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!

State Department Video Coverage of 2009 TIP Report Release

Please find a link to HTP's previous post and the full report here.

New York Assembly Passes Law Vacating Prostitution Convictions for Sex Trafficking Victims

A Press Release from the Sex Worker's Project at the Urban Justice Center:

NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY GIVES TRAFFICKING VICTIMS A SECOND CHANCE

Anti-trafficking Advocates Call for Swift Action on Bill in the Senate

NEW YORK CITY (June 16, 2009) – Today the New York State Assembly took a critical step toward enabling victims of human trafficking to wipe away prostitution convictions resulting from coerced involvement in sex work. A.B. 7670, introduced by Assemblymember Gottfried, Chair of the Committee on Health, passed the Assembly unanimously this afternoon. The bill has now been referred to the Senate, where an identical bill introduced by Senator Tom Duane is pending before the Senate Codes Committee.

“In our experience, people trafficked into prostitution are often repeatedly arrested, in some cases up to ten times, in police raids on brothels and other sex work venues, convicted of prostitution, and even sentenced to jail without the police or courts recognizing that they need help,” said Andrea Ritchie, Director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center (SWP). “As a result, these trafficking victims often carry with them the burden of a prostitution conviction for conduct they engaged in against their will.”

“Even after they have escaped their abusers, it is extremely hard for people who were trafficked into sex work to start a new life with a long “rap sheet” of prostitution convictions,” added Sienna Baskin, a staff attorney with the SWP who worked with a broad coalition of anti-trafficking advocates to build support for the bill. “Unfortunately, a conviction for prostitution leaves them with significantly fewer options for legal employment, potentially shut out of public housing, vulnerable to eviction from private housing, and at risk of loss of custody of their children. For immigrants, a record of prostitution can be fatal to an application for residency or citizenship. This bill would allow victims of trafficking to clear their records and start fresh.”

“This is really a common sense, humanitarian measure,” Ritchie emphasized. “What victims of trafficking need most is the stability that housing, employment, and legal immigration status provide. They should not suffer ongoing punishment, in the form of the widespread collateral consequences of a prostitution conviction, for acts they committed unwillingly under coercion.”

“Trafficking victims deserve real chance at a safe and stable life once they have escaped their abusers, free of the lifelong stigma and civil consequences of a prior conviction for prostitution,” Baskin said. “We are extremely grateful to Assemblymember Gottfried and Senator Duane for their vision and compassion in introducing this measure on their behalf.”

The bill, the brainchild of Assemblymember Gottfried, has broad support in the Assembly, with more than 30 Assemblymembers signed on as cosponsors or multi-sponsors. It also enjoys broad support in the anti-trafficking movement among service providers and advocates, as well as among the legal profession, law enforcement, and sex workers rights organizations. It is one of several bills whose passage SWP has identified as critical to promoting and protecting the rights of individuals involved in the sex industries, whether by choice, circumstance, or coercion. More information on SWP’s legislative agenda is available at http://www.sexworkersproject.org/.

No vote on the bill’s Senate counterpart, S.B. 4429 is currently scheduled, although supporters hope that it will pass before the end of the current legislative session.

The Role of State Policy to Combat Trafficking

In December 2008, Congress reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a piece of federal legislation designed to fight human trafficking and protect victims and survivors. With this federal legislation in place, state-level officials may feel that state laws and policy are superfluous.

After doing various awareness raising, lobbying, and advocacy visits to state senators and representatives in Missouri, I know first-hand about this belief on their part. However, states have an incredibly important role to play in addressing human trafficking.

State legislation is necessary for a number of reasons. Perhaps most obviously, state anti-trafficking laws are needed for situations where cases cannot be prosecuted federally. Those situations tend to be rare, though, and state laws cannot stop there. Policy at the state level can address local contexts and needs in ways that federal policy cannot, and federal policy without state support is often mere rhetoric.

In her article “The Role of the State Attorney General in Combating Human Trafficking,” Johanna Coats acknowledges that state efforts have trailed federal efforts. She also argues that state-level policy and resources are needed for combating trafficking in persons, particularly for identifying victims. A 2007 State Report Card from the Center for Women Policy Studies, though, mainly gave out Fs to states for their anti-trafficking efforts (less than 4% were As).

At the same time, states have implemented innovative legislation to address human trafficking. In 2007, Texas passed a bill to require that all establishments that sell alcohol – aside from restaurants – post information about human trafficking and trafficking hotlines. This bill was introduced because so many victims were being transported through these establishments. Since one of the main challenges facing anti-trafficking work today is simply identifying victims, similar bills that take into consideration the local context could lead to great strides in finding and helping victims.

Minnesota State Rep. Lesch introduced a bill this session that would require public training and education about trafficking. States can and should take action, and in some cases they are; more efforts that are attuned to the local context are needed, though. Ultimately, states cannot abdicate responsibility for fighting human trafficking to the federal level. States are in a unique position to combat human trafficking, and I urge you to be informed about state policy and legislation, and to take action. Polaris Project and the Center for Women Policy Studies monitor human trafficking legislation, and both groups have more information about this topic.