Nicky+Oral

My Speech 2009
= Was there such thing as freedom? =

Millions of people around the world lived without freedom. In some countries they lived in fear of everything and everyone. Some people were and still can be slaves to everyone. Girls are bought and sold like slaves. So are boys, men and women. Parents sold their children for money. Why should they suffer? What have they done to deserve this? Many children and adults of all ages have died from hunger, disease and many other things. They lived in camps and suffered from torture or death. They were children forced into slave labour. They were people hiding from bombing and shelling killing them and their loved ones. They were and are women who can not leave their homes without fully covering their bodies with clothes and veils. Even those that get away from this are still under threat of being in war, revolution, disease, famine and poverty that may destroy their lives for ever or those of their loved ones. So should they have to live in fear of arrest and prison, disappearing off the face of the earth forever, of forced labour, genocide, mass murder and an unnatural death? Even in countries like New Zealand where they might have been free, they could have still been arrested, tortured, executed without a fair trial, watched all the time and not even allowed to do some stuff because of their race, religion or nationality. In some countries if you said one bad thing about your leader you may be sentenced to death straight away. The question is why did these people not get the rights they deserved?

There was once a girl named Acol Bak who was a member of a tribe called the Dinkas who lived in a southern village of Panlang. One day Arabs attacked her village killing her father will her mother escaped. They found her and her brother and took them away. Forced to walk for three days to the village of Goos they had to carry all of the stolen goods on their heads. Having to make it with no food and only dirty water from filthy ponds to drink many of their tribe died. Once they arrived the Arabs then separated her and her brother and sold them separately to different Arabs. Acol had told many people "I was the only slave in that house. If I said I was tired, I was beaten by all of them." She bore the scars of those beatings, and had her arm broken. Although she was only 8 years old she had to sleep outside without bedding. It goes to show you that there have always been people without freedom. Unlike so many people that have been slaves Acol was very lucky. Along with 248 other slaves she was set free but could not return to her village for 7 years when she rejoined with her mother. This happened in the 1990’s. Not all the slaves were children some were women who got raped by soldiers, some were men that were forced to work. In Sudan, buying and selling slaves at whatever price has been very well known. In 1998 for example, a slave cost $90 but within a year the prices had plummeted right down to $15 due to the increase of slave raids. This is about equal to a pruning shear at some hardware stores. So what would you do if you didn’t have the freedom that we have? Would you help people to get out of slavery? And would you sell slaves?

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