“I was born in a village where we were subjected to attacks on a monthly basis, or yearly basis. The government troops [would] come and burn down the villages—kill whoever that they will find. … When I see what happened recently in Israel, where they went and burned down, and shot people—that’s exactly what I experienced when I was a child.”
When Simon Deng was nine years old, he was kidnapped from South Sudan and brought to the North. He was given to an Arab family as a “gift,” and enslaved for more than three years.
“I’m here talking to you as a living proof of the slavery which still exists,” says Mr. Deng.
25 years ago, Charles Jacobs helped to liberate tens of thousands of slaves in Africa, and received an award from Coretta Scott King for his work.
“We went to the slave redemption sites, and we talked to the survivors who were brought back. And they told us their stories,” he says.
Today, Mr. Deng and Mr. Jacobs are cofounders of the newly-formed African Jewish Alliance, which raises awareness about the threat posed by Jihadism.
Watch the video:
“Hamas is no different than Boko Haram in Nigeria,“ says Mr. Jacobs. ”It’s one front in Israel, but it belongs to a global movement. And people need to know that.”
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Simon Deng, Charles Jacobs, it’s such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Charles Jacob: Thank you.
Simon Deng: Thank you for having us.
Mr. Jekielek: Let’s start with you, Simon. Many Americans and people in the West believe that slavery is an issue of the distant past. But you’re actually living proof that’s not true, and that it exists today, so why don’t we start with your story?
Mr. Deng: Thank you for having me here. I am here to talk to you as living proof that slavery still exists in Sudan. As a child, I was kidnapped from my loved ones, taken to northern Sudan, and given away as a gift. I became a slave in Sudan when I was nine years old.
Mr. Jekielek: You are originally from South Sudan, which is now a separate country. Can you provide some background on what is happening there? For many people, the idea of slavery is something they find difficult to understand unless given more context.
Mr. Deng: Yes, that is true. When we talk about Sudan, we are talking about a country where there is no media and no cameras on the ground to film the footage, especially when it concerns people who are so far away that nobody even acknowledges their existence.
Sudan has been at war for a very long time. The conflicts between the northern Sudanese and the southern Sudanese started in 1955. The northern Sudanese fought against the southern Sudanese before the secession that occurred in 2011.
There was a temporary peace agreement in 1972, in which the sitting government in Sudan was believed to be a government for all people. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a government for a particular group of people—Muslims and Arabs in the north. Africans in the south were being ignored and disregarded.
The same government that had previously signed a peace agreement with the southerners in 1982 later canceled the agreement, declaring Sudan an Islamic state aligned with Iran. Sudan became the first African country on the continent to become an Islamic state and subjected everyone to Sharia law. This made the southern Sudanese feel like second-class citizens, with Muslims being prioritized.
In 1982, a war broke out in which two million southern Sudanese were killed due to a declared jihad against the infidels. It was a brutal conflict, with individuals from other countries volunteering to fight in the name of jihad, including Osama bin Laden, who was in Khartoum at the time executing this policy. The creation of al-Qaeda was tied to this conflict, with Osama bin Laden’s soldiers fighting against the southern Sudanese.
Slavery still persists in southern Sudan, but it goes largely unnoticed since there are no cameras or journalists present, and access to the region requires permission from a government that does not want outsiders to see what is happening.
Mr. Jekielek: Charles, I'll turn to you soon, since I know you have extensive knowledge on this topic. Simon, could you please share what occurred in your village?
Mr. Deng: I was born in a village that was subject to attacks on a monthly and yearly basis. Government troops would come and burn down the villages, killing whoever they found. Usually, we had to run to the bush and then wait for our father to come back and rebuild the village. To build a village, you only need a few things, like some wood to cut to build huts. That’s where we were. We were not in a city like other places.
When I see what happened recently in Israel, where they went and burned down and shot people, it reminds me of exactly what I experienced as a child. It’s especially disturbing when the people doing the shooting and killing claim it is in the name of Allahu Akbar, which means “God is great”. It makes me wonder what kind of God they believe in. That’s exactly what I experienced as a child.
Mr. Jekielek: Were you captured?
Mr. Deng: My dad decided to take his family to the capital city, Malakal. We were in a village at the time. In that town, one of my neighbors was leaving and going to northern Sudan. He asked me to help him with his luggage. As a child, if someone asked for help, I would do it. He told me to sit next to his luggage on the train while he went to get something in the market. He didn’t show up by the time the train was leaving, and I became terrified. He eventually found me and calmed me down and explained that we couldn’t go back once the train left the station, so we would continue all the way to Kosti, a city in northern Sudan. He promised me that when we arrived in Kosti, he would put me on another train going back south, which was a lie.
When we arrived in Kosti, we were walking into the city with a northern Muslim man with three African kids with him. That’s how I ended up in his hands. My neighbor gave me away to him as a gift.
Mr. Jekielek: The last part of the story is about how you managed to escape. I understand you were there for about four years.
Mr. Deng: Three-and-a-half years passed. My slave master’s family had a son who needed to go to junior high school. In his village in northern Sudan there was no junior high school, so they had to move to Kosti. One day in Kosti I saw three Shilluk gentlemen with the Shilluk tribal marks, which I myself have today. At that time, I didn’t have those tribal marks.
In fact, during my time as a slave, I was given an offer to convert to Islam, to be given an Arab name, and to become their son. I was willing to convert to Islam if it would save me from the daily hardships I endured. I was even willing to take on an Arab name if it meant being treated like a human being. However, the idea of becoming their son was incredibly difficult for me.
In my mind, even as a child, I had a loving mother and father. I had a wonderful family. I had been kidnapped against my will and no one knew what had happened to me. How could I give up my identity? During that time, there was only one word I knew—yes. I couldn’t say no to anything, not even to the torture I had to endure.
I always told them that I would let them know later, buying time. I relied on two things—hope and faith that someday someone would come and prevent another child from going through what I had experienced. That hope and faith came when their son had to go to junior high school. It was in the city of Kosti where I saw the three gentlemen with the Shilluk tribal marks. This was what I had been waiting for.
I approached them with so much happiness on my face because of the tribal marks they had on their foreheads, something I didn’t have. Since I couldn’t communicate in their language, all I could do was speak to them in Shilluk. Unfortunately, one of them told me they were from northern Shilluk, while I came from southern Shilluk. He said they didn’t know my mom or my dad, even though I had mentioned their names and the name of my village. I assumed they knew. Hearing this, tears started to run down my face and I felt disappointed.
But then, another person came and comforted me, saying that while they didn’t know my mom, they knew someone from the village I mentioned. They promised to go and meet that person and they would come back to meet me the following day. True to their word, I was waiting for them, and there they were. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was someone from my village.
That person broke down in tears upon seeing me. For two-and-a-half years, my dad had been looking for me. My dad had offered ten cows to anyone who could provide information about his missing son. Two-and-a-half years passed, but nobody came forward to claim the reward. My parents organized a funeral for their lost and deceased child, and this is why he was crying.
Then he warned me not to reveal to my slave master that I had encountered someone I knew, as he feared I would be taken to an undisclosed location. I kept my promise. He was the one who rescued me from slavery and brought me to freedom. Without him, I wouldn’t be here today, talking to you as a free man in the United States.
Mr. Jekielek: What an incredible story. Charles, you’ve dedicated your life to liberating slaves from the region. I even heard that you received an award from Coretta Scott King for your efforts. This work has been ongoing for decades. Can you explain how this kind of slavery is similar or different from what we know in North America?
Mr. Jacobs: I actually first learned about this issue on an airplane. Back then, smartphones didn’t exist, so they provided magazines for passengers to read. I was reading an article in Newsweek which stated that one could buy and sell a black woman for $30 in Sudan and other places. I was shocked.
I couldn’t believe that such a practice still existed in my time. This article was buried on page 19. Why wasn’t an article about the buying and selling of human beings given more prominence? This made me question the collective mindset that prevented certain realities from being acknowledged.
Through my research, I discovered that slavery was prevalent in Sudan, Mauritania, and many other places. However, human rights organizations seemed to relegate these reports to the bottom of their agenda. There were no large-scale protests calling for the liberation of these slaves, unlike the marches against apartheid in South Africa. While apartheid was undoubtedly horrific, I couldn’t understand why the human rights community and the media seemed indifferent to people like Simon.
Mr. Deng: I remember sitting down and talking with Bishop Macram Gassis, who was exiled from Sudan for speaking out against slavery in the country.
Mr. Jacobs: Then I started the American Anti-Slavery Group and I received a lot of interest from decent people. I wrote an article in the New York Times that broke the story about slavery in Mauritania and Sudan, and I began building an organization. As the research director of the American Anti-Slavery Group, I represent black chattel slaves, a people many Americans believed had long ago vanished.
Our organization is made up of American and African abolitionists; black and white, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. For three years, we have been working to bring attention to the issue of the present-day slave trade and advocate for the removal of Sudan from the United Nations. It is unacceptable to have a country that enslaves and kills people being represented in the United Nations.
We gained support from organizations like the NAACP and influential individuals like Eleanor Holmes Norton, an important black congresswoman. Many people were genuinely concerned about this issue. The Arab Islamic regime declared a jihad against black, Christian southern Sudan, and militias would attack African villages.
They would just shoot the men, because this is not the kind of slavery that we once had. You don’t need musculature. They didn’t take them because they wanted them for rice harvests or cotton picking. This was all for concubinage and humiliation and spreading their culture through the womb of the captured slave women. It was a different kind of slavery.
At one point, I met John Eibner from Christian Solidarity International [CSI]. He became a hero in this fight. His organization figured out how to buy back slaves that had been taken by the North from the South. They paid cooperating Arabs near the border, who did not want war with the South, to retrieve people like Simon and bring them back.
The cost was around $35 or $50 per slave. We raised tens of thousands of dollars in the U.S., with support from Europe as well. We garnered media attention, and even children were contributing to the cause. There were heartwarming stories on NBC and CBS about kids donating money to bring back slaves.
Eventually, I traveled to South Sudan illegally, passing through Kenya as it was not possible to travel through the north. I joined Christian Solidarity International on this journey. We walked for half-a-day to reach a clearing under a large shade tree, where we encountered hundreds of women and children slaves that had been returned and who were waiting for us. Did they truly know they would be redeemed? It must have been a horrifying night for them. They were told they would be freed. Why would they believe that?
Eibner arrived with a duffel bag filled with cash. It was the most incredible scene I’ve ever witnessed. He sat down next to the Arab retrievers and paid and paid, and then it was all done. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it. He stood up, and speaking through a Dinka translator (mostly Dinka people were enslaved), he then said, “You are blessed by God. Don’t dwell on what they made you do. Good people from the West have paid for your freedom. Now, you are free.” I have only experienced this feeling three or four times in my life.
When this happens, their families, brought nearby, start screaming and jumping and dancing, and I dance with them. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done, aside from marrying my wife. CSI has saved tens of thousands of people in this way. Eventually, the word reached President George Bush, and he compelled Khartoum to hold a plebiscite allowing the South to decide whether they wanted to remain, considering that the region is predominantly black African Christian. Unsurprisingly, they voted 99 percent in favor of separation.
That’s how we have the newest nation in the world, South Sudan. Now, the same thing is happening in Nigeria. It is also occurring in roughly 10 African countries, including Mali, Somalia, and Burkina Faso, as this expanding and militant ideology takes hold.
Unfortunately, not enough attention is being paid to this issue. Therefore, we have formed the African Jewish Alliance to address this. We are here in Congress, speaking with members, and inaugurating our efforts.
What happened to the Jews on October 7th of last year is exactly what I witnessed in Sudan. It follows the same pattern; ransacking villages, shooting people, burning them alive, and gang-raping girls before taking them as slaves. We recently celebrated the return of four Israeli hostages, and one of the girls, Noah, reminds me of the girls I interviewed in Sudan who were survivors of the slave raids. It’s the same horrendous situation.