A tribute to Victor Schoelcher
Down with slavery!
Mélina Gazsi, journalist, FRANCE
The First French Republic had abolished
slavery in 1794 but Napoleon Bonaparte re-established it in 1802. Signed in 1848, the
decree of abolition was the work of a great Republican figure who fought unceasingly for
Human Rights and was to devote his life and his fortune to humanitarian causes. A number
of events in France in 2004 have celebrated the bicentenary of the birth of Victor
Schoelcher, parliamentary deputy and senator, who died in 1893 and whose ashes were laid
to rest in the Pantheon in Paris in 1949.
It is hard not to believe in the existence of
a freedom fairy watching over the cradle of little Victor Schoelcher on that 22 July 1804.
Chance or a premonition? He was born in Paris in the same year as the first Black Republic
of Haiti. Nothing obviously predestined this son of a porcelain manufacturer to become a
relentless militant for the abolition of slavery.
From "an insult to the human
race...": His future was all mapped out – to take control of his father’s
factory in Paris; which is what he in fact did, after a short period of secondary
education. It is an understatement to say that he did not have what it takes for business
or industry. What he preferred was to move in literary and artistic circles, and in the
salons of the capital he made the acquaintance of George Sand, Eugène Sue, Delacroix,
Liszt and Berlioz, sharing the enlightened ideas of Auguste Blanqui and Pierre Leroux,
ardent defenders of a social republic. Music, reading, writing and politics were what
interested him. But expressing such republican sentiments at the height of Charles
X’s monarchy alarmed his father.
Victor loved travelling. Not a problem! He
was sent in search of new customers for the ceramics factory in Mexico, the United States,
the West Indies and Cuba, from where, of course, he brought back not a single order. On
the other hand, he did discover the harsh reality of slavery whose infamy he denounced on
his return to France, publishing books, accounts of his experiences and pamphlets. On the
death of his father, his family, noting that he was decidedly lacking in both the taste
and aptitude for trade, provided him with a comfortable allowance which he spent on
politics.
"Let us say to ourselves and to our
children that as long as one slave remains on the face of the earth, this man’s
servitude is a permanent insult to the entire human race." In 1840, since immediate
abolition was not on the agenda, he presented a law to the French Parliament which
attempted at least to limit the corporal punishment inflicted on slaves, to grant them the
status of "civil persons" – under the code decreed in the 17th century by
the minister Colbert they were considered hardly more than "chattels"! –
and which made their elementary education compulsory... The law remained a dead letter, so
deep-seated was colour prejudice and the belief that a Black person was an inferior being!
"Modern" slavery: Over and above
the necessary duty to memory and historical research, we must "sow the thought to
harvest the action", says Pierre Sané, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for the
social and human sciences and the originator of this Forum, as well as cast an objective
eye over the present. Indeed, this system of oppression endures in some parts of Africa
and in "more modern" forms all over the world.
Anti-Slavery International, the oldest
organization for the defence of Human Rights, estimates that there are 20 million adults
subject to traditional slavery. But what can we say, not just about the forms of bondage,
sale or conveyance, the trafficking of women through the pornography market and
prostitution, but also about the forced marriages that are accompanied by work of the same
name and which affect millions of women in the world, whose fate is no more enviable than
that of the slaves of the past?
The International Labour Office (ILO)
estimates that there are between 250 and 300 million children aged from five to seventeen
forced to work (including selling themselves sexually) in order to survive, and whose
working and living conditions have many similarities to slavery. It is a terrifying
figure.
While those concerned are principally developing countries,
such practices also exist in the West. In December 2002, a French law introduced into the
Penal Code an offence of "trafficking in human beings", punishing these new
forms of servitude with terms of imprisonment which can be anything from seven to twenty
years. The fight against slavery is far from over.
(Courtesy: French Embassy, Label France Magazine) |
