American Anti-Slavery Group

Abolitionist organization

This article is about the modern-day organization. For the 19th century organization, see American Anti-Slavery Society.

The American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG) is a non-profit coalition of abolitionist organizations that engages in political activism to abolish slavery in the world. It raises awareness of contemporary slavery, particularly among the chattel slaves of Mauritania and Sudan, raises funds to support relief and aid to enslaved populations and escaped former slaves, and lobbies government officials to increase their efforts. AASG'[1]

Part of a series on

Forced labour and slavery

Contemporary

* Child labour
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* CSEC
* Debt bondage
* India
* Forced marriage
* Bride buying
* Child marriage
* Wife selling
* Forced prostitution
* Human trafficking
* Child
* China
* Cybersex
* Europe
* Fraud factory
* India
* United States
* Involuntary servitude
* ... in 21st-century jihadism
* ... in Africa
* Peonage
* Penal labour
* Sex trafficking
* China
* Europe
* United States
* Sexual slavery
* Wage slavery

Historical

Antiquity

* Babylonia
* Egypt
* Greece
* Rome

Medieval Europe

* Ancillae
* Black Sea slave trade
* Byzantine Empire
* Genoese slave trade
* Kholop
* Prague slave trade
* Serfs
* History
* In Russia
* Emancipation
* Thrall
* Venetian slave trade
* Balkan slave trade

Muslim world

* Baqt
* Barbary Coast
* slave trade
* pirates
* Sack of Baltimore
* Slave raid of Suðuroy
* Turkish Abductions
* Bukhara slave trade
* Concubinage
* history
* Ma malakat aymanukum
* Avret Pazarları
* Harem
* Abbasid harem
* Ottoman Imperial Harem
* Safavid imperial harem
* Qajar harem
* Jarya/Cariye
* Odalisque
* Qiyan
* Umm al-walad
* Circassian slave trade
* Contract of manumission
* Crimean slave trade
* Kafala system
* Khazar slave trade
* Khivan slave trade
* Ottoman Empire
* Avret Pazarları
* Saqaliba
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Slavery in al-Andalus
* Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate
* Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Volga Bulgarian slave trade
* 21st century

Atlantic slave trade

* Brazil
* Bristol
* Database
* Dutch
* Middle Passage
* Nantes
* New France
* Panyarring
* Spanish Empire
* Slave Coast
* Thirteen colonies

Topics and practice

* Blackbirding
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* Devshirme
* Ghilman
* Mamluk
* Coolie
* Corvée labour
* Drapetomania
* Dysaesthesia aethiopica
* Field slaves in the United States
* Treatment
* Gladiator
* Gladiatrix
* House slaves
* Planter class
* Proslavery thought
* Saqaliba
* Seasoning
* Slave market
* Slave Power
* Slave raiding
* Slavocracy
* Voluntary slavery
* White slavery

Naval

* Galley slave
* Impressment
* Pirates
* Shanghaiing
* Slave ship

By country or region

Sub-Saharan Africa

* Contemporary Africa
* Trans-Saharan slave trade
* Red Sea slave trade
* Indian Ocean slave trade
* Zanzibar slave trade
* Angola
* Chad
* Comoros
* Ethiopia
* Mali
* Mauritania
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Seychelles
* Somalia
* Somali slave trade
* South Africa
* Sudan
* Zanzibar

North and South America

* Pre-Columbian America
* Aztec
* Americas indigenous
* U.S. Natives
* United States
* field slaves
* female
* contemporary
* maps
* partus
* prison labour
* slave codes
* treatment
* interregional
* proslavery
* sexual slavery
* The Bahamas
* Canada
* Caribbean
* Barbados
* British Virgin Islands
* Trinidad
* Code Noir
* Latin America
* Brazil
* Lei Áurea
* Colombia
* Cuba
* Haiti
* revolt
* Restavek
* (Encomienda)
* Puerto Rico

East, Southeast, and South Asia

* Haruwa-charuwa
* Human trafficking in Southeast Asia
* Bhutan
* Brunei
* China
* Booi Aha
* Eunuchs
* Laogai
* penal system
* India
* Debt bondage
* Chukri System
* Bawi system
* Indonesia
* Japan
* comfort women
* Karayuki-san
* Korea
* Kwalliso
* Nobi
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Slavery in the Mongol Empire
* Thailand
* Yankee princess
* Vietnam

Australia and Oceania

* Australia
* Human trafficking
* Blackbirding
* Slave raiding in Easter Island
* Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea
* Blackbirding in Polynesia

Europe and North Asia

* Sex trafficking in Europe
* United Kingdom
* Penal Labour
* Slavery
* Albania
* Bulgaria
* Denmark
* Dutch Republic
* Finland
* France
* Georgia
* Germany in World War II
* Hungary
* Malta
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* Romania
* Russia
* Serbia
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland

North Africa and West Asia

* Afghanistan
* Bacha bazi
* Algeria
* Bahrain
* Egypt
* Human trafficking in the Middle East
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jordan
* Kuwait
* Lebanon
* Libya
* Morocco
* Oman
* Palestine
* Saudi Arabia
* Syria
* Tunisia
* Qatar
* Yemen
* United Arab Emirates

Religion

* Bible
* Christianity
* Catholicism
* Mormonism
* Islam
* Judaism
* Baháʼí Faith

Opposition and resistance

* Abolitionism
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90
* Temporary Slavery Commission
* 1926 Slavery Convention
* Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery
* Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
* Abolitionists
* Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention
* Anti-Slavery International
* Blockade of Africa
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Colonization
* Liberia
* Sierra Leone
* Compensated emancipation
* Freedman
* Manumission
* Freedom suit
* Slave Power
* Underground Railroad
* songs
* Slave rebellion
* Slave Trade Acts
* International law
* Third Servile War
* 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
* Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]

Related

* Common law
* Forced labour
* Fugitive slaves
* laws
* convention
* Great Dismal Swamp maroons
* Indentured servitude
* List of slaves
* owners
* last survivors of American slavery
* List of slavery-related memorials and museums
* Slave catcher
* Slave marriages in the United States
* Slave narrative
* films
* songs
* Slave name
* Slave patrol
* Slave Route Project
* breeding
* court cases
* Washington
* Jefferson
* J.Q. Adams
* Lincoln
* Emancipation Proclamation
* 40 acres
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Iron bit
* Emancipation Day

* v
* t
* e

AASG was co-founded in 1993 by Charles Jacobs (who served as its first research director) with African human rights activists Mohamed Athie of Mauritania and David Chand of Sudan.[2]

Incorporated in Newton, Massachusetts, the AASG reports having "many associates and 30,000 members around the world."[3] Recent officers include: Mohamed Athie (past president) and Charles Jacobs (past clerk and treasurer; current president and member of board of directors).[4]

AASG maintains close ties to The Sudan Campaign, for which Charles Jacobs serves as a co-chairman.[citation needed]

## Central components

[edit]

AASG says that the first step in eradicating slavery is educating the public that it still exists. AASG builds awareness through publications, school curricula, conferences, and a Speakers’ Bureau, consisting mainly of survivors of slavery. AASG advocates for the freedom of those degraded by slavery through government lobbying and online campaigns, which locate pressure points in corporations that benefit from slavery, governments that tolerate human bondage, and leaders who remain silent. On their website, AASG state that they have a network of activists around the world who are passionate about freedom. Grassroots activism takes the form of rallies, candlelight vigils, freedom marches, petitions and letter-writing campaigns. AASG partners with organizations working on the ground to provide rehabilitation and support to victims of slavery.[5]

## Modern-day slavery

[edit]

On June 4, 2008, the U.S. released a trafficking in persons report. In this report Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, "Trafficking and exploitation plague all nations, and no country, even ours, is immune."[citation needed]

## Controversies

[edit]

The AASG claims of contemporary slavery have been met with criticism from BBC journalist David Hecht.[6]

Hecht has challenged the AASG claims of rampant slavery in Sudan. "Yes, there is a slave (and master) mentality in Africa, but nothing like the dehumanized institutions that Frederick Douglass had to fight in America." He also reported that Western media are often naïve misunderstandings of the facts. Claiming that outside those areas controlled by the Sudanese Government, the old practice of intertribal feuding continues. In these raids prisoners are taken, who must then be ransomed. What looks like the purchase of slaves is actually the redemption of prisoners of war.[7]

Anti-Slavery International has also stated that, "The charge that government troops engage in raids for the purpose of seizing slaves is not backed by the evidence."[7][8]

### Controversy of redemption program

[edit]

The AASG supported program of arrangement of payment to human traffickers for the "freedom" of slaves has come under fire. Aid workers, missionaries, and even the rebel movement that facilitates the redemption of slaves in the claim it is often an elaborate scam or a "corrupt racket."[9] Groups, including the Sudan Embassy, Canada, state that the practice of paying the rebels prolongs the war,[10] while others claim it brought the "perverse incentives" of slavery in many areas.[11][12] Manase Lomole Waya, who runs Humanitarian Assistance for South Sudan, a group based in Nairobi, praises AASG for its effort, but brings a warning: "We welcome them for exposing the agony of our people to the world," he said. "That part is good. But giving the money to the slave traders only encourages the trade. It is wrong and must stop. Where does the money go? It goes to the raiders to buy more guns, raid more villages, put more shillings in their pockets. It is a vicious circle."

Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, concedes there is an increase in slave-taking since 1995 in terms of the growing intensity of the Sudanese war, but rebukes characterizations that it creates a market for the slave trade. He asserts that although war is the context for the slave trade, it cannot be the main cause. Thus, the transactions to free slaves do not contribute to the cycle of violence in the Sudan.[11]

## See also

[edit]

* Contemporary slavery
* Human trafficking

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ "About the American Anti-Slavery Group," Archived 2006-08-15 at the Wayback Machine online posting, iAbolish.org, n.d., accessed July 25, 2006. Cf. "African Slavery 1996," by Joseph R. Gregory, online posting, First Things 63 (May 1996): 37-39, accessed July 25, 2006. See also "The Great Slave Scam," online posting, Embassy of the Republic of The Sudan news archive, Washington, D.C., 23 Feb. 2002, accessed July 27, 2006. NB: The American Anti-Slavery Group should not be confused with the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833-1870).
2. ^ AASG Profile, online posting, ArriveNet [2004], accessed July 28, 2006. [Some of the website links are outdated.]
3. ^ "About the American Anti-Slavery Group," Archived 2006-08-15 at the Wayback Machine online posting, iAbolish, n.d., accessed August 23, 2006.
4. ^ Non-profit corporation "Summary Sheet" for American Anti-Slavery Group, Inc.[permanent dead link], online posting, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Corporations Division 2001-2006, accessed July 27, 2006; "Who We Are," online posting, iAbolish, n.d. (copyright 2006), accessed July 27, 2006.
5. ^ "iAbolish.org - American Anti-Slavery Group". www.iabolish.org.
6. ^ "Slavery" African Style, The Wisdom Fund February 14, 1998
7. ^ a b Hecht, David. "Virtual Slavery", The New Republic, 12 May 1997
8. ^ Peter Verney, 'Slavery in Sudan', Sudan Update and Anti-Slavery International, London, May 1997. p. 20
9. ^ "Sudan's great slave scam". News24. 2002-02-27. Retrieved 2012-07-08.
10. ^ "Collecting Money Prolongs A War". Embassy of Sudan. January 13, 1999. Archived from the original on 2004-06-26. Retrieved 2012-07-08.
11. ^ a b "Slave Redemption - 99.07 (Part Two)". Theatlantic.com. Retrieved 2012-07-08.
12. ^ "Ripping Off Slave 'Redeemers': Rebels Exploit Westerners' Efforts to Buy Emancipation for Sudanese", The Washington Post, 26 February 2002

## External links

[edit]

* American Anti-Slavery Group Profile at ArriveNet. [Some of the website links are outdated.]
* iAbolish — Web Portal of the American Anti-Slavery Group
* Freeing Modern-Day Slaves: Program 15 Interview with Charles Jacobs, produced by Human Media [catalog entry].
* The Sudan Campaign

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