- Cover of Slave
Mende Nazer is a British author and human rights activist, whose work is mostly based on a former life as a slave in Sudan.
Nazer, who lived in a village near the Nuba mountains of Sudan with her family, was abducted and sold into slavery in Sudan when she was a child of twelve or thirteen (her birthdate is unknown) following an attack on her village. Although she had fled with her family into the mountains during the raid, she became separated from her family, and when a man caught her and promised he would protect her, she believed him, unaware that the man was a slavedealer.
For six years, Nazer served an Arabic family in Khartoum, where she was forced into hard labour without pay, and was subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Despite her determination to leave, she was forced to stay as she was a stranger in a foreign land.
At the age of eighteen, Nazer was sent to London to work for Sudanese diplomat Abdel al Koronky, Khartoum’s acting chargé d’affaires who resided in Willesden Green. After two years, with the help of a fellow Sudanese, she managed to escape and claimed asylum. At first, the Home Office rejected her claim, but eventually overturned its decision in November 2002, and granted Nazer asylum based on further information provided by her many supporters, including such human rights groups, including Anti-Slavery International. The British Home Office’s decision, sent to Nazer’s asylum lawyers, 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” [5]. The decision to grant asylum was thus reflecting the fact that her well publicised story would greatly harm her subsequent chances of life in Sudan, rather than giving credibility to her story.
Mende Nazer has written a book, together with Damien Lewis, Slave. It is published by Virago in the United Kingdom and Public Affairs in the United States, and is also available in Germany, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Turkey.
In 2010, Nazer’s story was dramatised in the Channel Four programme I Am Slave, starring Wunmi Mosaku.
