Human Trafficking for Begging: Old Game, New Name

Press Release: Beggars are a part of the street landscape of any major European city. ‘But don’t be fooled’, warns Iveta Cherneva, author of Trafficking for Begging: Old Game, New Name. ‘The children and elderly women begging on the street are often forced beggars – victims of human trafficking.

They are a part of a ring with organizational complexity comparable to that of a medium-size business enterprise’, adds the author whose latest research is also based on observations of the operations of begging traffickers in Geneva, Switzerland.

‘For their destination, traffickers chose high wealth concentration cities, such as Geneva, the world’s capital of luxurious watches.

There is a physical archetype that traffickers follow when choosing beggars. Often they chose children with handicaps’, explains the author. In a number of reported cases cited in the study traffickers hurt and mutilate beggars on purpose. By maiming and deforming them they create more revenue. A handicapped child earns three times more than a healthy child.

A survey by the Stop Child Begging Project in Thailand found that disabled children earn as much as 1000 baht a day, as opposed to a healthy child beggar who earns 300 baht a day. ‘An ugly industry is quietly sitting on the pavement and we don’t even notice it’, explains Iveta Cherneva. ‘The revenues from this illegal activity are huge’, she adds. The US State Department trafficking report cites the findings of an undercover reporter who learned in 2005 that a man in Shenzhen, China could earn between $30,000-$40,000 per year by forcing children to beg. ‘Organized begging is a form of human trafficking, although admittedly not all begging is human trafficking.

A few questions first need to be asked and answered, and a few legal parameters – examined, in order to prove that organized begging is indeed trafficking in persons. Under international law there are five elements of trafficking, which need to be met – action, means, exploitation, transnational nature and organized criminal group. Familial forced begging, for example, is difficult to prove as human trafficking. Another problem is that very few legal cases are available and this is an area where the police and the courts need to do better’, explains the author. The demand side of begging is still a largely unstudied topic.

The study looks into the psychological explanations behind begging in attempt to answer the question why people give money to beggars. ‘We need to realize that by giving money to beggars on the street we only encourage the vicious cycle, which fuels the criminal activity. This is why we need to stop and in that way cut the cycle of this trafficking activity’, the author concludes.

Trafficking for Begging: Old Game, New Name is available as an Ebook in Amazon Kindle Store. For more information Contact the author at ivetacherneva@yahoo.com.

Half the Sky Movement

Nicholas Kristof, two time Pulitzer Prize winner and Op-Ed journalist for The New York Times, recently published a book highlighting the inconsistencies in gender based progress in the developing world. "Half the Sky" focuses on various issues that have affected women throughout the world in unique and often disastrous ways. Health, education, abortion rights and human trafficking are among the numerous topics discussed in Kristof's latest book.

For several years, Kristof has been a relentless voice in raising awareness about human trafficking related issues, and his New York Times series on child trafficking gained international recognition. He first encountered human trafficking while on assignment in Cambodia and was "blown away" by what he saw. His research was intended to expose the not-so-secret child trafficking rings in Southeast Asia. But Kristoff was not prepared for the stories he would hear.

Shortly after beginning his assignment, he read about two young women, chained to bedposts, who were killed when the brothel where they were enslaved burned down. Time after time, Kristof head the stories of women being bought and sold like livestock. Their virginity sold to the highest bidder; their futures stolen without hesitation. Kristof said that like most people who get involved in the anti-trafficking field, it took a personal experience like meeting the young girls and hearing their stories for him to truly understand the atrocity that is human trafficking. "When you see things like that, it's hard to move on," he confessed.

Since this time, Kristof has spent a substantial amount of time writing, reading, researching and collecting stories about the issue. He believes that human trafficking is not black and white. "Trafficking is evil, but it's not being driven by evil but by a pursuit of money. We need to make it less profitable and more dangerous for perpetrators." For example, while in Southeast Asia, Kristof encountered a woman who has ventured to make a larger profit for her brothel by kidnapping young girls and selling their virginity. However, international organizations has recently put pressure on the local police to crack down on illegal trafficking activity. The potential cost of being found out and shut down was too great, ands she decided she could make better money by running a grocery store instead of a brothel. As the dynamics of her business environment changed, it simply became too costly to continue the illegal activity. Kristof firmly believes that with real pressure and punishment by local authorities, the whole industry could become less and less profitable which would make it less and less enticing for traffickers, pimps and brothel owners.

"Half the Sky" is a well-written, hopeful book that gives an overview of the major issues that plague women in developing countries. It does not go into much depth about any subject specifically, but it does offer a quick, educational read surveying these challenges and some of the more hopeful stories of triumph and progress. Also, the back of the book lists hundreds of women's and human rights organizations from grassroots to United Nation programs.

For more information about "Half the Sky" and the campaign to push for greater equality for women across the world, visit Half the Sky Movement. Kristof continues to write articles about women's issues for The New York Times. You can find his articles here LINK.

I would like to thank Mr. Kristof for agreeing to an interview during a very busy weekend in Oklahoma.

The Slave Next Door: EATING, WEARING, WALKING AND TALKING SLAVERY

Excerpt from The Slave Next Door. Reprinted with permission.

CHAPTER 6: EATING, WEARING, WALKING AND TALKING SLAVERY

Slavery probably crept into your life several times today, some before you even got to work. Rolling off your bed, standing on that pretty hand-woven rug, maybe you threw on a cotton t-shirt. In the kitchen did you make a cup of coffee, spoon in a little sugar, and then kick back with a chocolate croissant and your laptop to check the headlines? After a shower, maybe you drove to the station. Waiting for the train, perhaps you made a couple of calls on your cell phone.

All in all a normal day, but slavery was involved in almost every step. Hundreds of thousands of rugs are hand-woven by slaves in the “carpet belt” of India, Pakistan, and Nepal. Cotton is grown with slave labor in India, West Africa, and Uzbekistan, the world’s second largest producer. Coffee cultivation also encompasses slave labor, mainly in Africa. Enslaved Haitian workers harvest the sugar in the Dominican Republic, the largest exporter of sugar to the U.S. The chocolate in that croissant can also be the product of slavery, from the cocoa farms of the Ivory Coast. Even the steel and iron in your car can be polluted by slavery. From a quarter to a half of all U.S. imports of raw iron in different forms come from Brazil.[i] In that country slaves burn the forests to make charcoal, which in turn is used to smelt ore into pig iron and iron into steel. In America, the single largest consumer of Brazilian iron and steel is the automotive industry, though the construction industry also uses a large amount. Pressed against your ear, that cell phone keeps you connected to friends and family, but also to slavery. Cell phones (and laptops and other electronics) just don’t work very well without a mineral called tantalum. In the Democratic Republic of Congo poor farmers are rounded up by armed gangs and enslaved to dig tantalum out of the ground. Every one of us, every day, touches, wears, and eats products tainted with slavery. Slave-made goods and commodities are everywhere in our lives, but, paradoxically, in small proportions. The volume is unacceptable, but rarely critical to our national economy or quality of life. And slavery in our lives is not restricted to cotton, coffee, cocoa, steel, rugs, and cell phones. The list goes on and on, with new commodities and products turning up all the time. Some of them, such as shrimp, might surprise you.

Huckleberry Finn it ain’t

If there is an archetypical picture of rural youth, it is the barefoot lad with the fishing pole over his shoulder. The dusty riverbanks, the lazy heat, the straw dangling from his lip, it all says that halcyon days are possible in our youth. Today even this picture out of Mark Twain is shot through with bondage. Across Africa and Asia children are enslaved to catch, clean, package, and dry fish. They feed a global demand for everything from shrimp cocktail to cat food. One of the world’s largest consumers of seafood is Japan, but the U.S. isn’t too far behind. Americans imported 2.5 million tons of seafood in 2006, worth over $13 billion.[ii] And when it comes to shrimp, the US imports significantly more than the seafood-loving Japanese. Americans love shrimp, and the little crustacean that was once an expensive specialty food is now as ubiquitous as chicken. More than three million tons of frozen shrimp were imported to the U.S. in 2006.[iii] The huge demand for shrimp in the U.S. and other rich countries has generated a gold rush along the coastlines of the developing world. From India to Bangladesh, from Indonesia to Ecuador, Guatemala and Brazil, coastal forests, mangrove swamps, and natural beaches are ripped up to build hundreds of thousands of acres of shrimp farms. In all of these places adults and children are enslaved to cultivate and harvest the shrimp.[iv] In some cases whole families are caught in debt bondage slavery, in others children are kidnapped and hustled off to shrimp and fish farms on remote islands. Children are regularly enslaved in fishing and shrimping, since kids can do the work and they are easier to enslave and control.

In Bangladesh, boys as young as eight are kidnapped and taken out to remote islands like Dublar Char off the southwest coast. Sold to the fishing crews for about $15, they are set to work processing fish on shore for 18 hours a day, seven days a week. If the boats return with a large catch they might work several days with no sleep at all. Like robots they clean, bone, and skin fish; shell mussels, shrimp and crab, and wash squid to remove the ink. Other children sort, weigh, check, and load the haul, processing and preparing the fish for freezing and shipment. The slaveholders sexually abuse the boys and beat them regularly. They get little food, no medical care, and sleep on the ground. If they sicken or are injured and die, they are thrown into the ocean.[v] Dublar Char was raided and the children freed in 2004 when researchers linked to the US anti-slavery group Free the Slaves discovered the situation. They worked with the State Department’s anti-trafficking office to bring diplomatic pressure on the Bangladeshi government, which led to a raid by military police. (The local police were on the take from the gangs running the island).

No one knows how many other remote islands conceal such slave camps. Much of the fish and shrimp from these islands enters the global markets and then comes to the U.S. Dublar Char is just one example of the slave operations that supply our hunger for seafood. Around the island of Sumatra in Indonesia the sea is dotted with what appear to be ramshackle rafts. They are actually fishing platforms, crudely lashed together and moored up to twenty miles off the coast. There are some 1,500 fishing platforms in this region, each holding three to ten children whose only avenue of escape is a twenty-mile swim. Promised a good job, they are left on the platform to cast nets, catch fish, and clean and dry the catch. In heavy weather the platforms can break up, children can be swept overboard, or they might simply fall through the holes in the rough bamboo deck. On irregular visits, the boss collects the fish and administers beatings to increase productivity. As in Dublar Char and so many other places, the children are sexually abused, and if they become ill, there is no relief. If they die of illness or injury, they are simply rolled into the water. The revenues from Indonesian fish exports reached $5 billion in 2006; America is one of the top destinations for frozen shrimp, canned tuna, tilapia and sea crab from that country.[vi]

________________________________

[i] See: Michael Smith and David Voreacos, “The Secret World of Modern Slavery,” Bloomberg Markets, December 2006.
[ii] See report of National Marine Fisheries Service, at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/trade_and_aquaculture.htm. Accessed Aug. 2007.
[iii] Shrimp imports also reported at: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/trade_and_aquaculture.htm.
[iv] See for example, “Dying for your dinner” Environmental Justice Foundation, accessed at http://www.csrwire.com/PressRelease.php?id=1932; and Report No. 32 on Forced Labor in Burma, International Labor Organization, accessed at http://burmalibrary.org/reg.burma/archives/199809/msg00281.html.
[v] Report on Indonesian Fishing Platforms, Anti-Slavery International, 1998.
[vi] See: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-779909/Indonesia-hopes-to-increase-fish.html#abstract. Accessed Aug. 17, 2007.


Free the Slaves is very happy to announce the upcoming publication of the paperback edition The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today.

A Blight on the Nation: Slavery in Today’s America

By Ron Soodalter, co-author (w/ Kevin Bales) The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today

The American humorist Will Rogers once said, “It ain’t that we’re so dumb; it’s just that what we know ain’t so.”

Certain things we know to be true. We know that the South kept slaves, and the North fought a righteous war of liberation. We know that the slave trade was legal right up to the Civil War. We know that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves, and that the United States has been slavery-free ever since. These things we know – and none of them are true.

On the other hand, most of us do not know that slavery not only exists throughout the world today; it flourishes. Slavery is legal nowhere, yet it is practiced everywhere. With an estimated 27 million people in bondage worldwide, this is twice as many people as were taken in chains from Africa during the entire 350 years of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. In seeking to place blame, we’re tempted to point to the “emerging nations” as the culprits, whereas in fact slavery exists in such “civilized” countries as England, France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, China…and the United States. Most Americans are clueless that slavery is alive and flourishing right here, thriving in the dark, and practiced in many forms in places you’d least expect.

As a student of history, I’d always assumed that slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment. Some years back, I had written nearly an entire book on the pre-Civil War slave trade when I stumbled on an account of slavery – in present-day America! My first response - a common one, as it turns out - was denial: “No way. Slavery has had no place here since the time of Lincoln.”

Only after extensive research did I discover that slavery has always existed on this continent, from the days of its European discovery right up to the present day. Christopher Columbus enslaved the Taino Indians, setting a precedent that was followed by every European power to claim land in the New World. Slavery became the social and economic order. After the Civil War, and for decades right up to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, planters practiced a form of debt bondage known as peonage, binding workers and their families to the land in an unending cycle of slavery. For over sixty years, our own government has enabled worker abuse and slavery through the mismanagement of its “guest worker” program. And now, with the global population more than tripled since World War II, and with national borders collapsing around the world, people - in their desperate quest for a way to survive – have become easy targets for human traffickers. And once again, America is a prime destination.

So how many slaves are we talking about? According to a U.S. State Department study, some 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States from at least 35 countries and enslaved each year. Some victims are smuggled into the United States across the Mexican and Canadian borders; others arrive at our major airports daily, carrying either real or forged papers. The old slave ship of the 1800s has been replaced by the Jumbo Jet. Victims come here from Africa, Asia, India, Latin America, and the former Soviet Republic. Overwhelmingly, they come on the promise of a better life, with the opportunity to work and prosper in America. Many come in the hope of earning enough money to support or send for their families. In order to afford the journey, they fork over their life savings, and go into debt to people who make promises they have no intention of keeping, and instead of opportunity, when they arrive they find bondage. They can be found – or more accurately, not found – in all 50 states, working as farmhands, domestics, sweatshop and factory laborers, gardeners, restaurant and construction workers, and victims of sexual exploitation. These people do not represent a class of poorly paid employees, working at jobs they might not like. They exist specifically to work, they are unable to leave, and are forced to live under the constant threat and reality of violence. By definition, they are slaves. Today, we may call it human trafficking, but make no mistake: It is the slave trade.

Nor are native-born Americans immune from slavers; many are stolen or enticed from the streets of their own cities and towns. Some sources, including the federal government, estimate in the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens – primarily children – at risk of being caught in slavery annually. Although these figures may be uncertain, even inflated, the precise number of slaves in the United States, whether trafficked in from other countries or enslaved from our own population, is simply not known. The simple truth is, we’re looking at a crime that lives in the shadows; it’s hard to count what you can’t find.

What is particularly infuriating is the fact that this is a crime that, as a rule, goes unpunished. For the moment, let’s accept the government’s estimate of about 17,000 foreign nationals trafficked into slavery in the United States per year. Coincidentally there are also about 17,000 people murdered in the US each year. The national success rate in solving murder cases is about 70%; around 11,000 murders are “cleared” annually. But according to the US government’s own numbers, the annual percentage of trafficking and slavery cases solved is less than 1%. In 2007, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division obtained 103 convictions for human trafficking, with an average sentence of 9 years.

And to further complicate matters, when they are rescued, slavery survivors often deny their situation. There are several reasons for this: the language barrier, a deep sense of shame, fear for their lives and those of their families in their country of origin, and a sense of obligation to pay their debt. In addition, the traffickers work to brainwash them to fear the police and immigration officials. And in some instances, they come to identify with their keepers.

We don’t yet know how President Obama will respond to the human trafficking crisis; it’s too soon to tell. But we do know that the response under the Bush Administration was inadequate on any number of levels. In a speech on trafficking, Bush once stated, “We're beginning to make good, substantial progress. The message is getting out: We’re serious. And when we catch you, you’ll find out we’re serious. We’re staying on the hunt.” Strong words. But the unvarnished truth is, with less than 1% of the bad guys apprehended, and less than 1% of the victims freed, the flow of human “product” into America continues practically unchecked.

Finding out about the slave next door is the kind of knowledge you can’t “unlearn”; the only question is, what do you do with the information once you have it? It’s a question we must all answer for ourselves. We tend to think of our America as the country where slavery has no place; the dire truth is, we are pretty far from freedom, and it will take a lot of work and dedication – by the government, and by us - to make it so.

by Ron Soodalter, co-author (w/ Kevin Bales) The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today Websites: Ron: www.RonSoodalter.com Kevin: www.freetheslaves.net

Free the Slaves is very happy to announce the upcoming publication of the paperback edition "The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today."

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

In his book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Slavery, author Siddharth Kara presents a business and economic analysis of sex trafficking. Though such a study may seem heartless or dehumanizing, Kara argues that analyzing sexual slavery through the lens of economics can reveal short- and long-term solutions to end trafficking, and that, in fact, without this type of analysis intervention attempts may do more harm than good.

Kara, a former investment banker with an MBA from Columbia University, left his corporate career to pursue anti-slavery research and work. He is a board member of Free the Slaves. In his book, he argues that ending sex slavery will necessitate ending the demand for sex slavery, and that the most effective way to decrease demand is to increase risk. He presents suggested ways to increase the risk/cost of slavery to traffickers, and uses basic economic concepts, such as elasticity of demand, to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-trafficking efforts.

Many of Kara's findings are more suggestive than conclusive, which he readily acknowledges. For example, he argues that increasing the costs of using sex slaves will dramatically decrease the demand for these slaves due to the elasticity of demand for commercial sex. Though his conclusion aligns with my own beliefs and the beliefs of many NGOs, the analysis is based on an extremely small sample size that may not be representative. While this example points to some of the challenges in conducting research on human trafficking and its causes, it also points to the need for more research and data.

Kara extensively researched sex trafficking around the world, and he contextualizes his economic analysis within his firsthand interviews with sex trafficking victims and survivors, and his experiences with the market for sex slaves. While many of the most compelling parts of his books spring from these experiences, his analysis of slavery in the United States is somewhat anemic and does not discuss the sex trafficking of US citizens.

Throughout the book, Kara discusses the role that globalization has played in creating situations rife for exploitation and slavery. He demonstrates the ways that governmental policies and corrupt greed help perpetuate human rights abuses and poverty. He argues that vulnerability to trafficking can often be traced to unequal distributions of power and wealth that are only increasing as a result of globalization.

Though his book focuses mainly on sex trafficking, Kara does touch on labor trafficking issues and acknowledges the need for a similar analysis of the business of labor trafficking. Many of his insights about the economic factors that contribute to the demand for slavery and the need to increase the economic costs of slavery for producers and consumers will prove useful in such an analysis. At the same time, the causes of labor trafficking and the factors that fuel its demand are different from sex trafficking, and more research on this form of trafficking is vitally needed.

Kara's research and analysis provide a useful foundation for further efforts to effectively end slavery that is grounded in an understanding of the economic and business realities that fuel this crime.

The Slave Across the Street

When people in the US think of sex slavery and sex trafficking, the first image is likely to be of a young woman in another country, perhaps in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia. Even people who are aware of trafficking in the US are most likely to picture a sex trafficking victim as someone who matches the traditional signs of being "at risk": a runaway, someone who was abused at home, or someone from an impoverished background. Theresa Flores defies all of these stereotypes.

In The Slave Across the Street, Flores' new book published to coincide with National Global Human Trafficking Awareness Day, she recounts her experiences of sex slavery as a teenager living in suburbia in the Midwest. Flores came from an affluent background that valued education and hard work. Her family moved around frequently to allow her father to advance in his career. Because of the frequent moves, Flores lacked a strong support network when her family moved to Michigan.

When she was 16, she was sexually assaulted by a classmate. The assault was an initiation into the world of sex trafficking. For nearly two years, Flores' classmates used threats and violence to control her as a sex slave. Though she had friends, a long distance boyfriend, and continued to attend school and extracurricular activities, no one ever noticed the red flags or changes in her behavior. Eventually, her family moved, which helped her to escape the situation. Truly, though, it was her own incredible strength that allowed her to survive. In her book, she notes that physically leaving the situation was only one small piece on her journey to healing and true escape.

Flores went on to attend college, and is now a licensed social worker with a master's degree in counseling education. Flores recently founded Gracehaven House, a group home for girls under the age of 18 who are victims and survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. In addition to recounting her experiences, The Slave Across the Street also includes information about domestic minor sex trafficking/commercial sexual exploitation of children (DMST/CSEC), and information for parents, educators, and others who work with youth on recognizing sex trafficking and working to prevent slavery and support victims.

I first met Flores at an anti-trafficking conference in Missouri two years ago. I remain completely awed and inspired by her and her work. As a survivor, Flores has dedicated her life to helping other survivors through sharing her story, raising awareness, challenging stereotypes and complacency, and providing direct support to other survivors. I recently spoke with her about her new book and her perspective on sex trafficking and the anti-trafficking movement.

When I asked her about what needs to be done to ending sex trafficking, particularly CSEC, Flores stated that she believes that US laws are inadequate and misdirected. She pointed out that people who buy sex are not penalized, while prostitutes face arrest, even if the commercial sex involved a minor or someone who was coerced. She would advocate for a model like Sweden's, where the purchase of sex is illegal, thus targeting the demand side of commercial sex.

Flores also noted the extreme need for increased services for survivors, pointing out that there are only 39 beds in the country for DMST/CSEC survivors, though the FBI estimates that 100,000 American children are victims each year and 300,000 are at risk. According to Flores, people wishing to support survivors should advocate for increased services as well as increased awareness. One of the challenges she has faced in telling her story has been the victim-blaming attitudes and comments she has encountered from people. She argues that challenging victim blaming as well as cultural attitudes that glamorize pimps are vital for supporting survivors.

I also asked her about who motivates her to stay involved in anti-trafficking work and what keeps her going despite these challenges. She said, "I do this to save girls who are going through [what I went through]. I want to give hope to other survivors. You can heal from this, there's another life out there. I tell survivors 'that part of your life, when you went through that, is one small part of you, it's not who you are, it's not all of you.' I survived because I was bound and determined to not let them win the rest of my life. I was going to take over my life from that moment on so that they couldn't win."

Flores said that if there is one thing that people take away from her book, she hopes it is that sex trafficking can happen to anyone, and it is happening in the US. As we commemorate National Global Human Trafficking Awareness Day, I hope that her message of awareness, strength, and hope reaches survivors and advocates so that we can end slavery and exploitation.

Happy Holidays from HTP

If you are currently busy with last minute shopping or struggling to find something for that hard-to-shop-for person on your list, consider one of the following ways to support anti-trafficking work with your purchases.

The Nomi Network has launched the "Buy Her Bag, Not Her Body" campaign. You can order a tote and help raise money for survivors of sex trafficking, while raising awareness about sexual slavery.

Made By Survivors offers a variety of products, from jewelry to holiday items to clothing. A special line of products also helps support the NGO GEMS, which works with minor survivors of sex trafficking in New York. Made By Survivors sells products made by survivors of trafficking and people at high risk for trafficking, in order to provide them with a stable, sustainable, living wage and fair working conditions. While Made By Survivors has stopped shipping for the year, you can order items to be shipped on January 4th or gift certificates.

You can also give the gift of awareness and education. Books about trafficking include Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter's The Slave Next Door, Ben Skinner's A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery, David Batstone's Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It, and Somaly Mam's autobiographical book The Road of Lost Innocence.

For the people who are really impossible to shop for, you can make a donation to an anti-trafficking organization in their name. The Somaly Mam Foundation, Free the Slaves, and Polaris Project are just a few of the many worthy organizations available.

Finally, as you are preparing holiday cookies and other goodies, consider purchasing chocolate, sugar, and other supplies from Equal Exchange or a local, organic source.

Thanks for reading and supporting the Human Trafficking Project in 2009. We look forward to an exciting year with you in 2010!

Human Trafficking Book Awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

The 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize winners were announced on September 23, and this year's winner in the nonfiction category is A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery, by Benjamin Skinner (published by Simon & Schuster).

The book is based on the author's experiences reporting in Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, and suburban America, and according to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize press release, "is both a shocking expose of the horrors of contemporary slavery and an inspiring call to make ending this crime a global priority."

Stated Skinner: "By highlighting modern-day slavery and the fight for its abolition, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize committee pushed forward the 'unfinished work' that President Lincoln spoke about that Thursday afternoon in Gettysburg....There are more slaves today than at any point in human history, and I'm deeply honored, and humbled, to be recognized by the committee as being among those working for their freedom." Skinner will be donating the $10,000 award to Free the Slaves.

The book was published in March 2008, and has received high praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bill Clinton, and John McCain, among others.

The runner-ups included Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan (Little, Brown, & Company), a collection of short stories which focus on hardships facing children in Africa, including child trafficking. Say You're One of Them was recently announced as Oprah Winfrey's latest book club pick.

"The Road of Lost Innocence"

"In 1986, when I was sold to a brothel as a prostitute, I was about sixteen years old. Today there are many far younger prostitutes in Cambodia. There are virgins for sale in every large town, and to ensure their virginity, the girls are sometimes as young as five or six," writes Somaly Mam on the dedication page for her book The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine. In the book, originally published in French in 2005, Mam recounts her experiences as a sex trafficking victim, survivor, and eventually as a rescuer for others in the same situation.

Mam was born in 1970 or 1971 during a time of great upheaval in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge political party came into power and ruled from 1975-1979; due to executions, starvation, and forced labor, 2 million Cambodians died during this time. As Mam notes, this time of incredible hardship and violence shaped and continues to shape life in Cambodia. People are especially vulnerable to exploitation, and Mam suggests that there is a legacy of extreme violence, particularly towards women and girls. Throughout the book, Mam contextualizes her experiences and the sex-trade in general in the larger socio-political context of Cambodia.

Mam was left as an orphan when she was a young girl. After living on her own and scrambling for food and shelter, a man calling himself her grandfather took her to a city, where he abused her and sold her out as a domestic slave. Eventually he sold her to a brothel as a sex slave. After experiencing years of abuse, she gained her freedom after the death of her "grandfather." Because she lacked job skills, education, and any support network, she stayed in the commercial sex industry until she eventually married a Frenchman who was working on foreign aid projects in Cambodia. Eventually they moved to France for a few years, where Mam gained work experience and learned French.

Upon her return to Cambodia, she started working on behalf of other girls and young women who were forced into commercial sex work, either by their parents who sold them to pay a debt or because they were kidnapped from their families for use as sex slaves. At first she mainly provided condoms and other services to the girls and women. Later, she started working to rescue them from the situations, and she opened a shelter. Eventually, Mam opened several shelters, ranging from emergency shelters to more permanent educational facilities for survivors.

In the book, Mam details the many challenges she has faced in her work, particularly relating to lack of consistent funding and police corruption. Despite these many difficulties, Mam's work has helped countless girls and women, many who had no other chance of getting out of their situations. Mam has received numerous honors for her heroic efforts, including being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2009, which the Human Trafficking Project reported on earlier this year.

During her childhood and young-adult years, Mam endured horrific physical and sexual violence, which she graphically describes in the book. Mam notes, however, that the situation in Cambodia has only worsened. According to Mam "the brothels have grown larger and more violent. We find women chained to sewers. Girls come to us beaten half to death. They are so young. Increasingly we see that the meebons have addicted them to drugs so they won't even try to escape. When I was young we were terrorized with snakes and heavy fists, but these girls suffer a more brutal sort of torture. They have marks that are worse than anything I have ever endured" (166).

Looking back on her work, Mam writes, "I don't feel like I can change the world. I don't even try. I only want to change this small life that I see standing in front of me, which is suffering. I want to change this small real thing that is the destiny of one little girl. And then another, and another, because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to live with myself or sleep at night" (129). Mam's words are especially powerful in light of the prevalence of sex trafficking in Cambodia. The Future Group, a Canadian NGO, reported in 2005 that at least 1 in 40 girls born in Cambodia will be sold into sex slavery.

Throughout the book, Mam emphasizes the need for people to get involved to work to end modern-day slavery. The Somaly Mam Foundation website lists a number of ways to support her work in Cambodia, including volunteering, interning, volunteering in Cambodia, donating, selling bracelets made by survivors, and hosting an awareness fundraiser. While the entire book is a pressing call to action, one passage in particular highlights the urgency of anti-trafficking work: "It's still happening, today, tonight. Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book. My story doesn't matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don't sleep at night. They haunt me" (61).

Excerpt- The Slave Next Door Pt. I

Ron Soodalter

CHAPTER IX: THE FEDS

It is important to look at the federal government’s actions – both positive and negative – in its relatively new war against human trafficking in America. Many federal officials have taken on the task of rooting out and prosecuting traffickers, as well as coordinating with service providers and victim advocates providing care for survivors. We’ll speak with representatives of some of the federal agencies whose job description has been expanded to include modern day slavery, and get a sense of how they feel the campaign is going. We’ll also examine some cases that seem to stand in direct contradiction to the anti-trafficking position taken by the government – cases in which administration politics and inaction have actually increased human trafficking on American soil - both here and abroad. One of the worst of these cases involves tax-payer money supporting slavery as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Bringing democracy to Iraq – on the backs of slaves
First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., a billion-dollar construction company, was hired to build the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad – after no American company would agree to the government’s terms. The project is worth $592 million to First Kuwaiti, and encompasses a 104-acre, 21-building complex, making it the largest U.S. embassy in the world. When completed, it will be six times larger than the United Nations, and the same size as Vatican City. From the beginning First Kuwaiti had difficulty in fulfilling the terms of its contract. Serious problems piled up: faulty wiring, fuel leaks, and poor construction. Some of the problems were determined to be “life safety issues.” And while the day-to-day fire fight was going on in Baghdad, a war of words was being waged between the State Department in Washington, who defended their contractors, and those on the ground in Iraq, who were suffering from substandard work, and delays.

Boondoggles, pork barrels, and shoddy work are scandalous, but it was another, uglier issue that brought First Kuwaiti to the world’s attention. Some of their contract workers had been trafficked to Iraq against their will, held by force, and paid little or nothing. First Kuwaiti – and by association, the U.S. Department of State – were using slave labor to build the embassy. Taxpayers were footing the bill. The idea of a U.S. subcontractor trafficking enslaved workers into the country where we are waging a war to introduce freedom and democracy, is unthinkable. And yet, in case after case, the construction company hired workers, normally through sub-contractors, from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Turkey, and the Philippines under false pretenses. Falsely promised work in Dubai, they were landed in a combat zone. Once in Iraq contractors confiscated the workers’ passports, forced them to live in squalid conditions, and to work long hours for little or no pay. And, says journalist David Phinney, “It was all happening smack in the middle of the US-controlled Green Zone—right under the nose of the State Department….”



The Slave Next Door by Ron Soodalter and Kevin Bales:

Tens of thousands of people from every part of the globe (including U.S. citizens) are living in slavery today in America. They are controlled by violence, paid nothing, and forced to work until they die, escape, or are rescued. Authors Ron Soodalter and Kevin Bales describe this horrific condition in their definitive book, The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today, which presents for the first time, a comprehensive and compelling account of modern-day slavery in the Land of the Free.

Excerpt- The Slave Next Door Pt. II

Ron Soodalter

CHAPTER IX: THE FEDS

The issue came to light after the murder of 12 Nepali workers who had been “recruited under false pretenses from rural villages…before being trafficked illegally into Iraq.” En route to a U.S. base in Iraq, all twelve were kidnapped and executed by insurgents. The subcontractor had “sent them into the war zone, and along one of the most dangerous roads in the world, in what basically amounted to taxi cabs.” Ali Kamel al-Nadi, the man who allegedly assembled the unprotected caravan, commented when asked about the incident, “If they were my workers, maybe I should be compensated for losing them.”

Despite the fact that foreign workers had been complaining of abuses since early 2003, the problem was first flagged in a news report in late 2005. The report provoked a flurry of base inspections by the government. In April 2006, the Pentagon, without naming any of the subcontractors to Halliburton/KBR, concluded that “doing business in this way” was common in Iraq and Afghanistan. The confiscation of workers’ passports kept the laborers from leaving Iraq, the report stated, or from seeking jobs with other contractors. No penalties were assigned to the contractors. Nonetheless, the Pentagon ordered that all passports be returned, and that such practices “cease and desist” immediately.

They didn’t. In July 2007, two American civilian contractors who had worked on the embassy testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by California congressman Henry A. Waxman. One of the two, native Floridian John Owens, had worked for 27 years building U.S. embassies around the world, sometimes in areas troubled by violence and corruption. But after working for seven months as a foreman in Iraq, he quit. “I’ve never seen a project more fucked up. Every U.S. labor law was broken,” he said. Owens testified that the workers’ living and working conditions were “deplorable,” and described how they were “verbally and physically abused,” forced to live in cramped trailers, denied basic needs like shoes and gloves, made to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, with time off only for prayer, and “had their salaries docked for petty infractions.”

The second contractor to testify was Rory J. Mayberry. He told the committee that First Kuwaiti managers had asked him to escort 51 Filipino workers onto a flight to Baghdad. The plane, Mayberry recalled, was an unmarked 52-seater – “an antique piece of shit.” Mayberry noted with surprise that “all of our tickets said we were going to Dubai,” whereupon a First Kuwaiti manager told him not to let any of the laborers know they were going to Iraq. John Owens recalled the same experience when he saw the workers’ boarding passes: “I thought there was some sort of mix up and I was getting on the wrong plane.” In Mayberry’s words, the workers were “kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy.” After their passports were taken in Baghdad, they were “smuggled into the Green Zone.”

Excerpt- The Slave Next Door Pt. III

Ron Soodalter

CHAPTER IX: THE FEDS

Mayberry, an emergency medical technician, was horrified at the number of injuries and ailments among the 2,500 or so foreign laborers. Infected, unattended, sores and unbandaged wounds were common. There was a lack of disinfectant, hot water, any form of hygiene. Prescription pain killers, he testified, “were being handed out like a candy store…and then people were sent back to work... I told First Kuwaiti that you don’t give painkillers to people who are running machinery and working on heavy construction and they said, ‘that’s how we do it.’” After he requested an investigation into the deaths of two laborers as a result of what he believes could have been “medical homicide,” Mayberry was fired.

Owens confirmed the inhumane treatment. He testified that health and safety measures were non-existent, and that serious injuries took place as a result. When he advised workers to seek medical help for their injuries and illnesses, he was accused by the firm’s managers of “spoiling the workers and allowing them to simply skip work.” At one point, 17 laborers tried to escape by climbing over the wall; they were recaptured - with the help of a State Department official - and put in “virtual lockdown.”

First Kuwaiti responded in writing that the charges were “ludicrous.” State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard disputed the charges in a follow-up hearing, stating that his “limited review” and two visits to Baghdad had failed to verify the claims: “Nothing came to our attention that caused us to believe that trafficking-in-persons violations” – or any other serious abuses – “occurred at the construction workers’ camp at the new embassy compound.” In a written submission the anti-slavery organization Free the Slaves pointed to serious flaws in Krongard’s report. They noted that the State Department’s own Trafficking in Persons Report for 2007 revealed “a structure conducive to trafficking in persons” throughout much of the Middle East. This includes sponsorship laws that give employers control over workers’ ability to leave the work site, their job or the country. The TIP report observed “employers commonly do not provide workers with documents legitimizing their employment in the country … and refuse to sign exit permits allowing victims to leave the country, effectively holding the worker hostage.” Most damning, the Free the Slaves submission showed that while Krongard had gone to investigate a charge of human trafficking, he failed “to recognize the significance of, and appropriately characterize as warning signs: … the contractor’s practice of holding employee passports; terms of employment that raise concerns about exploitation, including the amount of payment relative to national standards, payment by the month rather than the day or hour, and a 14 day workweek, with no days off; the requirement to prepay recruitment, travel or other fees before obtaining control of earnings; and the fact that most workers interviewed either originated in countries whose laws prohibit work in Iraq, because of the strong possibility of abuse, and/or whose countries are identified by State’s TIP report as having a significant number of victims of severe trafficking to the Middle East.”

For his part, Chairman Waxman was also dissatisfied with Krongard’s methodology and conclusions. The inspector general, said Waxman, “had followed highly irregular procedures in exonerating the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading Company, of charges of labor trafficking.” On September 18, 2007, Waxman began an inquiry into accusations that Krongard had repeatedly hindered fraud and abuse investigations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The allegations were supported by information from several of Krongard’s current and former employees, some of whom sought whistleblower status to protect them from punishment for malfeasance. Congressman Waxman stated to Krongard, “One consistent element in these allegations is that you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush administration, especially with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud and abuse on behalf of U.S. taxpayers.”

The Slave Next Door Released Today 6/18

If I could condense all of the fantastic information and insight put into The Slave Next Door by Ron Soodalter and Kevin Bales into a training session, no one would ever leave without having a much greater understanding of the complexities of human trafficking, the wide profiles of victims and traffickers or the history and current status of the modern counter-trafficking movement in the U.S.

Bales and Soodalter tackle some of the most difficult issues embedded in the counter-trafficking movement with discernment and respect for the dozens of victims and field experts interviewed for the content. Topics such as prostitution, government and NGO relations, policy and legislation, the seeming pervasiveness of slave-made goods in a consumer culture, among many others receive balanced consideration and attention. It takes a purposeful sensitivity to discuss these issues and do so without demonizing every element of our society that either at one point has or still is involved in modern day slavery; and yet this book is able to bring together a wide range of cases and arguments to provide the reader with constant stimulus to rethink what trafficking is and how we tackle it with a multi-sector approach. This includes the heroic actions of ordinary citizens in the past, and a detailed message about what people can do to take action now. Although the actions may seem a heavy burden, and any actions that individuals take should always be informed by what is already going on in the community, there is a lot to take away from the material in the action-oriented sections.

This book will be a tremendous asset if you want to better understand human trafficking in the United States. Some, if not most of the information will shock you, particularly the stories of how people have been lured and exploited everywhere from the quiet suburbs to sleepy rural areas to busy city neighborhoods. Some, if not most of the information will force you to look inward and reflect on which societal and individual habits in the U.S. contribute to an environment conducive to trafficking. In the end, you will be more informed as a member of your local and international community, which, from my perspective, was the ultimate goal of the book.

To purchase a copy, please visit the following sites:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
indiebound.org
booksamillion.com

And please re-visit HTP today to catch an excerpt from The Slave Next Door!