Mende Nazer

Part of a series on
Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Byzantine Empire Kholop Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Muslim world Contract of manumission Ottoman Empire Avret Esir Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Esir Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm walad 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia South Africa Sudan North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Aztec United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf
Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last surviving American enslaved people Marriage of enslaved people (United States) Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day

Nazer is a Nuba woman from a village in the Nuba mountains of southern Sudan. According to her own account, at the age of twelve or thirteen (her birthdate is unknown), she was abducted and sold into slavery in Sudan following a slaving raid on her village. Although her family fled the raiders into the mountains, she became separated from her family and was caught by one of the raiders. For six years, Nazer served a family in Khartoum, where she was forced into hard labour and was subjected to physical abuse.[1]

Six years into her captivity, Nazer was sent to London to be a household servant to a Sudanese diplomat, Abdel al-Koronky, acting chargé d'affaires at Sudan's embassy, who resided in Willesden Green. After three months, and with the help of a fellow Sudanese, she managed to escape. She claimed asylum.[2] At first, the Home Office denied her claim, two years after it was submitted. This provoked the rise of a movement in support of her, consisting of individuals and human rights groups, including Anti-Slavery International.

By the time of the denial, she had already had her autobiography published in Germany, coauthored by a British professional journalist. The Home Office reversed its denial in November 2002, and granted her political asylum. The decision stated: "In view of the widespread publication of her book and the high profile given to her claims both in Sudan and elsewhere, I am satisfied that Ms. Nazer would face difficulties which would bring her within the scope of the 1951 convention were she to be returned to Sudan. For these reasons it has been decided to recognise her as a refugee and grant her Indefinite Leave to Remain in the United Kingdom."[3]

In 2005, the English-language edition of her autobiography was published. In 2010, her life story was dramatised in the Channel Four film I Am Slave, starring Wunmi Mosaku, and in 2012, it was the subject of a stage play entitled Slave — A Question of Freedom, by Feelgood Theatre Productions.[4]

After the Sunday Telegraph printed a second-hand account of her version of her experience as a slave in September 2000, al-Koronky sued the paper for libel. In July 2002, before the case went to trial, the paper retracted its story and agreed to pay damages.[2] Nazer and the coauthor of her autobiography, which was published in 2003, have blamed this outcome on the Telegraph reporter's professional incompetence. In particular, the reporter never met with or even spoke to Mende prior to publication of the article.[5] As part of the case settlement, the Telegraph retracted the entire story. Nazer later wrote that she should have been given the opportunity to clarify the story's inaccuracies and point out the truths it contained.[5]

• Francis Bok
• Slavery in Sudan
• List of slaves

• "Mende Nazer - From Slavery to Freedom". Archived from the original on 2004-02-21. Retrieved 2011-07-08.
• BBC Woman's Hour (2004-01-21). "Mende Nazer". BBC online. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
• Guardian. "Foreign Office Investigates Claim That Woman Was Kept As Slave By Diplomat". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2011-02-19. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
• Leigh, David (2003-01-08). "Home Office grants asylum to Sudanese "slave"". theguardian.com. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
• Nazer, Mende; Lewis, Damien (2005). Slave: My True Story. Public Affairs. ISBN 1-58648-318-8.

• "Statement on the case of Mende Nazer". 2002-10-25. Archived from the original on 2002-12-20. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
• "Mende Nazer Wins Fight for Asylum". National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns online. Archived from the original on April 26, 2010. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
• Szymanski, Tekla (January 2003). "Mende Nazer: Fighting for Asylum". World Press online. Vol. 50, no. 1. Retrieved 2011-07-08.

• "Slave review". ABC Wide Bay Queensland. Archived from the original on 2004-04-08. Retrieved 2011-07-10.