I'm 150 feet down an illegal mine shaft in Ghana.

The air is thick with heat and

dust, and it's hard to breathe. I can feel the brush of sweaty bodies passing me
in the darkness, but I can't see much else. I hear voices talking, but mostly the
shaft is this cacophony of men coughing, and stone being broken with primitive
tools. Like the others, I wear a ickering, cheap ashlight tied to my head with
this elastic, tattered band, and I can barely make out the slick tree limbs holding
up the walls of the three-foot square hole dropping hundreds of feet into the
earth. When my hand slips, I suddenly remember a miner I had met days before
who had lost his grip and fell countless feet down that shaft.
As I stand talking to you today, these men are still deep in that hole, risking their
lives without payment or compensation, and often dying.
I got to climb out of that hole, and I got to go home, but they likely never will,
because they're trapped in slavery.
For the last 28 years, I've been documenting indigenous cultures in more than
70 countries on six continents, and in 2009 I had the great honor of being the
sole exhibitor at the Vancouver Peace Summit. Amongst all the astonishing
people I met there, I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO dedicated to
eradicating modern day slavery. We started talking about slavery, and really, I
started learning about slavery, for I had certainly known it existed in the world,
but not to such a degree. After we nished talking, I felt so horrible and honestly
ashamed at my own lack of knowledge of this atrocity in my own lifetime, and I
thought, if I don't know, how many other people don't know? It started burning a
hole in my stomach, so within weeks, I ew down to Los Angeles to meet with
the director of Free the Slaves and oer them my help.
Thus began my journey into modern day slavery. Oddly, I had been to many of
these places before. Some I even considered like my second home. But this
time, I would see the skeletons hidden in the closet.
A conservative estimate tells us there are more than 27 million people enslaved
in the world today. That's double the amount of people taken from Africa during
the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade. A hundred and fty years ago, an
agricultural slave cost about three times the annual salary of an American
worker. That equates to about $50,000 in today's money. Yet today, entire
families can be enslaved for generations over a debt as small as $18.
Astonishingly, slavery generates prots of more than $13 billion worldwide each
year.

Many have been tricked by false promises of a good education, a better job,
only to nd that they're forced to work without pay under the threat of violence,
and they cannot walk away.
Today's slavery is about commerce, so the goods that enslaved people produce
have value, but the people producing them are disposable. Slavery exists
everywhere, nearly, in the world, and yet it is illegal everywhere in the world.
In India and Nepal, I was introduced to the brick kilns. This strange and awesome
sight was like walking into ancient Egypt or Dante's Inferno. Enveloped in
temperatures of 130 degrees, men, women, children, entire families in fact, were
cloaked in a heavy blanket of dust, while mechanically stacking bricks on their
head, up to 18 at a time, and carrying them from the scorching kilns to trucks
hundreds of yards away. Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they work
silently, doing this task over and over for 16 or 17 hours a day. There were no
breaks for food, no water breaks, and the severe dehydration made urinating
pretty much inconsequential. So pervasive was the heat and the dust that my
camera became too hot to even touch and ceased working. Every 20 minutes,
I'd have to run back to our cruiser to clean out my gear and run it under an air
conditioner to revive it, and as I sat there, I thought, my camera is getting far
better treatment than these people.
Back in the kilns, I wanted to cry, but the abolitionist next to me quickly grabbed
me and he said, "Lisa, don't do that. Just don't do that here." And he very clearly
explained to me that emotional displays are very dangerous in a place like this,
not just for me, but for them. I couldn't oer them any direct help. I couldn't give
them money, nothing. I wasn't a citizen of that country. I could get them in a
worse situation than they were already in. I'd have to rely on Free the Slaves to
work within the system for their liberation, and I trusted that they would. As for
me, I'd have to wait until I got home to really feel my heartbreak.
In the Himalayas, I found children carrying stone for miles down mountainous
terrain to trucks waiting at roads below. The big sheets of slate were heavier
than the children carrying them, and the kids hoisted them from their heads
using these handmade harnesses of sticks and rope and torn cloth. It's dicult
to witness something so overwhelming. How can we aect something so
insidious, yet so pervasive? Some don't even know they're enslaved, people
working 16, 17 hours a day without any pay, because this has been the case all
their lives. They have nothing to compare it to. When these villagers claimed
their freedom, the slaveholders burned down all of their houses. I mean, these
people had nothing, and they were so petried, they wanted to give up, but the
woman in the center rallied for them to persevere, and abolitionists on the
ground helped them get a quarry lease of their own, so that now they do the

same back-breaking work, but they do it for themselves, and they get paid for it,
and they do it in freedom.
Sex tracking is what we often think of when we hear the word slavery, and
because of this worldwide awareness, I was warned that it would be dicult for
me to work safely within this particular industry.
In Kathmandu, I was escorted by women who had previously been sex slaves
themselves. They ushered me down a narrow set of stairs that led to this dirty,
dimly uorescent lit basement. This wasn't a brothel, per se. It was more like a
restaurant. Cabin restaurants, as they're known in the trade, are venues for
forced prostitution. Each has small, private rooms, where the slaves, women,
along with young girls and boys, some as young as seven years old, are forced
to entertain the clients, encouraging them to buy more food and alcohol. Each
cubicle is dark and dingy, identied with a painted number on the wall, and
partitioned by plywood and a curtain. The workers here often endure tragic
sexual abuse at the hands of their customers. Standing in the near darkness, I
remember feeling this quick, hot fear, and in that instant, I could only imagine
what it must be like to be trapped in that hell. I had only one way out: the stairs
from where I'd come in. There were no back doors. There were no windows large
enough to climb through. These people have no escape at all, and as we take in
such a dicult subject, it's important to note that slavery, including sex
tracking, occurs in our own backyard as well.
Tens of hundreds of people are enslaved in agriculture, in restaurants, in
domestic servitude, and the list can go on. Recently, the New York Times
reported that between 100,000 and 300,000 American children are sold into
sex slavery every year. It's all around us. We just don't see it.
The textile industry is another one we often think of when we hear about slave
labor. I visited villages in India where entire families were enslaved in the silk
trade. This is a family portrait. The dyed black hands are the father, while the
blue and red hands are his sons. They mix dye in these big barrels, and they
submerge the silk into the liquid up to their elbows, but the dye is toxic.
My interpreter told me their stories.
"We have no freedom," they said. "We hope still, though, that we could leave this
house someday and go someplace else where we actually get paid for our
dyeing."
It's estimated that more than 4,000 children are enslaved on Lake Volta, the
largest man-made lake in the world. When we rst arrived, I went to have a quick
look. I saw what seemed to be a family shing on a boat, two older brothers,
some younger kids, makes sense right? Wrong. They were all enslaved. Children
are taken from their families and tracked and vanished, and they're forced to

work endless hours on these boats on the lake, even though they do not know
how to swim.
This young child is eight years old. He was trembling when our boat approached,
frightened it would run over his tiny canoe. He was petried he would be
knocked in the water. The skeletal tree limbs submerged in Lake Volta often
catch the shing nets, and weary, frightened children are thrown into the water
to untether the lines. Many of them drown.
For as long as he can recall, he's been forced to work on the lake. Terried of
his master, he will not run away, and since he's been treated with cruelty all his
life, he passes that down to the younger slaves that he manages.
I met these boys at ve in the morning, when they were hauling in the last of
their nets, but they had been working since 1 a.m. in the cold, windy night. And
it's important to note that these nets weigh more than a thousand pounds when
they're full of sh.
I want to introduce you to Ko. Ko was rescued from a shing village. I met him
at a shelter where Free the Slaves rehabilitates victims of slavery. Here he's seen
taking a bath at the well, pouring big buckets of water over his head, and the
wonderful news is, as you and I are sitting here talking today, Ko has been
reunited with his family, and what's even better, his family has been given tools
to make a living and to keep their children safe. Ko is the embodiment of
possibility. Who will he become because someone took a stand and made a
dierence in his life?
Driving down a road in Ghana with partners of Free the Slaves, a fellow
abolitionist on a moped suddenly sped up to our cruiser and tapped on the
window. He told us to follow him down a dirt road into the jungle. At the end of
the road, he urged us out of the car, and told the driver to quickly leave. Then
he pointed toward this barely visible footpath, and said, "This is the path, this is
the path. Go." As we started down the path, we pushed aside the vines blocking
the way, and after about an hour of walking in, found that the trail had become
ooded by recent rains, so I hoisted the photo gear above my head as we
descended into these waters up to my chest. After another two hours of hiking,
the winding trail abruptly ended at a clearing, and before us was a mass of holes
that could t into the size of a football eld, and all of them were full of enslaved
people laboring. Many women had children strapped to their backs while they
were panning for gold, wading in water poisoned by mercury. Mercury is used in
the extraction process.
These miners are enslaved in a mine shaft in another part of Ghana. When they
came out of the shaft, they were soaking wet from their own sweat. I remember
looking into their tired, bloodshot eyes, for many of them had been
underground for 72 hours. The shafts are up to 300 feet deep, and they carry

out heavy bags of stone that later will be transported to another area, where the
stone will be pounded so that they can extract the gold.
At rst glance, the pounding site seems full of powerful men, but when we look
closer, we see some less fortunate working on the fringes, and children too. All
of them are victim to injury, illness and violence. In fact, it's very likely that this
muscular person will end up like this one here, racked with tuberculosis and
mercury poisoning in just a few years.
This is Manuru. When his father died, his uncle tracked him to work with him in
the mines. When his uncle died, Manuru inherited his uncle's debt, which further
forced him into being enslaved in the mines. When I met him, he had been
working in the mines for 14 years, and the leg injury that you see here is
actually from a mining accident, one so severe doctors say his leg should be
amputated. On top of that, Manuru has tuberculosis, yet he's still forced to work
day in and day out in that mine shaft.
Even still, he has a dream that he will become free and become educated with
the help of local activists like Free the Slaves, and it's this sort of determination,
in the face of unimaginable odds, that lls me with complete awe.
I want to shine a light on slavery. When I was working in the eld, I brought lots
of candles with me, and with the help of my interpreter, I imparted to the people
I was photographing that I wanted to illuminate their stories and their plight, so
when it was safe for them, and safe for me, I made these images. They knew
their image would be seen by you out in the world. I wanted them to know that
we will be bearing witness to them, and that we will do whatever we can to help
make a dierence in their lives. I truly believe, if we can see one another as
fellow human beings, then it becomes very dicult to tolerate atrocities like
slavery. These images are not of issues. They are of people, real people, like you
and me, all deserving of the same rights, dignity and respect in their lives. There
is not a day that goes by that I don't think of these many beautiful, mistreated
people I've had the tremendous honor of meeting.
I hope that these images awaken a force
in those who view them, people like you, and I hope that force will ignite a re,
and that re will shine a light on slavery, for without that light, the beast of
bondage can continue to live in the shadows.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)

50m

28 70 2009

NGO

150

18
130

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7


10
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500







72
90m

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Translated into Japanese by Akira Kan

Reviewed by Mieko Akai