free a slave or two

instead of ALL of them, but bushwhacked STILL rewards ya!

and don't think (slavery) doesn't happen here and now. IT DOES. see my january 1st posting in my connecticut blog, the nutmeg grater


Eradicating slavery in Sudan
By John Eibner February 22, 2006
FOR 20 YEARS, Abuk Ater was a slave in northern Sudan. She was a young, childless, married woman when she was captured and enslaved by a member of an Arab militia backed by Sudan's government. Her master, Mohammed El Nur, raped her, called her ''slave," and forced her to convert to Islam. He renamed her ''Howah."
This month, Abuk, her four children, and 162 other slaves were repatriated to southern Sudan by the government's showcase Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children. Government officials loaded Abuk and the others like cattle into open-topped, seatless trucks for a three-day journey in 100-degree-plus heat. Despite the bleak prospect of having nothing to eat but leaves, Abuk is relieved to be free, living with her own people, in her own land.
Abuk is just one of tens of thousands or more black Sudanese citizens who have been enslaved by the government's armed forces and allied militias since the outbreak of civil war in 1983. Khartoum has consistently used militia raids on black villages as a low-budget
but brutally effective component of its counterinsurgency policy.
President Bush declared the eradication of slavery as one of his goals when he launched his Sudan peace initiative in September 2001. But just as the signing of a peace agreement between Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in January 2005 has not ended genocidal conflict in Darfur, neither has it resulted in the emancipation of the country's slaves. Slavery -- an internationally recognized crime against humanity -- continues to blight lives and obscure the prospect of a peaceful, stable, and united Sudan.
Black women and children in Darfur continue to be enslaved by government-backed janjaweed militiamen, especially for sexual purposes. In the far south, Khartoum's longtime ally, the Lord's Resistance Army, still perpetrates atrocities against civilians, including enslavement............

.......The government withholds funds needed to free the 8,000 registered slaves. It calculates that the international community will be satisfied with occasional small-scale repatriations, and it appears to be right. Last September, the Bush administration rewarded Khartoum's lethargy by upgrading Sudan's slavery status from Tier III (the level for worst offenders) to Tier II............