One day early last year, a boy named Oumar Kone was
caught trying to escape. One of Le Gros' overseers beat him,
said the other boys and local authorities.
A few days later, Oumar ran away again, and this time
he escaped. He told elders in the local Malian immigrant
community what was happening on Le Gros' farm. They called
Abdoulaye Macko, who was then the Malian consul general in
Bouake, a town north of Daloa, in the heart of Ivory Coast's cocoa- and coffee-growing region.
Macko (MOCK-o) went to the farm with several police
officers, and he found the 19 boys there. Aly, the youngest,
was 13. The oldest was 21. They had spent anywhere from six
months to four and a half years on Le Gros' farm.
"They were tired, slim, they were not smiling," Macko
said. "Except one child was not there. This one, his face
showed what was happening. He was sick, he had (excrement)
in his pants. He was lying on the ground, covered with cacao
leaves because they were sure he was dying. He was almost
dead. . . . He had been severely beaten."
According to medical records, other boys had healed
scars as well as open, infected wounds all over their
bodies.
Police freed the boys, and a few days later the Malian
consulate in Bouake sent them all home to their villages in
Mali. The sick boy was treated at a local hospital, then he
was sent home, too.
Le Gros was charged with assault against children and
suppressing the liberty of people. The latter crime carries
a five- to 10 year prison sentence and a hefty fine, said
Daleba Rouba, attorney general for the region.
"In Ivorian law, an adult who orders a minor to hit and
hurt somebody is automatically responsible as if he has
committed the act," said Rouba. "Whether or not Le Gros did
the beatings himself or ordered somebody, he is liable."
Le Gros spent 24 days in jail, and today he is a free
man pending a court hearing that is scheduled for June 28.
Rouba said the case against Le Gros is weak because the
witnesses against him have all been sent back to Mali.
"If the Malian authorities are willing to cooperate, if
they can bring two or three of the children back as
witnesses, my case will be stronger," Rouba said.
Mamadou Diarra, the Malian consul general in Bouake,
said he would look into the matter.
Child trafficking experts say inadequate legislation,
ignorance of the law, poor law enforcement, porous borders,
police corruption and a shortage of resources help
perpetuate the problem of child slavery in Ivory Coast. Only
12 convicted slave traders are serving time in Ivorian
prisons. Another eight, convicted in absentia, are on the
lam.
The middlemen who buy Ivory Coast cocoa beans from
farmers and sell them to processors seldom visit the
country's cocoa farms, and when they do, it's to examine the
beans, not the workers. Young boys are a common sight on the
farms of West Africa, and it's impossible to know without
asking which are a farmer's own children, which are field
hands who will be paid $150 to $180 after a year's work and
which are slaves.
"We've never seen child slavery. We don't go to the
plantations. The slavery here is long gone," said G.H.
Haidar, a cocoa buyer in Daloa, in the heart of Ivory
Coast's cocoa region. "We're only concerned with our work."
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, based in
Vienna, Va., at first said the industry was not aware of
slavery, either. After Knight Ridder began inquiring about
the use of slaves on Ivory Coast cocoa farms, however, the
CMA in late April acknowledged that a problem might exist
and said it strongly condemned "these practices wherever
they may occur."
In May, the association decided to expand an Ivory
Coast farming program to include education on "the
importance of children." And in June, the CMA agreed to fund
a survey of child labor practices on Ivory Coast cocoa
farms.
Finally, on Friday, the CMA announced some details of the joint
study, which will survey 2,000 cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. ``Now we are
not debating that this is true," CMA President Larry Graham said Friday
when asked about cocoa farm slavery. ``We're accepting that this is a
fact."
Ivorian officials have found scores of enslaved
children from Mali and Burkina Faso and sent them home and
they have asked the International Labor Organization, a
global workers' rights agency, to help them conduct a child
labor survey that's expected to be completed this year.
But they continue to blame the problem on immigrant
farmers from Mali and on world cocoa prices that have fallen
almost 24 percent since 1996, from 67 cents a pound to 51
cents, forcing impoverished farmers to use the cheapest
labor they can find.
Ivory Coast Agriculture Minister Alfonse Douaty calls
child slavery a marginal "clandestine phenomenon" that
exists on only a handful of the country's more than 600,000
cocoa and coffee farms.
"Those who do this are hidden, well hidden," said
Douaty (Doo-AH-tee). He said his government is clamping down
on child traffickers by beefing up border patrols and law
enforcement, and running education campaigns to boost
awareness of anti-slavery laws and efforts.
Douaty said child labor in Ivory Coast should not be
called slavery, because the word conjures up images of
chains and whips. He prefers the term "indentured labor."
Ivory Coast authorities ordered Le Gros to pay Aly and
the other boys a total of 4.3 million African Financial
Community francs (about $6,150) for their time as indentured
laborers. Aly got 125,000 francs (about $180) for the 18
months he worked on the cocoa farm.
Aly bought himself the very thing the trader who
enslaved him had promised: a bicycle. It has a light, a
yellow horn and colorful bottle caps in the spokes. He rides
it everywhere.
Aly helps his parents by selling vegetables in a nearby
market, but he still doesn't understand why he was a slave.
When he was told that some American children spend
nearly as much every year on chocolate as he was paid for
six months' work harvesting cocoa beans, he replied without
bitterness:
"I bless them because they are eating it."
