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Human trafficking exploits thousands
Jul. 19, 2005 at 9:20AM
The U.S. State Department says thousands of people who leave their homeland for work in the Persian Gulf end up as modern day slaves.
The State Department lists 14 countries that do little to stop human trafficking and unless the countries improve in that area, the United States could resort to economic sanctions, the Christian Science Monitor reported. As many as 800,000 men, women and children are sent to other countries, often under fraudulent means to be used in forced labor or otherwise exploited, the State Department says.
Among counties on the U.S. list are several Persian Gulf states, where thousands of mostly South Asian people are sent each year to work. Thousands of others pay "sponsors" who promise jobs in other countries, only to find upon arrival there is no work and they are stranded in the new country, the Monitor said.
The U.S. allegations of trafficking for exploitation, including of children, were denied by officials from the Gulf region.
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Ukrainian women freed from sexual slavery in Turkey thanks to phone tip-off
August 5, 2005
GENEVA -- Five Ukrainian women who were tortured and imprisoned in a basement by sex traffickers in Turkey have been freed thanks to a special telephone hotline, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday.
The women - one of whom was held for six years - were set to return to Ukraine after being rescued by Turkish police following a call to the "157" hotline, which is run by the IOM, the Geneva-based organization said.
"This case is one of the worst instances of trafficking we have documented in Turkey," said IOM official Marielle Sander Lindstrom in a statement.
The women, who were forced into prostitution, were tortured with boiling oil and kept in a windowless basement near the southern resort town of Antalya.
However, one managed to call the hotline using a mobile telephone belonging to a client or trafficker, and they were freed on August 1, said the IOM.
Turkish police rescued a further five victims of trafficking on August 3 in the southern city of Mersin, again thanks to a call to the hotline, the IOM added.
They had also been tortured and kept in a basement.
"Our greatest concern is that these cases taken together may represent a new level of cruelty and torture inflicted on trafficked individuals," said Sander Lindstrom.
Launched in May and aimed mainly at women from former communist countries, the hotline is staffed by Russian, Romanian and Turkish speakers who pass on to the police emergency calls from victims, as well as tip-offs from other people.
Impoverished women from Eastern Europe are lured to Turkey by criminal gangs with promises of well-paid jobs, but many are later forced into prostitution or other jobs in the underground labor market.
The IOM said that it was offering the Ukrainian women help to rebuild their lives at home, including medical and psychological support, legal aid, family and housing allowances and education or business grants
Tied into Debt Bondage
by Ajitha G S
THE cash-rich Punjab economy stands on a substructure of bonded labour. In this state, migrant labourers are given a monetary advance at the time of recruitment that ties them into debt bondage. The labourers have no say in — and little understanding of — how the debt works. All they know is that they cannot leave their employment.The centuries-old tradition of bonded labour lives on, transmuting into newer forms to suit the new economy. International Labour Office (ILO) director general, Mr Juan Somavia has expressed the opinion that globalisation has a share of the blame. At the release of the ILO report ‘Global Alliance Against Forced Labour’ in May, he said: “Forced labour represents the underside of globalisation and denies people their basic rights and dignity.”
About 12.3 million people around the world are victims of forced labour, of whom 10 million are exploited in the private economy; more than 2.4 million have been trafficked; 2.5 million are forced to work by the state or by rebel military groups; children represent between 40 and 50 per cent of all forced labour.
A quick break-up of these statistics shows that, five years into the new millennium, regional inequities persist. Nearly 9.5 million - a massive 77 per cent - of the total number of forced labour is in South Asia and the Pacific. It is estimated that India has the biggest share of this number.
The report identifies bonded labour, or debt bondage — where people are trapped in forced labour to pay off a loan from an employer or landlord — as the main form of forced labour in India. Estimates suggest that a bulk of this labour is in agriculture, rice-mills, domestic service, brick kilns, fields and sericulture.
And this brings us to a fundamental question: what is forced labour? Article 2(1) of the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention 1930 defines forced labour as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”.
The report says that India was the first country to acknowledge the problem of bonded labour. Under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1976, the Indian government reported 4,859 prosecutions until August 2004 — probably a figure that no other country can match. However, conviction figures on these prosecutions are not available. Even the number of prosecutions does not seem as impressive when compared to the actual number of bonded labourers in the country.
The government traced 285,379 instances of bonded labour as of March 31, 2004. Of these, 265, 417 persons received rehabilitation assistance. The remaining (nearly 20,000) could not be traced or had died. -WFS
