Latest news with #modernslavery
WIRED
23-07-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Silicon Valley AI Startups Are Embracing China's Controversial ‘996' Work Schedule
Jul 23, 2025 5:30 AM In an industry once known for cushy perks, some founders are now asking staff to commit to a 72-hour weekly schedule. You're either in or you're out. Photo-Illustration:Would you like to work nearly double the standard 40-hour week? It's a question that many startups in the US are asking prospective employees—and to get the job, the answer needs to be an unequivocal yes. These companies are embracing an intense schedule, first popularized in mainland China, known as '996,' or 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. In other words, it's a 72-hour work week. The 996 phenomenon in China gave rise to major protests and accusations of 'modern slavery,' with critics blaming the schedule for a spate of worker deaths. Despite the negative connotations overseas, US firms, many of them working on artificial intelligence, are adopting both the schedule and its nickname as they race to compete against each other—and with China. Adrian Kinnersley, a serial entrepreneur who runs both a staffing and recruitment company and an employment compliance startup, has been surprised by how many startups are going all-in on 996. 'It's becoming increasingly common,' he says. 'We have multiple clients where a prerequisite for screening candidates before they go for an interview is whether they are prepared to work 996.' At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, conversations about conditions for workers in the United States often centered around burnout and the need for increased flexibility. Even in the notoriously hard-charging tech sector, companies began emphasizing efforts to facilitate a balanced schedule. Now, the surge in interest in 996 demonstrates the pendulum has swung the other way. It echoes Elon Musk's 'extremely hardcore' ultimatum to X employees, which encouraged them to work punishing hours. Companies aren't having trouble finding willing employees, and some frame it as core to their work culture. Rilla, an AI startup that sells software designed for contractors (like plumbers) to record conversations with prospective clients and coach them on how to negotiate higher rates, says nearly all of its 80-person workforce adheres to the 996 schedule. 'There's a really strong and growing subculture of people, especially in my generation—Gen Z—who grew up listening to stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, entrepreneurs who dedicated their lives to building life-changing companies,' says Will Gao, the company's head of growth. 'Kobe Bryant dedicated all his waking hours to basketball, and I don't think there's a lot of people saying that Kobe Bryant shouldn't have worked as hard as he did.' Rilla is up front about its expectations. In current job listings, it explicitly states that workers are expected to log more than 70 hours a week, warning them not to join if they aren't 'excited' about the schedule. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided at the office every day—even on Saturdays. Amrita Bhasin, the CEO of AI logistics startup Sotira, says that it's common for Bay Area founders to adopt the schedule as they grow: 'The first two years of your startup, you kind of have to do 996,' she says. While Bhasin sees the demanding workload as essentially mandatory for company leaders, she doesn't think that rank-and-file employees should be expected to keep pace: 'I don't think it's fair to push it onto them.' Some founders pitch the schedule as an option for their most devoted employees, creating a two-tiered structure where only some employees are expected to work the extra hours. Ritchie Cartwright, founder of the San Francisco–based telehealth company Fella & Delilah, recently posted about a message he'd sent to employees on LinkedIn, outlining his efforts to shift some of his current staff to a 996 schedule. To entice workers to get on board, Fella & Delilah offered a 25 percent pay increase and a 100 percent increase in equity to willing participants. Just under 10 percent of the staff has signed up, the LinkedIn post claimed. (Cartwright did not respond to requests for comment.) In 2021, after years of increasing pushback from workers, the Chinese government cracked down on the widespread 996 practice, which was technically illegal but seldom enforced. While still commonplace in the tech sector, some companies have backed off, at least publicly. Globally, though, 996 appears to be on the rise. This summer, UK-based venture capitalist Harry Stebbings helped spur a lively debate over the trend's adoption when he argued that 996 might not be enough—and that truly ambitious startups might need to go even harder to keep up. 'The truth is, China's really doing '007' now—midnight to midnight, seven days a week, and they just have a rotational workforce,' he says. 'If you want to build a $100 million company, you can do it on five days a week. But if you want to build a $10 billion company, you have to work seven days a week.' Stebbings says US-based companies and their employees are currently far more enthusiastic about 996 than their European counterparts. 'People in Europe seem shocked when you ask them to work the weekend,' he explains. Adrian Kinnersley, the entrepreneur who runs a staffing and recruitment startup, has been alarmed by how many companies pushing 996 appear to be 'wildly noncompliant' with US labor laws. While many employees in the tech sector may be exempt from overtime pay, Kinnersley says he has seen some companies not even bothering to issue employee classifications. 'California is the epicenter of AI, and where a lot of the 996 culture is coming from, and it has the most employee-friendly employment law in the whole United States,' he says. 'There's almost a hysteria in the rush to create AI products, and a lot of very young, highly intelligent people, in their fervor, are forgetting all the risks they're creating, all the massive liabilities.' Despite his reservations, he doesn't think the work schedule is going way anytime soon in the United States. 'I just registered the domain he says.
Daily Mail
13-07-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE I was kidnapped, raped and tortured by ruthless human traffickers - only to be plunged into an even worse nightmare when I finally escaped their clutches
At just 17 years old, Lurata Lyon was snatched off the streets in a war-torn Serbia by a brutal human trafficking gang. One moment, she was a bright young teen with dreams of becoming a doctor like her father and the next she had vanished into the shadows of war - silenced, and sold by traffickers who saw her not as a person, but a commodity. What followed was a descent into a nightmare most would not survive: months in solitary confinement being raped, beaten and branded by her captors. Now a leading campaigner against human trafficking and modern slavery, her story stands as a powerful testament to endurance, faith, and the strength it takes to rebuild. Born an only child to a loving couple in a small village in Serbia called Veliki Trnovac, Lurata remembers a home not of privilege, but of happiness: 'I didn't grow up with lots, but we were really rich in love.' Her father, a doctor who would often worked for free for the local community and her mother, warm and watchful, kept their small household united: 'We were the Three Musketeers,' she lightly laughed, 'that was our kind of wealth.' A keen student, Lurata grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor, inspired by her father: 'He was never about the money,' she says with a smile, 'he just wanted to help people. That was his calling. And I thought, when I grow up, I want to be like him.' But fate had other plans. In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia began to fracture violently along ethnic lines, and within a decade would become six separate states, known today as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia. But these years were notoriously marked by depraved war crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass wartime rape. 'We knew something was coming,' she recalls, 'there were signs. You hope war never comes to your doorstep. But it can, in a split second.' By the time Lurata was 17, those cracks had split wide open. Schools closed, police curfews were enforced, and the quiet life she'd always known slipped away. Her father had heard that their village was earmarked to be massacred as part of an ethnic cleanse of the region, as such begged her to flee through the mountains, to the Red Cross who he believed could protect her. Thankfully for their village, Lurata's wealthy uncle bribed the men who came to kill them, handing over everything he owned in order to spare their lives. However, still fearful of what was coming, Lurata argreed to leave the village and alone, at 17, she trekked through the mountains to Kosovo in search of the Red Cross. Exhausted, dehydrated and having no idea where to go next, she sat down outside of a pub, unbeknownst to her that she was out past curfew and was risking being shot for such an offence. Moments later she was approached by two American police officers, part of the international peacekeeping force, and a translator. Their names were Brian and Peter. 'They came out with a translator and started questioning me - what I was doing on the streets, where I was from. I told them the truth: I was from Serbia.' A dangerous admission in the middle of Kosovo during wartime. Little did she know then this was the start of a lifelong friendship: 'They treated me like their own. They gave me safety when I had nothing.' Brian and Peter offered her shelter, fed her, gave her blankets and a sofa to sleep. She stayed with the two men for what she recalls as a few months, helping out around the house and waiting for them to secure her safe passage to the Red Cross. But safety was fleeting. One day, bored, she thought she could risk going outside along to buy a newspaper. Although the stand was just over the road, within seconds of stepping outside the house, a van pulled up alongside her. She had a bag put over her head and was thrown into the back. Now reminiscing she declares: 'They were waiting for me. We later pieced it together - the translator who had helped me speak to Brian and Peter had told people there was a Serbian girl living with two Americans. That should have been confidential information.' She continued: 'After a short drive, we arrived at some place, but I couldn't see anything clearly at first. 'They dragged me inside and threw me into a room. There was a man sitting at a table. He looked at me and said, 'She's the one.' 'I remember thinking, What do you mean, the one? I wasn't anyone special. I tried to plead with them, tell them they've made a mistake and to let me go. 'But they started accusing me of being a spy. I was 17 years old. A spy? I couldn't understand what was happening. 'Then the boss said something that changed everything: 'Flip her over and rape her. I want to watch.'' Gripped by the terror of what might happen next Lurata began to scream that she was a virgin, not knowing that this would make her even more precious 'cargo' to these depraved men. After finding out this knowledge, she was spared the torment then as now they would be able to fetch a higher price to 'sell her to the highest bidder'. 'During that time, I was being groomed - trained in how to behave, how to 'please.' They made me watch horrible things. The boss and his partners abusing other girls. They forced me to watch, to learn. 'There was one I remember vividly. She was unconscious and being abused. I'll never forget it. That broke me. What they did to her - I will carry it with me forever.' She was eventually sold and it meant she had to be moved, however when the traffickers tried to cross into Albania, Italian troops turned them away. As such the boss decided she was 'more trouble than she is worth', saying 'rape her do whatever you want to her and then get rid of her.' Panic stricken she began to beg the man she had been left with if she could pray. 'I hadn't prayed in a long time, and I knew I'd made a lot of mistakes in my life. So the prayer came from desperation. I was preparing to die. 'I said, 'Let's do this in a dignified way. You're Muslim, I'm Muslim too - I was raised that way. Please, can we just do this kindly? I'm so scared. I know I'm about to die, but don't send me off like this.' To her surprise, the man paused. Instead of carrying out the order, he allowed her to pray and went into the bathroom. But as she recited her final prayers, filled with sorrow and guilt, Lurata experienced what she describes as an inner voice that saved her life. 'I was weeping inside. I was saying, 'I'm so sorry, Mum and Dad. I've let you down. You'll never know where I am.' And then I heard a voice in my mind. It said: 'Turn around.' She hesitated. In her faith, prayer is sacred and not to be interrupted. But driven by something unknown she turned. 'On the table were the gun and a ring of keys. I looked at both and didn't know what to do. But then I felt this surge of courage. I got up, looked again, grabbed the keys and ran.' The escape was far from over. Lurata ran to the apartment door, only to face two locked barriers: a wooden door and a second layer of metal security bars. 'I opened the wooden door, but the metal one wouldn't open. I was fumbling, panicking, trying every key. I was frantic. And then—somehow—I managed to unlock it.' She burst out of the apartment in a frenzy, but her captor was not far behind. Just as she reached the street-level door, she was attacked. 'I heard him behind me. His footsteps getting closer - faster - and then bang - he punched me right in the face. So hard that I flew into the street.' Lurata hit the pavement dazed, struggling to understand what was happening. Then she saw it - a parked Jeep. It appeared empty, until her desperate screams summoned a figure from the shadows. 'I started screaming. And, by some miracle, it turned out to be a UN police officer who had just finished his shift.' The officer ran to help her, but her captor returned with the gun and opened fire. Thankfully the officer had time to radio in for back-up and within moments, UN vehicles surrounded the scene. With nowhere else to go, Lurata told them she had previously stayed with two American police officers, Peter and Brian. Police managed to contact Peter, who came immediately. But unable to stay with the pair she made the decision to return to her parents home in Serbia, so she retraced the same mountain route she had taken months earlier. However her reunion with her family was far from joyful. What she expected to be a heartwarming return quickly turned into confusion and despair. 'My mother wasn't happy to see me - she cried and screamed, 'You shouldn't have come back!' She had been spotted coming back into Serbia and and followed home. Soon after, soldiers arrived to arrest her. At first, Lurata didn't feel threatened. She assumed they were part of her own national army - protectors, not predators. But these weren't trained professionals, instead they were crazed vigilantes who preferred to take matters into their own hands. 'You could tell who was real and who wasn't by the shoes,' she said. 'The ones with trainers came for me. I told my parents, 'Don't worry, I'll explain what happened. They'll release me.' I was so naïve.' As she was led away, her mother screamed in the garden, restrained only by her father. She was taken to an abandoned building high in the mountains, which had been converted in to a secret interrogation site. 'At first, it was just normal questioning,' she recalled. 'But as it went on, it got more and more intense. They wouldn't believe me. I kept telling them the story, but they became so frustrated that they started beating me. 'I lost teeth, my jaw was dislocated, and my ear was ripped from the power of the blows.' Then in a final attempt to get her to 'confess' to crimes she had not committed they scarred her for life. 'They branded me. That's when I blacked out. The pain was so excruciating, I don't remember much after that. I just woke up in a small, dark room.' When she woke, her eyes were swollen shut. She was still bleeding and so confused and disoriented, she believed she had been buried alive. 'The room was so dark, I started screaming and scratching the walls, banging on the door. I thought I was underground. I panicked for hours. But eventually, I gave in. I was exhausted - from the beatings, the infections. I just didn't have anything left. 'There was no comfort. Just a blanket on the floor. The smell was awful. I tried everything to stay warm. That little space became my whole world.' For the next six months Lurata was held in that dungeon without proper food, daylight or warmth. 'I was being sexually abused daily - multiple times a day. They gave me some kind of soup, but I stopped eating. I wanted to die. I didn't want to survive anymore. 'I starved myself. I tried everything I could to die. But nothing worked. I'd given in to the darkness.' Eventually, Lurata dissociated from her own body and experience, fearing that she would never get out of that hell. 'During one of the abuses, I was just a body that didn't feel anything anymore. I think I got used to the pain. And I started thinking about them -those people doing this to me. What made them so evil? What happened to them as kids? Were they abused too? 'I actually felt sorry for them.' And then, a miracle: her father managed to track her down and bribed the men to allow her to come home, just for 24 hours, to see her, to clean her up, and, ultimately, to plan her escape. 'He wasn't worried about the repercussions. He'd already planned for both him and my mum to be executed if it meant saving me. They had accepted the risk.' On the night of her rescue, there was no time for full goodbyes. Just the haunting knowledge that she would never see them again. 'He told me to say goodbye to my mum. That was when I knew. They had made peace with it. Any parent who loves their child would do the same, I think.' Later that night, she was hidden in a truck and sent away. Her parents stayed behind to face the consequences. A few weeks later she would arrive in the UK, just 18 years old, with the legal status of a political asylum seeker. Years after escaping war and torture Lurata finally received a phone call she had been waiting for. It was her mother. Both her parents had survived the war, but had endured their own horrors for their 'crimes'. Lurata eventually became a British citizen in 2005, and then in 2007, her parents were finally able to visit her in the UK for the first time. Now in her 40s, Lurata has built a life far beyond mere survival. She is a wife, a mother, and a trauma recovery expert who helps others through their own healing journeys. Even recently launching a wellness retreats in Spain to guide others through physical, mental, and spiritual recovery. Despite all her hardships her final message was one of gratitude: 'I'm very grateful to the British government for what they did for me. I thank every taxpayer in every speech I do. 'The money they contributed gave me access to doctors, psychiatrists, medication, operations - everything I needed. I'm forever grateful.'
The Independent
08-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Slavery victims cannot be ‘abandoned' over loophole concerns, says Theresa May
Victims of modern slavery cannot be 'abandoned' over fears of creating a legal loophole, Tory former prime minister Theresa May has told Parliament. The Conservative peer made the impassioned point after concerns were raised by her own frontbench that her attempt to protect those who fall prey to trafficking could be exploited by 'bad actors'. Baroness May of Maidenhead, who as home secretary introduced the Modern Slavery Act, was speaking as peers continued their detailed scrutiny of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which has already cleared the Commons. Labour's flagship immigration reforms would introduce new offences and counter terror-style powers to tackle people smugglers bringing migrants across the English Channel. People selling and handling boat parts suspected of being used in migrant Channel crossings could face up to 14 years in prison and the Government wants to make it an offence to endanger another life during sea crossings to the UK. The total number of people crossing the Channel in small boats this year now stands at more than 21,000, a record for this point in the year. But Lady May was concerned trafficking victims could end up falling foul of the law by committing an immigration offence under coercion and called for 'duress of slavery' to be made a legal defence. She said: 'My concern is that in the attempt to smash the gangs, the Government may inadvertently catch up within the requirements of this Bill those who are acting not in order to make money or simply for themselves but because they have been forced to do so by their traffickers or slave drivers. They are acting under the duress of modern slavery.' Lady May added: 'It may very well be that somebody who is being brought under duress of slavery, who is being trafficked into sexual exploitation, for example, may in effect be committing an immigration crime. I believe that they should have the ability to use the fact that it was under duress of slavery as a reasonable excuse for a defence.' She told peers: 'If we are all agreed that people who have been enslaved should not be caught up by this Bill and be charged with these offences, then I urge the minister to accept that that needs to be specified on the face of the Bill.' But former archbishop of York Lord Sentamu said: 'What about a member of one of these criminal gangs that are bringing people over? They could easily say as their defence, 'I was under duress when I did what I have done'. What would be the response to such a line of defence?' Conservative shadow Home Office minister Lord Davies of Gower said: 'It is the duty of government to seek to protect those who are under duress of slavery.' But he added: 'This amendment might risk creating a considerable loophole which could be easily exploited by bad actors. This is not to say that I do not support the intent behind the amendment.' Responding, Lady May pointed out there was a mechanism in place for assessing if someone had genuinely been enslaved and trafficked into exploitation. She said: 'That should, if the process works well, weed out criminal gang members who claim such modern slavery. That addresses the loophole point Lord Davies of Gower raised.' She added: 'It is very tempting to say, as has been said to me by some colleagues, that all of this just creates loopholes. 'But I say to them that if we are genuinely concerned that slavery exists in our world today, in 2025, and that people are being brought into our country into slavery – that they are being trafficked by criminal gangs which make money out of their expectations, hopes and misery when they face exploitation and slavery – and if we feel that that is wrong, we should do something about it. 'We draw our legislation up carefully so that we do our best not to create loopholes. 'But we cannot simply say that we abandon those in slavery, or those who are being exploited, because we are worried about a loophole.' Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint argued protections being sought by Lady May were already covered by the Modern Slavery Act. A provision in the 2015 law 'provides a statutory defence against prosecution where an individual was compelled to commit an offence as a result of their exploitation', he said. Other changes proposed by Lady May to the legislation included ensuring the confiscated belongings of potential slavery victims were safeguarded so they may later be used to prove their status. She also called for a provision under which slavery victims coerced into acting as a guardian for children during sea crossings are not prosecuted for 'endangering another' as proposed by the Bill for people smugglers.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Slavery victims cannot be ‘abandoned' over loophole concerns, says Theresa May
Victims of modern slavery cannot be 'abandoned' over fears of creating a legal loophole, Tory former prime minister Theresa May has told Parliament. The Conservative peer made the impassioned point after concerns were raised by her own frontbench that her attempt to protect those who fall prey to trafficking could be exploited by 'bad actors'. Baroness May of Maidenhead, who as home secretary introduced the Modern Slavery Act, was speaking as peers continued their detailed scrutiny of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which has already cleared the Commons. Labour's flagship immigration reforms would introduce new offences and counter terror-style powers to tackle people smugglers bringing migrants across the English Channel. People selling and handling boat parts suspected of being used in migrant Channel crossings could face up to 14 years in prison and the Government wants to make it an offence to endanger another life during sea crossings to the UK. The total number of people crossing the Channel in small boats this year now stands at more than 21,000, a record for this point in the year. But Lady May was concerned trafficking victims could end up falling foul of the law by committing an immigration offence under coercion and called for 'duress of slavery' to be made a legal defence. She said: 'My concern is that in the attempt to smash the gangs, the Government may inadvertently catch up within the requirements of this Bill those who are acting not in order to make money or simply for themselves but because they have been forced to do so by their traffickers or slave drivers. They are acting under the duress of modern slavery.' Lady May added: 'It may very well be that somebody who is being brought under duress of slavery, who is being trafficked into sexual exploitation, for example, may in effect be committing an immigration crime. I believe that they should have the ability to use the fact that it was under duress of slavery as a reasonable excuse for a defence.' She told peers: 'If we are all agreed that people who have been enslaved should not be caught up by this Bill and be charged with these offences, then I urge the minister to accept that that needs to be specified on the face of the Bill.' But former archbishop of York Lord Sentamu said: 'What about a member of one of these criminal gangs that are bringing people over? They could easily say as their defence, 'I was under duress when I did what I have done'. What would be the response to such a line of defence?' Conservative shadow Home Office minister Lord Davies of Gower said: 'It is the duty of government to seek to protect those who are under duress of slavery.' But he added: 'This amendment might risk creating a considerable loophole which could be easily exploited by bad actors. This is not to say that I do not support the intent behind the amendment.' Responding, Lady May pointed out there was a mechanism in place for assessing if someone had genuinely been enslaved and trafficked into exploitation. She said: 'That should, if the process works well, weed out criminal gang members who claim such modern slavery. That addresses the loophole point Lord Davies of Gower raised.' She added: 'It is very tempting to say, as has been said to me by some colleagues, that all of this just creates loopholes. 'But I say to them that if we are genuinely concerned that slavery exists in our world today, in 2025, and that people are being brought into our country into slavery – that they are being trafficked by criminal gangs which make money out of their expectations, hopes and misery when they face exploitation and slavery – and if we feel that that is wrong, we should do something about it. 'We draw our legislation up carefully so that we do our best not to create loopholes. 'But we cannot simply say that we abandon those in slavery, or those who are being exploited, because we are worried about a loophole.' Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint argued protections being sought by Lady May were already covered by the Modern Slavery Act. A provision in the 2015 law 'provides a statutory defence against prosecution where an individual was compelled to commit an offence as a result of their exploitation', he said. Other changes proposed by Lady May to the legislation included ensuring the confiscated belongings of potential slavery victims were safeguarded so they may later be used to prove their status. She also called for a provision under which slavery victims coerced into acting as a guardian for children during sea crossings are not prosecuted for 'endangering another' as proposed by the Bill for people smugglers.
Telegraph
03-07-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The shocking truth about slavery in the Islamic world today
I began my research into the history of slavery in the Islamic world in Bamako, the capital of Mali, in 2020. Yes, you read that right. Not 1820 or 1920, but five years ago, during a harrowing encounter. Sitting cross-legged on the mud floor of a temporary shelter, a man in his late 50s called Hamey told me how he and his ancestors had been enslaved to a slave-owning family in the western region of Kayes for many generations. It was only two years earlier, after a savage public beating, that he'd managed to escape his enslavement. He broke down repeatedly as he described the near-impossibility, now that he was free, of finding somewhere to live and providing for his family in one of the poorest countries on earth. Slavery is officially illegal in Mali, but it continues, a hereditary and racialised system, as it does in Mauritania and other parts of west Africa. Nor is the problem unique to the region. In recent years, the Arab world, especially the Gulf, has become a hub of modern slavery – defined by Walk Free, the international human rights and anti-slavery group, as 'situations of exploitation in which a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power'. In its most recent report, from 2023, Walk Free's Global Slavery Index reported that Arab states have the world's highest prevalence of slaves (10.1 per 1,000 people), ahead of Asia and the Pacific (6.8), Europe and Central Asia (6.6) and Africa (5.2). The countries in the region with the highest numbers of people trapped in modern slavery were Saudi Arabia (740,000), Iraq (221,000), Yemen (180,000) and Syria (153,000). The history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world is as long as the history of Islam. Whereas the notorious Atlantic slave trade lasted from the 15th to the 19th centuries and enslaved 11-14 million Africans, the slave trade practised within the geographical heart of the Muslim world, centred on North Africa and the Middle East, lasted from the seventh century until the 20th and enslaved 12-15 million, perhaps even 17 million. Vast numbers of men, women and children were taken overwhelmingly from sub-Saharan Africa, together with Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus during the Ottoman period. More covertly and in much smaller numbers, slavery – if not institutionalised trafficking – continues today. But Islam did not conceive slavery in the Middle East, any more than Christianity devised it on the shores of the Atlantic. (It is just as wrong to call this phenomenon 'the Muslim slave trade' or 'Islamic slave trade' as it would be to call its Atlantic version 'the Christian slave trade'.) Seventh-century Arab Muslims, already surrounded by the ancient slaving civilisations of the Persians and Byzantines, inherited the tradition of slavery from their pagan ancestors and refined and adapted it in an Islamic context. Islam permitted slavery from the outset and with their range of regulations, and rights afforded to slaves, the Quran and Islamic jurisprudence combined to improve the lot of the average slave. My new book Captives and Companions, the first history of its kind for the general reader, is the result of years of research and travel in the Muslim world. Here are the stories of eighth-century concubines, ninth-century plantation slave revolts, 13th-century slave soldiers who founded mighty dynasties ruling Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and generations of Christian boys 'harvested' annually from the Balkans to become the Ottoman Empire's crack soldiers – the Janissaries. Eighteenth-century Muslim and Christian corsairs marauding across the Mediterranean rub shoulders with 19th-century Ottoman eunuch millionaires, downtrodden Egyptian cotton-pickers and enslaved Africans labouring on Zanzibari clove plantations. There are disturbing accounts of 20th-century pearl divers, date palm cultivators in the Gulf, and Yazidi women serially raped in the recent terrorist 'caliphate' in Syria and Iraq. On the other hand, it may surprise you to know that slaves in the Islamic world have often found opportunities for social and financial advancement. From the earliest days of Islam, enslaved men – and in some cases women – could rise to the heights of society. Take Bilal ibn Rabah, an Ethiopian slave who became one of the prophet Mohammed's most cherished 'companions' (disciples and followers), and earned the exceptional distinction of becoming Islam's first muaddin, or caller to prayer. Famous eunuchs and concubines could become the richest men and women of their day. Eunuchs represented one of the Islamic world's longest-lasting categories of enslavement. Mohammed himself was given Mabur, a eunuch, by the Byzantine ruler of Egypt in 627. Although castration is prohibited by Islam, for centuries leaders across the Islamic world looked the other way and imported enormous numbers of mutilated boys. Nineteenth-century descriptions of castration, provided by Western travellers, are not for the faint-hearted. Boys were shackled to a table, wrote Raoul du Bisson, a Frenchman who watched Christian monks perform the operation in Ethiopia in the 1860s. 'The operator then seizes the little penis and scrotum and with one sweep of a sharp razor removes all the appendages.' Styptic substances used to cauterise the wound around the urethra included hot oil, dust or tar, honey, butter and mule dung. Mortality rates appear to have been one in three. Concubines, too, have endured for virtually the entire lifespan of the Islamic world and, unlike eunuchs, were not prohibited. Mohammed was given Mariyya in 627, and had several others. Women captured during the world-changing Arab Conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries were routinely enslaved as concubines. The Abbasid caliph Muqtadir, leader of the Islamic world from 908-932, had 4,000 of them, as did Moulay Ismail, the 17th-century Moroccan sultan and inveterate slaver. Al Aziz, the Fatimid caliph of Cairo from 975-996, kept 10,000 concubines and eunuchs combined. In some cases, the voices of these courageous and charismatic women have been preserved. Arib, a concubine from 9th-century Baghdad, admitted to having slept with eight caliphs. Asked what she looked for in sex, she replied: 'A hard p---k and sweet breath.' For the Ottomans, slavery wasn't just an elite pursuit, it was literally in their DNA: they favoured concubinage over marriage as the means to produce heirs. Sultans, grand viziers and much of the ruling class were either the sons of former slaves or had been slaves themselves. In Istanbul, I interviewed Edhem Eldem, doyen of Turkish historians. His great-great-grandfather had been enslaved as a Greek boy in 1822. In 1877, that former slave was appointed Grand Vizier, the second most powerful man in the empire. Abolition came late in the Islamic world. Though many indigenous voices called for it in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Mohammed Abduh, Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the Indian philosopher, and Rashid Rida, the anti-Western Islamic revivalist, they did not amount to a movement. Ultimately, it was global economic forces and international political pressure, often led by the British, to combine and bring slavery to a stuttering close. (For all the reformist zeal of the Young Turks, slavery – as opposed to the slave trade – hadn't been abolished in the Ottoman Empire before its fall in 1922.) What is remarkable today is how one version of slavery and the slave trade continues to dominate Western public consciousness. To take just one example, A Short History of Slavery, by the historian James Walvin, was published in 2007. Of the book's 235 pages, 201 focus on the Americas. By contrast, the history of slavery in the Islamic world – so long, various and controversial – has been neglected. That is starting to change: a new generation of Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian and (in particular) Turkish researchers are poring over the archives and asking uncomfortable questions. Among other things, their work will demonstrate that, although it has become fashionable in some quarters to vilify the West as the supreme historical villain, such a stance is historically and factually incorrect. My final confrontation with modern slavery came last year in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. Here I met a woman in her fifties called Habi. She had, like Hamey in Bamako, managed to escape a life of slavery. Regularly beaten and repeatedly raped as a child by her 'master', she came, again like Hamey, from a long line of enslaved men and women, and – having been rescued by her brother in 2008 – was now living free, but in destitution. Home was a small, breeze-block shelter, buried in deep drifts of sand, in the outer reaches of a poverty-stricken settlement, under a scorching sun. But Habi struck a note of defiance. She said it was only when she came to Nouakchott as a free woman that she realised she'd never really lived. 'Before that, I was just an object,' she told me. 'I didn't exist as a human being. Now, praise God, I am free.' She has stood for the Mauritanian parliament twice, and has dedicated the rest of her life to fighting slavery. It's both tragic and disconcerting that, in 2025, such a fight goes on.
