In spite of the many generations who belong to this eternally militant continuum, to this day women are faced with the infringement of the basic right to their own bodies. A recent example of this is represented by the protests that took place in Poland in the last weeks, after the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) attempted to further restrict abortive practices when the foetus is diagnosed with an irreversible condition.
In order to fully understand the terms involved, it is crucial to look to the historical and societal context in which the dispute is happening. Amidst the horrors of post-communist Poland (1989), which was essentially committed to the extirpation of the previous communist regime, was the fight against what had been one of the most liberal abortion policies in Europe. The debate on abortion therefore has been focally recurring, with a ban introduced by the Polish Parliament in 1993, and the settling of this decision in Constitutional Law in 1997. Within this framework, the debate has taken on three major ideological positions, which reflect radically different approaches to women’s rights and democracy, in general. The first view is the profoundly Catholic conservatist which opposes abortion by arguing for the unconditional right to life and dignity of the unborn child; in opposition to this, the liberal pro-choice position takes on the same logic by adopting, on the contrary, a negative discourse on right, defending rights of non-interference and state neutrality. The third pro-choice discourse finally is that of feminist ideologies, developing in the pure language of women’s rights. This last view, in fact, is not merely contextual or structural, but seeks to put forth a view in which women are able to gain not only reproductive self-determination, but also autonomy and parity. Within this last strain of thought the debate sheds light on the real issues, that involve not the liberal but the feminist perspective as a main locality for the reconsideration of women, and how they are defined or define themselves. Here the real problem arises, and must be solved, within feminist terms. In fact, the social and political rights granted to women lose meaning if the debate on abortion focuses firstly on a foetal dimension or an institutional/deontological stance. The preeminence of a fertilised cell over the integrity and autonomy of a living human, already embedded within society and possessing an identity, and publicly considered as a social being, clearly undermines their dignity. No universal claim for life could possibly overtake the claim for a good, or free life. The principle of sacrality of life which is so often wielded in defence of foetuses, is self-defeating if the sacrality of a woman’s life is not taken into account first, but rather is limited in its potential decision-making and autonomous self-defining capacities. As well as this, the moral implications involved in the killing of a foetus are not biologically comparable to those of infanticide, and therefore cannot be put in the same terms of ‘murder’. Therefore, against this conservative debate, the sacrality of womanhood should be preeminent. Furthermore, if we refer to the liberal pro-choice view, we could also consider arguments not against the view that abortion is wrong, but against the laws which prohibit abortion. However, this argument would flee from the point and not consider the real matter which is at stake, that is the undermining of female experience and its legitimacy. In fact, we should aim to implement this monolithic ethic of rights, of a purely legal nature, with what feminist philosopher Carol Gilligan defines as an ‘ethic of care’, embracing a more feminine concept of relationships which is non-hierarchical and non-economic, keeping in mind that our values are always carried outside the home. The difference between what, in the Polish case, is defined as the liberal pro-choice and the feminist pro-choice view is that whilst the first is concerned with emancipation, in terms of rights and duties, the latter focuses on a holistic and substantial liberation, which aims to understand and comprehend sexual differences and not simply formalise them. In the words of contemporary psychoanalyst, Luce Irigaray, the instrument used in this struggle should no longer be a mirror, held up by women for men to define and assert themselves, but a speculum, the instrument of female self-exploration and redefinition. Only through the understanding of themselves, women will be able to realise that their diversity is not an absence, a hollow and empty deficiency, but a positive and enriching dissimilarity. Being moved by the deep fear and uneasiness that comes with the incomprehension of difference leads to humanist catastrophes, such as the rape reported in January 2019 and uncharged in a criminal court in Lima, Peru, because the victim was wearing red underwear. Our society in fact is dominated by what Julia Kristeva terms a ‘symbolic order’, in relation to the father, defined by language and dominant ideology, as opposed to the ‘semiotic order’ which includes all natural communication and signs that the mother enacts when interacting with her child. We learn to exist in this world through the latter, and then define ourselves according to the first, in society. The semiotic, unthinking act of female reproduction implies the creative act of generation which transcends any cultural significance. It is possible in fact to consider any woman’s generation as purely biological, and not socially determined. However, in our social living, the issues of femininity have become more and more embedded within the political order, becoming conditioned by a new ‘biopolitics’ which seeks to merge biology and politics by administering and controlling biological functions within a social body. In this framework, which lies at the core of our modern constitutional politics, we must realise that the key to this debate is that the feminine question truly belongs to and must be considered in the political space; there cannot be plausible attempts to define this outwith the boundaries of politics. Only by realising that politics is not, in truth, limited to solely constitutional terms, and by acting and aborting compliance to this fundamental biopolitics, we can bury the seeds of equality. We must realise how far back we belong and owe to this ‘eternal feminine’, as defined by Goëthe. The feminine, just like the earth, must receive the reverence it deserves, as the true possessor of the creative force of life, as the continuum which sews together our origins and future. This veneration is the very soil upon which the whole of life rests.
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In an age where the hungry stomach of economy is driving our world, deforestation and habitat fragmentation are dangerously soaring and increasing the risks of disease pandemics, the Amazon is still burning, forests in many warm regions are weakening as much as barrier reefs and the planet is swarming with conservation refugees who have been displaced from their lands to ‘’protect’’ the naturality of a territory.
As members of the natural family, we must learn to view ourselves as constituent components of the environment, rather than consider ourselves as the unnatural beast or the dominating demiurge. We should instead be deeply concerned with designing a lifestyle that promotes not just conservation, which often leads to the irrational separation of man from his land, but also the preservation of natural spaces, and the native creatures that inhabit them, including humans, in order to leave them untouched. This model is founded on the philosophical basis of ecocentrism, a doctrine of ethical considerations that focuses on the well-being of ecosystems, and the interacting and interdependent relationships of its biodiversity, rather than privileging one community of beings over another. The ecocentric model, as defined by Aldo Leopold, is based on the habit of ‘thinking like a mountain’, whereby human actions are able to cause an unbalance in the system as a whole, and as a consequence, for instance, deer can become more dangerous than wolfs because they produce profound ecological changes to the local flora. When considering the management of nature from a human-interest perspective, this may ultimately lead to the ‘shooting of Indian wild dogs to preserve deer, and simultaneously the shooting of deer to preserve trees’, as described by philosopher Stephen Clark. In order not to pose this unnatural and demanding responsibility into the hands of mankind, which is nothing but a simple part of the whole, we should allow for a spontaneous symbiosis to take place. As Aldo Leopold, the father of conservationism, formulated in his grand opus ‘Land Ethic’, an ethic is a ‘limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence’. Our ultimate aim, therefore, is not to live a sustainable life isolated from the rest of the world which remains untouched, but rather to live in such a human way that is embedded within our environment. Our environmental struggle for this reason, must not be considered as an issue of paternalist and controlling salvation of other beings, but it should be moved by the ontological realisation that we are grappling with our very survival. What we must do is transcend ourselves, and think like the earth.
In the 1950s, the price of a ready-made dress could have been as expensive as £4 (£140 in current currency), whilst it is now possible to find one for only £10. This deflation, followed by the unconscious devaluation of labour involved, has brought individuals in the Global North to buy twice as many clothes as they did only 15 years ago. Whilst the problems that inhabit the Western society are mostly those of sexism and objectification, the Global South, mostly including lower income populations, has not only economic but also deeply societal issues such as child labour, extremely heavy schedules (up to 14-16 hours per day, 7 days a week), legal restrictions on any unionist action and issues regarding low wages, sometimes reduced to 1/5 of a legal minimum wage. The inability to politically have a say in the workplace combined with the threat of job loss or debt makes the situation of garment workers precarious. In Third World countries, 60 to 80% of family income is spent on food, and every 20% increase in food prices pushes a hundred million people into the poorest condition, living with less than a dollar per day.
Our purchases rarely involve ethical engagement with members of the supply chain which include farmers, spinners, weavers, tailors, finishers and packers, but are focused on the mere aesthetic quality of items. We should always remember that everything is somebody’s work, and our aesthetic should ultimately aim to reflect an ethic stance. Whilst the West is exceeding its biological capacities, and people are filling their wardrobes with items they may not have the time to ever wear, the Third World is dealing with the consequences of overconsumption, attempting to respond to the deranged demands of requestors. As well as all the economic discriminations to which the West is often blind, as retailers mostly delegate all ethical responsibilities to suppliers, the fashion industry is one of the first concerning gender discrimination, as women count as 80% of the total 75 million garment workers in the world. For many reasons therefore, it is necessary to realise that fashion has not always been fast and that the situation could possibly be different. On a global perspective, the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, after oil companies. In fact, greenhouse emissions exceed those by international flights and shipping combined, freshwater consumption is the largest on the planet, and cheap clothes are responsible for 35% of all microplastics found in the ocean which are released by the garments when washed. For instance, one of the most harmful textile systems is the leather industry, which demands an enormous quantity of water, uses many chemicals to convert skin into the final product, and has no concern for animal welfare. On an environmental perspective, the leather industry has become increasingly more dangerous to local areas. A clear example the Brazilian government who, after declaring its desire to increase its presence in the global beef market by 2020, had already occupied more of the Amazon rainforest in 2006. For this reason, after the Brazilian government was exposed for expanding herds and profiting from the destruction of a natural rainforest by also supporting illegal ranchers, Amazonian leather was boycotted temporarily by brands such as Nike and Adidas. Although the link between retailers’ demands and the production are separate but closely intertwined, brands should be always held accountable of the ethical choices they make, rather than being allowed to constantly distance themselves from the responsibility that is often outsourced to the supplier. The two main materials involved in the garment industry are polyester and cotton, which involve more than 80% of all fibre production. Although cotton is referred to as the most ‘sustainable’ material in fast fashion, its cultivation in monocultures requires a serious amount of agrochemicals and pesticides, that according to World Health Organisation, can poison and cause between 20,000 and 40,000 cotton workers to die each year. In addition, the more complex the production, the more water it demands; in this case, up to 11,000 – 20,000 litres of water are necessary to achieve a kilogram of finished cotton, which is enough for a pair of jeans. As well as this, more chemicals are usually required for fabrics and dye, which in the past were often coloured with onion skin, native plants, beetroot such as in the production of the traditional Scottish tweed, which reflected and included the biodiversity of local and regional flora. According to the Fashion Pact however, today 60% of our clothing is constituted by plastic. A new strain of fashion is slowly emerging and finding its place in the market, in spite of higher prices that serve to pay the costs of labour, a higher quality of materials and an economic difficulty due to lesser demands. For this reason, cheap prices often translate into invisible costs that someone else is paying up for in our place. We must always be aware that following our desires does not always coincide with freedom. When we decide not only to consider sustainable options to fulfil our requirements, but begin to question our requirements themselves, we will find that often buying less is better than buying carefully. If we begin to consider the possibility of donating, swapping, recycling and repairing our clothes, we will be able to move towards the model of a sustainable, circular economy in the realisation that we are not actually sacrificing a thing.
On the other hand, the city has become an ecosystem designed exclusively to function, that seems to isolate the individual from the material experiences that sustain life through the flat and sleek surfaces of cement buildings. The city does not sing its song, but emanates a constant, deep hum that is ever-present and unescapable, creating a soundscape of distance and fret, where also birds have to sing louder to hear each other. [1]
In the famous essay by Langdon Winner 'Do artefacts have politics?', a park bench, an automatic door, a public parkway can be analysed not only according to function, utility, or environmental impact, but also for their embodiment of specific forms of authority and power. The city then becomes a landscape of symbols, that surrounds the individual with labyrinths of control, surveillance, competition, eradicating him from any sense of home and throwing him in a landscape where the soil is thick with asphalt and does not allow him to bury his roots. This is the hidden message of contemporary 'Hostile Architecture', a modern design trend that aims to make public spaces unfit or uncomfortable with measures such as studs, bolts or ''anti-homeless spikes''. These exclusionary practices deepen the wound that has now been open across the cities for centuries, and unconsciously moves citizens apart, imprisoning them in social categories and leading to discrimination. In this sense, the spaces we live help condition our thoughts and beliefs, contributing to the creation of our morality. The prime example of the detachment that has occurred between human beings and locality is the phenomenon of 'moral commodification', where products are simply detached from their geographical setting and stripped of their material contexts and productive histories. In a logic of profit such as this, we can recognise the perversion of classic utilitarianism into solely economic terms, where objects, places and often people become valuable only for marketability. This reduction makes us blind to our responsibilities as members of a community and as consumers in a society. Through such practice, the consumer is denied a connection to his suppliers and the conditions they experience, consequently becoming unable to appreciate or even recognise their labour. The danger of this delocalised economy is that the unawareness of people and spaces involved in the processes of production does not enable the consumer to empathise or understand the causality of his actions and as a consequence the political power his consumption can have. Perhaps now is the time to revalue and reconsider the richness and beauty of simple living. Only though the tracing of our food up to the sources, the practices, the hands that create it, for instance, we are able to find the seeds of hope that may bring together our humanity. It is then clear that locality also becomes a motivational force, that both sustains life and moves us to engage, identify and defend our environments. As intangible values and physical surroundings co-constitute our world, the necessary connection that involves place and mind, and by extension nature and humanity, becomes the core of our moral landscape, of the constructions of beliefs we collectively build in a society. In a world where these two elements condition each other so deeply, as our land shapes us through language and identity, whilst we transform it with economy and design, this conjunction of material structures and human values should always aim to coexist and create a space where our ethical judgement involves both external, surrounding life and internal, psychological landscapes. [1] Birds sing louder amidst the noise and structures of the urban jungle https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120222132930.htm
When we are aware that the actions of man can transform the environment, we must realise that not only the landscape, with all its internal relationships, conditions and resources are changing; but also the interrelations of different ecologies that lie adjacent to each other. When the carbon footprint of a car speeding through the European countryside has the power to impact the entire ecosystem of a different continent, and our society is fully aware and scientifically informed of its causality links and repercussions, then action must not be separated from responsibility. In the words of José Saramago, perhaps ‘’without responsibility we don’t even deserve to exist’’, especially if the responsibility we should endorse is of this calibre.
In our planet, only 3% of the entire water mass is non-salty, and 70% of this small percentage is frozen, in the form of glaciers or ice sheets such as Greenland and Antartica which are on land (95%) and of floating sea ice in the ocean (5%). As the global temperatures rise however, sea ice will be the first to melt as it is in direct contact with warming waters, causing the dispersion of entire natural habitats for a great amount of sea creatures and polar mammals, as well as ocean dwelling animals such as narwhal, beluga and bowhead. As the Arctic regions are shrinking, many energy and oil companies are also reaching further north to undergo practices known as ‘seismic blasting’, where high air pressure blasts are made to explode every 10 seconds underwater (every single day during the ice free season), to search for oil deposits beneath the sea floor. This is extremely harmful to the ecosystem’s creatures that use sound to communicate and to the overall equilibrium that is affected by their disorientation and shift in habits. Although the sea ice might not cause any emergent rise in sea levels, the danger comes when land-based ice begins to melt, which could possibly rise the level to 70 meters higher. As well as this, the presence of great white ice continents helps reflect the sunlight into space. If these melt, the warmth will be absorbed by the dark masses of land and ocean water. The oceans are currently mitigated by a set of currents that help carry nutrients and chemicals because of the differences in saltiness of areas. These currents are crucial to all sorts of sea creatures, but also contribute to climatise the lands; for this reason crops and mass agriculture will have to be relocated to appropriate climates. However, not only the wildlife and the flora are affected, but also indigenous humans are seeing their landscape transmuted by recent changes. The Inuit, for instance, have settled and practiced a hunter-gatherer life in Canada for millennia. In 1939, these peoples were affected by the government’s decision to impose Canadian laws (and the respective punishments) on the native population, further impacting the original lifestyle with occupation during WWII due to the strategic position of their land. In the 1950s, the adoption of Western manners was bartered with the presence on the land, and the Inuit population was stripped of its nomadic traditions and forced to adapt to imported infrastructures. This led to the Inuit becoming the indigenous people most endangered by food insecurity in the developed world. The local stores in fact, exploit their sporadic presence to increase normal prices ridiculously. As well as this, oil and gas explorations remain a constant possibility and threat in the area. Furthermore, the anti-seismic legal battle against a 5 year project that was approved in 2014, without appropriate consultation of locals, was delayed by the residents of Clyde River in 2017, yet the practice still remains a common danger all over the world. Once more, not just climate indifference, but also deliberate environmental harm in the name of the economy, steps over the fundamental rights and legitimacy of indigenous peoples, who have built a way of life deeply embedded in the natural surrounding world. Yet should we respect their rights to the land only because these people seem to be the most endangered by the consequences of environmental change? In fact, along with this tight dependence on the land, comes the necessary and often implicit development of a land ethic, which determines limitations on the freedom of action in the name of survival and symbiosis with nature, which is profoundly lacking from our landscape of stone and concrete. This ethic and connection with the land creates a deep relation with place and a further great ability to easily adapt to the changes in the environment because of the deeply embedded habit of listening to its voice. For this reason rapid climate change may not necessarily create insurmountable difficulties for indigenous people in general, who are part of the environment and therefore are spontaneously prepared to change with it. On the other hand, our modern world which is nurtured with an overwhelming amount of information, we are still lacking the natural wisdom that comes with recognising and caring for one’s environment, and that has been annihilated by the sheer greed of wealth. Our measure of success should transcend profit and rather look to become the most compatible with our nature, finding a land ethic of our own that also enables us to recognise and respect the autonomy of others. Beneath the lair and deep forestry of the Amazon, teetering on the borders between Brazil and Venezuela, lies an old land belonging to the indigenous Yanomami population. Now reduced to only 38 000, these people occupy a territory that is two times the size of Switzerland. Yet why is the modern world so reluctant to recognise indigenous land and the right to self-determination of these people? Why do we fail to acknowledge societal life outwith the boundaries of civilisation, and refuse to accept tribalism as a valid possibility? The ancestral land of these people and their everlasting belonging is currently being put into question again, by the Brazilian congress which is now debating the proposal of a mining bill in order to allow large-scale mining on indigenous lands. In the times of an epidemic, the dangers that may come to indigenous tribes from this contact with gold miners could be crucial to their survival. The Yanomami came into intensive contact with outsiders who settled close by in the 1940s, bringing the first epidemics of flu and measles to local populations. In the 1970s, a road was built with no previous notice to the inhabitants and brought deforestation, disease and alcohol, as well as tensions with colonists and cattle ranchers. In the following decade, the gold rush era brought 40 000 gold miners on Yanomami land, ending with 20% of the population wiped out in 7 years and the final delineation of the ‘Yanomami park’ in 1992. However, although the area was recognised and only two miners were jailed and charged with genocide, the illegal gold mining continues to penetrate the Yanomami land and consequently harm their right and legitimacy to the earth itself. The tribes living in the heart of the Amazon are also some of the very few now personally committed to protecting and defending the great biodiversity of the region, that is being constantly threatened by the hungry greed of mankind. In the words of shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami: ‘Mining will only destroy nature. It will only destroy the streams and the rivers and kill the fish and kill the environment – and kill us. And bring in diseases which never existed in our land.’ With the murder of the earth, comes the murder of people. This logical consequence seems to be overlooked by those who are instead moved by a logic of profit and possession. Many illegal miners (known as garimpeiros), loggers and invasors are now occupying the Amazon territory in the name of these principles and have been morally justified by the laxness and complicity of the Brazilian government. ‘’The garimpeirosare like measles, they don’t want to leave”, his son Dario Kopenawa says. But what is left to do when the occupiers not only are a disease, but bring new ones with them? Since the recent epidemic of Coronavirus and the exacerbation of anti-indigenous legislations, not only the Yanomami, but all tribes in the Amazonas are facing this threat. When humanity fails to recognise the bounding principle that is the earth, wrapping us all together with the cordon of brotherhood and solidarity, we are bound to betray our humanity. If a population not only has lived on the land throughout its history, but is also spiritually connected and deeply dependent upon it, what right should any man have to rip this away from them? The problem is a matter of legitimacy. When we decide to justify our existence as a civilisation and not recognise any other that may not be inserted in the tissue of the world in the same manner as we, we fail to understand the many paths of human development towards progress or well being. If we decide to press each social entity against our own, and measure their virtue or value in terms of our standard, then we fail to recognise not just the diversity, but the plurality of expressions that come with human creativeness. Whenever we decide to view something as the ‘’other’’, up against one’s untouchable standpoint, rather than understand the plurality of human existence, we fail to find a bridge on which we may be able to find a common language. In a dislocated society such as ours, for instance, that is dominated by speed and the teleportative principle of spreading one’s presence throughout space and against the flow of time, making one’s being predominant and omnipresent, the connection with the earth has become secondary to that with the things that lie upon it. A civilisation that flees its land to enjoy free time during summer, that is unaware of where its food comes from, that does not recognise native plants and their fruits, has lost contact with the environmental roots that are our most precious inheritance. Only in the materialisation of space in fact, we can create meaning that looks back historically, and project it onto the future. Our present moment keeps us inevitably tied with our earth; life is the umbilical cord that links us to our environment. In a society that has forgotten the value of a fist of fertile soil, the stories behind a plate of tomatoes, the care and warmth poured into a glass of wine, space loses its meaning as well as time. We must be willing to redimension our sensitivity to the land and reconsider the true value of the commitment and effort that lie in small things. When we learn to appreciate the origins and labour that hide behind each thing, we are open to reconnecting with our ground. In this historical moment, when our reality is being reshaped by new forces to fight discrimination and slavery, the best practice employed for such a task seems to be the popular fashion of removing statues. The frigid and (quite literally) stony-hearted bodies of bearded oppressors and senile slave owners have been dragged from their standpoints and drowned in nearby rivers. Too bad they were already deceased two hundred years ago.
This collective act of displacing statues, however gratifying, is a symbolic performance in which people come together to erase the symbol of values and institutions that are surpassed and do not represent them any longer. This 'suppression of oppression' seems to have ignited the spirits of many of the freedom fighters of our age, who find their archenemies fossilised in time and standing on the high glory of an old plinth. Still, this has become nothing but a sterile act perpetrated against stone rather than the true criminals of modern slavery. The subtraction of public monuments, and all the meaning they may carry, is a gesture concerned with empowering its agents rather than the real victims who, at the very moment the ropes are being tied around slaver Robert Milligan's neck, find themselves threatened by oppression and abuse. For instance, the slavery involved in the production of chocolate, coffee and even bananas is the closest to our everyday lives. In fact, what we regard as a common, edible pleasure is mostly provided by the hardship of millions of men, women and children across the globe, the majority of which are obliged to offer sweat and blood in order to put those ordinary products on our tables. What we regard as a simple commodity, implies the labour and exploitation of many families’ existence on the other side of the ocean. The supply chain that connects those native farmers to consumers in the West is dominated by a middle link of a handful of persons who make the profit by ensuring farm prices are kept disproportionately low and workload excessively high. Therefore, as consumers, we unconsciously become the commissioners of a real slave system to which we are blinded, by buying and demanding these products. Unfortunately, this injustice also lies hidden behind the ambiguous ''fair-trade'' certification that has been used as a psychological marketing tactic by multinationals to induce purchasing whilst the corporation is, in truth, committing to very little. An example of this expediency is represented by major companies such as Starbucks and Cadbury, but also Chiquita who was historically involved in the destruction of democratic movements in Latin America. So the smaller the supply chain and business, the more likely its ethical commitment to ''fair-trade'' can actually be trusted. These are uncomfortable truths that make us silent participants in an invisible slavery that, however distant in space, is still existing in our time. Nevertheless, it is in our power to consider a simple act, such as the consumption of a cup of coffee, as a political strategy: these are the real revolutions we should be conducting. However, without travelling too far, while the debate is concerned with which statue must go next, there are enslaved and abused people currently working in the cities which we walk. As protestors are consumed by the hunger and desire to assault another heavy bust, in this exact same moment the city of London counts 2.1% of its female population affected by genital mutilation according to a report from City University London. Another key finding of the same research indicates that there is no local authority area in England and Wales free from this abominable practice that is carried mostly on young girls by doctors and circumcisers who live within the community. Just in 2011, an estimated 103,000 women between the age of 15 and 49 were counted to be living with female genital mutilation in the UK. In every single area of Britain, including those that have been swarming with antiracist and antislavery protests, trafficked children have been brought into the country to be ''tricked, controlled, tortured and sold every day'' (words of a 12 year old girl, groomed and exploited as a sex slave in the UK). Child slavery has been increasing in the last 5 years, and is silently and persistently growing. For instance, only in London police forces identified 19 cases of trafficked children in 2015, which escalated to 105 in 2018 and are currently still rising. This is the position not only of people who got entangled in exploitation and shipped to a foreign land, deprived of their passport and burdened with a price for freedom, but also of UK nationals who have been forced into drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, domestic slavery or even forced labour. In 2019, over 10,000 victims of modern slavery were officially reported in the country, number which minimises the count of real cases not referred due to either economic impediments, psychological threats, unawareness or simply inability to make one's voice heard. Rather than condemning the deeds of stone and throwing accusations into the indifferent waters of the past, we should become the resonating chamber that amplifies the breathing, unheard voices of modern slaves. It is the duty of all citizens who proclaim themselves against injustice and oppression to be aware of the hidden chains that still hold individuals tied onto their slave owners. In spite of some honourable organisations that are fighting for strong labour rights and regular controls of workplaces to ensure humane conditions, as well as creating support counselling and training for survivors of human trafficking and exploitation, the hidden tumour of slavery is still progressing in our contemporary social structure. Rather than antagonising those who have turned to stone and earn little profit from the top of their pedestal, we should be more concerned with tearing down the monstrosity of modern slavery and its living flesh that still holds human bodies as hostages. Slavery is not yet petrified. Now is the time to stop turning a blind eye to these realities and truly commit to that symbolic gesture, to save the present rather than try to redeem the past. Instead of fighting a war against statues, let's recognise and tackle the real enemy, who still breathes and breeds; and perhaps soon instead of destroying, we should look to what we can do to build new statues. |
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November 2023
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