12 Years a Slave

Last night we watched the movie ’12 Years a Slave’.

What a great movie. It surely deserved the Oscar. It is a true story, written by a slave in the 19th century. He was a free man, got abducted and sold as a slave to slavers in the South of the US. It is amazing he survived those 12 years. He was beaten and humiliated, but he never gave up and was finally freed. Colored people were treated like animals—beasts. That’s what they were called. They were property—like dogs or cattle. It is difficult to believe such terrible things actually happened and it is almost impossible to fathom human beings can treat other human beings with such cruelty. My wife and I had tears in our eyes while watching the movie (yes, it is that sad and powerful).

Those were dark days in the history of the United States of America, the ‘Land of the Free’. People always talk about the Germans and the Nazis and the awful things they did and the media constantly reminds us of it, but those things happened only for a few years. Slavery in America went on for centuries. No country is innocent. Here is a short list of atrophies committed throughout the history of mankind:

*The Egyptians kept slaves.

*From 1975 to 1979 an estimated 3 million people were murdered in Cambodia by members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

*In 1932 Stalin let over 10 million people starve to death in the Ukraine

*In the 20th century (around 1940) millions of Chinese were murdered by military personnel from the Empire of Japan.

*In the 1500s members of India’s Thuggee murdered an estimated 2 million people as sacrifice to their goddess Kali

*An unknown number of people were murdered during the Medieval Inquisition in the 13th century in Europe.

*The Romans in the first three centuries murdered an unknown number of Christians

*In the 14th century the Aztecs killed about 20,000 people each year to appease their sun god.

*In the holy wars (Islamic Jihads) millions were killed over more than ten centuries. More are killed to this day.

*The Spaniards wiped out the Mayans and other native people in Central America.

*The English and French were no better in North America the way they treated the native people.

The list goes on and on.

Atrocities were committed by so-called ‘righteous’ people throughout the history of humankind.

Will this madness ever end?