A classic case study in public outrage on a moral issue bringing an end to a hideous, entrenched system of personal pillage and cruelty and exploitation took place in Belgium and its colony. King Leopold ran the Congo as a personal, and very profitable, labor plantation. Public outrage began with the work of one English journalist, E.D. Morel, and grew into an international campaign ultimately involving other states that forced the King to relinquish his hold on the Congo. There was no invasion of Belgium. Sheer publicity, international publicity, of the horrors that were being perpetrated made the King see the light.
Here's another small but perfect example you'll have to take on faith (I'll tell you or any friend of mine in PM who it is, and what his position was, and when, if they're curious), because i'm going to disguise the person involved, who is a longtime personal friend of ours. (We spent a couple of weeks with him and his family in Vienna a while back, and I wrote something about that visit on SI. Steven Rogers knows his name, and what his position was-- I say all this, including offering a testimonial to this connection by Steven, because a poster on SI accused me of lying when I told a relevant anecdote involving someone I knew personally.) Anyway, this friend was a diplomat attached to an international organization, representing the United States. In his routine contacts with the head of state in a newly independent government in the Caucasus, our friend sought the release of a group of political prisoners who were being held in terrible conditions. The list of names and prisons was given to him by an International Human Rights organization (not AI.) This head of state had an interest in improving his relationship with the larger organization that our friend represented. He had the power, with a word, to free these individuals. (The story is very... human. One of the group had been framed by a bomb "found" in his apartment. When our friend raised the issue, and the head of state rationalized with that story, our friend said, "_____, do you know that that the drawer that that bomb was claimed to have been found in was the children's room? We are both fathers, _____. Tell me. If you were going to hide a bomb in your house, would you choose a drawer in your children's room?") The prisoners were freed.
That's a story about what one motivated diplomat can do about human rights violations in one case. We could have dozens, hundreds, thousands, of motivated diplomats around the world having just such casual conversations at just such gatherings.
In fact, we do.
But very few of them are talking about slavery. And when we talk about it, we act as though the choice was military invasion or keeping it off our radar screens, and off our representatives'.
That's not because there's nothing we can do; it's only because we don't give a shit, as I believe I pointed out earlier. |
