At least 50,000 women and children were sold in the West last year.
The following is a rush transcript of The Agenda program hosted by Press TV's Yvonne Ridley on human trafficking. Eastern-European Oxana Kelma, who was trafficked into Britain, Human Rights Consultant Ceri Hayes and Dr. Mick Wilkinson, a senior lecturer of race and social justice at the Wilberforce Institute were the guests of the program.
You can watch the program here.
It is the 21st century and yet there are more slaves around the world today than there were chained and put on boats in Africa during the 4th century when the UK dominated the slave trade.
This new form of slavery is global and even more lucrative than the world's drug trade. The statistics are shocking. The stories are harrowing, and the main victims are women and children.
The illegal industry is now worth USD 32 billion a year.
The UK parliament passed the slavery abolition act in 1833 giving all slaves in the British Empire their freedom. But it has been revealed that humans are still being sold and trafficked around the world.
At least 50,000, mainly women and children, were sold in the West last year.
Leading human rights groups are demanding governments meet their international legal obligations and provide compensation as protection measures for the 21st century slaves.
These include thousands of young women forced into the European sex industry and others trafficked to work for little or no pay as domestic staff where they are subjected to a physical and psychological violence and forced to work long hours.
Is human trafficking the new slavery?
Ridley: We are told that this evil trade involves millions of victims far bigger than that other dark period in our history, when African people were traded like pieces of meat across the British Empire. Just how vast is this evil trade Mick?
Wilkinson: It is vast. Professor Kevin Bales who is a colleague with me at the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull, has estimated that there are now 26 million people globally who are actually victims of the slave trade.
That is an enormous amount of people, within that the State Department in the United States estimates that there are 600-800 thousand people trafficked across borders each year, into the sex trade. So, we are talking about a vast global problem out there.
Ridley: Where is the hub of this? Is it an East problem or is it a Western problem. Where are these people being trafficked to?
Wilkinson: It is a globalized problem, it is difficult to find any corner of the globe where trafficking and slavery doesn't not exist. So, you have got slavery in the Amazon basin, you have got slavery in India. Children working in garment factories in India, you have got children in Burma. It is a global phenomenon. It is in Southwest Africa, in Ghana you have got children working with fishing nets there and women in the sex trade across Southeast Asia.
Ridley: Ceri, where do you start with this? It is such a huge problem.
Hayes: It is, but I think there are clear ways to tackle the problem. If you look at, for example, the EU convention on [Action Against] Trafficking, it has what is called the three P's: Prevention of the actually problem of trafficking; Protection of the women and children who are being trafficked; Prosecution of the people who are perpetrating this crime. So, there are clear rules and regulations around this. The problem is actually implementing them and making sure that the funding is in place to do that.
Ridley: Oxana, You were trafficked, you were a victim although you now work to highlight the dangers of this trade. The victims are sometimes afraid that they are going to be targeted if they got o the police or the authorities. Is that fear genuine or is it imagined?
Kalemi: Well, when you are trapped with the people, they actually tell you that you are an illegal immigrant and if you go to the police, you will go to prison for 3-5 years for illegally coming to this country. So, that is what I knew and I didn't want to go to prison for 5 years for that, because I just came with no papers, so I was illegally there. So, that is what I knew, I didn't have any internet access or television or anything like that. I was kept in one room which was just walls and a bed. So, that is what I knew and that is what I was very, very afraid; for no one wants to go to prison.
Ridley: Ceri, you deal with a lot of people like Oxana. How can you get the message out to these women and children, to blow the whistle if they are away from any forms of communication and they are literally locked in tiny rooms?
Hayes: Well, that is precisely the problem. I think it is not straightforward. As Oxana has said, the way these cases tend to be dealt with is that they are seeing the victims, or themselves portrayed as criminals and also identifying these women as victims in the first place is very difficult. So, Oxana's experience is very common.
Ridley: Ceri as we have discussed, the scale is breathtaking. Is there one single global authority that deals with this? As one of the statistics said, America spends just one days worth of the money it spends on trying to combat drug trafficking, [on human trafficking], which was quite astonishing. It is not really taken as a serious problem is it?
Hayes: I think the issue is quite fragmented in the approach taken to addressing it, and that is why there needs to be more interaction and a more integrated approaches, both at regional level and also internationally, to addressing this. So, for example the problem of cross-border controls, you know the more cooperation between countries who are addressing this, the better.
Ridley: when people like Oxana do manage to escape and they go to the authorities, they are not treated like victims are they?
Hayes: No, that is the problem as Oxana has already said. For example, if you take the United Kingdom, the agency that is dealing with that, the UK Border Agency, will usually see this as an immigration problem. A report recently produced by some leading anti-human trafficking agencies in the UK, found that mechanisms in place to try and address the needs of some of these victims are just not being addressed and implemented properly. So, we need proper support for women like Oxana so that they are able to come out and escape from this awful trade.
Ridley: Oxana, you wrote a book called 'Mummy Come Home' and I believe it is doing very well [in sales]. But, can you tell me how you were able to escape you handlers, and what the reaction of the authorities was when you went to them for help?
Kalemi: Actually, when I ran away, I ran away to a friend. I did not run away to the police, I was too afraid to go to the police. And my friend told me that I can live in her place where she was working -- and she was working in a sauna. So, I had to have some money to earn somehow, to get a room and then think what I am going to do next. So, I didn't actually escape, and I didn't actually think through anything. I was just gone. I did not think about what was going to happen.
Ridley: How did it come to an end?
Oxana Kalemi: I had heard very bad news from my country and I was living in my boyfriend's house and I had to pack to a sauna and when I came back to the sauna, the second day I was there, the police raided and took me because I had no papers whatsoever.
When I got to the police station it was very scary because I thought that is it, my life has ended here. So, I was there [at the police station] all night, and I was very lucky to get a police officer who believed my story.
Ridley: Mick, how wide spread is child slavery?
Wilkinson: Again it is massive. In countries like India, there is enormous usage of children in the garment trade. It is an enormous phenomenon.
Ridley: But India is an emerging power it is seen as quite a force in the world today; surely it must be aware of this.
Wilkinson: Of course it is, that is why they have passed laws against slavery, but the problem is the implementation. Well, not just in India, I do not want to highlight India as the only country [practicing child slavery] and I don't want to highlight countries in the developing world, specifically either.
We have to accept the fact that part of this problem is the supply chain and part of this problem are major retailers in the north and in the west. Where do these jewelers think they get their diamonds from so cheaply? How are they produced? Is it beyond capabilities to go and find out who is producing these diamonds? How can I get T-shirts for two pounds on British high streets?
So, the retailers really think that those T-shirts are being created under decent labor conditions? It is laughable to suggest that they don't know there is slavery somewhere along the way of the supply chain.
Ridley: So, is it the fault of the consumers then? Should shoppers shop with conscience?
Wilkinson: It is not the fault of the consumers, we are going into a recession now, people buy goods where they see them cheaply. You cannot expect consumers to check out every product, whether it be garments or coffee, or whatever. There surely is a moral responsibility on the suppliers of these products.
There are people sending out buyers to get these products, the same buyers can easily find out where there is slavery somewhere along the line of the supply chain. And they can work with developing countries to organize with trade unions to ensure that this doesn't happen. The reality is there is no interest in doing this because they are making huge profits.
The other key agent here is the British government and other Western governments. It is the responsibility of national governments to ensure that they are not engaged in this kind of horrendous slavery-linked trade.
Ridley: Oxana, where do you see the problem? Do you see the problem as being the customers, the pimps in your case, or the people who lured you into Britain in the first place?
Kalemi: From my point of view, I think the problem is on the borders. Because I passed so many borders with no police check at all and that is just shocking. I was in a lorry with 5 people inside and we didn't even stop all the way from Germany.
Ridley: Presumably, before you boarded the lorry, you had handed over money already. What did you think you were going to?
Kalemi: My friend told me that I am going to a casino to work as a waitress and as I was left with three children and my husband gone, I needed to provide some food. So, of course it is a problem with economy in my country and lots of poor countries like Romania and Ukraine and also Europe. It is the economy. They (the governments) are not supplying anything. I mean we do not have any benefits. We do not have any hostels. We do not have any help whatsoever.
Ridley: Ceri, human rights organizations thought that it scored a major victory when the UAE brought out to stop the exploitation of children [as camel jockeys]. And then in a festival in Abu Dhabi, children were clearly being used again in camel racing. How can you overcome this problem when governments are quite prepared to turn a blind eye or do nothing?
Hayes: Well, I think governments need to be held accountable, as you say the laws are in place, but these laws needs to be enforced properly. And I also think that we need to look at this problem in a holistic way as well.
I want to come back to the points that both Oxana and Mick made, if I may. Oxana was talking very much about the push factors around trafficking, so in the case of women and girls in countries like for example, Albania, I have met with women's organizations in Albania that have been trying to help women that have been repatriated to Albania. The reasons that those girls left in the first place was because of lack of jobs, poverty in their own countries, and then they were tricked and coerced into going overseas for work, which turned out to be sex trafficking.
And, similarly, coming back to the point that Mick was making, about the demand. We need to look at the demand as well. And this is something that the Anti-Trafficking Alliance has been looking at, in terms of sex trafficking and the men who pay for sex in the first place. So, there is the men paying for sex, and the demand for prostitution that increases sex trafficking. So, we need to be addressing that as well.
Ridley: And of course it is a multi-billion-dollar trade, and that is higher than the drugs trade?
Hayes: I believe that the arms trade is the most lucrative, then the drugs trade and then it is sex trafficking. But they anticipate that in the coming decades, sex trafficking and trafficking of humans generally will actually overtake drugs trafficking.
Ridley: Who is getting rich on all of this Mick?
Wilkinson: criminal gangs and local newspapers. Let me explain that one for you. The difference between the drugs trade and the reason why the sex trade will surpass it is that the penalties for being involved in the drugs trade, is far greater than the penalties for being involved in trafficking people for sexual activity and sexual exploitation.
Ridley: And that is quite shocking in itself in terms of the value of a human.
Wilkinson: Yes, that is why the criminal gangs are moving over or jointly doing both drugs and sex trafficking. But the people who profit are criminal gangs, in the one instance, and in another instance, local newspapers.
Ridley: I am intrigued by the local newspapers, I mean I started my career on a local newspaper.
Wilkinson: Open many local newspapers across the UK, to the back you will find advertisements of massage parlors, saunas, and so on. Many of the women, who work in these massage parlors and saunas, have been trafficked into them for the use of sexual exploitation.
For example in 2004, the POPPY project in London did a study called Sex in the City where they highlighted the fact that 85 percent of women who are working in off-street prostitution in London -- that is massage parlors and saunas -- 85 percent of them, have been trafficked into those situations against their will.
So, all those clever boys in the city of London who think it is funny and as easy to go and use a prostitute as it is to order pizza, they should be aware of the fact that the vast majority of those women, are in those circumstances against their will and so effectively they are raping them.
Ridley: Well, surely the newspaper publishers should take responsibility as well because if there weren't the advertising [then this wouldn't happen]. I mean, isn't this one way of trying to crack down?
Wilkinson: You will not have any arguments on that from me. My own local MP (Member of Parliament) Diana Johnson for instance has done some solid work in trying to counter that.
Ridley: US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton launched the US State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report and among the countries on that list of shame was, for the first time, the United States.
Mick how much of a major breakthrough was that?
Wilkinson: It is a major breakthrough in the sense that it publicizes the issue and with some one like [US Secretary of State] Hilary Clinton behind it, it obviously has some sway with the Obama government. What is more important than words, is action. I would actually like to see some action happen materially in terms of providing funding for support agencies.
Ridley: Well, Oxana had identified the borders as being one of the key areas, I mean is that one of the main problems in your view?
Wilkinson: Yes, it is a primary problem because most of the agencies that have been given responsibility to identify traffic victims are actually immigration forces and their primary objective appears to be, and certainly in the UK, with the UK Borders Agency, is to not allow illegal immigrants rather than protect and support victims.
The Guardian in February of this year (2010) wrote, the title: Border staff humiliate and trick asylum seekers -- Whistleblower. Louise Perrett who worked cases at the borders agency in Cardiff for three and a half months last summer claims staff kept a stuffed gorilla and grant monkey, which was placed as a badge of shame on the desk of any officer who approved an asylum application. She claims the tone was set on the first day when one manager said of an asylum seeking clients 'if it was up to me I would take them all outside and shoot them.'
Now, do we really think that UK Borders Agency is an appropriate body to be identifying the victims of trafficking?
Ridley: Which highlights again when you (Oxana) said you were lucky you were dealt with by a police man who was actually sympathetic. What would have happened if, God forbid, you had been confronted with somebody with such racist attitude?
Kalemi: I would have been packed off and deported. I do not think I would have gone back to my kids.
Ridley: You have now been re-united with you children?
Kalemi: No.
Ridley: Still?
Kalemi: I am still fighting my government to give me my kids back but no. Because they took my rights while I was trapped and trafficked. I have been in court twice and they still do not want to give me back my kids. My daughter disappeared three years ago from the orphanage and the government said she is adopted but there is no proof whatsoever, so I am still fighting, but I will get them.
Ridley: And this is documented in your book, 'Mummy Come Home.'
Again Ceri this is another dimension to the misery suffered by victims, even after they have been rescued.
Hayes: Yes, it is a double traumatization if you like. So, already they have suffered massive physical, mental and emotional torture, but then to have to be put through that again and the uncertainty of their immigration status, what is going to happen to them, their family, compounds the problem if you like.
Ridley: What about this compensation scheme? Because as you said before, this trafficking industry is worth billions. And presumably when these gangs are arrested, money is impounded and assets frozen. What happens to that?
Hayes: Well, exactly. That is a good question. We do not know, and we think that money should be channeled towards compensating the victims of trafficking. An EU (European Union) campaign has been launched precisely on that, to make sure that some of that money goes to the right place, but at the moment that is not the case.
Ridley: Mick, what initiatives are happening in Britain, if any, to crack down on this human trafficking?
Wilkinson: Well, it is difficult to say, I mean we have had a change of government obviously. We did have the UK Human Trafficking Center, which did actually do some positive work, though the parliamentary committee who were on the first committee said that it could do a lot more. It has now been subsumed together.
Ridley: How do they measure success?
Wilkinson: Well, the measurement of success was primarily…,by the way this doesn't exist as a separate body now, it has been subsumed back into the serious organized crime organization, there is a problem within that, because that means that everyone can identify in Sheffield that the UK Human Trafficking Center no longer exists specifically.
Again they were primarily for the first couple of years, and they had success in this, [and that's why] they publicized the issue.
Let me explain…we have a government that spends hundreds of thousands of pounds every year, putting posters across all the major cities, bus shelters, bus stations, everywhere you can imagine, on the sides of buses, about benefit fraud.
When I spoke to the UK Human Trafficking Center two years ago, after they had done their first major poster campaign against sex trafficking in the UK, they said the actual posters had been designed by the son of one of their officers with a computer in his bedroom because he had no designated fund to run such a campaign and to prepare it.
Ridley: A lot of people who were told about the 50,000 people who were trafficked last year, they were very surprised that it was on such a scale. But you seemed to think that they were conservative figures?
Wilkinson: Well, yes. The State Department figures between 600-800 thousand people trafficked across borders and millions trafficked within borders. I am not surprised that they thought it was excessive because I think, even 50,000 was mentioned because there is lack of public knowledge on this, and it is not in the interest of the traffic and also in the interest of the government who do not want to take any action against it.
Ridley: Why is it not in the interest of the government though? I mean what are they losing out on?
Wilkinson: Well, I think it has become unfortunately embroiled with the whole immigration debate and that is a major problem particularly in this country and well now, across western Europe for example and certainly in this country, we had a conservative party in the run up to the last election which whipped up hysteria about European migrant workers, when Cameron knew full well there was nothing he could do about East-European migrant workers. Because we have got trade agreements, agreement sin terms of free movements in labor within Europe.
Immediately after the election he then used that hysteria to cut down on third country migrants, i.e. people from outside Eastern Europe, to make it more difficult for them to come and legitimately work in this country. And if you make it more difficult for people to come and work in this country legitimately, they end up being trafficked. That is the problem.
We have been talking about people being trafficked for the sex trade, this needs to be looked at in the wider perspective. We know for instance that anywhere between 300,000-800,000 undocumented migrants workers are in the UK today. The Home Offices estimate is 480,000. We know these people have been exploited in the most appalling ways by gang masters, some of them are working in care one minute and the next minute working on the street as prostitutes. The vast majority of the people have been undocumented through no fault of their own. It is due to the duplicity of criminal gangs and gang masters who take the papers.
The logical solution to that problem is to offer an amnesty from undocumented migrant workers and to offer an amnesty for sex workers who have been trafficked into the countries because then these people can come forward and assist the police in prosecuting the real criminals here which are the traffickers and the illicit gang masters.
Ridley: that sounds like a good solution Ceri, why has no one suggested it?
Hayes: I think we need to pressure governments to do something about it. I want to add another aspect to this debate because I think the immigration is one issue but also another perspective is around the attitudes that tolerate violence against women and girls as another factor that is contributing to this. We are seeing the unchecked growth of the commercial sex industry, that is a major factor in all of this, attitudes which tolerate violence, the sexual objectification of women and girls is another factor and that needs to be addressed. We need national awareness campaign in the UK, but we also need a global awareness campaign about the issues of trafficking.
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