Labor Trafficking News from October

Throughout the month there are many cases or stories that break regarding forced labor. They are usually not on the front pages of our newspapers, rather they are buried deep and sometimes are only accessible through the internet. These are some of the stories both headline articles and those that were not from October.

In their Fourth Annual Report, the Payson Center for International Development at the University of Tulane reports that not enough is being done to prevent suppliers from using child labor within their supply chains. Child labor (worst forms), forced labor and labor trafficking still occur within the industry and include abuses such as physical, sexual and verbal harassment along with restricted movement and children being sent to farms separate from their parents and guardians. While some companies have worked to clean-up their supply chains there is at least one company notably absent. Read more

Details about the first case involving charges of labor rather than sex trafficking in Canada began to come out at the beginning of October. A group of 19 or more victims were lured from Hungry to work in Canada. Once they arrived they were forced to work for a construction company and were controlled through threats of harm to either their families or to themselves. The workers were forced to apply for government support. The traffickers would take this money once it arrived. Ten members of a family are being charged in the crime. Read more

Authorities arrested 23 people and were looking for more in connection with a Chinese human trafficking ring in places such as New York City and Long Island. Victims paid up to $75,000 to come to the US for work. The victims families were threatened and required to pay off these fees while the victims were living in poor conditions and were forced to work in "slave-like conditions" in restaurants. Read more

A man was convicted in Missouri for his role in a scheme which spread across 14 states. It involved the recruitment of illegal aliens to work in places such as hotels. The employees were lead to believe the conditions of employment would be different. Once in the US the victims were threatened with deportation. The man was not charged with forced labor but was convicted under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charges. Read more

Additional charges have been brought against the Sou brothers in the Hawaii Aloun Farm case involving the 44 workers they brought to the US from Thailand. They have been charged with five counts of forced labor for threatening workers. There are also two counts of document (passport) confiscation, and two counts for hiding workers from the authorities after their visas were expired in order to force them to work. Read more

A potential case of child abuse/labor is being investigated in Britain. While it is still early in the investigation it appears that 8 children were being forced to work on a farm in near freezing weather while inadequately dressed. The children were between 9 and 15 years old. Read more

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the "California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010" on the 18th of October. The Act requires manufacturers and retailers within California to detail what they are doing to ensure there is no slavery within their supply chains. This must be posted on the company's website. Read more

While a lot of attention is given to child labor in Uzbekistan's cotton industry, very little attention is paid to the forced labor of adults in the same industry. People from many different industries including police officers and teachers were reportedly being forced to pick cotton during this year's harvest particularly because prices for cotton are currently high. Uzbeki news sources reported several abuses related to people who refused to work. Teachers were beaten in effort to compel them to work and a whole village had its power cut to punish a man who refused to work. According to the report even the sick and old are being compelled to pick cotton. Of the 3,400,000 tons of cotton that was picked China is expected to receive at least 100,000 tons Read more

Photo by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department.

Spain Breaks Up a Trafficking Ring for Male Prostitution

From The New York Times on August 31, 2010

By Raphael Minder

MADRID — The Spanish police said Tuesday that it had dismantled for the first time a human trafficking network bringing men rather than women into the country to work as prostitutes.

The police said 14 people, almost all of them Brazilian, were arrested over recent weeks as part of an inquiry into the network’s activities begun in February.

The sex workers were recruited in Brazil, with their travel costs to Spain initially covered by the trafficking network’ organizers in return for a pledge to work subsequently for them, according to a police statement. Most of the recruits, however, expected to work as models or nightclub dancers, although some allegedly knew that they were coming to Spain to offer sex.

The police estimated that between 60 and 80 men were brought to Spain by the network, most of them in their 20s and originating from Brazil’s northern state of Maranhão. They reached Spain by passing through third countries.

The network covered the whole of Spain, with the sex workers placed in, and then switched regularly between, apartments whose landlords received half of the money earned by them, as well as €200, or about $255, to cover food and lodging, officials said.

The police released a video of one of the apartments in which some of the arrests were made, with bunk beds and mattresses cramped into neon-lit rooms. The gang, meanwhile, advertised pictures of the men on Web sites as well as in classified newspaper ads. The sex workers were allegedly provided with Viagra, cocaine and other stimulants to help keep them available for sex 24 hours a day. Most of their customers are suspected to have been men.

The bulk of the arrests occurred on the island of Majorca, including that of the Brazilian accused of being the ringleader, whose identity was not disclosed by the police. The prostitutes ended up owing the network as much as €4,000 each and were sometimes threatened with death if they refused to pay the debt, according to the Spanish police.

For the entire article visit here.

Dying to Work

While we frequently discuss the trafficking of women and girls, or that of children, the trafficking of men is a less commonly explored subject. A few years ago, I worked as a research assistant at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University. One of the duties I was tasked with was creating an annotated bibliography for an anti-trafficking study that included academic literature on the trafficking of men. I was shocked at the paltry amount of academic literature on the trafficking of men for work other than prostitution. True, there is a significant amount of grey literature but the academic studies and resources on the trafficking of men are vastly overshadowed by those on the trafficking of women and children. I always wondered if this was because in many societies across the globe there is a notion that men are more in charge of their destinies; are less in need of protection. It is easy to forget that there are so many circumstances that can intertwine to result in conditions of modern slavery for millions of men around the world.

Trafficking of men feeds a number of industries, such as agriculture, service, and construction. In a Huffington Post article posted on September 15th, Cameron Sinclair explores the darker side of the construction industry, focusing on the situation in the UAE. According to Sinclair, there are more than 1.1 million indentured construction workers in the UAE, mainly from India, Pakistan, and Nepal. Once they arrive in the UAE, as in many other countries, they find themselves in labor camps with inadequate food and even worse housing. Frequently, these men have their passports and other documentation taken away and receive meager wages, if they are even paid. As the global economic downturn has put over $300 billion in construction projects on hold in the UAE alone, indentured construction workers are often the most severely impacted. Without status in the UAE, they have no access to services or assistance and, without documentation or passports, they cannot return home.

As it has become increasingly imperative, even trendy, to "go green," Sinclair reminds us that we must look at not only our environmental footprint, but also our ethical footprint. What does it really mean if we construct an environmentally friendly building if we use exploitative labor practices? Can we laud such a structure when it was built on the backs of people who are living as modern slaves?

Read the full article here

In a recent search I conducted, I found that there are more academic resources available today than there were three years ago on the trafficking of men. However, this remains a fertile avenue for further research and exploration.

A Shocking Story

By Ayesha Ahmad
September 14, 2008

The UK media has recently covered two instances of human trafficking.

Police Raids
The first story reported a series of raids involving over 50 polices forces across England and Wales. Some 500 people were arrested and almost 200 people including women and children were, as the newspaper reported, “released”.

The next day the story had disappeared from the media despite the enormous scale of the police operation. The operation was conducted to crack down on human trafficking, but the perspective is still that the way to do this is blaming the trafficked rather than the traffickers.

What happened to the men, women and children who were released? One can only assume that they were deported. And upon returning home, there may be no emotional reunion with their family; instead, these people who had already endured so much exploitation and abuse are sometimes and not uncommonly placed straight back into the hands of the traffickers linked to the gang masters in the UK that were imprisoned.

Imprisonment of trafficking victims or even traffickers does not erase the “debt” that will have issued to each trafficked victim. This is a debt that either has to be repaid in money or death. Returning a trafficked victim to their home country is only a continuation of their journey, the journey that they were enticed into with the prospect of providing a “better life” for their family.

Forced Labor
The second story in the media recently reported a shocking murder trial of four men who were part of a trafficking gang in Wales, UK. All four men were found guilty of manslaughter following the death of a Vietnamese man. The report describes how the 44 year old was dumped in a hospital with severe head injuries. A large police operation followed his subsequent death, tracing back to the perpetrators and revealing the following chain of events.

After entering the country illegally via the Ukraine and entering the UK in the back of a lorry, the trafficked man was provided work in an illegal cannabis factory. Two months later he was accused of using the produce and tortured before being left at the hospital entrance.

The focus of the police operation concentrated on prosecuting those responsible for the man’s death, yet no charges were made against them for trafficking. In fact, the issue of trafficking was entirely bypassed except for mentioning the illegality of the victim in the country.

Again, the traffickers are not viewed as responsible for trafficking people, which brings attention to an apparent societal lack of comprehension of the vulnerability rendered by poverty and war that allows traffickers to deceive or coerce their victims. The first step in changing the opinion of society, including that of the media and how the media portrays human trafficking, must stem from distinguishing between the traffickers and the trafficked in terms of vulnerability and violation.

In the above two examples, both parties were viewed as criminals. This approach has got to change.

Turbulent Waters: 21st Century Galley Slaves

Most of the goods we consume are transported by sea on ships where working conditions recall those of the galley ships of another age. Turbulent Waters takes us into this murky world where ship owners, (like the family of former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin) avoid operating standards and working conditions in force in their own countries by registering their ships offshore in tax havens like Panama, the Bahamas, or Liberia. They then hire seafarers for cheap in the Philippines, India, China, or the Ukraine. Turbulent Waters tells the story of some of these seafarers - equivalent to 21st century galley-slaves - and of the turbulent seas they inhabit in the world of corporate globalisation. The feature-length documentary is directed and written by Malcolm Guy and Michelle Smith.

An excerpt from the film:

Sprite Zungu, an inspector with the International Transport Federation, defends seafarers who have decided to go on strike because they have not been paid for several months. Turbulent Waters tells the story of these seafarers -- equivalent to 21st century galley slaves -- and of the turbulent seas they inhabit in a world of corporate globalisation. Scene from the film Turbulent Waters by Malcolm Guy and Michelle Smith.



Visit the Turbulent Waters website

Suriname Police Detain Alleged Human Trafficker

By Ivan Cairo

From Caribbean Net News:

PARAMARIBO, Suriname- Police in Suriname have arrested and subsequently detained a Korean national (49) on suspicion of human trafficking, a prosecutor has confirmed. The suspect was the captain on a fishing boat with four Vietnamese fishermen on board. The arrest came after one of the crew members committed suicide by hanging, to escape his ordeal.

Preliminary investigations have revealed, said prosecutor Garcia Paragsingh, that the four Vietnamese nationals working on the boat, were forced to hard labour on the vessel without payment, proper medical care and food. For over a two year period, two of ill-treated crew members did not receive payment for their work, while the remaining two fishermen told police that for over one year they did not receive salaries and were not allowed to leave the boat.

The captain, a Korean national, allegedly refused to allow them to see a doctor when they became sick, while they were forced to work long hours under very poor conditions even when they were physically unable to do so. According to police sources, the worker who committed suicide apparently got sick and asked to be taken to shore to seek medical treatment. After his requests were rejected by the captain, the man hung himself.

The suspected trafficker was arrested by officers of the Trafficking in Persons Unit of the Suriname Police Force (KPS) said police spokeswoman Maritha Ritfeld-Asontoe. According to the spokeswoman, the captain refused to pay salaries, telling his crew that there was no money.

Read the full article

Organ Trafficking around the World

Israeli Police Bust Organ Trafficking Ring


From Reuters:

6/7/07- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expressed alarm on Thursday over rising cases of trade in human organs in Asia, and said globalization had increased risks of human trafficking.

Bruce Reed, IOM regional representative, said trafficking in persons for sexual or labor exploitation and other purposes such as adoption, false marriage and human organ donation was the third-largest international criminal activity, behind drugs and arms smuggling.

"The profile (of those being trafficked) is constantly changing," Reed told a seminar on human trafficking in Manila. "Women and girls are being trafficked for non-sex work and cases of men and boys are also being reported in the region."

Reed said many trafficking cases in Asia "end up in situations of forced begging, delinquency, adoption, false marriage, or most recently, as victims of the thriving trade in human organs".

He said trafficking for organs was on the rise in China and in many impoverished states in Southeast Asia, like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Although rising, the number of those being trafficked for organs was dwarfed by those being smuggled for sex, Reed said, saying there was constant demand from the entertainment and hospitality industry.

Chinese migrants apply for jobs at a job fair

The IOM said there could be 30 million Asians living outside their country, making them more susceptible to sexual and labor exploitation.

"Due to globalization, improved communications, more accessible travel and high technology, people are traveling like never before, substantially increasing the numbers of persons exposed to the influence of traffickers and criminal networks," Reed said.

Men Forced to Marry Pt II

From the BBC:

The UK's first male-only refuge for those who have been forced into marriage is being considered. One victim tells of the dramatic effect the experience had on his life - and how he has come through it.

When Imran Rehman was 10, he was taken to Pakistan and found himself in the middle of an enormous family party. He remembers being told to sit next to a little girl in a fine dress. He did not understand why, but he and the little girl were, jointly, the centre of attention. They were showered with money and presents and they had garlands cast around their necks. Imran said: "I was just paying attention to the food and the money. I didn't know what was happening. I just thought it was a party."

It was not until five years later that he was shown a photograph of that celebration - and he finally understood its significance. It had been his own engagement party. The little girl was his five-year-old first cousin. She was also to be his wife - whether he liked it or not.

"It made me feel sick, knowing that was my engagement. I went off the rails. I got into the wrong crowd, I got into fights, I got expelled from two schools," he said. To get him to behave, his parents took measures that many people might see as extreme. They sent him to Pakistan, telling him it was so he could see the area where they had been born. For a while, he says, "it was nice to be on holiday". Then, one morning, he says, he was drugged, taken to a mosque in a deserted village, and imprisoned. Once there, he had shackles locked around his feet. "I was kept in a room, locked up. I had to sleep like that. I even had to eat, go to the bath, toilet, shackled like that, for 15 days."

With the help of friends, he was eventually able to find his way back to the UK. When he got home, the only explanation he got from his family was it was his "rehabilitation". The pressure continued, perhaps to a lesser degree, for years, until something happened that finally made up his mind up that he had to get married.

He said: "I was 24. I was working at Birmingham airport. I got a phone call to say one of my close relatives was extremely ill. I was the first person there, by their bedside. I said: 'What can I do to help?'" His poorly relative told him that if anything was to happen to her, it would be his fault, for not going to Pakistan to get married. He says he was emotionally blackmailed, and he felt that he had no choice. "So I went to Pakistan. I didn't want that on my head, you know," he said.

He married his cousin. But the marriage only lasted a month before Imran told his family it was over. He was told he had just two choices: "Stay with your wife, buy a house, have kids, live your life. Or get disowned." "So I left home," he said.

It was the beginning of a seven-year severance from his family. He says he drifted from job to job, drank too much and struggled to deal with his trauma. "My family had disowned me. I just thought: 'I've got to stand on my own two feet and try and battle it out'. Which I couldn't understand how to do."

He eventually found a support organisation called Karma Nirvana. At the time, this Derby-based self-help group was only for women. But they realised, through their dealings with Imran, that men were also vulnerable to becoming victims of honour-based violence. Now, Imran works with Karma Nirvana as a support worker for men who suffer in the same way he did.

He says it is harder for men to seek help than women because men are not allowed to be open about their feelings. He said: "You're a man, you don't cry. If you cry, you're not supposed to show your tears. It really stressed me out. "I knew there was no support for me to go anywhere. Now, there is support out there for men. I encourage men to come forward. "What I tend to do is I tell my personal experiences to the men I work with, male victims. And believe me, they do open up."

Imran now supports 36 men who have been victims of forced marriage or honour-based violence. He says helping them get over their problems is a way to help himself to stay positive. "It makes me feel good, you know? I know I'm not alone any more. Before, when I was alone, I used to feel like I was the only man who was going through it," he said. Now he knows there are others who have gone through what he has been through. And he hopes they will all get the kind of support that will help keep them safe from their families.

Men Forced to Marry

Big Ben & the houses of Parliament

From the BBC:

UK- The government has agreed to look into funding the UK's first male-only refuge for victims of forced marriage. It has emerged that 15% of the people who seek help about being forced into wedlock are men or boys.

A man taken to Pakistan as a child and forcibly engaged to his five-year-old cousin has called for a men's refuge. Foreign Office minister Meg Munn said authorities must talk to those affected to "listen to their experiences" and "learn directly from them." She said: "Generally people expect men to be able to look after themselves, to manage situations, so men subject to domestic violence, men subject to forced marriage are likely to find it much, much more difficult." She added "there could well be" a need for a male shelter.

The British High Commission in Pakistan said that the issue of boys and men being forced is a problem that it is aware of. Spokesman Theepan Selparatnum said: "Sixty per cent of our case load is forced marriage work and between 10 to 15% of that are male. Our workload is increasing yearly and that's probably attributed to increased publicity and increased knowledge of what we can do."

'Abducted' Imran Rehman, from Derby, said his family took some extreme measures to get him back in line when he resisted the marriage, explaining that he was abducted and taken to Pakistan. He said a relative shackled his legs together and he was imprisoned for 15 days.

Mr Rehman has now urged the government to take action. "What I'm calling on the government to do would be set up a male refuge," he told BBC 5 Live. He went on: "There are no male refuges at all for Asian men. We have 165 women's refuges. What about the men? "We know it's happening, and I have a caseload of 36 men. We definitely require male refuge."

Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, told BBC Radio 5 Live a male refuge was a good idea. "We have even heard of bounty hunters chasing people," he said. "It exists, all these things, so I think people do need solid support."

Trafficking of Men: Last to the response effort, but certainly not least

Very early in my interviews, I heard from multiple organizations that the trafficking of men is a serious problem that lacks considerable research, and that an international effort is underway to acknowledge and combat this problem. Some countries do not even recognize male victims or even labor victims. The State Department included some of these issues in their 2007 TIP Report including adding "servitude on the high seas" and "parity in anti-labor trafficking legislation" to their Topics of Special Interest. This month in the Global Eye on Human Trafficking, a bulletin produced by the IOM with basically the same purpose as this blog (to spread information, news, and analysis on human trafficking) but is created from direct IOM research, the main article is about trafficking of men.

As the article points out, the common approach to combating human trafficking has focused on combating trafficking in women and children. However, the problem is becoming more and more obvious among male victims as well, particularly concerning post-trafficking needs. According to a study done with 685 male trafficking victims from Ukraine and Belarus who were assisted by the IOM in 2004-2006, the study has found the following:

• the majority of victims are adult (18-44);
• the majority of these victims were trafficked for labor purposes to Russia; other purposes include sexual exploitation, adoption, criminal activities, and begging;
• Many had dependent children, and cited this as the need to find better work;
• Their experiences mostly began with situations that seemed like legal migration- contracts, (seemingly) reliable companies, etc.

Both Ukrainian and Belarusian men face exploitative, often traumatic working and living conditions, which, in many circumstances, compromised their physical and mental well-being. Men worked six to seven days each week, regardless of destination country or form of work, and work days were commonly 12 hours or more. Most men reported severely substandard living conditions while trafficked – living in unheated rooms, cramped together with others in unhygienic situations and being provided with limited and poor quality food. A combination of abuse (or threats of abuse), non-payment of salary, debts and restricted freedom of movement served to keep many men in their trafficking situations.

Most men exited their trafficking situation on their own (77.6% Belarusian men; 46.9% Ukrainian men) and often only when they realized that they would not be paid for their work. However, the ability to exit trafficking differed substantially, with some men physically prevented from leaving, confined, under constant guard and exposed to violence or threats of violence.

The article also points out serious difficulties in providing assistance. Even when the victim has been identified, even when the needs of the victim to reintegrate are identified, and even if the victim recognizes that he has been exploited (some refuse to say so), they rarely take to the idea that they are a victim. The recommendation, therefore, is to take gender dimensions into formulating a response in every step- prevention, identification, reintegration, prosecution.

Based on the information provided in this study, the IOM will be releasing a paper, "Trafficking of men - a trend less considered" as a part of their CTM Thematic Research Series in 2008.

As an additional resource, this paper focuses mostly on the trafficking of men in and out of Canada, but has background on the global situation and notes to other resources on the topic. Trafficking in Men: an Exploration of an Overlooked Phenomenon

Think it doesn't happen in the US?