People please can we trig debate about "slavery". What in fact it is? What is its scope. How it implicates nations and preclude their social, economical and culture development. Please share your views ???/

Slavery has different manifestations: It can be physical, which is very primitive. However, even in these modern times it is still practised in some parts of world. You don't have to go very far to search for an example. It is happening in our very country in South Punjab and Sindh where tenants are usually kept chained or in some sort of physical captivity of the land lords.
Slavery can also be economical and political, by denying certain groups of people the economic advantages or political freedom. Pre-independence colonial states in Asia and Africa would be appropriate citations of this phenomenon.
On a more conceptual plane, slavery can also be of the mind. If your thought process is captured, trained, or redirected to see and think on the lines where your captor wants you to see and think, it is a form of slavery. In current times, powerful media conglomerations act as an important vehicle to turn people's mind to certain ideals and make them slaves of certain things. For instance, many in the oriental world is attracted towards the western ideals and in the process relegate all the nice things they have in their own culture. They aspire to act and acquire whatever westerners do, or at least what the powerful media houses show them as doing.

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Muhammad Ali Asghar

dear maliasghar.....

sir i like ur elaboration on slavery. ur examples are good and easy to understand.

but dear i being a patriotist of sindh dont like ur example from sindh in which u cited the example of present slavery. since i am from sindh and know very well about its tenants and land lordism. i agree that slavery used to be a common practice in sindh but at this of modern days it is not possible.

so if u dont mind plzz dont hurt the people of sind and southern punjab.

regards

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"pattering your life around others opinion is nothing more than slavery"

What is Slavery?

Nowhere is slavery legal in the sense that no legal system recognizes title or property in a living human being. This means that no court will enforce a contract to buy and sell slaves or enforce the right of a master to the labor of his or her slave.

However, although slavery, as a form of property recognized by the state, has been abolished, millions of people are still enslaved.

The Society uses the definition of slavery enunciated in 1880 by the High Court of Allahabad in India, which, in substance, is that a person is treated as a slave or is reduced to a condition of slavery if another exercises power or control over that person:
(1) to restrain their personal liberty; and
(2) to dispose of their labor against their will —
without lawful authority.

Slavery is sometimes confused with other forms of servitude, such as forced labor, bonded labor, pawnage and servile concubinage.

The expression "forced labor", in international law, refers to those forms of labor obligations or penal labor imposed by a state or an agency or agent of the government or state and which are described in the Forced Labor Convention 1930 and the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention 1957.

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How Many Slaves Are There?

Just because you pass a law on paper abolishing slavery does not mean that slavery ceases to exist. Indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries the colonial powers passed laws and issued decrees abolishing slavery, but slaves still existed in those colonies (usually no one told them that they were free, and often the colonial administrators in the colony did not wish to offend the chief by forcing him to free his male and female slaves).

Some are in traditional forms of slavery which were never eradicated. However, one of the most surprising aspects of this problem has been the emergence of slavery in areas where had not existed for over a hundred years.

No one knows precisely how many slaves there are. In 1995 this Society estimated that there were 2.7 million people throughout the world — mainly children — in conditions of slavery. The International Labor Organization estimates that the number is slightly higher than this, and we would suggest that its estimate is as accurate as you can get.

In arriving at our estimate of 2.7 million slaves, we used the common law definition of slave (see the previous page: "What Is Slavery?"). This definition excludes other forms of servitude, such as bonded labor, forced labor and servile concubinage. In addition, it only includes one category of trafficked women and children. Some would probably say that our definition — which is the definition enunciated in 1880 by the High Court of Allahabad in India — is too narrow.

It is simply that we include the other forms of servile labor under distinct categories rather than lumping them together under one heading. A "one size fits all" is not suitable for an organization such as ours which focuses on rescue and manumission programs rather than on political advocacy. This is quite important for our organization as we use different in-country programs to deal with and eliminate different forms of servitude.

A recent newspaper article questioned the credibility of estimates by Professor Kevin Bales and others which give an estimate of 27 million slaves, or others who give an estimate of 100 million slaves.

The criticism is unfair to Professor Bales and is based on a misunderstanding.

Professor Bales uses a different definition of slavery (which includes pawns and bonded laborers) to arrive at his estimate of 27 million.

Others arrive at an estimate of 100 million by including other categories of trafficked women and children which we exclude.

Furthermore, the criticism does not appreciate the difficulties in estimating the number of slaves. Our organization has direct in-country experience in estimating various forms of servitude and child labor in quite small areas, for example, 5,000 slaves in one remote rural region, 3,000 bonded laborers in another small rural area or 5,000 child prostitutes in one city. Several methodologies are employed, but it is important to stress that if we say that there are 5,000 slaves in a certain region that does not mean that this is the precise number, but rather that it is in the range of about 4,500 to 5,500.

Following a meeting in London in January 2006 with our sister organization, Anti-Slavery International, it was agreed that we would henceforth adopt the estimates published by the International Labor Organization. After all, debating whether there are 2.7 million slaves or 27 million slaves will not free a single child! The task is to free them!

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Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.

Before complaining that you are a slave to another,be sure that you are not a slave to self look within...you will find there,perchase slavish thoughts,slavish desires and in your daily life and conduct slavish habits...conquer these,cease to be a slave to self and no man will have the power to enslave you......