The Modern Slave Trade
From: http://www.utne.com/2008-07-01/Politics/People-for-Sale.aspx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPost
It would be nice if that conversation were fictional. It is not. I recorded it in October 2005 as part of four years of research into slavery on five continents. In the popular consciousness, “slavery” has come to be little more than just a metaphor for undue hardship. Investment bankers routinely refer to themselves as “high-paid wage slaves.” Human rights activists may call $1-an-hour sweatshop laborers slaves, regardless of the fact that they are paid and can often walk away from the job.
The reality of slavery is far different. Slavery exists today on an unprecedented scale. In Africa, tens of thousands are chattel slaves, seized in war or tucked away for generations. Across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, traffickers have forced as many as 2 million into prostitution or labor. In South Asia, which has the highest concentration of slaves on the planet, nearly 10 million languish in bondage, unable to leave their captors until they pay off “debts,” legal fictions that in many cases are generations old.
Few in the developed world have a grasp of the enormity of modern-day slavery. Fewer still are doing anything to combat it. President George W. Bush has been urged by several of his key advisers to vigorously enforce the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, a U.S. law that sought to prosecute domestic human traffickers and cajole foreign governments into doing the same. The Bush administration trumpeted the effort in addresses to the United Nations General Assembly in 2003 and 2004. But even the quiet and diligent work of some within the U.S. State Department, which credibly claims to have secured more than 100 anti-trafficking laws and more than 10,000 trafficking convictions worldwide, has resulted in no measurable decline in the number of slaves worldwide.
****
The first page of this piece is truly chilling: a firsthand account of the process of purchasing a Haitian child slave.
Also: http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/transparency/011/trans011slavery.html
/cross-posted at churchoftheleft and my own LJ.
It would be nice if that conversation were fictional. It is not. I recorded it in October 2005 as part of four years of research into slavery on five continents. In the popular consciousness, “slavery” has come to be little more than just a metaphor for undue hardship. Investment bankers routinely refer to themselves as “high-paid wage slaves.” Human rights activists may call $1-an-hour sweatshop laborers slaves, regardless of the fact that they are paid and can often walk away from the job.
The reality of slavery is far different. Slavery exists today on an unprecedented scale. In Africa, tens of thousands are chattel slaves, seized in war or tucked away for generations. Across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, traffickers have forced as many as 2 million into prostitution or labor. In South Asia, which has the highest concentration of slaves on the planet, nearly 10 million languish in bondage, unable to leave their captors until they pay off “debts,” legal fictions that in many cases are generations old.
Few in the developed world have a grasp of the enormity of modern-day slavery. Fewer still are doing anything to combat it. President George W. Bush has been urged by several of his key advisers to vigorously enforce the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, a U.S. law that sought to prosecute domestic human traffickers and cajole foreign governments into doing the same. The Bush administration trumpeted the effort in addresses to the United Nations General Assembly in 2003 and 2004. But even the quiet and diligent work of some within the U.S. State Department, which credibly claims to have secured more than 100 anti-trafficking laws and more than 10,000 trafficking convictions worldwide, has resulted in no measurable decline in the number of slaves worldwide.
****
The first page of this piece is truly chilling: a firsthand account of the process of purchasing a Haitian child slave.
Also: http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/transparency/011/trans011slavery.html
/cross-posted at churchoftheleft and my own LJ.