Sexual slavery
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Sexual slavery is a special case of slavery which includes various different practices:
- forced prostitution (which can include religious prostitution)
- single-owner sexual slavery
- slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common or permissible
In general, the nature of slavery means that the slave is de facto available for sex, and ordinary social conventions and legal protections that would otherwise constrain an owner's actions are not effective. Female slaves are at highest risk of sexual abuse and sexual slavery.
The term "consensual sexual slavery" (meaning see for example BDSM and total power exchange) has occasionally been used. The term refers to a sexual role play between someone in an assumed position of power (e.g. dominant) and someone in a supposed position of servitude (e.g. submissive).
| Contents |
Modern-day sexual slavery
Forced prostitution
Forced prostitution is a form of sexual slavery that is often directed at immigrants to western countries. Often the "owners" of these people will confiscate passports and/or money in order to make the women involved completely reliant on them. This practice is universally illegal.
In many countries, illegal immigrants often work in prostitution in circumstances such that they feel they have no other choice. Often these prostitutes are kept in financial debt by the brothel owners, who charge them for their travel and other costs. The arrangement may be such that the prostitutes can never earn enough to pay off the debt. This is a form of debt bondage. This kind of sex slavery is often found in Germany, Spain, Britain,the Netherlands, and the USA. Clearly separating this from East European women entering prostitution in Western countries knowingly and more or less willingly, to escape the daily hardships of their lives, is often not possible. Since the mid 1990s, with the opening up of the former Soviet Union, the end of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the opening up of East and South East Asia, there has been an increase in the trafficking in human beings, the movement of people into forced labour, by force, fraud, or coercion. A significant part of that includes sexual exploitation and forced prostitution, with, according to US State Department figures, at least 500,000 women and children forced into prostitution globally. A new disturbing development is the large-scale trafficking of women from Iran to the Gulf countries and Western Europe. Iranian government officials and clerics have been implicated in this trade. In the United States, large scale trafficking of women from Mexico and Central America for sexual slavery has been on the increase.
In addition to the First World, this also takes place in countries of South Asia such as India and Thailand, where young girls are sometimes sold (often by their own parents) to brothel owners. In modern day Thailand this is becoming much rarer, but is still widespread.
Sexual slavery in Africa
The presence of sex slavery in Africa is widespread. In many African communities marrying women requires paying a wedding dowry to her family, which lessens the perceived barrier to female slavery.
The colonial powers abolished slavery in the 19th century, but in areas outside their jurisdiction, such as the Mahdist empire in Sudan, the practice continued to thrive. Nowadays, institutional slavery has been banned worldwide, but in the Muslim countries Mauritania and Sudan cases still exist, including sex slavery. In Sudan, sexual abuse of female prisoners by government troops is commonplace, both in the Darfur conflict and the Second Sudanese Civil War.
There are numerous reports of women sex slaves in areas without an effective government control, such as until recently, Liberia, Sierra Leone, northern Uganda and Kongo. In Zimbabwe, the government is believed to force both boys and girls into membership of a youth militia, the Green Bombers. Rape of girls here is common.
Sexual slavery in the past
Sexual slavery in Islamic countries
Qur'anic interpretators consider the liberation of slaves a meritorious act, orders prisoners to be released with or without ransom and forbids debt slavery. However, the hadith and most traditional madhhabs (schools of Shariah) permitted slavery. According to the Sunnah, infidel war captives can be enslaved. Although Islam forbids sex with married women, in Sunni Islam, the marriage of enslaved infidel women is considered annulled.
Traditional Islam, (both Sunni and Shi'a) allows every Muslim man to be married to up to four wives, however he must love and provide for them all equally. Traditional Islam regards this as a social security system for widowed mothers and their children. Different rules apply for the ma malakat aymanukum.
'Right hand possessions' According to all four Sunni madhabs and Shia islam, the rights and duties of those 'right hand possessions' were as follows:As soon as she was impregnated by her master, her status changed to 'mudabbar', which entitled her to additional rights:
- Juridically they were considered as property of their master.
- They could not marry or divorce without their masters permission.
- Her master had the right to dissolve her marriage.
- Her master was allowed to have sex with her 'by right of possession', unless she was married.
The first category clearly fits the definition of sexual slavery, while the second category doesn't.
- She was entitled to the same treatment as the master's regular wives.
- Her offspring were considered as legitimate children of her master, i.e. they were no slaves anymore.
- She could not be sold to others.
- After his death she was manumitted and enjoyed the same treatment as other wives.
Because of a steady demand for female household and sex slaves and eunuchs, trade in the former flourished in African Muslim countries like Sudan, Mauritania and the former Sultanate of Zanzibar. By number of slaves, the Arab slave trade was comparable to the slave trade by Europeans. Usually, slave traders sold the male slaves for the American market, which employed them mainly as plantation workers and labourers, while selling the female slaves and castrated men to Arabs. The slave market in the holy Muslim city of Medina existed up to 1923. These slaves were acquired mainly by slave raids from Arab slavers on the indigenous African population. A smaller proportion was acquired as prisoners of war by Africans or abducted directly by Europeans.
The Ottoman Empire and its precursors acquired its slaves by abducting children from the subjugated Christian Circassians, Armenians and Greeks. The boys were incorporated in the Janissary corps, many girls ended as concubines in the harems of Ottoman officials.
Other important sources for sex slaves were South Asia and Eastern Europe. A limited number of Western Europeans were abducted by Barbary raiders.
In the Middle East, sexual slavery is as rare as in the western world. The exceptions are the underdeveloped countries of Sudan and Mauritania. Though some Muslims may claim that the hadith allows child sexual slavery, their view is very strongly in the minority, and publicly making such claims would be dangerous to the individual. The authenticity of many hadiths are disputed, and all Muslims would agree that the Qur'an is the best source of Islamic study.
Sexual slavery in North America
In the mid-19th century in the U.S., there was a white slavery scare which suggested that large numbers of white women were being kidnapped and forced into prostitution. The prevalence of this practice was greatly exaggerated due to xenophobia, and this phenomenon is generally regarded today as having been an example of a moral panic.
In fact, at that time, the US victims of sexual slavery were overwhelmingly women of African descent, held as slaves, often purchased with sexual exploitation as the primary goal. A supposedly true story of one such girl, purchased as a sexual slave when she was fourteen, is told in Celia, A Slave by Melton A. Mclaurin, and such practice is also widely referred to in other literature discussing the era, for instance Roots by Alex Haley.
Sexual slavery in Japan during World War II
During World War II, hundreds of thousands of mostly Asian women were tricked or otherwise coerced into serving the Japanese army as prostitutes in the wartime brothels of Asia during the Japanese occupation of Korea, China and other parts of South East Asia.
Forced into sexual slavery by Japan and raped dozens of times daily by Japanese soldiers, the euphemistically named "comfort women" have faced lives of enduring shame.
Sexual slavery in Japan post World War II
Some Japanese sources assert that the euphemistically named Recreation and Amusement Association, essentially brothels set up by the Japanese Home Ministry in August 1945 to serve the occupation forces, was equivalent to the comfort women system. However, most prostitutes seem to have been Japanese women forced into the work through economic destitution, not physical coercion. The system was officially terminated in January 1946, by order of higher military commanders from the main occupying power, the United States.
Sexual slavery in Korea
According to some Korean scholars, the South Korean military had a "comfort women" system in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Sexual slavery in KZ-camps during World War II
The Joy Division were groups of Jewish women in the concentration camps during World War II who were kept for the sexual pleasure of the Nazi guards, as described in Ka-tzetnik 135633's 1955 book, The House of Dolls. The Nazis also selected Polish and Ukrainian women working in forced labor and forced them into brothels.
External references
- Sex trade's reliance on forced labour - BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4532617.stm)
- A modern slave's brutal odyssey – BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3979725.stm)
- 'Bosnia: Sex Slave Recounts Her Ordeal - Institute for War & Peace Reporting (http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr3/bcr3_200303_415_3_eng.txt#)
- 'Asia's sex trade is 'slavery' - BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2783655.stm)
- 'Iran's Sex Slaves Suffer Hideously Under Mullahs - Iranfocus' (http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6)
- 'Streets of despair - The Observer (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1316649,00.html)
- eText (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/2/8/1/12818/12818-8.txt) of Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers (1907) by Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell, at Project Gutenberg. A work about "Oriental brothel slavery on the Pacific Coast".
- Celia, a slave (ISBN 0-38-071935-5)
- Roots (ISBN 0-44-017464-3)nl:Seksuele slavernij
