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Translator: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Morton Bast
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I'm 150 feet down an illegal mine shaft in Ghana.
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The air is thick with heat and dust,
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and it's hard to breathe.
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I can feel the brush of sweaty bodies passing me
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in the darkness, but I can't see much else.
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I hear voices talking, but mostly the shaft
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is this cacophony of men coughing,
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and stone being broken with primitive tools.
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Like the others, I wear a flickering, cheap flashlight
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tied to my head with this elastic, tattered band,
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and I can barely make out the slick tree limbs
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holding up the walls of the three-foot square hole
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dropping hundreds of feet into the earth.
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When my hand slips, I suddenly remember a miner
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I had met days before who had lost his grip
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and fell countless feet down that shaft.
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As I stand talking to you today,
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these men are still deep in that hole,
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risking their lives without payment or compensation,
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and often dying.
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I got to climb out of that hole, and I got to go home,
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but they likely never will, because they're trapped in slavery.
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For the last 28 years, I've been documenting
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indigenous cultures in more than 70 countries
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on six continents, and in 2009 I had the great honor
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of being the sole exhibitor at the Vancouver Peace Summit.
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Amongst all the astonishing people I met there,
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I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO
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dedicated to eradicating modern day slavery.
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We started talking about slavery, and really,
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I started learning about slavery,
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for I had certainly known it existed in the world,
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but not to such a degree.
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After we finished talking, I felt so horrible
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and honestly ashamed at my own lack of knowledge
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of this atrocity in my own lifetime, and I thought,
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if I don't know, how many other people don't know?
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It started burning a hole in my stomach, so within weeks,
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I flew down to Los Angeles to meet with the director
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of Free the Slaves and offer them my help.
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Thus began my journey into modern day slavery.
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Oddly, I had been to many of these places before.
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Some I even considered like my second home.
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But this time, I would see the skeletons hidden in the closet.
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A conservative estimate tells us there are more than
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27 million people enslaved in the world today.
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That's double the amount of people taken from Africa
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during the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade.
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A hundred and fifty years ago, an agricultural slave
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cost about three times the annual salary
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of an American worker.
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That equates to about $50,000 in today's money.
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Yet today, entire families can be enslaved for generations
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over a debt as small as $18.
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Astonishingly, slavery generates profits
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of more than $13 billion worldwide each year.
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Many have been tricked by false promises
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of a good education, a better job, only to find
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that they're forced to work without pay
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under the threat of violence, and they cannot walk away.
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Today's slavery is about commerce,
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so the goods that enslaved people produce have value,
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but the people producing them are disposable.
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Slavery exists everywhere, nearly, in the world,
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and yet it is illegal everywhere in the world.
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In India and Nepal, I was introduced to the brick kilns.
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This strange and awesome sight was like
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walking into ancient Egypt or Dante's Inferno.
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Enveloped in temperatures of 130 degrees,
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men, women, children, entire families in fact,
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were cloaked in a heavy blanket of dust,
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while mechanically stacking bricks on their head,
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up to 18 at a time, and carrying them
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from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away.
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Deadened by monotony and exhaustion,
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they work silently, doing this task over and over
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for 16 or 17 hours a day.
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There were no breaks for food, no water breaks,
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and the severe dehydration made urinating
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pretty much inconsequential.
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So pervasive was the heat and the dust
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that my camera became too hot to even touch
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and ceased working.
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Every 20 minutes, I'd have to run back to our cruiser
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to clean out my gear and run it under an air conditioner
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to revive it, and as I sat there,
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I thought, my camera is getting far better treatment
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than these people.
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Back in the kilns, I wanted to cry,
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but the abolitionist next to me quickly grabbed me
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and he said, "Lisa, don't do that. Just don't do that here."
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And he very clearly explained to me that emotional displays
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are very dangerous in a place like this,
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not just for me, but for them.
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I couldn't offer them any direct help.
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I couldn't give them money, nothing.
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I wasn't a citizen of that country.
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I could get them in a worse situation
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than they were already in.
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I'd have to rely on Free the Slaves to work
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within the system for their liberation,
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and I trusted that they would.
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As for me, I'd have to wait until I got home
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to really feel my heartbreak.
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In the Himalayas, I found children carrying stone
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for miles down mountainous terrain
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to trucks waiting at roads below.
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The big sheets of slate were heavier
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than the children carrying them,
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and the kids hoisted them from their heads
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using these handmade harnesses of sticks and rope
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and torn cloth.
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It's difficult to witness something so overwhelming.
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How can we affect something so insidious,
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yet so pervasive?
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Some don't even know they're enslaved,
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people working 16, 17 hours a day without any pay,
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because this has been the case all their lives.
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They have nothing to compare it to.
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When these villagers claimed their freedom,
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the slaveholders burned down all of their houses.
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I mean, these people had nothing,
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and they were so petrified, they wanted to give up,
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but the woman in the center rallied for them to persevere,
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and abolitionists on the ground
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helped them get a quarry lease of their own,
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so that now they do the same back-breaking work,
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but they do it for themselves, and they get paid for it,
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and they do it in freedom.
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Sex trafficking is what we often think of
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when we hear the word slavery,
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and because of this worldwide awareness,
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I was warned that it would be difficult for me to work safely
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within this particular industry.
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In Kathmandu, I was escorted by women who had
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previously been sex slaves themselves.
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They ushered me down a narrow set of stairs
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that led to this dirty, dimly fluorescent lit basement.
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This wasn't a brothel, per se.
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It was more like a restaurant.
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Cabin restaurants, as they're known in the trade,
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are venues for forced prostitution.
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Each has small, private rooms, where the slaves,
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women, along with young girls and boys,
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some as young as seven years old,
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are forced to entertain the clients,
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encouraging them to buy more food and alcohol.
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Each cubicle is dark and dingy,
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identified with a painted number on the wall,
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and partitioned by plywood and a curtain.
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The workers here often endure tragic sexual abuse
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at the hands of their customers.
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Standing in the near darkness, I remember feeling
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this quick, hot fear, and in that instant,
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I could only imagine what it must be like
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to be trapped in that hell.
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I had only one way out: the stairs from where I'd come in.
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There were no back doors.
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There were no windows large enough to climb through.
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These people have no escape at all,
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and as we take in such a difficult subject,
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it's important to note that slavery, including sex trafficking,
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occurs in our own backyard as well.
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Tens of hundreds of people are enslaved in agriculture,
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in restaurants, in domestic servitude,
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and the list can go on.
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Recently, the New York Times reported that
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between 100,000 and 300,000 American children
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are sold into sex slavery every year.
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It's all around us. We just don't see it.
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The textile industry is another one we often think of
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when we hear about slave labor.
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I visited villages in India where entire families were enslaved
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in the silk trade.
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This is a family portrait.
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The dyed black hands are the father, while the blue
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and red hands are his sons.
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They mix dye in these big barrels,
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and they submerge the silk into the liquid up to their elbows,
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but the dye is toxic.
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My interpreter told me their stories.
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"We have no freedom," they said.
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"We hope still, though, that we could leave this house
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someday and go someplace else
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where we actually get paid for our dyeing."
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It's estimated that more than 4,000 children
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are enslaved on Lake Volta,
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the largest man-made lake in the world.
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When we first arrived, I went to have a quick look.
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I saw what seemed to be a family fishing on a boat,
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two older brothers, some younger kids, makes sense right?
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Wrong. They were all enslaved.
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Children are taken from their families
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and trafficked and vanished,
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and they're forced to work endless hours on these boats
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on the lake, even though they do not know how to swim.
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This young child is eight years old.
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He was trembling when our boat approached,
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frightened it would run over his tiny canoe.
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He was petrified he would be knocked in the water.
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The skeletal tree limbs submerged in Lake Volta
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often catch the fishing nets, and weary,
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frightened children are thrown into the water
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to untether the lines.
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Many of them drown.
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For as long as he can recall, he's been forced to work
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on the lake.
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Terrified of his master, he will not run away,
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and since he's been treated with cruelty all his life,
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he passes that down to the younger slaves
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that he manages.
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I met these boys at five in the morning,
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when they were hauling in the last of their nets,
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but they had been working since 1 a.m.
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in the cold, windy night.
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And it's important to note that these nets weigh
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more than a thousand pounds when they're full of fish.
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I want to introduce you to Kofi.
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Kofi was rescued from a fishing village.
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I met him at a shelter where Free the Slaves
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rehabilitates victims of slavery.
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Here he's seen taking a bath at the well,
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pouring big buckets of water over his head,
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and the wonderful news is,
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as you and I are sitting here talking today,
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Kofi has been reunited with his family,
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and what's even better, his family has been given tools
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to make a living and to keep their children safe.
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Kofi is the embodiment of possibility.
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Who will he become because someone took a stand
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and made a difference in his life?
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Driving down a road in Ghana
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with partners of Free the Slaves,
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a fellow abolitionist on a moped suddenly sped up
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to our cruiser and tapped on the window.
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He told us to follow him down a dirt road into the jungle.
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At the end of the road, he urged us out of the car,
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and told the driver to quickly leave.
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Then he pointed toward this barely visible footpath,
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and said, "This is the path, this is the path. Go."
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As we started down the path, we pushed aside the vines
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blocking the way, and after about an hour of walking in,
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found that the trail had become flooded by recent rains,
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so I hoisted the photo gear above my head
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as we descended into these waters up to my chest.
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After another two hours of hiking, the winding trail
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abruptly ended at a clearing, and before us
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was a mass of holes
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that could fit into the size of a football field,
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and all of them were full of enslaved people laboring.
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Many women had children strapped to their backs
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while they were panning for gold,
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wading in water poisoned by mercury.
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Mercury is used in the extraction process.
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These miners are enslaved in a mine shaft
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in another part of Ghana.
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When they came out of the shaft, they were soaking wet
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from their own sweat.
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I remember looking into their tired, bloodshot eyes,
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for many of them had been underground for 72 hours.
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The shafts are up to 300 feet deep, and they carry out
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heavy bags of stone that later will be transported
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to another area, where the stone will be pounded
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so that they can extract the gold.
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At first glance, the pounding site seems full
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of powerful men, but when we look closer,
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we see some less fortunate working on the fringes,
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and children too.
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All of them are victim to injury, illness and violence.
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In fact, it's very likely that this muscular person
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will end up like this one here, racked with tuberculosis
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and mercury poisoning in just a few years.
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This is Manuru. When his father died,
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his uncle trafficked him to work with him in the mines.
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When his uncle died, Manuru inherited his uncle's debt,
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which further forced him into being enslaved in the mines.
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When I met him, he had been working in the mines
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for 14 years, and the leg injury that you see here
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is actually from a mining accident,
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one so severe doctors say his leg should be amputated.
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On top of that, Manuru has tuberculosis,
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yet he's still forced to work day in and day out
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in that mine shaft.
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Even still, he has a dream that he will become free
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and become educated with the help of local activists
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like Free the Slaves,
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and it's this sort of determination,
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in the face of unimaginable odds,
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that fills me with complete awe.
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I want to shine a light on slavery.
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When I was working in the field,
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I brought lots of candles with me,
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and with the help of my interpreter,
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I imparted to the people I was photographing
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that I wanted to illuminate their stories
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and their plight,
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so when it was safe for them, and safe for me,
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I made these images.
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They knew their image would be seen
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by you out in the world.
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I wanted them to know that we will be bearing witness
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to them, and that we will do whatever we can
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to help make a difference in their lives.
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I truly believe, if we can see one another
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as fellow human beings, then it becomes very difficult
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to tolerate atrocities like slavery.
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These images are not of issues. They are of people,
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real people, like you and me, all deserving
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of the same rights, dignity and respect
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in their lives.
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There is not a day that goes by that I don't think
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of these many beautiful, mistreated people
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I've had the tremendous honor of meeting.
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I hope that these images awaken a force
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in those who view them, people like you,
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and I hope that force will ignite a fire,
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and that fire will shine a light on slavery,
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for without that light, the beast of bondage
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can continue to live in the shadows.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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