A Global Perspective (Part 2)

As Christians we have a responsibility to speak for those whose rights have been taken from them. We have a responsibility to fight for the defenseless and pray for our brother's and sisters in captivity. Slavery is an issue all over the world, even in our own home towns.

The San Jose, CA Police Department has an entire division dedicated to this horrendous crime.

Its a crime that we would all like to think could never exist in our more enlightened "Global Community" but it does exist. And its prolific.

There are numerous organizations like Catholic Relief Services maintains an informative website that details the root causes of human trafficking and who it effects.

In an effort to keep a finger on the global pulse, this is a subject that simply cannot be forgotten. Sudan has had a significant amount of press in the last 5 or 6 years, but the problems in Sudan go back much further.

After a peace agreement was signed in 1972 ending a decade of civil war, the South Sudanese Christian minority found that the issues were not addressed and in 1983, it started all over again. Another civil war, this time lasting more than 20 years devastated the communities in both the North and the South. In late January, there was a vote held in Sudan that would separate the north and south into two distinct nation states hopefully bringing an end to the "jihad" and civil wars that have been central to the lives of the nationals for generations.

As a result of these years and years of relentless violence, many of our Christian brothers and sisters in the South were taken into slavery in the North. Christian Solidarity International (CSI) lists some of the  human rights violation at the hands of the Northern Sudanese slave masters: repeated rape, mock executions, forced religious conversions, stabbings, cuttings, genital mutilations, beatings, and forced, unpaid labor.

CSI has successfully freed and returned several of these slaves to Southern Sudan in months, but there are an estimated thirty-five thousand more, including women and children suffering at the hands of these slave masters.

Remember the Sudanese and persecuted Christians and enslaved peoples of all faiths in your prayers. 


**Update Haitian Human Trafficking Ring Busted in D.R.**