International Human Trafficking and Migration
Child Slavery at the Circus
Published October 11, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Lions and tigers and bears and slaves, oh my! In the West, we most often associate the circus with acrobats, clowns, cotton candy, and animals (which are often abused as well). But for many Nepalese girls, the circus in India represents a life of slavery, rape, and exploitation.
It's difficult to estimate the number of children who have been trafficked into Indian circuses. One estimate is about 500 at any given time, with new ones being recruited as others age out or escape. They are mostly girls from small villages in Nepal. Some are kidnapped, some a tricked, and some are signed into a contract to work by their parents. But no matter how they enter, these girls rehearse and perform for hours a day, for as little as $3 per month. At night, many are abused and raped by men in the circus or sold in prostitution for extra money. Those who go to see the circus may never know that bright smiles and stage makeup hide nefarious exploitation and slavery backstage.
The Nepalese government has only recently begun to treat the recruitment and captivity of children in circuses as a crime. But now, they are even reaching out to the Indian government to work in partnership to reduced the number of Nepalese girls trafficked into circuses. This is a vast improvement of policy for both governments, and has the potential to prevent more girls from being trafficked into circuses.
I stumbled upon a video that's a great example of human trafficking in circuses. In 2007, a British rescue organization teamed up with a group of Nepalese parents to try and find and rescue the children they had lost to circuses. This is short documentary video of their efforts, which creates an vivid picture of what human trafficking in Indian circuses is like, complete with police corruption, difficulty in finding the victims and traffickers, and a happy ending for at least some of the enslaved girls. It's the reality faced by so many children hoping to escape slavery in an industry created for the joy and amusement of children.
London Considers Axing Human Trafficking Police Unit
Published October 08, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Here's something to file under Really Bad Ideas Someone's Gonna Lose a Job Over: London, the most populous city in the European Union (with over 250,000 immigrants each year), is considering shutting down the Human Trafficking Unit of the Metropolitan Police due to budget issues. London is a huge destination and transit city for human trafficking victims from all over the world, and shutting down the police force trained to identify and remove victims would be nothing short of catastrophic for the many slaves being held there today.
British and international advocacy groups have expressed everything from concern to outrage at this suggestion. Human trafficking has now been identified as the second or third largest form of organized crime in the world, and diverting resources to any crime less significant is a tough argument to make. And trafficking may even be on this rise when the 2012 Olympics come to London. Even if trafficking doesn't increase in conjunction with the games (as many people fear it will) and remains stagnant, law enforcement will be severely understaffed and unable to properly address it. Furthermore, many advocates fear that without a dedicated unit, the only form of trafficking law enforcement will pay attention to is trafficking into commercial sex industries, leaving no help for slaves in domestic servitude, factories, agriculture, and other industries.
The Met's answer to these concerns is that human trafficking cases will be spread out to other officers. I've got news for you, London. I've trained a lot of cops in my time, and none of them were born understanding human trafficking. I can't tell you how many good, hardworking police officers have missed human trafficking victims standing right in front of them because they didn't know what to look for. This is a hidden crime and the victims are chameleons -- they often look like victims of other crimes or even criminals. How can you expect someone to tease out the intricacies of human trafficking and tell the victims from the perpetrators without any training or support from colleagues who are also experts on the issue?
To me, this move says that London is not nearly as concerned with ending slavery in their city as they are with balancing their budget. The Met Human Trafficking Unit has been lauded as an international example of a highly efficient and effective law enforcement effort. They have brought hundreds of cases against traffickers and freed even more victims. Why would you shut them down? I know money is tight right now, London, but of all the cities in the world to consider this move, you are one of the most dangerous. I hope we never find out how serious this mistake could have been.
Photo credit: JD Mack
Are U.S. Government Contractors Still Supporting Slavery?
Published October 07, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
A few months ago, The Slave Next Door exposed the truth that, as late as 2005, U.S. government contractors were using slave labor in construction projects paid for by American taxpayers. Employees at the notorious firm DynCorp were accused of having sex with girls as young as 12 in Bosnia in the late 1990s. Now, American taxpayers may be supporting more trafficking through government contractor ArmorGroup. They are accused of frequenting brothels in Afghanistan known to enslave young girls, an act which is in direct violation of U.S. law and Department of State policy. But do you really need a law to tell you sex with underage enslaved girls is wrong?
Former ArmorGroup Director of Operations-turned-whistle-blower James Gordon filed a suit this past month. alleging that not only did ArmorGroup employees break the law by visiting brothels known for holding trafficked women and girls, they withheld documents and blocked efforts to investigate or end the illegal outings. And this little scandal went all the way to the top -- the manager in charge in Kabul is accused as being part of these activities, even though he knew they were illegal. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act prohibits government contractors or employees from visiting brothels overseas.
Gordon says he was concerned because the brothel ArmorGroup employees frequented was known to sell very young Chinese girls and women against their will, and because he was worried that all that sex was distracting the employees from their job -- guarding the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Seriously, Gordon? I mean, why would a U.S. embassy in Kabul need focused and steady protection? Tell me one bad thing that has ever happened to a U.S. embassy overseas in a war-torn area full of insurgents. Oh, wait..... Maybe ArmorGroup should have been doing what I (and the other taxpayers) are paying them to do and not raping young Chinese girls. And yes, their "outings" got in the way of work, because some of them happened during business hours -- hours they should have been protecting the U.S. embassy.
But just visiting the brothels wasn't enough for some of the ArmorGroup employees. Gordon claims to have overhead one AG recruit arranging to buy a girl for $20,000, but was skeptical that he could start making money off her right away. This particular recruit was eventually fired, but the company made very little effort to investigate the incident or do anything to prevent employees from trying to buy and traffic other women and girls. At the rate these guys were being unethical, I'm frankly surprised they didn't congratulate him for being skeptical of such a large investment.
So in addition to supporting human trafficking, ArmorGroup employees were endangering the lives of U.S. embassy staff and guests, as well as the others who worked with them by thinking a lot more with their "downstairs brains" then their bigger, upstairs brains. The lawsuit is pending, but the case has also been brought to the attention of the State Department. Hopefully, this case will be one to show U.S. government contractors that the U.S. is serious about that whole don't-support-slavery-with-U.S.-taxpayer-dollars thing. However, this isn't the first time that a government contractor has been caught exploiting women in brothels or workers in construction. And I'm worried that it won't be the last.
Photo credit: mr.nomind
UN to Russia: Prevent Exploitation, Protect Migrants
Published October 05, 2009 @ 03:00PM PT
The UN criticized Russia today for spending about as much time trying to protect migrant workers from exploitation as Donald Trump spends on his hair. And what little effort they've expended on laws and programs aiding migrants has left results about as palatable as Trump's. It's time for Russia to stop relying on abused, exploited, and enslaved migrant labor.
Millions of migrants, many of them from former Soviet bloc countries, are currently working in Russia. Most of them work in low-paying jobs like construction, factory production, agriculture, and domestic service. Migrant workers from the former Soviet Union not only provide a primary labor pool for Russia, they are vital to the economic health of their home countries. For example, money sent to Tajikistan by citizens working abroad represented 45% of its gross domestic product, an earlier U.N. study found. Most of Tajikistan's migrant workers are employed in Russia. So Russia and supplier countries both need this migration to work to continue.
Russian law, however, does not support even the most basic human rights for these workers, nor does it allow them access to social services. Because of this lack of legal protection, migrant workers in Russia are vulnerable to and suffer from exploitation, violence, and even slavery. The kicker for this whole situation is that Russia needs these workers to simply function as a country of production and industry. Their population has been steadily decreasing since the mid-1990s, and they have relied primarily on migrant labor from former Soviet bloc countries to bulk up their workforce. Perhaps this is the real reason Russia has been reluctant to engage in legal reform: fear that raising workers' wages will prevent companies from importing more workers and ultimately reduce the workforce.
But Russia should realize that creating legal protections for workers that prevent human trafficking and exploitation will eventually increase their labor force. When workers are paid fairly and given good working conditions, they will tend to stay in Russia longer to work and return to Russia (instead of another country) if they return home and need to work abroad again. It's a win-win situation for Russia and the migrant workers. But who knows how long it will take for Russia to see what needs to be done and then do it.
Photo credit: vokabre
Dear San Francisco: "Sell Crack or Die" Isn't a Real Choice
Published September 28, 2009 @ 02:00PM PT
Dear San Francisco Superior Court Jury,
After hearing of your recent decision convicting an apparent trafficking victim of selling drugs at gunpoint, I felt compelled to write to you about the concept of control, since it is apparently a foreign concept to you. Should you care to look it up, the definition is here, but I can summarize by saying one person controls another when he has the power to direct or determine that other person's thoughts and/or actions. One example of full and coercive control you may have heard of is the institution of human trafficking, aka modern-day slavery. Since human trafficking has recently been the subject of a Lifetime mini-series, several feature films, and a New York Times series, I will assume that you have not been, in fact, living under rocks and have heard of it.
What you apparently don't understand, based on the explanations you gave of your recent decision that Rigoberto Valle is guilty of being a drug dealer and not a human trafficking victim, is how modern-day slavery works. In modern-day slavery, a trafficker uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit someone's labor under violence or the threat of violence. Now I don't know if you've ever been forced to do something at gun-point or knife-point (as Mr. Valle described his interaction with his traffickers), but it greatly reduces your bargaining power. If your trafficker holds a gun to your head and says "pick tomatoes," you pick tomatoes over being shot. If he holds a knife to your chest and says "have sex with this man", you have sex over being stabbed. And if he threatens to shoot or stab you if you don't sell crack, well, then you sell crack.
What most trafficking victims don't have the power to do is tell the trafficker "I'm sorry, I'd prefer for you to enslave me in a legal industry, so if I get caught in a police sting, there won't be any confusion as to who was in the wrong." If they can do that, they probably can escape trafficking. So, when you say,
"To me, it came down to that he knew what he was doing was illegal. I don't think he honestly cared,"
I have to disagree. I think he cared a great deal not to be shot, arrested, or deported. I think he cared that he was being forced to do something dangerous and illegal in a country where he didn't understand the legal system. I think he cared not to put his family into further debt. Did he "choose" selling crack over death? Can that really be considered a choice?
I did not sit and listen to two lawyers hash this case out as you did, so perhaps this was not the miscarriage of justice it seems to be. Perhaps Mr. Valle was guilty of selling drugs of his own free will and wove a well-crafted lie about being a pawn in an international organized criminal syndicate to get out of going to jail. I can't say for sure that he's innocent. I can, however, say for sure that trafficking victims are enslaved every day in both legal and illegal industries. Some victims in illegal industries like prostitution and drug-selling are recognized by law enforcement for what they are: innocent people forced to do something against their will. But too often they are arrested as prostitutes or drug dealers or illegal immigrants and deported. The "sell crack or die defense" isn't just a defense -- it's a reality for some trafficking victims.
So, San Francisco Superior Court Jury, when you say you wanted to find Mr. Valle not guilty, I ask you to look deep inside and ask yourselves why you didn't. Was it really easier to believe him capable of inventing a story about evil traffickers forcing him to sell crack than to believe men were capable of enslaving him as a drug-dealer? Or was it easier to think that because he was a grown man, he should have been able to fight back? Was it easier to think that because he was an immigrant who had entered the country illegally, he could have committed other crimes as well? Thinking about human trafficking in a real and meaningful way is rarely easy. And neither are the lives of its victims, no matter what they are forced to do.
Photo credit: Marco Gomes
Video: Stop Child Trafficking Walks Inspire Action
Published September 28, 2009 @ 06:12AM PT
This past Saturday, thousands of activists gathered in cities across the country for one reason: to walk to stop child trafficking. The walks were organized by Stop Child Trafficking Now to raise awareness about the reality of child trafficking, especially in the U.S., and to raise funds for local organizations. Walks took place from Oregon to Florida, Canada to Texas. I caught up with the Washington, DC walk to find out what had inspired so many people to wake up early on a Saturday morning and take a stand against child trafficking. Here's the Change.org original video:
The success of the DC walk was tremendous, and I hope it will inspire activists and organizers to do similar events in other cities. The issue of child trafficking touched the lives of so many people who participated in the walk -- in their churches, sororities, businesses, and even personal lives. At an event like this one, the children who live in and have survived slavery are no longer a distant concept of a child. They are present in every walker who says "It happened to my roomate ..." "to my sister ..." "to me ..." They are real.
Congratulations to everyone who made the Washington, DC walk and all the other walks across the country a success.
Guatemalan Army Admits to Trafficking Kids for Adoption
Published September 21, 2009 @ 12:07PM PT
When it comes to talking about the human rights abuses that took place during their long and painful civil war, the Guatemalan military has acted like a cat next to a bathtub: willing to make a lot of noise but not jump in to the issue at hand. Surprisingly, however, the Guatemalan army has finally admitted to kidnapping and selling hundreds of children in international adoptions from 1977 to 1989.
If you're not up on your Guatemalan history, here's the over-simplified version: From the 1960 to 1996, Guatemala was engaged in a bloody, brutal civil war between right-wing, pro-Reaganonmics type government and the left-wing, Che-had-the-right-idea type insurgents. Over 200,000 people were killed or "dissapeared" by the government and the insurgents committed their share of murders and rapes as well. Human rights were about as well-respected as Paris Hilton's quantum physics term paper. And throughout the whole bloody mess, the army kidnapped kids and sold them as part of "international adoptions" both as a way to generate revenue and punish parents who spoke out against the government.
International adoption in Guatemala is nothing new; it has been a source of income there for decades. The chaos and brutality of the civil war meant less regulation of the army's activities and more opportunities for abuse. Guatemala has the highest per capita adoption rate in the world and is a leading provider of children for adoption to the U.S. In fact, 1 in 100 babies born in Guatemala are eventually adopted to parents in the U.S. who are willing to pay up to $30,000 in fees for a child. This money is a huge financial incentive in a country where 75% of the people live below the poverty level and $30,000 may represent untold hope for a desperate family. Advocates fear that mothers may be coerced, financially or politically, into putting their children up for adoption. Similarly, child advocates want to be sure children aren't being adopted into families which will abuse or exploit them.
The issue of international adoption as a front for human trafficking is international, and has affected several countries, including Guatemala. Romania actually banned international adoptions because the problems with exploitation were so severe. Many international agencies and the U.S. government have since asked Romania to lift or relax the ban, since the country cannot support the number of children who need care and Western families are eager to adopt Romanian children. There are a number of model policies for how to screen potential families and set up protective mechanisms to prevent children from being adopted by unscrupulousindividuals and couples. There are not, however, very many model policies for how to prevent mothers from being coerced into giving up their children. That is an area the international adoption community should look into more thoroughly.
It takes some guts to admit that you did something as heinous as kidnap kids for political reasons and then sell them for profit, but the Guatemalan army did the right thing by telling the truth. Their revelation has helped hundreds of families reunite with lost children, most of whom are now adults. It has also shed light on the important issue of international adoption used as a front for trafficking, which will hopefully help other countries identify policy measures to take in order to protect both mothers and children.
Photo credit: cotaro70s
