SOLD: 50 million slaves billions of buyers

It's 2026, and an estimated 50 million people around the world are living in conditions of modern slavery. Trapped in forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage, and sex trafficking.

While the world talks about globalism, climate catastrophes, human rights and DEI, one of humanity's darkest ongoing crimes is ignored. 

There is always much to learn from history, but in the case of slavery, the first place to begin is within ourselves.

A conversation with Lawrence Rogak

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Lawrence Rosak, our US correspondent, will be discussing slavery. Lawrence, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Good morning, Australia.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Lawrence, this is quite a big topic, isn't it, when it's on the tip of people's tongues. They immediately think the United States. Why might that be the case?

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Slavery in the United States gets more attention, more conversation, and more focus than all the other types of slavery that have ever existed. That is the main reason why it's the one that comes to people's minds first, and also because American slavery involved the ancestors of many people who are Americans today, I'm sure that it's more relevant to them than any other kind of slavery.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, Lawrence Peter Richardson here with the Cheryl today. One of the things that I find very interesting and a little disturbing is that people consider that slavery is only an historic historical matter. And that's not the case, is it?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

No, it's not the case at all. And in fact, one of the gravest scandals of our modern age is the fact that right now, today, as I'm speaking, there are an estimated fifty million people living in slavery around the world. And that's an increase of ten million in the past ten years. But nobody wants to talk about it, and very few people are even aware of it. It's just never a topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Now that being the case, we've just had a major report on our mainstream media regarding renewable energy and the cobite uh cobalt, sorry, mines in Africa, and in particular that whole notion of slavery was certainly part of that situation. So we've got the profiteering of r those involved in renewable energy in conjunction with slavery, it would seem. Would that be a fair comment?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Yes. Uh modern slavery makes a lot of people uncomfortable because talking about it conflicts with things that they are interested in, or which which they have an interest in, and uh green energy is one of them. It's true that in places like the Congo, there are thousands, uncounted thousands of children who are forced to dig in open pit mines for rare metals like cobalt that are necessary for the electric vehicle industry. Now, of course, anybody who's in favor of green energy doesn't want to talk about this because it means that they are complicit in child slavery. So naturally, they are neither going to bring it up nor want to discuss it. That's just one of the examples. We could also talk about China, where it's estimated by experts in modern slavery that some six million people are engaged in forced labor in various industries, including mining and manufacturing, but we import many items manufactured and raw materials from China, and it's big business, so people don't want to talk about that either. Those are among the reasons, and I'll be to another reason in places like Pakistan and some other Muslim countries, slavery is rampant, but people don't want to talk about that for fear of being accused of being racist. Another aspect of human slavery in places like Pakistan and other Muslim countries is that children are forced into marriage, which is also included in the modern definition of slavery because they they have no choice in the matter. And it's not just children, women too. In certain countries, men decide who they're going to marry, and women have absolutely no say in the matter. That's included. But these are uncomfortable topics because they conflict with the stances of many people who consider themselves to be on the to be the good Jays.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

So you touched on there the uh the use of slaves by China, and I always want to make uh make it clear it's we're talking about the Chinese Communist Party, we're not talking about the Chinese people. But we're complicit in Australia in a very big way. In fact, we could be independent with all the precious minerals, etc. We have cobalt here as a for instance, but we're becoming more and more reliant on China to supply all the goods that we're we want, the iPads and the phones, etc., etcetera. So we're complicit in slavery, aren't we?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

I would agree with that. I think that if President Trump were to decide to boycott or embargo all products made in countries where there is forced labor, it would dramatically transform our economy. There's a lot of countries that we import a lot of things from who would be on the ban list. It would be very disruptive.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

It would indeed, and you've just mentioned uh a little bit earlier there too about the modern definition of marriage and that also being part of slavery. So if we were to have President Trump do the extraordinary, which we know he's he's always doing, let's be fair. But I had to throw that one in, you know, that how that works, Sir Lawrence. But uh if forced labour is something that let's say President Trump did say, look, that's not going to happen, yes, it would transform the economy, would it be possible and uh beneficial to bring in that whole issue of marriage and the inappropriate approach to marriage with slavery?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

I think it's a topic that should be tossed out there for public debate because it's very important, and among the reasons that it's very important is that many of the people who have migrated to the United States both legally and illegally have brought their customs of child marriage and sexual exploitation of women and other practices that are abhorrent to Americans, they brought those postcultural aspects with them and by doing so they're perpetuating in the United States these practices that are contrary to Western values. And yet when this I have seen when this topic is brought up, the left and the liberals denounce that as racism. I'll give you one example. A few years ago, it was in the news that immigration officials were asking applicants from Muslim countries whether they believed in child marriage and slavery. And the mere asking of that question when it hit the news was condemned as being racist, discriminatory, fascist. People just don't want that topic to even be discussed. And that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, Lawrence, going back to I suppose the early days of slavery, one of the things that our societies are suffering from is the supposed evils of colonialism. And one of the things that isn't spoken of enough is the Brits' efforts to actually ban slavery around the world, and obviously it hasn't succeeded because the numbers have gone up, but it hasn't gone up in the Western world, has it?

SPEAKER_02 9:07

No. If we getting back to American and British complicity in slavery, it's a much more complicated topic than people are aware of. Yes, we all agree slavery is bad, but if we understand history, in the eighteenth century, the 1700s, when the first efforts to try to eliminate slavery were begun, slavery was the norm. The the concept of being anti-slavery was revolutionary when it began in in the mid-eighteenth century. And towards the end of the eighteenth century, Britain outlawed slavery, and in eighteen oh eight the United States banned the importation of new slaves, and that and the Civil War, the efforts on the part of the West to eliminate slavery are not given the significance that they deserve because they were going against the norm. Slavery was the norm, and eliminating it was revolutionary. That context is important, and that's why we had to fight a war over it. The American South fought a war, started a war and fought it to keep their slaves mostly because it was an economic necessity for them. They didn't own slaves because they didn't like black people. They owned slaves because slaves were valuable, they were money, and they were essential to the economy. And in fact, when the when the Confederate South was defeated and the slaves were freed, it caused an economic calamity from which the American South has still not completely recovered. The reason I bring that up is not to defend slavery by any means or by any stretch of the imagination, but to help explain why it exists. American slavery existed for the same reason it exists today in other countries, because it is extremely profitable. That is the whole idea behind slavery, that people are exploited for economic gains. It was true in America, it's true today in China and Pakistan and India and North Korea, and that is a topic that is not explored, delved into, and discussed because I think it's too complicated for simple minds to comprehend.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Indeed. And you mentioned the United Kingdom and the USA. I could add to that as well, Lawrence, and taking on Peter's point a moment ago. When slavery entered in the United States, a number of plantation owners, particularly from the Caribbean and so forth, moved to Australia because they couldn't get the workers, the workforce, to continue. So what they did is they set up in South Australia and Western Australia, and because we were originally a penal colony in some states and we certainly never had slavery, the apprenticeship bill was passed. So what happened was instead of young boys particularly coming over from the United Kingdom as from committing crime, they were sent over as apprentices and worked for the plantation owners who'd moved across from the United States. So we're talking geography here, but we're also again talking, as you just said, profit and money. It it's fascinating, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 13:16

There are types of unpaid labor today that some people point out are akin to slavery, and in the United States we have a very common thing called internships. Internships are jobs that college graduates and law students and new law graduates frequently take where they get to work in uh under other professionals, such as in law firms or working for judges, for no pay for the privilege of the experience. Now they're working for nothing and they could quit if they wanted to. It's not like they're tied to the job, but there is composion there because it's seen as an advantage to the intern. I debate this topic with people who are on the left side of politics. They argue to me that today in the United States there are equivalent forms of slavery, such as having to stay in a job you don't like because you're in debt. If you want to draw analogies, you could call many marriages slavery if one of the partners is economically tied to the other partner and and would prefer to leave. So being in a situation that you would prefer not to be in is not slavery. But there are certainly a lot of situations in life where people are doing things that they don't want to do, but that is not the same as physically being prevented from leaving, which is the situation of most of the fifty million enslaved people today. We have to get people to start talking about it, but it's I'm not sure where that conversation would lead. You know, what should we do?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yes, you're right, and and one of the issues you talk about slavery, but it's also child labour, and so if we're going to transition from that child labour conversation across to slavery, that's a big leap, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah. Lawrence, yeah, you just touched on something there that people don't want to do what they don't want to do, whether it be in a marriage or whatever. But I've had discussions with younger people here and about and they don't want to work because they don't they can't get a job in the area that they want to work or they can't get enough money. The reality is they've got to do the hard yards, but also the fact that they put this argument forward that they shouldn't have to work, they shouldn't have to be a part of the system. The fact is that the man has always had to work, the type of work has always changed, but we've always had to work. Whether the cavemen had to work, it's a matter of making sure that you're paid accordingly for the work that you're doing, isn't it? It's and then it's not slavery.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yes, I think in Western societies such as the United States or Australia and Canada, parents, many parents, do not instill a work ethic in their children. They buy them everything they want, they never say no to them, and so these young people have a feeling of entitlement, and that sense of entitlement makes them feel that they shouldn't ever have to do anything that they don't want to do. That's a problem because at some point in their life they're going to hit the proverbial brick wall and find out that they're not the world does not want to support them.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

You're spot on. And what we're talking about now is essentially how we continue to prosper where we have that creation of value and mutual exchange of that value. Lawrence, it's always great to have you on the show. Thank you for that. That was quite an insightful conversation, and I'm sure our listeners will continue this conversation on slavery, not so much the historical context, albeit that that's an important one, but what's really happening in various countries today. So I thank you for sharing that with us.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Thanks, Lawrence.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

One last comment, please. Please, yep. I encourage people to Google the term modern slavery and read about it.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Well done, thank you. Looking forward to talking to you again next week. Thanks for being on the show.

unknown 17:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Thank you. Lawrence Rojak, our weekly US correspondent, and today talking about modern slavery. We'll be back with more in just a moment.