This Christmas, Counter the Lies of Slave Owners

Last year, this was Malavika's entire world: More than 20 slaves were held in this granite quarry. Children like Malavika were forced to work to help their parents.

On December 1, 2010, everything changed: The oppression at the quarry came to an end through an IJM-supported rescue operation. Malavika and her family were freed.

A year after her rescue, Malavika is vibrant and full of life.

She is in school, and as soon as her brother is old enough, he will join her there.

Today, instead of helping her parents work in a rock quarry, she's dreaming of a career as a doctor when she grows up.

PreviousPauseNext

1 of 1

A message from IJM President Gary Haugen

Last fall, Malavika was five years old – the age my own daughters started school. But Malavika was spending each day as she had the one before: sitting on the hard dirt next to her mother, helping to crush rocks, as her father carried massive stones out of a deep pit. Though she was young, Malavika knew enough to understand her home – a remote and massive granite quarry – was a terrible place.

Malavika’s parents were slaves. The fabric of her childhood was a cycle of abuse, pain, work and need. It was hearing the vulgar shouts of the owner and his henchmen berating the labourers and threatening to sexually assault the women. It was her father’s bloodied face after the owner kicked him in the head over and over again for the ‘crime’ of being too sick to work. It was sleeping in a shack guarded by one of the owner’s thugs. It was never leaving the quarry.

Malavika didn’t wish for freedom – because Malavika had no idea what freedom was like. But her parents did. They grieved that their precious daughter and her little brother were growing up in this terrible place. The owner made it clear just how worthless, how expendable they were to him. He had even reserved a plot of land for graves for labourers who died. He often told the two dozen slaves in the quarry that if they didn’t work, he would put them there. At least one man was buried already.

But, try as he might to pretend that little girls like Malavika and men and women like her parents didn’t matter, their owner was wrong. He had enslaved people created in the very image of God. People of infinite value.

At this time last year, my IJM colleagues in India had just discovered the brutal prison in which Malavika was spending her childhood. On December 1, 2010, the reality that she and her family were indeed of very great worth became apparent to the man who had enslaved them. In a coordinated operation, IJM and the local government freed the families enslaved in the quarry. The owner who had spent the past five years tormenting these children, women and men was placed under arrest. Gloriously, Malavika’s family left forever the place where they had known so much pain.

Today, Malavika doesn’t have to see her parents bowed down and assaulted. They are free: Her mother, Sharadha, hopes to become a teacher, and her father, Madesh, works as a guard. Malavika is in school. She loves math, and she says her favorite games are “running and catching.” When you talk to her, it’s impossible not to see how very full of life she is. Her mother hopes that someday, her daughter will grow up to be a teacher; for her part, Malavika wants to be a doctor.

Theirs is now the story of a family leading an ordinary, dignified life together. It is not a complicated story, but it is a good one.

As Christmas approaches, we remember another story – that our Maker placed on each of us such great value that he sent his own son into this world. The slave-owners and thugs and tyrants are wrong – and terribly so. There are no worthless people. And at Christmas, we are reminded of this truth forcefully. In the grand story, you matter. We matter. Little girls like Malavika matter.

But even now, other families like Malavika’s toil in slavery, told in word and deed that they are forgotten, worthless. This Christmas, let’s proclaim the truth that those who wait for rescue matter. Will you help us continue the work of rescue with a year-end financial gift?

With deep gratitude for your partnership and wishes for a joyous Christmas season,

Gary A. Haugen
President and CEO, International Justice Mission