Uncle Mubarak's Cabin: Slavery in Yemen……..
“SANA’A: Officially, slavery was abolished back in 1962 but a judge’s decision to pass on the title deed of a “slave” from one master to another has blown the lid off the hidden bondage of hundreds of Yemenis. The judge in the town of Hajja, which is home to some 300 slaves, according to residents, said he had certified the transfer only because the new owner planned to free the slave. But his decision has triggered a campaign by local human right activists. A 2009 report by the human rights ministry found that males and females were still enslaved in the provinces of Hudaydah and Hajja, in northwest Yemen — the Arab world’s most impoverished country. Mubarak, who has seven brothers and sisters, has never set foot outside the village where he was born into a family which was inherited as slaves by their local master. Sheikh Mohammed Badawi’s father had bought Mubarak’s parents 50 year ago, shortly before Yemen’s 1962 revolution which abolished slavery. Mubarak has known no other life except that of a slave. “Whenever I think of freedom, I ask myself, ‘Where will I go?’” he said as he stood outside a hut which serves as home for him and his family. Black-skinned Mubarak does not know his birthday but he knows he has been a slave from birth ……”
That is one other thing that the captive people of Southern Yemen are fighting against when they seek to regain their independence. In the moderate allied dictatorship of Yemen where president Salih has been in power for 32 years, about 2 years longer than the mummy in Egypt.
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