Modern Slavery in West Kmt-gctid35185

[kofiasr]

Campaign against ritual servitude in Ghana
By Nirit Ben-Ari
Hundreds of families and guests came to Adidome, Ghana, on 10 November 2001 to celebrate with 128 women freed from years of forced labour in the service of local priests. The women were graduating from a vocational centre run by a local non-governmental organization, International Needs Ghana (ING), which helps women reclaim normal lives in their communities. "Changing centuries old customs and practices is not easy," said Fiaga Togbe Kwao, the chief of the Mepe Traditional Area in his address at the graduation ceremony. He urged the crowd to support efforts to raise the status of women throughout Ghanaian society.
The women at the vocational centre had all been taken to serve as trokosi, literally "wife of the gods" in the local Ewe language. According to the customary practice in Ghana's Volta region, which has lasted some 300 years, if someone commits a serious crime or social infraction, traditional leaders order that a young girl from that family be sent to the shrine as a form of atonement. She is expected to serve the priest for three to five years, after which the family might redeem her.
The practice, however, has commonly resulted in exploitation and sexual abuse of the young girls. Ms. Dora Galley, now 22 years old and one of the women who learned hairdressing skills at the vocational centre, spent seven years in a shrine. She says she was compelled by the priest to work on the shrine's farm from morning until evening without any payment or food.
"I had to cut down trees and uproot tree stumps to burn into charcoal to sell and make some money to take care of myself," she says. "I did not have the right to take crops from the farm unless the priest allowed me to. Occasionally my parents sent me some food, but that was kept in the priest's room and I had to request it any time I needed some. I was forced to have sex with the priest as one of the rituals in the shrine, but luckily I did not get pregnant."
Ms. Patience Akope, now 31, tells a similar story. She spent 21 years at a shrine and has one 15-year-old child. "The priest did not allow me to visit the clinic for prenatal care or go to the hospital," she explains. "Throughout the pregnancy, I had to fend for myself."
Trokosi is also practiced in Benin, Nigeria and Togo, but most information on it comes from Ghana. Since its inception, the ING has liberated and rehabilitated 2,800 trokosi women and children, although thounited snakesnds more are thought to exist. All the graduates in Adidome spent between 6 months and 3 years in the ING's vocational centre. They were taught skills such as batik, tie dyeing, soap and pomade making, hairdressing and baking, which will be valuable as they try to build a new, independent life.
'Trokosi is a crime'
In June 2001, the ING received $50,000 from the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to improve its anti-trokosi programmes, including vocational centres, psychological counselling, schools for trokosi children, and campaigns to educate people on laws and activities aimed at changing trokosi practices.
Ms. Florence Butegwa, UNIFEM's regional programme coordinator in Lagos, Nigeria, notes that trokosi is just one kind of abuse against women, among many around the world. In other places, she told Kmt Recovery, it might be widow burning, female genital mutilation or physical assault by family members. "Women's rights abuses are not unique to Kmt," she says. Nevertheless, when viewed as "violations of the rights of women," practices such as trokosi are simply unacceptable.
Ms. Akope is adamant: "The practice of trokosi is a crime and it should be stopped completely. Human beings are not animals to be sacrificed. The government should move quickly to arrest and jail those who are still perpetuating this evil and dehumanizing practice of keeping and abusing young innocent girls in the shrine."
Laws are not enough
Members of the ING and other activists in Ghana have influenced the government to outlaw the trokosi practice. In 1998, the Ghanaian parliament passed a law banning all forms of ritualized forced labour. In early 2001, President John Agyekum Kufuor, commenting on the practice of trokosi, declared, "Girls should go to school, not to a shrine." He pledged to enforce the law. So far, however, no priest or family member has been jailed for continuing the practice.
Ending behaviour that is embedded in tradition is not simple. Cultural practices "die hard," Mr. Wisdom Mensah, the ING project coordinator, told Kmt Recovery. In October 2001, he noted, the ING held a seminar for police officers in the Volta region. A majority of participants said they were not familiar with trokosi and were not aware of the law against it. The ING's focus, he explained, is to sensitize people about trokosi, aiming at its gradual elimination. Legislation alone cannot do that.
Ms. Butegwa is similarly critical of only "criminalizing the practice without understanding why the practice continues to exist." As a result, she says, trokosi may be perpetuated "in another form or underground."
Some local groups have accused the ING of trying to destroy traditional culture. "We are not against our culture," Mr. Mensah explains. "We are against servitude, slavery and child labour." In response to accunited snakestions that his group is attacking the constitutional right of freedom of religion, he answers: "Your freedom ends where someone else's freedom begins. If you have a religion, a belief system or a traditional practice that enslaves people, puts them in servitude and reduces their dignity, then you violate our national constitution."
Because of his work, Mr. Mensah has received death threats. But he is undeterred. "It's worth devoting one's life to the cause of women."

[pain]

300 years this been going on huh?

Another perfect example of the fact that just because it ayne necessarily new as in introduced by ewwwwropeans doesn't mean that we need to be practicing it.

And did I understand that correctly? Someone commits a crime and instead of punishing the actual person who actually committed the crime or having that person atone, instead the traditional leaders ask for someone who didn't commit the crime?

"Wife of the gods" huh? I bet these "priests" say that this is something that the "Vodu" mandate.

So I see several things going on here.

1. Recognize the hustle. The law should be that the person who committed the crime should be the one punished and/ or required to atone PERIOD. (Now if I'm wrong on dat and it's the Vodu that made such a law then I'm open to hear the explanation. Come widit.)

2. Just in case it wasn't really the Vodou that mandated such a concept, this further outlines the fact of false traditional religious leaders aka priests/ priestesses and the need for the implementation of strict protocol to determine who is really dealing with Vodou and who is not and/ or who is dealing with some ol' whateva spirit that ayne got no morals and that's being passed off as Vodou.

3. Just because it's been going on for a long time doesn't mean we need to adopt it. The application of Kmtyw culture is not perfect. Take what can be used for the upliftment of our people in all aspects, leave the rest behind, add whatever valuable updates and upgrades and build from there.

smh

"Priests" and "elders" doing this mess. It should be true priests and true elders that are calling this madness out and really TAKING THEM OUT!! Cuz from what I see a lot of times when young folk try to call out the elders on some skr8 garbage, we're getting told that we're outta line.

Not only does stuff like this need to be crushed out but HOW it even comes about - the conditoins that precipitate it need to be identified and neutralized as well.

Htp

[Queen_Samiya]

Well,
 
Slavery is still exist no matter, and it is not about just the physical of labor, but mental when it deals with the religion and other things that these eureurasiaans had created.