This is horrible. The line between migrant labor, indentured servitude and human trafficking is very thing, and it's often difficult (or just nobody cares) to regulate and otherwise police migrant labor in this way. Sadly, what we are reading about with this situation is actually unique in that it's actually getting media attention - most of the products that we use everyday, or the infrastructure by which we all live, is made exactly through this type of labor exploitation that often borders on slavery.
When I was in Nepal, I had a taxi driver who was of the Tamang janajati. I had just stayed in a Tamang village for a bit and had picked up some Tamang (okay studied it furiously beforehand and barely could see anything), but I tried to speak with the taxi driver in Tamang and he was super excited, giving me some guidance in it. I think maybe because of that, he felt comfortable confiding in me certain things about Nepal, the U.S. and so forth.
The story he told me essentially went like this:
Decades back, he had been looking for work, because Nepal is a very impoverished country and he was poor and wanted to be able to feed himself and his family and not live as a beggar on the streets. So after saving up quite a bit up in the Himals, he made himself enough cash to come down to Kathmandu and sign up, with pretty much all the money he had, for a migrant labor agency. Signing up with these migrant labor agencies are often very coveted, and don't always, perhaps not even often, end with horrible accounts of labor exploitation. I had met people in Nepal quite pleased with their stays in the gulf states. But not this man: this man was sent to work in an oil refinery in Kuwait. He says that he absolutely could not get a lick of pay, that whenever he would try, he was met with rebuke that he did not work enough, or that he was not supposed to get paid until some later date, or that he would not be paid until all the terms of the contract had been fulfilled at the end or later than the agreed upon period (longer then the period in so long as he didn't fulfill these terms, which the "employers" had the complete ability to dictate and assess of course). He was being screwed both by the agency and by his employers, from what I could tell. He still had to pay a certain amount back to the agency as well, yet wasn't getting paid. So he was essentially stuck there without any recourse. Then...yup you guessed it, the Gulf War began. He was in Kuwait. He said that when the U.S. bombed the oil refineries, he ended up trapped underground for weeks. He said he saw many of his coworkers die, and every else tried to piece together bits of medicine that they knew. He attributed a lot to the medicine he had learned in his Tamang community. He said that for months he had no way to contact his family back in Nepal and let them know that he was okay, and that for literally 6 months, the clouds from the bombings were so thick that he could not see the sun. I am not sure what changed later, but he did get back to Nepal, as obviously, he was my taxi driver.
This is how we get our oil. This is how we get our commodities in general. Human trafficking and slavery is why we in our Western oligarchical aristocratic nations can enjoy such a luxurious quality of life with abundant material goods that we continuously throw away before going to Wal-Mart to get another $3 shirt, marveling at the cheapness. Our quality of life exists because of this type of slavery that is largely hidden from us. I have a friend who's in his early 20s and is making over $200k a year as an oil-futures trader in the Financial District in Manhattan. And I keep asking myself, what in the world gives him the right to temporarily own, via setting and owning the contract on the price, of great quantities of oil - he had absolutely nothing to do with its creation and has never even seen it, yet he gets to profit in the hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars off of it? What is that? People are enslaved and people die to make that oil, yet some rich white boy in New York can claim that through his "merit" he is making a six figure salary off of it?
I can't. I get so angry when I think about this, because so few people are willing to acknowledge that nothing is a meritocracy, and that much of our items, our goods, and our financial services and industry is little more than a trade in blood money.
Yea I just wrote a ton, I can't help it, I'm super passionate on this topic.
Not to open a can of worms, but the US did not bomb Kuwaiti refineries. Iraq systematically destroyed Kuwaiti oil fields as they retreated as a "scorched earth" strategy intended to slow down and disrupt the UN forces driving them out of the area. It was their actions that booked out the Sun.
This doesn't diminish the man's suffering in the least nor does it justify the inhuman way he was treated.
When I was in Nepal, I had a taxi driver who was of the Tamang janajati. I had just stayed in a Tamang village for a bit and had picked up some Tamang (okay studied it furiously beforehand and barely could see anything), but I tried to speak with the taxi driver in Tamang and he was super excited, giving me some guidance in it. I think maybe because of that, he felt comfortable confiding in me certain things about Nepal, the U.S. and so forth.
The story he told me essentially went like this:
Decades back, he had been looking for work, because Nepal is a very impoverished country and he was poor and wanted to be able to feed himself and his family and not live as a beggar on the streets. So after saving up quite a bit up in the Himals, he made himself enough cash to come down to Kathmandu and sign up, with pretty much all the money he had, for a migrant labor agency. Signing up with these migrant labor agencies are often very coveted, and don't always, perhaps not even often, end with horrible accounts of labor exploitation. I had met people in Nepal quite pleased with their stays in the gulf states. But not this man: this man was sent to work in an oil refinery in Kuwait. He says that he absolutely could not get a lick of pay, that whenever he would try, he was met with rebuke that he did not work enough, or that he was not supposed to get paid until some later date, or that he would not be paid until all the terms of the contract had been fulfilled at the end or later than the agreed upon period (longer then the period in so long as he didn't fulfill these terms, which the "employers" had the complete ability to dictate and assess of course). He was being screwed both by the agency and by his employers, from what I could tell. He still had to pay a certain amount back to the agency as well, yet wasn't getting paid. So he was essentially stuck there without any recourse. Then...yup you guessed it, the Gulf War began. He was in Kuwait. He said that when the U.S. bombed the oil refineries, he ended up trapped underground for weeks. He said he saw many of his coworkers die, and every else tried to piece together bits of medicine that they knew. He attributed a lot to the medicine he had learned in his Tamang community. He said that for months he had no way to contact his family back in Nepal and let them know that he was okay, and that for literally 6 months, the clouds from the bombings were so thick that he could not see the sun. I am not sure what changed later, but he did get back to Nepal, as obviously, he was my taxi driver.
Reply
This is how we get our oil. This is how we get our commodities in general. Human trafficking and slavery is why we in our Western oligarchical aristocratic nations can enjoy such a luxurious quality of life with abundant material goods that we continuously throw away before going to Wal-Mart to get another $3 shirt, marveling at the cheapness. Our quality of life exists because of this type of slavery that is largely hidden from us. I have a friend who's in his early 20s and is making over $200k a year as an oil-futures trader in the Financial District in Manhattan. And I keep asking myself, what in the world gives him the right to temporarily own, via setting and owning the contract on the price, of great quantities of oil - he had absolutely nothing to do with its creation and has never even seen it, yet he gets to profit in the hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars off of it? What is that? People are enslaved and people die to make that oil, yet some rich white boy in New York can claim that through his "merit" he is making a six figure salary off of it?
I can't. I get so angry when I think about this, because so few people are willing to acknowledge that nothing is a meritocracy, and that much of our items, our goods, and our financial services and industry is little more than a trade in blood money.
Yea I just wrote a ton, I can't help it, I'm super passionate on this topic.
Reply
Reply
This doesn't diminish the man's suffering in the least nor does it justify the inhuman way he was treated.
Reply
Also I see that my spelling was rather disastrous. I have learned not to type when angry and sleep deprived.
Reply
Spelling is neither here nor there. I wrote "booked" instead of "blocked" myself.
Reply
Leave a comment