Report sparks US probe into NZ fish imports | Stuff.co.nz

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/6452854/Report-sparks-US-probe-into-NZ-fish-imports


SOURCE: STUFF.CO.NZ


21/02/2012

Two top US retailers have launched investigations into the New Zealand fish imports after publication of an extensive investigation into slave or indentured labour conditions aboard foreign charter fishing vessels (FCVs) operating in New Zealand's exclusive economic zone.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported this morning that Safeway, America's second largest grocery store chain, and Wal-Mart Stores were investigating New Zealand fish.

The report by Ben Skinner, a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, focused on the Korean ship Melilla 203 which was arrested in Christchurch in December. Its sister ship Melilla 201 was arrested last Friday.

"In a six-month investigation spanning three continents, Bloomberg Businessweek found cases of debt bondage on the Melilla 203 and at least nine other ships that have operated in New Zealand's waters," Skinner reports.

He said the catches from Melilla were bought and processed by Christchurch's United Fisheries, New Zealand's eighth-largest seafood company, which had sold the same species in the same period to distributors operating in the United States.

"Those distributors have sold those species to major US companies. Those companies - which include some of the country's biggest retailers and restaurants - have sold the seafood to American consumers."

Fairfax Media has run its own investigations on the fishing industry for the last year. Fish exports to the US are worth $178 million a year.

Last month California enacted its Supply Chain Transparency Act requiring retail sellers and manufacturers doing business to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their direct supply chain.

The New Zealand government created a joint ministerial investigation committee last year to investigate labour and human rights abuses aboard FCVs. The three-person inquiry, which is due to report this week, was also charged with reporting on whether New Zealand was suffering reputational damage from the use of low cost Asian labour aboard mainly Korean boats fishing Maori Treaty of Waitangi quota.

When alerted over New Zealand FCVs by Businessweek, spokespeople for the US retailers pledged swift investigations.

"As with all of our suppliers, we have a process underway to obtain documentation that (High Liner is) complying with the laws regarding human trafficking and slavery, and that (they are) reviewing their supply chain to insure compliance," said Brian Dowling, Safeway's vice president of public affairs.

Henry Demone, CEO of High Liner, which sold fish on to Safeway, said that he "abhorred" slavery and labour abuse, and that his company "tries very hard to do the right thing".

"In the case you're talking about, we bought from a company whose labour practices in the (processing) plant were fine. We audited that. We didn't audit the fishing vessels. But we relied upon a well-known New Zealand-based company and their assurance of 100 per cent observer coverage."

United Fisheries CEO Andre Kotzikas told the magazine he had heard of no complaints from crew on board the ships, and he had personally boarded the vessels to ensure that the conditions "are of very high standard".

"I don't think that claims of slavery or mistreatment can be attached to foreign charter vessels that are operating here in New Zealand," he said.

"Not for responsible operators."

Kotzikas said that while the national labour laws are "a thousand pages of, you know, beautiful stuff," he believed that they did not necessarily apply beyond New Zealand's 12-mile territorial radius.

Businessweek tracked and interviewed nine major seafood companies across the US who did business with United.

They also looked at Auckland-based Sanford, noting they supplied the US supermarket chain Whole Foods Market. Sanford's ships carry observers.

Whole Foods spokesperson Ashley Hawkins said they complied with the new California law.

"According to the US Department of Labor, New Zealand is not considered high risk," Hawkins said.

The article reports on the abuse of Indonesian fishermen and says the global fishing industry profits from the forced labour of hundreds.

"Beyond the reach of international regulators, human-rights violations are committed on a daily basis on the high seas, in the name of satisfying the world's appetite for seafood. This is the story of how that ill-gotten catch may wind up on your plate."

Skinner said with the Melilla ships, New Zealand authorities had repeatedly fined them for breaking fishing regulations.

"But crimes against humanity took a back seat to those against the environment," he wrote.

The report said New Zealand authorities had "plenty of prior evidence of deplorable working conditions on foreign vessels like the Melilla".

It pointed to the 2010 sinking of a Korean-flagged trawler Oyang 70, off the Otago coast. An inquest is to be held in Wellington in April into the deaths of six men in that sinking.

- © Fairfax NZ News

Related articles

• NZ fish investigated after report into labour on boats in Kiwi waters (nzherald.co.nz)
• Fishing as Slaves on the High Seas (businessweek.com)

Burmese Baited into Thai Fishing Slavery

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN Monday, August 8, 2011

Group of fishermen working on a boat in Phang Nga District, southern Thailand. (Photo : The Irrawaddy)

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SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand — “The broker took 36,000 baht (US $1,200) from us,” says Ma Than Nwe, a Tavoyan Burmese migrant worker in Thailand. “It was money that should have been paid to my husband,” she laments.

Her spouse *Kyaw spent six months at sea on a Thai-run fishing vessel and the salary, which might seem a pittance to some, is a small fortune for people who earned the equivalent of $1-2 per day in Burma. Or it would be, if it was paid at all. The promised 6,000 baht ($200) per month was paid to a broker, a Burmese woman who cannot be named at this time for legal reasons. She kept the all money as payment for what Ma Than Nwe—with understandable anger—sarcastically describes as the broker's “services” in helping her husband “find work” on the boat.

The broker and alleged trafficker and extortionist has since fled back to Burma. “We were afraid to do anything, as the police and the brokers work together to get money from us,” Ma Than Nwe says. “But we think she has angered some other people as well,” she adds, speculating on the broker's apparent flight from Thailand.

The broker told the couple that Kyaw would only have to work two months on the fishing vessel to clear the broker's fee. Anything else after that, if he chose to stay on board for longer, would be his. However, he was kept on the boat against his will for six months and emerged without being paid a single baht.

“The boat did not come to shore during all that time,” says Ma Than Nwe. “When he got back, he told me how small boats would come to meet them at sea and take the catch to land, so they did not get to come ashore themselves.”

Such tales of deceit, naivete and brutality are legion in Thailand's fishing industry and in the coastal province of Samut Sakhon—perhaps better known by its old name Mahachai—a forty-minute drive west of the Thai capital, Bangkok. Thailand's fishing sector and this particular location have both long been a draw for immigrants from neighboring countries seeking work away from their own sluggish economies.

The United Nations special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, begins an official visit to Thailand today to examine the impact of anti-trafficking measures in the country. She will stay until Aug 19 and visit Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Mae Sot, Samut Sakhon and Songkhla, where she will likely hear stories such as that of Ma Than Nwe and her husband.

“During my mission, I wish to reach out to a wide range of stakeholders and trafficked persons themselves, so that their voices are heard and can be considered in the national laws, policies and measures related to trafficking in persons,” she said.

Ezeilo will have to convince Thai authorities to do more to enforce anti-trafficking laws, as—according to a recent US State Department assessment of global human trafficking—Thailand has “made mixed progress in its anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts.”

According to the US report, the Thai government “reported 18 convictions in trafficking-related cases in 2010—an increase from eight known convictions during the previous year; as of May 2011, only five of the 18 convictions reported by the government could be confirmed to be for trafficking offenses.”

However, as the report later outlines, the fishing industry and its locales remain at the margins of even this relatively small conviction rate. According to the report, “investigations of alleged human trafficking on Thai fishing boats, as well as inspections of these boats, were practically nonexistent, according to surveyed fisherman, NGOs, and government officials.”

Ma Than Nwe herself was trafficked, forced to work at shrimp factory in Samut Sakhon for a 200 baht ($6.70) day rate.

Source: irrawaddy.org

Related articles

• 52 Trafficked Burmese Rescued in Thailand " The Sail (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Thailand is a regional hub for human misery (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

Neoliberalism's Newest Product: The Modern Slave Trade

by Ignacio Ramonet

Global Research, August 3, 2011

IPS

PARIS, Jul (IPS) Two centuries after the abolition of slavery we are seeing the reintroduction of an abominable practice: human trafficking. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 12.3 million people each year are taken captive by networks tied to international crime and used as forced labour in inhuman conditions. In the case of women, the victims are subjected mostly to sexual exploitation while others are exploited as domestic servants. There is also the case of youths who are taken captive through various scams so their body parts can be sold in the international human organ trade. These practices are expanding more and more to satisfy the demand for cheap labour in sectors like the hotel and restaurant industries, agriculture, and construction. The OSCE dedicated two days of its last international conference in Vienna in late June to this subject [i]. Though the phenomenon is international, various specialists asserted that the plague of slave labour is growing rapidly in the EU. Unions and labour groups estimate that in Europe there are hundreds of thousands of workers subjected to the blight of slavery [ii]. In Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and other countries of the EU, foreign migrant workers attracted by the mirage of Europe find themselves trapped in the networks of various mafias and working in conditions like slaves of past ages. An ILO report reveals that south of Naples, for example, 1200 homeless farm labourers work twelve hours per day in greenhouses without contracts and for miserable pay, guarded by private militias and living in what resemble concentration camps. This "work camp" is not the only one in Europe; thousands and thousands of undocumented immigrants have met similar fates, victims of a modern slave trade flourishing in any number of European countries. According to various unions, this form of forced labour accounts for almost 20 percent of agricultural production [iii]. Responsibility for this expansion of human trafficking lies largely with the current dominant economic model. In effect, the form of neoliberal globalisation than has been imposed over the last three decades through economic shock therapy has devastated the most fragile levels of society and imposed extremely high social costs. It has created a fierce competition between labour and capital. In the name of free trade, the major multinationals manufacture and sell their goods around the world, producing where labour is cheapest and selling where the cost of living is highest. The new capitalism has made competitiveness its primary engine and brought about a commodification of labour and labourers. Globalisation, which offers remarkable opportunities to a lucky few, imposes on the rest, in Europe, a ruthless and unmediated competition between EU salary workers, small businesses, and small farmers and their badly-paid, exploited counterparts on the other side of the world. The result we now see clearly before us: social dumping on a planetary scale. For employment the result is disastrous. For example, in France in the last twenty years this phenomenon has caused the elimination of more than two million jobs in the industrial sector alone. Certain sectors in Europe where there is a chronic shortage of labour tend to use undocumented workers, which in turn fuels the trafficking of more workers by clandestine networks that in many cases force them into slave labour. Numerous reports clearly evidence the "sale" migrant farm workers. Despite the many tools of international law available to combat these crimes, and despite the proliferation of public statements by government officials condemning them, the public will to put an end to the practice is weak. In reality, the management of industry and construction and major agricultural exporters exert constant pressure on governments to turn a blind eye to the trafficking of undocumented workers. Industry management has always supported mass immigration because it depresses the price of labour. Reports by the European Commission and BUSINESSEUROPE (an association of European industries and businesses) have called for more immigration for decades. But today's human traffickers are not the only ones exploiting slave labour: now a form of "legal servitude" is being developed. For example, last February in Italy Fiat served its workers with the following extortionate ultimatum: either agree to work more, for less money, in worse conditions, or the company will shift operations to Eastern Europe. Faced with the prospect of being fired and terrorised by the conditions in Eastern Europe, with its rock bottom wages and no weekends off, 63 percent of the Fiat workers voted for their own exploitation. In Europe many employers, taking advantage of the crisis and brutal fiscal adjustment policies being imposed, are trying to establish similar forms of "legal servitude". Thanks to the tools made available by neoliberal globalisation, they threaten their workers with savage competition from cheap labour in distant countries. If we are to avoid this form of corrosive social regression, we will have to begin to question the current workings of globalisation - and begin the process of deglobalisation. Ignacio Ramonet is editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish. Notes [i] Titled "Preventing Trafficking in Human Beings for Labour Exploitation: Decent Work and Social Justice", the conference was organised by the Special Representative and Coordinator for the Fight Against Human Trafficking, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, and her team, as part of the Alliance Against Human Trafficking. [ii] See the report: Combatting Trafficking as Modern-day Slavery: A Matter of Rights, Freedom and Security, 2010 Annual Report, OSCE, Vienna, 9 December 2010. [iii] See the report: The Cost of Coercion, ILO, Geneva, 2009. [iv] Cf. No trabajar solos. Sindicatos y ONG unen sus fuerzas para luchar contra el trabajo forzoso y la trata de personas en Europa (Never Work Alone: Unions and NGOs Join Forces to Fight Against Forced Labour and Human Trafficking in Europe), International Trade Union Confederation, Brussels, February 2011.

Global Research Articles by Ignacio Ramonet

Source: globalresearch.ca

Neoliberalism's Newest Product: The Modern Slave Trade: "Combatting Trafficking as Modern-day Slavery: A Matter of Rights"

Saudi Arabian torment of migrant workers at mercy of abusive 'madams' | World news | The Observer

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia send £17bn to families back home annually. But for some, the cost in physical and mental abuse is too high, writes Jason Burke

• 
• • Jason Burke
  • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 25 June 2011 19.24 BST
  • Article history

A Saudi woman applies makeup to a woman at a cosmetics exhibition in Jeddah. Photograph: Amer Hilabi/AFP/Getty Images
 
Shortly after dawn, as the sun rises over the hills behind the city, tens of thousands of women will wake in the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah and go to work. Maybe 14 or 16 hours later, their day will be over.
They are maids, almost all from the Philippines or Indonesia, working for £100-£200 a month. There are more than 500,000 of them in Saudi Arabia, among nearly nine million foreign workers who sweep roads, clean offices, staff coffee shops, drive the cars that women are banned from driving and provide the manpower on the vast construction projects.

The story of the maids rarely receives attention, except when a new shocking incident reveals once again the problems many of them face. Last weekend a 54-year-old Indonesian maid was beheaded by sword for killing her female boss with a cleaver. Ruyati binti Sapubi had, an Islamic court heard, endured years of abuse before finally attacking her "madam", as the maids call their employers, when denied permission to return home.

Another Indonesian maid also faces execution for killing her boss whom she alleges tried to rape her. Other recent incidents include a Sri Lankan maid who had nails driven into her legs and arms by her employers, and another who was scalded with a hot iron.

Every year, thousands of the maids run away from their employers in Saudi Arabia.

Often physically or mentally scarred, they find themselves in a legal limbo. In Saudi Arabia, the consent of employers or "sponsors" is needed before any worker can leave the country.

Last week the Observer was able to visit a secret shelter in Jeddah – there are others elsewhere in Saudi Arabia – where 50 women are being looked after by well-wishers. The shelter is tolerated by local authorities, but the women who stay there, often for months on end, are not allowed to leave once they have entered and cannot use mobile phones. Sixteen sleep in a single room.

The maids say, however, that it is better than what they left behind. Most tell of fleeing employers who did not pay their wages; many talk of physical, mental or sexual abuse.

Rose, a 40-year-old from the island of Leyte, in the far south of the Phillipines, has spent five months in the shelter after fleeing from her employers after her "madam" threw keys into her face, narrowly missing an eye. "I don't know why she did it. She lost her temper," said Rose, whose wages were consistently in arrears.

Many exist in an illegal netherworld in the sprawling city itself. Muneera, a 33-year-old from the Muslim south of the Philippines – from where many of the maids in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia come – told the Observer that she was sleeping on friends' floors after fleeing her employers. The family she worked for was "kind", Muneera said, but the hours were unbearable.

"I worked from 5am to 1am, almost every day. I got up to make the children breakfast and get them ready to go to school and then cleaned the house all day, and in the evening my employers would go out and come back at midnight and want dinner. Finally it was just too much," she said.

Beth Medina, a 46-year-old maid, said she ran away after two months. "I had no idea what it was going to be like. If there was a single hair on the floor, madam was angry at me. The only food I got was leftovers from their dinner. If there wasn't any, I got bread," she told the Observer.

Few of the maids, who are often recruited by agencies in the Philippines, have much idea about where they are going or what will be expected of them. Terms of employment are also variable. As domestic workers, they are not protected by Saudi labour law.

Riyadh recently rejected demands from Manila for medical insurance for maids and for information on employers to be supplied before their departure. For their part, Philippine officials refused to accept a cut in the minimum wage for maids from $400 a month to $200. The result is a moratorium on the hiring of maids. Indonesia has also stopped its citizens travelling to Saudi Arabia following the execution last week.

Yet the governments are likely to come to some arrangement. There have been such standoffs before, and in relative terms the foreign workers generate huge sums of cash, most of which is sent to needy families at home and provides important revenues for developing nations. Saudi Arabia was the source of £17bn of such "remittances" last year, second only to the US. Entire states in some countries depend on the funds flowing in.

Money from the Gulf has transformed parts of India, particularly the Keralan coast, where many Muslims who work in Saudi Arabia live, for example. With such huge sums at stake, the plight of the odd "camel shepherd who dies unnoticed in the desert for a wage of $50 per week" is seen as unimportant, said Mohammed Iftikar, an Indian who works on behalf of foreign workers in Jeddah.

But the problems are growing. The number of foreign workers in the kingdom has been edging up, from a quarter of the total population a decade ago to nearly a third today. At the same time, youth unemployment in Saudi Arabia is approaching 30%.

The Saudi government is now trying to impose tight restrictions on the number of foreigners any company can hire and clamping down on long-term overseas workers.

"We have a young population. We need to generate 6.5 million jobs. At the moment we have jobs that people don't like to do. So either we create jobs that people like, or we try to convince people to accept the jobs that are available," Dr Abdul Wahid bin Khalid al-Humaid, the vice-minister of labour, told the Observer in an interview in Riyadh last week. Analysts say it is unlikely, however, that Saudis will replace the foreigners soon.

Many foreign workers arrive illegally, smuggled in from Qatar, Kuwait or Yemen. There are estimated to be tens of thousands of "absconders" – as those who have run away from the jobs for which their residence permits were issued are called – from Nepal alone. And the wealth of Saudi Arabia, where the per capita GDP is more than £15,000, continues to attract more people.

Many workers both enjoy their time in Saudi Arabia and are grateful for the opportunity employment there gives them. Their example encourages others to travel too.

Eileen, a 44-year-old maid from Iloilo in the Philippines, said her employers always paid her monthly wage of £400 on time and even "invited [her] to eat with them sometimes". Though she gets up at 5.30am and works until late in the evening, she has some time off in the day and each summer travels with the family on holiday to Europe.

With the money she earns, Eileen supports the four children of her brother, who died in a car accident last year. "Maybe I am lucky," she said.

One result of the huge foreign population is a cosmopolitanism that lightens the otherwise severe and puritanical atmosphere in Saudi Arabia. Every major city has its "immigrant quarter", where people from a score or more countries fill cheap restaurants serving food from across Asia and further afield or simply sit on street corners where a dozen different languages can be heard.

In Jeddah, it is the old city, Balad. On a Friday night, its car-choked streets were full of Filipino care workers in embroidered headscarves bringing colour to their obligatory black, Saudi-style, abbaya gowns; Indian labourers smoking enthusiastically; Sudanese teenagers earning a few riyals by washing windscreens; and Afghan children begging. Recent arrivals from central Africa collected cardboard packaging to sell for recycling. In the Selamat Datang cafe, Indonesian hotel workers downed traditional dishes from home – with rice, a bowl of soup and a Pepsi – for 14 riyal (£2.30).

For Rose, the maid stuck in the secret shelter, and Muneera, the runaway sleeping on friend's floors, such scenes hold little attraction. Their needs, they say, are simple. Muneera just needs a way out of the trap she has fallen into. She says she will go to the Philippine consulate and seek help.

Rose just wants an exit visa, the money for a flight home and enough cash left over to allow her three children to go back to school. "I hope I will go soon," she said.

Source:  The Observer

Commentary: Army reservists helped Ugandan women escape human traffickers - KansasCity.com

 Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2011 02:49 AM

Mary Sanchez

The Kansas City Star

Word spread quickly among the desperate Ugandan women:
If you can somehow escape from the Iraqi household, go to the “Flying Man” statue. The Americans will help you.

Eventually, 17 women, many beaten and raped by their enslaving employers, made it inside the U.S. base in Baghdad in 2009.

The women were not U.S. citizens, nor hired by U.S. contractors, and the Americans had no jurisdiction beyond the walls of their base, having turned security matters over to Iraqi forces months earlier.

So, it would have been easy for the men of the 326th Area Support Group, an Army Reserve unit from Kansas City, Kan., to do nothing, to not get involved, to avoid risk of an international incident. That’s not the choice they made.

“I don’t know if I could have lived with myself,” said Lt. Col. Ted Lockwood, who organized the sanctuary where the victims of a human trafficking ring hid.

At least 150 Ugandan women, maybe more, are believed to have been lured into Iraq with the promise of jobs on an American military base. Instead, some were sold to wealthy Iraqi families for about $3,500 each.
Sexually assaulted, starved, worked from early in the morning until late at night, some without any pay, the women felt trapped.

“Oh, my God. I thought I would die. I thought they were going to kill me. I lost my life,” said Prossie, one of the Ugandans who found refuge within Victory Base Complex.

She said she was raped at one house where she worked. She considered taking her own life before another Ugandan woman passed her a secret message: “Get to the American base.”

Alone and in small groups, the women made their way to the landmark statue outside the sprawling base. One was so traumatized she was unable to speak and had to be helped through the gates.

Another victim was pregnant from rape. Some would later test positive for sexually transmitted diseases. One likely had been drugged. Several had infections and problems from poor nutrition. Most had bruises from recent beatings.

Samuel Tumwesigye, a Ugandan working for a private security firm at the base, first heard about the women’s plight. He told Lockwood, who helped oversee Camp Slayer, one of several installations at the Victory complex, a nearly 50-square-mile base set within the grounds of a Saddam Hussein palace.

Tumwesigye wanted to take other Ugandan guards to go rescue the women from their abusive circumstances, but the American officer warned that they could be arrested and imprisoned by Iraqi forces.

“We cannot go get the women, but if they can get here, I will protect them,” Lockwood said.
Less than three hours later, he received a call. Tumwesigye was in his office with a frightened Ugandan woman, frantic because her employer was about to send her to Syria.

Two days later, two more showed up. They were given a place to stay, set up with board games to play, puzzles and cards. At first, the women slept a lot.

For two months, the women hid on the base, their presence known by only a handful of Army officials.

“If LTC Lockwood was not there, it would have been difficult, even impossible,” Tumwesigye said.

“We just figured it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Lockwood said, although he kept his superiors informed.

He praises Tumwesigye, who risked his own safety and employment to encourage the women to flee, as well as Thair Ihssan, an Iraqi who worked for the International Organization for Migration and helped them return home.

“People just do what they have to do,” Lockwood said.

The incident is acknowledged by a four-line entry in a 359-page U.S. Department of State report chronicling the tragedy of human trafficking globally.
•••
“I am not interested in any publicity but would really like to raise awareness of the fate of these women and especially the 100+ that are still in Iraq,” Lockwood wrote in an initial email. “I do not need to be a part of your telling.”

Sorry, sir. But you do.

The 326th deserves great credit. Its members exemplify what reservists — ordinary men and women who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances — do.

Their rescue of the women was heroic, although those involved shun that term and until recently hid their exploit from publicity. Each said they never hesitated for one simple reason; it was the right thing to do.

Today, Lockwood works as a sourcing manager at the Sprint Campus in Overland Park. Originally from a small community in New York state, he has been a reservist for 22 years and comes from a family with a tradition of military service. He served in Germany during the Gulf War and completed two tours in Iraq.
His assistance of 14 Ugandan women occurred during his six-month deployment. Three more were helped by the officer who took over after Lockwood returned stateside.

Col. Charles Blaschke accompanied Lockwood whenever more women would make it to the “Flying Man,” a statue of Abbas ibn Firnas, a medieval astronomer who tried to soar with homemade wings, that was not far from the base.

The fear in the women’s eyes as they first arrived is seared in his memory, said the Kansas City litigation paralegal with 34 years in the reserves.

“We just tried to do the right thing and make them feel like a human being again,” Blaschke said. “They had just escaped from slavery.”

The men would then take the women to the post exchange, offering their credit cards so personal items could be bought. They were given medical attention as well, outfitted with clothes, shoes, anything they needed to feel more comfortable. Some of the women still treasure the stuffed toys Blaschke gave them their first night on the base.

For his role, Lockwood’s family was given a brown and white cow by Tumwesigye’s family. His son later named it Jessie Belle. The cow is cared for by Tumwesigye’s mother, who lives near Mbarara, Uganda.
•••

You would not be reading this now if it weren’t for a trial that was scheduled to begin Thursday in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. The case, now delayed by a judge’s absence, involves five of the rescued women, including Prossie.

“My life is still very hard,” she said. “I used all of my savings to get to that country.”

The former teacher’s thoughts came in spurts in a brief phone conversation from Kampala. The Kansas City Star is not using her full name, as sexual assault carries a horrible stigma for victims in her nation.

The women are accusing the company that lured them out of Uganda with responsibility for their suffering. In addition, they are charging their government as partly culpable.

Calls for comment from the recruiting firm, Uganda Veterans Development, were not answered. Nor did the Ugandan Ministry of Labor, which issued permits to the recruiting firm charged with trafficking the women, reply to requests for comment.

Because Uganda only recently passed the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, the importance of the charges is amplified, said Ladislaus Kiiza Rwakafuuzi, an attorney handling the cases for FIDA, an international federation of women lawyers.

The victims’ treatment could result in the first prosecution of its kind under the new law, Rwakafuuzi said.
Lockwood contacted me after I wrote an opinion piece on rape as a tool of war. He was seeking help to publicize the trial and to raise funds for the women’s cause.

An estimated $18,000 is needed for witness protection because of the nature of the case and $38,000 in projected legal costs, according to Rwakafuuzi
•••

The term “international incident” was used by more than one official knowledgeable about the possibility that someone would attempt to kidnap the women or harm them.

“There were a lot of potential implications,” said retired Col. Tom Hardy of Olathe, who teaches at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

To understand the sensitivity of the situation, realize that at the time, the U.S. military was attempting to hand authority to the Iraqis. And it was Iraqis — some probably influential — whom the women accused of the abuse.

Some of the women received death threats in cellphone calls from the people who had bought them. Lockwood stationed an armed female guard near the women, sequestered in a building once used as Baath party headquarters.

Hardy, at the time Lockwood’s immediate supervisor, never actually saw the women but, trusting Lockwood, gave permission to continue allowing them on base. He constantly checked with other officials, keeping a chain of command aware of developments.

Each man worries about the Ugandans they did not save, hopeful the trial will force the government to find out what happened to the women who are unaccounted for.

“I think about it,” said Blaschke of Lee’s Summit. “I have a daughter who is 21 and they are someone’s daughter, too.”

“The world is a horrible place,” Lockwood said. “I’ve seen some horrible things. If it can be imagined, then it can be done.”

Yes, but the same is true of the good that people can envision.

The reservists imagined how they could help. And then they just did it.

Commentary: Army reservists helped Ugandan women escape human traffickers - KansasCity.com
Source:  kansascity.com

The Human Trafficking Project: Qatar: How The World's Wealthiest Nation Per Capita Relies on Migrant Worker Labor

Thursday, May 06, 2010

Map of Qatar

In an attempt to further expand the scope of my research, I recently attended a few meetings and conferences in the State of Qatar to better assess the human rights and migrant labor issues that this majestic city-state currently faces.

Qatar hosts the most dramatic demographic contradictions between its local population and the migrant worker community that it must outsource in order to accommodate its rapid and unparalleled Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Industry. With only 350,000 Qatari citizens inhabiting a nation that boasts the highest production and export of LNG in the world, Qatar ranks number one for the world's highest GDP per capita income and embodies a rentier welfare-state in its most basic description.

However, the wealth that Qataris enjoy is at the expense of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers that are brought to the country on two-year contracts to work in nearly every sector and industry that the country has consecrated, mostly because the Qataris have no interest in working in positions that are not managerial or administrative. They hold a reputation that is even more negatively slanted than their Kuwaiti counter-parts, attributed largely to the country's massive natural resource wealth that provides a backbone for lavish lifestyles that are serviced and maintained by the hands of poor, outsourced laborers.

However, it is unfair to immediately dismiss the Qataris in their efforts to regulate and protect their migrant worker population. Higher income for Qataris has trickled down the economic ladder and raised income levels for migrant workers to higher salaries than anywhere else in the region. Legitimacy of private sector employment contracts is upheld and regulated by the Ministry of Interior. Unlike other parts of the region, Qatar maintains a strict turn-over of migrant workers to prevent long-term residency and the potential to reap attractive welfare benefits.

As a result, sponsors are less able to withhold wages and force their employees to stay in the country longer than the 2-year period the law allows. Although issues like withheld passports, coercive employment tactics (i.e. false contracts), and rights to change employers continue to remain crucial issues for anti-trafficking and human rights advocates, Qatar has seen rapid advancements under its labor law, with many foreseeable positive developments on the horizon.

Some of these developments have already come to fruition, and include, the abolition of the Camel Jockey industry. Previous to the Qatari Government's intervention in this regionally cultural tradition, underage children or "camel jockeys" were recruited from south Asia to participate in extremely dangers recreational races for entertainment purposes. Many were seriously injured and malnourished to keep them within race-weight standards. Now, the industry has made use of electronic jockeys instead, which has allegedly stopped the flow of the children who were previously trafficked into the country and exploited.

Another major development is the incorporation of anti-trafficking statutes under the current labor law. I will underscore that there is still no anti-trafficking law (although talk of drafting one has been reported); nevertheless, statutes exist that make use of similar language and highlight relative clauses that penalize trafficking of laborers. Qataris have even been tried, convicted, and imprisoned under these statutes-something barely seen in arguably more labor-friendly countries like Bahrain.

Like its neighbors, Qatari labor law maintains a crucial fault with regard to its domestic worker population (including housemaids, drivers, cooks and gardeners) who are not offered any legal protection under the current labor law or benefits that are awarded to private sector employees. Salaries, days-off and contracts are the responsibility of the sponsor and offer considerable room for ambiguity and abuse to exploitative employers. However, in response to growing criticisms from the international communities towards Qatar and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), new interest has developed in drafting a formal labor law that will better regulate Qatar domestic worker population.

Featured on the front page of one of the country's principle English-speaking newspapers, The Peninsula, an article described the development of a new domestic labor law being drafted by a special panel tasked with finalizing the regulation of rights and duties of domestic workers. The panel will incorporate representatives from several government agencies and will review with other GCC countries. The draft law may finally provide privileges to domestic employees, like end-of-service benefits, annual leave, and free medical care. These and other formal arrangements would have to be included in contracts between sponsors and their employees and would require endorsement by the Labor Department to be considered legally valid. The law might also regulate the functioning of manpower agencies and their role in hiring domestic workers in the country, The Peninsula reported.

And finally, the sponsorship system. Found in all countries except for Bahrain officially, but actually found in all countries of the Gulf unofficially, Qatar's sponsorship system seems to be the most archaic and limited with regard to a worker's access to mobility. As is required in Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, a sponsor must provide consent for his employer to change to a different sponsor. In Qatar, the process is further complicated with the addition of a second party that must approve a change of employment as well-the Ministry of Interior. Qatar, like Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait has embraced a new economic development model that "ization-izes" the national population and encourages locals to enter the job market. Limiting positions for expatriates is an effective way to open up the job market to locals but discourages the professional development of expatriates.

Qatar presents an intriguing case study for human trafficking and migrant worker issues in the Arabian Gulf. I intend to keep my attention partially focused on the peninsula as it embarks on a proactive course of action to improve its labor laws and the lives of its expatriate workforce. I am sure there will be some follow-up.

Posted by Tyler Logan at 7:00 AM
Labels: Child Trafficking, Domestic Labor, Domestic Slavery, Government, Human Rights, Immigration, Labor Issues, Legislation, Qatar, Weak Law

The Human Trafficking Project: Qatar: How The World's Wealthiest Nation Per Capita Relies on Migrant Worker Labor