Welcome to the movement to end slavery.
Uploaded by UNOHCHR on Sep 26, 2011
UN independent expert on contemporary forms of slavery Gulnara Shahinian says despite the abolition of slave trade years ago, it still manifests itself today in various forms. She called for a stop in modern forms of slavery including bonded labour.
Workers are powerless against the contractors used by multinationals who relocate to wherever production is cheapest
The re-emergence of slavery on ships off West Africa is profoundly shocking but it is not a surprise. Last week slavery its modern form came to light in cases of forced labour uncovered on trawlers fishing for the European market. In a haunting echo of the 18th century triangular trade, west African workers were found off the coast of Sierra Leone on board boats where they lived and worked in ships' holds with less than a metre of head height, sometimes for 18 hours a day for no pay, packed like sardines to sleep in spaces too small to stand up, with their documents taken from them and no means of escape.
It is no accident that globalisation has seen the reemergence of slavery. The human degradation off West Africa is replicated elsewhere. I first came across modern slavery when investigating the UK chicken supply chain in Thailand in 2002. UK retailers and manufacturers now source much of their cheap commodity chicken from Asian factories. On the subcontracted farms around Bangkok that supply the international poultry processing factories I found illegal Burmese migrants trapped in debt bondage and forced labour. Fifteen Burmese refugees, interviewed for me by the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, described sleeping in one room on the floor working whatever hours their Thai boss required of them, without pay and without a day off for two months. They had been kept in order by violence and by the threat of deportation if they complained.
In Brazil, investigating the explosion in soya production in the Amazon region for my book Eat Your Heart Out, I heard of the slaves found on farms being cleared in the rainforest. A Dominican priest, Xavier Plassat, who campaigns to free them told me how he had just returned with government swat squads from a farm 60km off the road where 200 workers were being kept in slavery, labouring without pay, deprived of freedom of movement and controlled by debt bondage. They had no clean water and little food and were living 30 to a room. Plassat believed slavery and agribusiness were inextricably linked. Monoculture for export, the large-scale intensive farming dominated by transnational corporations (TNC), and favoured by trade rules and international financial institutions, had created the conditions for slavery by eliminating the traditional small scale farming that provided food for 60% of the Brazilian population. He is not alone. Kevin Bales, the great expert on modern slavery, has shown how driving peasant farmers off the land has created a new supply of dispossessed workers who can be pressed into this condition.
Expansionist agriculture and empires have always depended on slave labour, as Latin authors of the Roman empire complained centuries ago. Today, we live in an era when the dominant powers don't officially "do" empire, so economic control takes a new privatised form in the TNC. Modern slavery has evolved to match. The straightforward ownership of chattel slavery is gone, replaced instead by an outsourced, subcontracted kind of control over people, which can be terminated when they have served their purpose. The transnationals universally abhor any idea of slavery or forced labour and yet it is found in their supply chains. Slaves and exploited migrants, often driven into migration by the squeeze on family agriculture, are what make the economics of today's agribusiness work.
In a globalised world, footloose corporations have relocated to wherever labour and resources are cheapest. And then in order to compete, companies in the developed world have reimported the labour conditions of the least developed countries with the fewest protections back to Europe and the US. So even in rural England I have found examples of debt-bonded South African workers and Anti-Slavery International finds itself taking up the plight of Mexican farm workers suffering extreme exploitation in California.
It was in part revulsion among consumers of the products of slavery in the 19th century that led to the movement to abolish it.
The sugar trade of the 17th and 18th centuries unlocked the power of mass consumption in England. Slaves on the plantations of the Caribbean laboured to produce it, creating wealth that mostly returned to Britain, and for others to accumulate capital. They paid with their lives. But it was also the sugar trade that threw up one of the earliest examples of ethical shopping.
An early 19th century sugar bowl in London's Museum of Docklands is inscribed with the message: "East India Sugar not made by Slaves. By Six Families using East India instead of West India sugar, one less slave is required." Like so much ethical shopping it exposes its own limitations. Abolishing slavery in the 19th century required reform of a whole political and economic system.
How should we respond to news of slavery re-emerging today? Stamping it out needs as big an overhaul of prevailing power structures as previously. And yet, it was on small tokens of concern that a political movement against slavery was originally built. It's time we made our revulsion clear again.
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| Dear Anti-Slavery supporter A week of special programming starting Monday 30 August on Channel 4 (UK only) uncovers the dark reality of slavery in Britain today. Dispatches: Britain's Secret Slaves - Monday 30 August, 7.30pm A special documentary investigating the plight of overseas domestic workers in Britain who are kept locked up by their employers and subjected to sexual, physical and psychological abuse. I am Slave - Monday 30 August, 8.30pm Written and produced by the team who made The Last King of Scotland and inspired by real-life events, I Am Slave is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for freedom from modern-day slavery in London. A powerful story of imprisonment, cruelty and despair, but also one of hope and humanity, starring Wunmi Mosaku. Hunt for Britain 's Sex Traffickers - starts Tuesday 31 August, 9.00pm The story of the biggest UK police operation against sex trafficking, following the investigation and eventual sentencing of some of Britain 's most serious sex traffickers. In three parts from Tuesday 31 August to Thursday 2 September. We hope the upcoming programmes inspire you to get involved as we need your help now more then ever to END SLAVERY TODAY. To take action against slavery, please add your voice at www.antislavery.org/campaigns/ Thank you for your ongoing support,  Gemma Wolfes Campaigns & Outreach Officer g.wolfes@antislavery.org If you would like to make a donation to support Anti-Slavery International's work please click here Connect with us on
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Br. Xavier Plassat , of the Pastoral Land Commission of Episcopal Conference of Brazil (a CRS partner). Photo by Jim Stipe/CRS
Catholic Relief Services partner, Br. Xavier Plassat, is being honored today by the Department of State as one of seven heroes in the fight against human trafficking. Br. Xavier, a Dominican Friar, is coordinator of the Pastoral Land Commission’s (CPT) National Campaign Against Slave Labor, which works to eradicate slavery in Brazil. He answered a few questions for us on his work and the status of slavery in Brazil.
What does slavery look like?
Modern-day slavery in Brazil is a form of exploitation in which rural workers, generally illiterate, landless, and without knowledge of their rights, are lured by middlemen or employers with false promises of good jobs and money. These workers are taken to work in remote areas in Northeastern Brazil and are forced to work in forestry, charcoal production, the ranching industry, and on sugar, cotton and soybean plantations. In many cases these workers have no access to clean drinking water, sufficient food, and are not provided with a place to sleep. Nevertheless, they are charged exorbitant prices for their lodging and transportation and are living in a constant deficit cycle in which they cannot work off the debt they’ve incurred.
How does the CPT work to help these workers?
We work on two fronts, with the workers themselves and with the Brazilian authorities. The victims are obviously our priority. We welcome these workers. We listen to their stories. We encourage workers to denounce their treatment with the authorities, so that there is an investigation that will, hopefully, lead to the release of those who remain on the farm.
We also pressure authorities to investigate claims, take action against employers, and adopt measures to help avoid people from being re-enslaved. One of the problems is that this form of enslavement is cyclical. It’s made up of three components: poverty, greed, and impunity. Whenever you leave one of these components operating you allow the cycle to work once more.
Releasing slaves is not enough, then?
Releasing slaves is not eradicating slavery. To eradicate slavery you have to address the question of impunity, poverty, and greed. The current model of farming in Brazil often feeds off the fact that employers go unpunished so they continue to mistreat workers, the poverty of the workers and lack of access to their own land makes it so they often feel they have no choice but to work in these conditions, and the greed of employers doesn’t motivate them to improve working conditions, all these situations are fueling the cycle of enslavement.
What is being done to address the issue of employer abuse?
The Brazilian government has created a “dirty list,” that publically names those who have been found guilty of allowing slavery on their properties. These people are prohibited from accessing public funds, and several banks are cutting credit to them.
What advances have been made in the fight against slave labor?
We have had some advances in the last 10-15 years. The first step was that the authorities acknowledged that there was a problem and created a special task force to investigate claims of slavery. Since the task force’s inception in 1995, around 38,000 workers have been released, 90 percent of them in the last 7 years.
What does this TIP Hero award mean to you and the fight against slave labor in Brazil?
It’s an honor that Brazil is being held up as something of a model of not only acknowledging the problem, but taking action against it. Even so, with all this concerted effort, why hasn’t Brazil been able to eradicate slavery? We haven’t been able to do so because our national efforts to combat slavery are insufficient. This award helps to shine a light on the job that we’re doing—that the CTP is taking the necessary steps to eradicate slavery, but it is not saying that Brazil has won the war against slavery. We are on the right track, but we are conscious of the fact that there are other demands that must be addressed that have not been addressed. CTP is here to insist that actions be taken until no one is forced to live and work in slave like conditions.
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