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Francis Bok is a 23-year-old native of Southern Sudan. At the age of seven, he was captured and enslaved during an Arab militia raid on the village of Nymlal on May 15, 1986. Mr. Bok saw adults and children brutalized and killed all around him. He was strapped to a donkey and taken north to Kirio.
For ten years, he lived as the family slave to Giema Abdullah, forced to sleep with cattle, endure daily beatings, and eat rotten food. Called "abeed" (black slave), Mr. Bok was given an Arabic name - Dut Giema Abdullah - and forced to perform Islamic prayers.

In December of 1996, Mr. Bok escaped to the nearby town of Matari, where he was enslaved by local policemen for two months. But an Arab truck driver helped Mr. Bok escape and eventually to reach Khartoum, the capital. In Khartoum, Mr. Bok was arrested by the security forces and jailed for seven months. After being released, Mr. Bok escaped to Cairo. In 1999, the United Nations resettled him in North Dakota. Mr. Bok is now an Associate at the American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston.

On May 23, 2000, Mr. Bok spoke out for the first time at a Capitol Hill ceremony with Senators and Congressmen, sharing his message: "We cannot rest until my people are free." On September 18, 2000 Mr. Bok spoke alongside Coretta Scott King, widow the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Boston Freedom Award ceremony.

On September 28, 2000, Mr. Bok became the first escaped slave to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in hearings that were broadcast live on C-Span. Later that day, Mr. Bok met with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. On October 21, 2002, he was invited to the White House for the Sudan Peace Act signing ceremony - where he spoke with President Bush at length, perhaps becoming the first former slave to meet an American president since the 19th Century.

Mr. Bok has spoken at colleges across the country, including heading a panel on slavery at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government ARCO Forum. Mr. Bok has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, in the New York Times and Essence Magazine and by dozens of other newspapers, radio, and television shows, including National Public Radio and Black Entertainment Television.

On April 28, 2001, Mr. Bok launched the website iAbolish.com while appearing on stage with the band Jane's Addiction before an audience of 40,000. He has been honored by the Boston Celtics as a "Hero Among Us" for community service, and in December 2001 he carried the Winter Olympic Torch on its national relay tour. In 2003, St. Martin's Press will publish Mr. Bok's autobiography.

its sad to see stuff like this still goin on out there in many countries .

What is also sad is the fact that the U.S. government/U.N. does little if anything to assist in eradicating the problem .

said cuz de backside president too worried wid securin airports...he feel de dam arabs schupid an go attack de same place more than once....:

really depressing, and true u would think slavery was abolished. Well, they try in their own way. But like most people, just like countries, they only truely get involved when it's their best interest at heart and they can gain something from it , that's important to them.


Even though sometimes we complain about the stuff that life throws us. We have to be greatfull and thanfull that we never had to endure such pain.

i like how u say that the u.s an the u.n the u.s.a is a part of the united nations but when bush wanted to go into iraq he was left alone , the u.n is peace keepers they dont like to start war they just like to come after an tell u what to do ,i was watchin a statistic the other day about africa by the year 2010 over 250 million people will die from aids another hundred something million from famine , then they had numbers of villages being slaugthered if they dont convert to so called muslim by guerilla soldiers or whatever they call them , people sit an argue about bush bush bush but they dont see the bigger picture so the u.n stays in the shadows allowin this yeah they send food an other stuff but half the food dont reach where it goin cause they have no troops to guard it so the trucks are robbed an what not .

the "/" here represented "and" ,"or"..but tanks fuh de political science lesson anyways!