On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 08:04:51AM -0700, Julia Jones wrote:
In message 20010730144746.89961.qmail@web12207.mail.yahoo.com, Stephen Date stephend999@yahoo.co.uk writes
I always assumed that the slave buyers were from non-Federation worlds as slavery is legal in the Federation, so the slavers may not have heard of Servalan.
While state-sponsored slavery is legal, I don't think there's any indication that privately owned slaves are. The examples we hear about seem to be the property of the military or commercial organisations.
That's one thing that always confused me about slavery in the Federation... we're told that (a) the families of deserters sold into slavery, there's also reference to the "slave pits of Ursa Prime"; and then we have Rashell, who is referred to as a bond-slave, which might be a different kind of slave.
Then in Assassin we're told that the slave auction is illegal, but we aren't told in what manner it is illegal.
The thing is, I don't think we could say that privately owned slaves were illegal, or that the buyers were from non-Federation worlds where slavery was illegal -- because what were they buying, then? It would be like someone turning up in Australia with a slave; they'd be guilty of kidnapping and wouldn't be able to keep the slave at all!
No, what I think was illegal about the auction is that the slaves themselves weren't legally slaves; but the pirates presumably had fake slavery papers that would pass muster, so the buyers would be able to take them home with relative impunity.
We have no information about whether slavery is illegal outside the Federation.
I also suspect that, from the reference to "bond-slave" that there was also some kind of debt-slavery in the Federation, as well as the families-of-deserters.
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Absolutely nothing! Why should I find nothing terrifying?" -- Vila Restal (Blake's 7: Breakdown [A10])