NIC hosts Popcorn Forum

Modern-day slavery shouldn’t be ignored. The issue shouldn’t be buried inside a newspaper or dismissed by people and their governments as someone else’s business.

Until the estimated 27 million people enslaved worldwide see freedom, their stories should dominate everyone’s agenda, a former Sudanese slave told the nearly 500 people who packed the Human Rights Banquet at the Coeur d’Alene Inn on Monday night.

Francis Bok was the keynote speaker at the 10th annual banquet, part of the Popcorn Forum put on by the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations.

He told of his enslavement, his repeated attempts at escape and his ultimate success at finding freedom in the United States. It was meant to serve as a wake-up call, a cry for action and a promise to do whatever it takes to help those enslaved in the most dehumanizing of conditions.

“While we are sitting in comfort and freedom, there’s people (who) are waiting for us to come and free them,” the 28-year-old said in slightly broken English. “I was one of them.”

Bok said he was captured by Arab militiamen when he was 7. He had lived happily with his family but was taken from his village and enslaved for 10 years. He was beaten and forced to sleep with animals. His master’s wife would spit on him and direct her children to urinate on him.

When he learned Arabic well enough to speak to his captors, Bok said he asked why he was treated that way and why no one loved him.

His master responded by beating him, then told him never to ask such a question again. But the next day, the man approached Bok and said the reason he was forced to sleep with animals “is because you are an animal.”

Bok told the audience that he kept his hope by reminding himself that his family loved him. His father had always told him he was to do something special with his life, and he didn’t forget that. He first tried escaping at 14, but was caught several times before finally making it to a refugee camp at 17.

He got refugee status from the United Nations in August 1999 and moved to the United States. He started in Fargo, N.D., before moving to Des Moines, Iowa, in 2000.

Bok began speaking in Boston about his experiences, leading to speaking engagements across Massachusetts and soon the country. He’s testified before the U.S Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and attended the Sudan Peace Act signing ceremony at the White House, where he spoke with President Bush.

“That peace is not a real peace,” Bok told the crowd.

Genocide is ravaging the people of Darfur, Sudan. Slavery still exists, and Bok wants the world to pay attention.

“This is the story that should always be on the front page of every magazine,” Bok said.