Local Sushi Owners Arrested for Human Trafficking Employees

From My Fox:

A couple who owned a Denver sushi restaurant were arrested in connection with human trafficking and having ties to the Korean mafia.

Young Jo Kwon and his wife Jessie Kwon, who formerly owned and operated Denver's Osaka Sushi, were arrested May 9 and charged with 5 counts of theft and forgery. The Kwons, who now own Greenwood Village's Sushi Moon, are accused of forcing two South Korean immigrant employees to work without pay.

The Kwons allegedly threatened employees Jailhee Jo Hong and Jong Chul Choi with the revocation of their sponsorship which the Kwons claimed would result in the subsequent deportation of the employees' families.

Between 2000 and 2005, the Kwons are accused of depriving Jaihee Jo Hong of more than $19,000 in overtime wages. The Kwons are also accused of depriving Jong Chul Choi of more than $900,000 for four years of unpaid labor.

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Do-Gooder Marketers Do the Soft Sell

By Shahnaz Mahmud

From AdWeek:

The music video for Radiohead's "All I Need" begins with slow, somber musical beats and a split screen revealing images of children. One side shows a child waking up, dressing for school and eating breakfast. The other, youngsters living in dingy conditions and toiling in a sweatshop.

The last shot pairs the one boy back from school removing his kicks with a boy assembling the last pieces of a strikingly similar sneaker in a factory. The tagline: "Some things cost more than you realize."

"All I Need," which debuted earlier this month on MTV properties worldwide, ends with an MTV logo. It was created for MTV Exit (End Exploitation and Trafficking), a multimedia initiative launched in Europe in 2004 by Viacom's MTV Europe Foundation, an independent charity based in London. The effort includes the distribution of anti-human trafficking information at Radiohead's concert tour in North America, Europe and Asia, which kicked off in West Palm Beach, Fla., this month.

MTV Exit -- which recently expanded into Asia -- also plans to release an animated film on human trafficking later this year, as well as produce other live events.

The network's efforts illustrate the growing use of branded-entertainment as a way to distribute corporate-responsibility campaigns, which are geared to creating deeper relationships with do-gooder consumers. Other brands using this tactic include Boost Mobile, the Microsoft Network and Virgin Mobile USA.

"Content creates an emotional bond with the consumer. It [forges] a connection between the brand message ... and the viewer in a way that a 30-second ad can't do," said Bill Hilary, president of Interpublic Group-owned Magna Global Entertainment.

Gayle Troberman, head of digital marketing at Microsoft's consumer marketing group, added that social responsibility branded-entertainment marketing: "is going to be the next big wave of content and marketing investments."

MSN has taken an innovative approach with its new Web portal -- which launches next month—WhatOnEarthIsGoingOn.msn.com. It's a partnership with U.K.-based company What On Earth Is Going On, which focuses on socially relevant marketing initiatives. Users on the portal can connect to global brands based on their interests and passions.

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Man Sentenced for Human Trafficking and Alien Smuggling

From the PR Newswire:

Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division Grace Chung Becker and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Don DeGabrielle announced that Walter Corea was sentenced today for his role in a scheme to smuggle Central American women and girls into the United States and hold them in a condition of forced labor in bars and cantinas in the Houston area. U.S. District Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore sentenced Corea to 180 months in prison and further ordered that he, jointly with his co-defendants, pay $1,715,588 in restitution to the victims.

"These defendants used false promises and threats of harm to lure and coerce vulnerable women and girls into conditions of forced labor and servitude," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Becker. "The Department of Justice is committed to vigorously prosecuting human trafficking cases such as this one."

In all, eight defendants have been convicted in connection with this scheme to compel the victims into service in restaurants, bars and cantinas in the Houston area, using threats to harm the victims and their families if they attempted to leave before paying off their smuggling debts.

"Some measure of justice has been meted out today," DeGabrielle said. "Any who think of smuggling and enslaving fellow human beings should count this very real cost of doing business."

Corea previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hold persons in a condition of peonage and to illegally and knowingly recruiting, harboring and transporting persons for labor and services. Peonage is a condition of involuntary servitude imposed to extract repayment of an indebtedness. He has also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bring, harbor and transport known illegal aliens for purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain.

Corea lured young Central American women to the United States with promises of good jobs. However, once the young women arrived, they were forced to work in the bars and cantinas of the defendant and co-defendants selling high-priced drinks to male customers. The women were subjected to numerous threats of harm to themselves and family members in order to compel their servitude, and some suffered sexual assaults at the hands of the defendant and his co-defendants.

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Poverty and the Risk of Labor Exploitation

Excerpts from an article from the Voice of America:

Poverty in Haiti Places Children at Risk for Labor Exploitation

U.N. officials are working with Haiti's government to prevent scores of children from falling prey to forced labor. VOA's Brian Wagner reports that chronic poverty places many children at risk of exploitation.

Low-income students in a health classMany Haitians take pride that their nation was the first in the Americas to abolish slavery during a revolt in 1791. Yet even today, scores of children labor as unpaid domestic servants in homes across the impoverished Caribbean nation.

The U.N. Childrens Fund estimates that more than 170,000 children, mostly girls, do not attend school and engage in forced labor in a practice known as restavek. Many come to the capital from rural areas, where parents say they have no resources to provide food and schooling for some of their children...

Sintyl Wilson (above) runs a school in the Martissant neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, where he says he is working to keep the numbers of restavek children down. He says, if not for free meals and low tuition at his school, some of his 125 students would likely be working as domestic servants.

Wilson says the neighborhood is full of restavek children. He says the students most at risk of being pressed into work are those with siblings who already are restaveks.

U.N. estimates show about half of Haitian children attend primary school, and about 20 percent continue on to secondary school.

This school in Martissant offers afternoon classes for restavek children who must work during the day.

Now, Wilson says he is trying to draw more restavek children into the school, by offering vocational training for students to become auto mechanics, electricians or develop other trades. Wilson shows off brand-new wrenches and other hand tools he has bought for students to begin apprenticing in a nearby auto repair shop...

The school's assistant director, Jean Baptiste Marie Marline, says children pressed into domestic service often face a difficult future.

Marline says children in abusive and demeaning situations often have low self-esteem and, even if they flee restavek homes they can be drawn into forced labor by others.

Haiti's government has laws on the books forbidding forced labor and child abuse. But experts say many children can fall through the cracks in a nation where scores of babies never receive a birth certificate.

Massimo Toschi, a child welfare expert with the U.N. Mission in Haiti, says a child without a birth certificate has very few legal protections. "So basically they do not exist, and it is very easy to have them forced into trafficking, exploitation, child labor, and no one would know about it," he said.

Earlier this year, the U.N. mission began targeting restavek with a media campaign featuring Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean.

Toschi says the goal is to raise awareness about the plight of thousands of children and challenge cultural acceptance of restavek...

Victims Defend the Accused

A good article that discusses the attachment of trafficking victims to their traffickers. The only issue I have is that, as we have seen in several other articles, smuggling is confused with human trafficking. Also it's good to see Andrea Bertone get interviewed, go visit her excellent website.

By Brian Donohue

From NJ.com:

Last September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested two men and a woman from Togo who they said smuggled 14 girls and young women from West Africa, forced them to work without pay at hair-braiding salons in Newark and East Orange, and kept them in line with threats and beatings.

It was, one agent said, a case of modern-day slavery.

Now, four of the alleged victims say they weren't exploited at all.

Rather, they described the three people charged in the case, Lassissi Afolabi, 44, Akouavi Kpade Afolabi, 39, and Dereck Hounakey, 30, as benevolent parent figures who rescued them from misery in their African village, where drinking water was hauled from a stream each day and their parents struggled to feed their families.

They say they long to return to the hair salons -- even if they weren't paid for their long hours performing intricate hair weaves. And worse, they say, their parents in Africa are blaming them for the downfall of the three jailed suspects, who had been sending money to the workers' families before the salons were shut.

When she calls home, says one 21-year old woman, her parents blame her for disappointing the village, then they hang up on her.

"I can't take it any more," said the woman, who, like all of those interviewed requested her name be withheld because she is a witness in an active criminal investigation.

"Before, we were happy," she added, shaking and visibly nervous as she spoke. "Now we are not happy. My life is going to hell."

Prosecutors and social workers cast doubt on the women's statements, noting such victims remain vulnerable long after they are pulled from abusive situations. They also fear the women may have been coerced to protect the suspects, or have developed a psychological attachment to them.

Nonetheless, no one involved in human trafficking can recall a case, in New Jersey or elsewhere, in which victims have launched such a defense of their alleged abusers.

Their account shines a rare light into the complex world investigators and prosecutors navigate battling human trafficking -- where toughened U.S. laws and hard evidence often collide with complex victim pathologies and conflicting cultural and economic norms.

"This is not an unusual case, although it's complicated, and it's heart-wrenching for these girls," said Andrea Bertone, executive director of Humantrafficking.org, an anti-trafficking organization in Washington, D.C. "They don't think of themselves as victims, but our law defines them as such," she said.

"It makes it difficult for prosecutors emotionally, but our laws are very clear: You can't bring them here to work and keep them in these conditions."

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Prostitution Suspects Could Be Victims of Trafficking

This article brings up the tricky process of determining if trafficking occurred, versus prostitution in this case. The issue of consent is especially relevant- what qualifies as consent and what qualifies as coercion? If someone consents to a certain situation knowing generally what the circumstances will be, for example prostitution, but not knowing that they will be virtually enslaved or entered into a form of debt bondage, does that qualify as consent?

By Sarah Moore

From the Beaumont Enterprise:

BEAUMONT, Texas - Possible prostitution at two spas raided last week could be linked to a Houston-area operation and be part of a worldwide human trafficking network, Beaumont police investigators say.

Police suspect one spa owner, who lives out of state, might have been the owner of a similar operation in Montgomery County before being shut down.

Beaumont Lt. Curtis Breaux said the two women arrested Wednesday, Su Han Jun, 45, and Li Zhao, 51, might be among untold numbers of foreign women lured from their homes with promises of lucrative jobs. They then are ensnared in a web of debt and coercion amounting to a form of feudal bondage, Breaux said.

The two were arrested in a sting at the Sun Spa on Old Dowlen Road and VIP Spa on Calder Avenue. Police charged each with three counts of prostitution, a Class B misdemeanor.

If convicted, the women, who are Chinese, face up to six months in jail on each count. They also could be deported, immigration officials have said.

In addition to perhaps being the iceberg tip in a much larger prostitution picture, the case also presents a prosecution challenge similar to what police and lawyers have faced in larger cities.

Police and prosecutors must grapple with small penalties for the offenses, unwilling witnesses and absentee business owners.

Women are lured to work by ads on the Internet, in newspapers and by word of mouth, according to a 2006 Dallas Morning News report.

And while some of them might have known they were expected to prostitute themselves, the issue of consent can become blurred after their arrival, said Terry Coonan, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University.

"Consent is always the question. Did they consent initially, and did they continue to consent?" Coonan told the Dallas Morning News. "Even if they initially consented to doing this, even if they knew they were going to come over and work, did they know they were going to ultimately be held as a slave or not have recourse to leave and do anything else?"

Breaux said Jun and Zhao told police that they were free to come and go as they pleased.

"But that's not necessarily true," Breaux said of cases in general, adding that prostitutes often have a misplaced sense of loyalty to their pimps. "They tend to protect the people that are exploiting them."

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Happy Mother's Day

Go hug your mother.

- The HTP Team

Bonus:

KW-DTMM [ALi]
by Alisvideo