We Haitians Have had what others have only dreamed about...Why can't we pull ourselves together so maybe one day we could even help our other brothers....
His Story of Slavery
In visit to LI, plea for help in Sudan
In honoring slain American leader Martin Luther King Jr., congregants at the predominantly black Memorial Presbyterian Church in Roosevelt revisited the horror of slavery yesterday with two modern-day abolitionists.
Twenty-five years after the TV series "Roots" captivated this nation, there are 27 million slaves around the world, from Pakistan and India to Haiti, these men said.
Francis Bok, 22, who escaped from 10 years of slavery in Africa in 1996 and came to the United States three years later, kept the rapt attention of about 400 congregants as he talked for a half-hour about his capture, his slavery and his escape.
A beanpole of a man, at least 6 feet, 6 inches, Bok, in struggling but understandable English, told how he and others in mainly black southern Sudan were captured in a marketplace not far from his village of Nymlal. He had been sent there by his mother to sell eggs and beans. It was the 7-year-old's first time at market without his mother.
Arab marauders from the north had raided his village before they came to the market. Bok later learned that his parents and two sisters had been killed in the village. Only a few months ago, he said, he found out that his older brother had survived and is fighting with a southern Sudan Liberation Army.
Bok said he was captured by the raiders and, along with two little girls, was placed on a donkey and carted north. "The girls were crying, and when they did not stop after being told to do so, a soldier pulled out his pistol and shot one of them," he said. "The other girl kept crying, and then he shot her."
Bok was taken to Kirio, he said, where he was given to an Arab man, who presented him to the entire household. They all beat him. "They always called me 'abeed,' which means black slave, and I had to sleep with the cows," he said, adding that he was always fed leftovers from the master's table.
A couple of years after his capture, he tried to escape but was easily recaptured and beaten and tied up for 10 days, he said. Years later, he tried again and was recaptured and beaten and threatened with death. "I would rather be dead than a slave," he said.
So he tried it again and was successful, being helped by an Arab truck driver, only to be found by some local policemen, who made him serve them for seven months. He escaped and, with the help of an Egyptian, made his way to Cairo, where a United Nations body eventually helped him get to the nation of his choice: the United States. He went to Fargo, N.D.; then Iowa, and later Boston, where he joined up with Charles Jacobs, who started an abolitionist movement two years ago, the American Anti-Slavery Group.
Since joining with Jacobs, a Harvard graduate, Bok has been speaking out on Sudanese slavery, and he is the first escaped Sudanese slave to testify before a U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
"I'm speaking for people who can't speak for themselves," Bok said. "I'm a witness for what is happening in the Sudan today. As a Christian community, we must do something for the suffering of my people."
Sudan, the continent's biggest country in land mass, is, Jacobs said, home of the world's largest slave system. It is also the site of a huge oil deposit in the south, mostly inhabited by black Christians.
"The Sudan was also the home of Osama bin Laden for five years, and President [George W.] Bush has been asking that nation's leaders for their help in finding him. I just hope he doesn't sell out [on the slavery issue] for it," Jacobs said.
Based on a question-and-answer period following the talk by the abolitionists, most people were impressed by Bok and had been unaware of slavery in his country.
"He was touching and informative, although I had heard about it," said congregant Phyllis Drayton. "Just reminds us of how inhumane man can be to man."
A few people, though, wondered if the talk was misinformation.
"Slavery is horrific, there's no doubt about that," said Max Smith, another congregant. "But are we sure we're using the right terminology here? Could this be something that is happening in a civil war, with captured enemies?"
The two abolitionists were here under the aegis of the Long Island Interfaith Council of Clergy's MLK Jr. celebration chaired by the Memorial Presbyterian's pastor, the Rev. Reginald Tuggle, and the Plainview Jewish Center's Rabbi Moses A. Birnbaum. They spoke at the 8 and 11 a.m. services at Memorial, and at 7 p.m. in the Plainview center for the interfaith service, which includes Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs.
"Slavery is a problem that almost nobody is looking at, and the Sudan is the worst example of it," said Birnbaum, who is vice president and interreligious chairman for the Long Island Board of Rabbis. "In the Sudan, blacks are treated like they were in this country 200 years ago."
01-22-02, 09:19 PM
Linear Mode
Similar Threads 
