Believed to Carry 180, Vessel Expected in Benin Remains
out of Contact
COTONOU, Benin The fate of some 180 presumed child slaves
aboard a ship off the West African coast remained uncertain
Sunday as authorities in Benin failed to make contact with the
vessel, at sea for more than two weeks.
"Our officials have tried several times to get in contact with this
boat, but they have received no reply so far," a Cotonou port
official said Sunday.
"We are waiting, like all Beninois, for these poor children, but no
boat is expected today, according to our department," he said.
The children have been aboard the ship, the Nigerian-registered
MV Etireno, in the Gulf of Guinea since March 30, when it set sail
from Benin. It was prevented from docking in both Cameroon and
Gabon, and was thought to be en route back to Cotonou after a
round-trip of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles).
The vessel left Douala, in Cameroon, on Thursday evening, and
the Cotonou port official said authorities had been trying to contact
the ship since Friday.
The police in Benin said they had alerted neighboring West African
countries about the ship. "Through Interpol, we have alerted our
colleagues for cooperation," said Martin Cocou Degan, head of
the police division fighting child trafficking. He added that "we've
given them all the information about the boat."
"The whole coast is under surveillance," he said.
Despite international efforts to curb the trade, child slavery persists
in West and Central Africa, from where European slave traders
shipped millions of people to the Americas from the 16th to 19th
centuries. Desperately poor parents are sometimes willing to give
up their children for as little as $14 to smuggling rings that promise
to educate them and find them jobs.
Boys are then typically resold to cocoa and cotton plantations for
as much as $340 in countries such as Gabon and Ivory Coast.
Girls often end up as domestic workers or prostitutes.
Conditions are harsh. Many children go unpaid and some may
never see their parents again, aid workers say.
Campaigners against child labor say the youngsters are often
forced to work for up to 12 hours a day and sometimes subjected
to physical and sexual abuse.
Aid workers had reports from police in Douala, the last port to
see the ship before it set out for Cotonou, that some children on
board were sick.
The United Nations Children's Fund has set up a center in
Cotonou along with nongovernmental organizations and
government authorities to receive the children on the ship.
"We are very concerned," said Estelle Guluman of Unicef in
Cotonou. "Reports from police authorities in Cameroon say there
are many, many children on board and some of them are sick."
"We don't know where the boat is, but conditions on board must
be very bad. The ship was only expected to go to Gabon, so it
didn't carry a lot of supplies. But instead of a four-day journey, it
has been at sea for more than two weeks."
The sea voyage from Cameroon to Benin normally takes two
days, but the UN officials feared the captain might try to divert the
vessel to another country to avoid arrest. Although the ship had
refueled in Douala, it was unclear how long the fuel would last. It
was also doubtful whether the passengers had enough food and
water.
Miss Guluman said government pledges to punish those guilty of
trafficking in children could backfire and put the children on board
at even more risk.
"The captain knows full well that he will have to face the music
when he gets back here," she said, "so he may have tried to
offload the children in another port."
She added there were unconfirmed reports the ship might head for
Lagos, in Nigeria, where Unicef employees were on standby.
Police authorities in Cotonou said they were in contact with their
counterparts in Nigeria as well as in Togo, Ghana and Ivory
Coast.
The Benin information minister, Gaston Zossou, described the
situation as shocking Saturday and vowed to punish those
responsible.
Port officials said the ship had been chartered by a Benin
businessman and set sail for Gabon on March 30. One official said
the ship was a trawler, but was normally used for transporting
goods and was unlikely to be equipped with life jackets.
First reports put the number of children on board at 250, but the
Benin social and women's affairs minister, Ramatou
Baba-Moussa, said she believed there were 180.
A Benin cabinet minister said Sunday that authorities sought to
question the businessman and two collaborators believed
responsible for the ship's cargo. Miss Baba-Moussa said the
Beninois businessman, identified as Staneslas Abatan, had been
asked Sunday to return from Gabon, where he had apparently
been waiting for the ship.
Miss Baba-Moussa denied that the government knew about the
human smuggling, but she did not rule out the possibility that
shipping and port officials might be involved.
"We will expect them to answer for this," she said.
The Etireno's final destination remained uncertain. It had made
regular trips from Benin to Gabon loaded with human cargo over
the past five years, said Hadi Lai Landou, a senior official with the
Benin state shipping firm. The company was contracted to provide
docking and other services for the ship.
Benin is one of the world's poorest nations while Gabon, a thinly
populated, oil-producing nation to the southeast, is relatively
wealthy by African standards.
Mr. Landou said both countries' governments knew that
unaccompanied minors were traveling on the boats in miserable
conditions. Benin authorities deny the accusation. (AFP, Reuters,
AP)
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