CHANNEL 4
Slavery is officially banned internationally by all countries, yet despite this, in the world today there are more slaves now than ever before. In the four hundred years of the slave trade around 13 million people were shipped from Africa. Today there are an estimated 27 million slaves – people paid no money, locked away and controlled by violence. Multi-Award winning documentary makers Kate Blewett and Brian Woods – who produced the groundbreaking films The Dying Rooms, Innocents Lost and Eyes of a Child, saw this terrible exploitation with their own eyes. The result is an utterly devastating film.
PROFESSOR KEVIN BALES from the UN Working Group on Contemporary Slavery notes one crucial difference in the slaves of today: “In the old days slaves were expensive you kept them for their whole lives, you took care of them. Today they are cheap, there is a glut of slaves and when you’ve used them you throw them away if you don’t want them any more – they’re disposable.”