“You’ve given me a chance to be a voice for the voiceless,” said Simon Deng, a survivor of child slavery in Sudan, to an audience in Cubberley Auditorium last night.

Deng opened his speech by describing his enslavement as a child, which he said is the inspiration for his current activism.

“At the age of nine, I was abducted from Tonga, my home village, in southern Sudan,” he said. “I will never forget the day the government came and invaded my village. That day, I thought, ‘I’m going to die.’”

Deng was then taken from southern Sudan to the northern part of the country by a slave trader.

“He gave me as a gift to his relatives in Kosti,” Deng said. “Most of you talk about gift as something you have to buy, but you are looking at a human being who used to be a gift himself.”

When Deng was rescued and moved to the United States, he kept silent about his time in slavery for years, until something he read in The New York Times inspired him to speak out and help those experiencing what he had years ago.

“In Sudan, you can buy a human for $10,” Deng said, in reference to the article that he read.

After reading the article, Deng devoted himself to speaking out about the human rights violations occurring in Darfur and the rest of Sudan.

“It is not true that slavery is a thing of the past in Sudan,” he told The Daily. “[Sudan is] the only country that has never considered slavery a crime. [Slavery] is accepted still by the Arab government in Khartoum.”

Deng now lives in New York City, but he returns regularly to Sudan to contribute to NGO efforts to free the African slaves considered “abductees” by the Sudanese government.

“I was in Sudan last month, involved in liberating 200 human beings by speaking with local African and Arab tribes,” he told The Daily before the talk.

While peace agreements between tribes, which result in the freeing of African slaves, have been more readily granted since Sudan declared the end of its civil war in 2005, Deng noted that “there are still 8,000 people enslaved right now, labeled ‘abductees’ by the Sudanese government.”

In his speech, Deng sharply criticized the United Nations for its insufficient role in stabilizing the country.

“The UN failed miserably,” he said. “I call it the United ‘do nothing’ Nations. I don’t believe in the UN. I believe in you.”

Deng closed his remarks to the audience with an appeal for students to take action.

“You are the backbones of these movements,” he said. “You especially have the power that you don’t realize in your hands. The action you took forced the world to realize what happened in Darfur today. I am talking to you because you are in a position to be the voice. The actions you take today will save one life tomorrow. Get involved. Be the voice.”

Deng’s speech left a powerful impression on students leaving Cubberley.

“It’s important to hear this from someone who’s actually experienced the slavery,” said Gigi Dascanio ‘11. “It’s like listening to a Holocaust survivor.”

Other students took the opportunity to consider their own activism in light of his words.

“His speech resonated with me because he mentioned southern Sudan as well as Darfur,” said Marloes Sijstermans ‘11. “He made me think about how a lot of the activism that I and other students do is to send UN troops to Darfur. Maybe that’s not the best way to go.”