One week after 70 Christians were beheaded by terrorists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution standing in solidarity with the people of Africa victimized by terror and modern-day slavery. The resolution was introduced by Alderman Raymond Lopez (15th) and cosponsored by forty-one of the city’s fifty council members.
Most Americans assume that slavery no longer exists. Many are unaware that, according to the Global Slavery Index, almost 50 million people are currently enslaved, and Africa, as in the past, is a region of major concern.
“This was a team effort,” Lopez said. “Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders came together alongside several human-rights and abolitionist groups to elevate this important issue, including the African Jewish Alliance, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, and the Abolition Institute.”
Testimony before the Committee on Health and Human Relations provided by several African experts and eyewitnesses was raw and emotional. Simon Deng, enslaved as a child during one of Sudan’s genocidal civil wars, described his life under his Arab master. Gloria Puldu — whose organization, the LEAH Foundation, champions the case of Leah Sharibu, a Nigerian Christian woman who is still, after exactly seven years, a captive of Boko Haram jihadists — held up a picture of Sharibu and begged the committee members to help demand her return. Two African Muslims also testified: Hacen El Khair, from Mauritania — in which around 149,000 (3.2%) of its 4.6 million people are enslaved — and Daowd Salih — a Muslim from Darfur, who explained that his African tribal people are being slaughtered and enslaved, mostly because of their race.
After Boko Haram’s abduction of 276 Christian schoolgirls from the Nigerian village of Chibok in 2014, Michelle Obama called Americans to act with her “#BringBackOurGirls” Twitter campaign. A decade later, the same violence has spread, and villages of Christian and un-Arabized Muslims are regularly plagued in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and Darfur, Sudan.
According to Ald. Lopez, “These ongoing African atrocities have been called a ‘silent genocide’ because they have been ignored and under-reported in the Western media. Today, Chicago, the most American of American cities, has broken that shameful silence.”
Based on comments made by Committee Chair Ald. Rosanna Rodriguez-Sanchez, Ald. Lopez filed an amendment to the city’s procurement process called “Slavery & Exploitation-free Procurement” that will prevent any vendor from doing business with the City of Chicago if they or their suppliers benefit directly from slavery, child labor, or other exploitive measures.
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