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"You have taken the first step to fight against the beast of slavery by being here today," said anti-slavery advocate and slavery survivor Beatrice Fernando to an audience Thursday evening at Hall Auditorium.
The lecture was sponsored by Miami University's chapter of AIESEC, an organization that facilitates student exchange opportunities and promotes cultural awareness and understanding about global issues, according to AIESEC President Erin Conwell.
"A lot of members are very passionate about stopping human trafficking and want to raise awareness on campus about contemporary issues," Conwell said. "I think it's something a lot of people don't think about. People associate slavery with the past."
According to Fernando, slavery is the second largest crime trade in today's world. She said slavery still exists, even in Westernized countries, and can victimize individuals taken from their homes, children given up to pay debts, girls forced into sexual slavery or women promised employment.
Fernando, a native Sri Lankan, detailed her experience with slavery more than 20 years ago. Fernando was abandoned by her husband while pregnant. Not wanting to burden her family, Fernando left home to work as housekeeper in Lebanon.
"I told my mother, I will come back with bags of money," Fernando said.
In Lebanon, she cleaned four houses daily without being able to leave the homes.
After falling ill, Fernando was placed in a different house without receiving pay for her previous work.
Fernando said she suffered extreme abuse at the hands of the homeowner, a powerful woman in the community. Fernando's allotted food supply dwindled to nothing, and she said the woman beat her regularly and brutally.
Fernando said she prayed for a miracle, wrote a letter to her son and one to her mother and jumped off a fourth floor balcony.
"I thought, why wait for death to come when I can volunteer to die with the hope of living?" Fernando said.
She woke in a hospital 21 days later.
Although doctors told Fernando she would never walk, she regained strength after returning to Sri Lanka. Fernando later moved to the U.S.
"It was too shameful, and I thought, if I could disappear in this new county, I could be anonymous," Fernando said. "I could escape my past."
Since 2004, Fernando has not been ashamed to speak out serve as a voice for other enslaved individuals. Fernando said there are 27 million enslaved worldwide with 12.3 million of these are people working in forced labor.
The lecture ended with a film on the Nivasa Foundation, which Fernando founded.
Senior Liz Schwandt said she was expecting Fernando to talk about trafficking in developing countries and not those so close to home.
"You don't really realize how prevalent it is and how it's all over the world," Schwandt said. "You think about it now when you go on vacation at resorts, you start looking for it. It's in the U.S. too."
Conwell said she was inspired by Fernando's story.
"I was very, very impressed," Conwell said. "She's really down to earth. For all that she's been through … she's an extremely strong woman. She's trying to help other people."
More information about the Nivasa foundation is available on its Web site at http://www.nivasafoundation.org.
Additional reporting by Erin Bowen and Margaret Watters.
