10:13 a.m., Nov. 12, 2010----Francis Bok, a man who escaped after being enslaved in Sudan for 10 years, spoke to a packed audience filled with members of the University of Delaware community on Tuesday, Nov. 9, in Sharp Hall, focusing on the history between north and south Sudan and his own belief in pacifism, as well as how he became an abolitionist.

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Bok, who was captured in a slave raid at age 7 and escaped at age 17, arrived in the United States at age 19.

Once in the U.S., he spent time in Iowa before being contacted by a human rights group in Boston to speak about his experience. Bok has been speaking out against slavery ever since, and has had the opportunity to meet Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as Coretta Scott King.

Of his work as an abolitionist, Bok said, “I knew in my heart that I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to speak up. I wanted to speak about my own experience and how I survived 10 years in captivity -- how I endured that and how I made it, and so I became an abolitionist.”

Returning to his village in 2008, Bok said that the country has gotten so bad, especially in his village, that he “didn't even recognize it.”

Violence is part of the fabric of life in the village, he said, even down to the children. “When you ask them to draw something, they would draw guns. That's what they do. They don't draw anything else, the kids in my country. They would draw guns and I would say 'Why?' And they said, 'Because that's what we see, all the time.'”

Bok's talk was part of Justice Week, which was sponsored by the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in cooperation with various registered student organizations and faculty, from Nov. 8-12.

The goal of this year's Justice Week campus event was to fight modern day slavery. Today there are an estimated 27 million people enslaved around the world.

Article by Adam Thomas