Slavery the modern way

We learnt in schooldays that a day called the United Nations International Day for Abolition of Slavery is observed across the world, including Islamic Republic of Pakistan, on December 2 every year.

Do all of us remember the day, and pledge to end slavery in any form?

One is looking for a media person who can tell if any function is actually organised in any metropolitan on this day to provide an opportunity to citizens to open their mouth against poverty, illiteracy and exploitation which drive people to slavery.

The ordinary citizen who is victim of ever surging food price and what he says disheartening utility bills seems to have lost confidence in leaders. “Most of them are intellectually slave to foreign monetary institutions,” he alleges.

“There has been a long crisis of leadership in my country: at least 40 per cent live below the poverty line; we beg billions of dollars as loans from International Monetary Fund and World Bank on their terms; how we spend such borrowed huge amounts; who takes away the money; and what’s the net result of such financial and economic policies.”

Educated but dissatisfied rural and urban youths say: “We poor masses have no knowledge of real facts; we feel we’re slaves; our children remain at the mercy of feudal landlords and capitalists who rule our motherland.”

By the way, one purpose of the Anti-Slavery Day is to remind people that the modern slavery works against human rights, another is to exhort citizens and their governments to translate the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “ no one shall be held in slavery or servitude” through their actions.

Does the Anti-Slavery Day have any impact on members of the United Nations Organization, like the U.S., Israel and India?

City elders say the struggle for an independent sovereign Pakistan was to evolve a state with a people’s government based on principles of equality and social justice, in other words socialism which emphasizes equality and brotherhood of man, and equal opportunities to all.

Almighty God’s last Prophet set up the welfare state as role model for the world. He was a great socialist who found that masses were exploited economically and socially by a section of people who practiced usury. He forbade it and introduced the system of Zakat, Sadqah and Fitr.

The distribution of wealth in society dealt a death blow to capitalism and feudalism. He encouraged the people to turn attention to trade and agriculture. Many such measures contributed to building a national economy. The slavery system was abolished.

One can recall the struggle of lawyers, doctors, poets, writers and youths of revolutionary ideas to eliminate the system of slavery in whatever form it existed in the country. The working journalists did not lag behind.

How to get rid of slavery?

Youths full of patriotism say the answer is simple: civil and military unity with faith in God almighty and working discipline to develop Pakistan into a welfare state.

— zasarwar@hotmail.com