Narrator:

Lady Caroline Cox is running late. Even crusaders can't escape the curse of London traffic.

Caroline Cox:

It's a bit like driving a sort of obstacle course [inaudible].

Narrator:

Time lost is time wasted. Lives are at stake, those of the slaves of southern Sudan.

Caroline Cox:

I know that I am very grateful to [inaudible] contributing to this debate. In recent years of this civil war over one and a half million Sudanese have perished, over five million have been displaced. And the numbers grow daily. Slavery is widely practised by the NIF regime. How much longer will the international community tolerate this? [crosstalk]

Narrator:

Westminster seems an unlikely place to debate the war in Sudan. But then Caroline Cox is no ordinary lady. When the Baroness of Queensbury thinks dining with, it's not Wedgwood or Royal Dalton she's after.

Speaker 3:

Basically something like this, which would be just a good little can for about two, three people. You can put a couple of pints of water in there.

Narrator:

Right now she's shopping for a billy can. In a few days she'll be shopping for slaves.

Two and a half hours flying time from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi is [Lockichokio], the gateway to southern Sudan. This bush town near the border has become the hub for Operation Lifeline Sudan, the United Nation's multimillion dollar famine relief effort. Although the UN will not work in areas banned by the Sudanese government, some groups will. One of them is Christian Solidarity Worldwide, headed by the Baroness.

Caroline Cox:

Because we go to the areas which are closed by the National Islamic Front regime to the major aid organisations we often find people there who have absolutely nothing in the way of medical supplies at all. That can come off. Thank you.

Narrator:

Caroline Cox has made more than 20 covert trips into Southern Sudan, areas controlled by the Rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement or SPLM.

Speaker 4:

Well, there may be one more set here.

Cal Bombay:

I'm trying to find myself a pair of shorts to wear. These longs are too hot.

Narrator:

Their partner in crime, for that's how Sudan's National Islamic Fund government sees their slave-freeing mission is Canadian reverend Cal Bombay. This is his fourth trip. He swore he'd make only one.

Cal Bombay:

If you can't see what's going on, then leave it alone. You just can't. And if you are, you're heartless. I'm not coming back. But I probably will.

Narrator:

Right now, however, this plane's not going anywhere.

Stephen Wondu:

We have a problem.

Narrator:

Stephen Wondu, a high ranking SPLM official and our passport into rebel-held Sudan, has bad news.

Stephen Wondu:

They are worried about your security. Everybody's security.

Narrator:

His superiors want the Baroness to abort the mission. It's too dangerous they say. Government-sponsored Arab tribesmen have begun their seasonal slave raids in the south.

Caroline Cox:

I think there are risks we must take if we want to see what's happening.

Stephen Wondu:

Absolutely. This is the reason why we have to stand up and be counted with what's going on.

Caroline Cox:

We've done it before.

Stephen Wondu:

We've done it before. We can do it again.

Caroline Cox:

I think anyone who has visited the Sudanese people in these terrible days cannot fail to be very humbled and very inspired by their courage, by their dignity in spite of terrible suffering. And if you think of that suffering, you are drawn back inevitably as by a magnet to do what you can to help.

Narrator:

Our destination is Barro Ghazal province in southern Sudan. It's home to the African Dinka people, mainly Christians and animists. They've been at war with the largely Arab Islamic north on and off now since independence in 1956.

Caroline Cox:

Hello. [inaudible].

Speaker 7:

Welcome back.

Caroline Cox:

[foreign language].

Speaker 7:

[foreign language].

Narrator:

We've been directed to land at Turalei. Here it should be safe, safe enough that is for the slave traders to bring in their bootie. Turalei turns out a warm welcome. It's not often they get visitors here. We've been on the ground for barely an hour, however, when another plane arrives to ferry UN workers out.

Speaker 8:

WFV people have been evacuated from there. They're walking along the war. We meet the WFV people on the road and bring them in here.

Narrator:

The news is the raiders are on their way, headed for a town just seven kilometres from here. The Dinka of Turalei know what that means so does Caroline Cox.

This was the scene the Baroness and SPLM rebel fighters encountered last year just days after a raid.

Caroline Cox:

The bodies were all heaped up. They were just covered with thorn bushes to protect them from the vultures. Others were just lying in the river lull, rotting corpses massed up as far as you could walk. There were fresh corpses, women and children, who'd obviously been trying to run away and had been followed, mowed down, slaughtered. And it went on for miles.

Narrator:

This is all that remains of a Dinka home after the raiders came through last year. There were hundreds of armed men on horseback who came thundering through the village, setting it alight, killing the men, capturing the women and children and dragging them north as war booty for a life of slavery. It sounds like a mediaeval horror story. But for many southern Sudanese this is the reality of life today.

[Acuaj] [Matyen] and her children were captured in last year's attack. They were marched 10 days north, given food mixed with sand and urine, beaten if they slowed. Then they were sent to work for different masters. Two months ago, [Acuaj] managed to escape with two of her three children. But not before she was forcibly circumcised, a barbaric procedure more appropriately known as genital mutilation.

Acuaj:

[Foreign language].

Narrator:

These young southerners are off to the northern front. They'll tell you they're fighting for political, cultural, and religious freedom from an oppressive Islamic regime. But more than anything else, the civil war in Sudan is about economics, about who controls the fertile and oil-rich lands of the south.

Southern Sudan could be the bread basket of the horn of Africa. Yet, today the Dinka look to the heavens for their food. Without international assistance, many would starve. While nature has played a part in this famine, the real cause is the destruction and displacement of war. Slave or hostage-taking has been a feature of inter-tribal conflict here for centuries. What's new, according to the Baroness, is the government's support of it.

Caroline Cox:

Slavery was there beforehand. This is not a new creation. But the use of slavery as part of the war against the peoples of the south and the border lands has been escalated dramatically by the government's active encouragement and particularly by providing the raiders with the Kolashnikov automatic rifles, which local people have no protection against.

Narrator:

We've decided to take our chances in Turalei. The imminent onslaught of raiders was, it seems, just a dreadful rumour.

Caroline Cox:

It indicates how fragile the peace is, in what constant state of terror the people are living. And how difficult it is to get any kind of stable society going.

Narrator:

We're off to see Stephen Wondu. He's been liaising with his contacts, trying to organise a time and place to link up with the slave traders.

Stephen Wondu:

Then we're going to arrange for them to just do this short trip for us.

Narrator:

There are problems.

Stephen Wondu:

The traders at this time of the year are not ... are reluctant to bring the slaves deep inside. [crosstalk].

Narrator:

The traders have cold feet. They don't want to come this far into rebel-held territory.

Caroline Cox:

We have to start thinking hard before it's too late to get in touch with [inaudible]. I think ... What's flying time there?

Stephen Wondu:

It's about seven minutes.

Caroline Cox:

It's only about seven, 10 minutes from here to there. It is very near.

Narrator:

Once again, we're on the move.

Caroline Cox:

10 minutes.

Narrator:

We're heading into a government declared no-go area, just 30 kilometres from the front line and a large army garrison. Close enough for the northern regime to make good its threat to shoot the Baroness out of the sky. The government denies any role in the slave trade. It's reluctant to admit slavery even exists. It says the Baroness is trying to discredit the regime by staging the buy-back of slaves.

Speaker 11:

Oh, Lady Cox.

Caroline Cox:

How do you do?

Speaker 11:

How are you?

Caroline Cox:

It's good to see you.

Speaker 11:

Yeah. Very well. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Caroline Cox:

It's good to see you.

Narrator:

Lady Cox is determined to prove otherwise.

Caroline Cox:

Happy we've made it here.

Speaker 11:

Yeah.

Narrator:

Four days after leaving London, the Baroness has finally found what she's looking for. Beneath one tree, the Arab traders, middle men who claim to risk their lives either stealing or buying back the Dinka and leading them home for a reward, of course.

And a couple of hundred metres away, 325 women and children, slaves, waiting to be redeemed.

Some have been here for a day or two. Others for a couple of months and what appears to be a macabre kind of lay-by. Their stories have the same threads, murder, abuse, rape, and religious coercion.

Speaker 12:

[foreign language].

Narrator:

13 year old Rebekah Nyanman Matok says she was held captive for more than two years, often tied so she wouldn't escape. Her sister is her only immediate family member still alive.

Speaker 13:

[foreign language].

Narrator:

For Adutenay, the homecoming is bitter. Two of her children, she says, are still enslaved somewhere in the north.

Speaker 13:

[foreign language].

Caroline Cox:

Do you know why you're here with this group of people?

Speaker 14:

[foreign language].

Narrator:

If I'd told you that foreigners had come to pay money so that you could be free, what would you say?

Speaker 14:

[foreign language].

Narrator:

At the SPLM compound, the business is about to begin. The price has been struck. $100 US a slave.

Cal Bombay:

That is $1300. that pays for 13 slaves. Right?

Narrator:

By the end of the trade, the equivalent of 51 thousand Australian dollars will have changed hands, most of it donations raised through the Reverend Bombay's Christian Forecast ministry.

Cal Bombay:

These are 100 dollar bills, okay? One, two, three, four, five.

Narrator:

If the thought of being bought and sold disgusts Rebekah, she doesn't show it. But many in the international aid community question the morality of this practise. And like departing UN relief Chief Carl Tinsman worry that the Baroness might actually be fueling the slave market.

Carl Tinsman:

It may well be that that encourages slavers to take more slaves because they know they can take them, take them away for a month, two months or three months, and then bring them back and sell them back. That's one of the risks of this kind of approach.

Nick Southern:

I just wanted to call you to the radio to ask you about [crosstalk].

Narrator:

Nick Southern from Save the Children Fund has similar fears. His agency works in both government and rebel-held Sudan. He says foreigner's payment of money for slaves has come at the same time as a dramatic rise in abductions.

Nick Southern:

$50 in economies which are largely pastoral, barter and exchange economies, probably constitute the sort of monies that cash monies that people would have available for a whole year. You're talking about huge amounts of cash.

Narrator:

But the Baroness believes slave raiding would continue with or without her team's monetary intervention.

Caroline Cox:

It would go on if we were here or not. The raiders would come and they would just clear this land of people. And that would happen. The fact that we are here making few resources available for the redemption of some women and children isn't going to change that war or that policy.

Cal Bombay:

And I am going to pay for 262.

Narrator:

As for the traders, they say their motivation is to help the Dinka, not profit from them. For people supposedly terrified of reprisals, they're hardly camera shy.

Speaker 17:

[Foreign language].

Narrator:

Whether the traders are well-intentioned or not, the bottom line according to everyone here is that without foreign money many slaves would not be emancipated.

Speaker 18:

Thank for you. The good work you have done for our children, I hope you continue to do this work for our children. Thank you.

Caroline Cox:

Thank you.

Narrator:

It's possible the Baroness is being taken for a ride. It's possible too that she's unwittingly encouraging the slave raiders. But in the absence of any hard and fast data, any response to the slavery issue boils down to a personal decision. And Lady Cox has made hers.

Caroline Cox:

[Foreign language]. I think I'd rather live with myself taking the flag, being in the controversy, but knowing at least that there are some people who are happy because they've been reunited with people whom they loved, who have been suffering the barbaric experience of slavery. And I'd rather live with that.

Narrator:

For these former slaves, liberty comes with no guarantees. Like Adutenay, they are still shackled by fear. The only thing which can buy them absolute peace of mind is an end to the long-running war between north and south. And at the moment, that seems as far off as ever.