Jeremiah of the Granite Studio’s take on the Shanxi slave case can be found here.
I haven’t written much on the case, nothing more than a couple of links, because I can’t figure out how. Yeah, maybe part of it is that old compassion fatigue, but really, how can you feel compassion fatigue in such a case?
I’ll quote Jeremiah’s last paragraph:
“Slavery in any form is an abomination. The enslavement of Africans in the early part of our history is one of the United States’ darkest hours. The act of taking slaves is cruel and inhumane and serves as proof that evil exists in the hearts of men. But it has nothing to do with “underdevelopment.” It is about greed, and corruption, and a system that consistently fails to protect the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. The exposure and total abolition of forced labor should matter more to any responsible government than comparatively petty issues such as “national image” or “face.””
I lived in Taiyuan for a year and heard many horrible, heartbreaking stories of the sheer poverty to be found only a few kilometres from my school. And the industrial slum I was living in was bad enough, but these stories were worse. But I never heard anything so horrific as this slave labour case.
And of course, despite the poverty I could see around me and the even worse stories I was constantly hearing, there were still plenty of black Audis with tinted windows cruising the streets.
But on the other hand, this comes as absolutely no surprise. The sheer number of stories I’ve read of all kinds of human trafficking, abuses of authority, inhumanity…..
I’m going to stop now. I don’t know where this is going.
