UN Chief calls for stamping out victims of slavery in the world

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the international community to honor the victims of slavery in the world.Speaking at the event commemorating the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade which coincides with 25 March , Ban Ki-Moon said the gathering was the culmination of “a series of powerful remembrances at the United Nations”. By recalling the struggle of victims of the transatlantic slave trade, it was possible to teach future generations.As well as prominent resisters and abolitionists, the Day provided an opportunity to “listen to the voices of the nameless victims,” he continued. Their messages were transmitted through the music and poetry of Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora, in the stories and scholarship of writers and “in the work of young people who studied the past to create a better future”.It was almost unimaginable that an estimated 15 million people had been forcibly removed from Africa in the four centuries between 1500 and 1900, he said.The theme of this year’s remembrance, “Forever Free: Celebrating Emancipation”, paid tribute to those courageous men and women of all colours who had worked tirelessly to focus public opinion on the fact that the slave trade was a depraved and immoral corruption of the human spirit. Much was owed to the determination and steadfast conviction of all those who had campaigned for its abolition