Impoverished Cambodians For Sale - Inter Press Service

Source: Inter Press Service

PHNOM PENH, Jan 24 2014 (IPS) - Many Cambodian women arrive in South Korea or China for marriage, only to find themselves being chosen as mistresses, say labour rights activists. While young Cambodian men, who travel to Thailand to work on fishing boats, often fall prey to drug abuse.

Read more:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/impoverished-cambodians-sale/

U.S. forces cracking down on human trafficking in Korea | Army Times | armytimes.com

Source: Army Times | armytimes.com

The U.S. military is cracking down on troops who support businesses connected to human trafficking, blocking airmen from spending money at so-called “juicy bars” and reminding all personnel of the prevalence of the problem businesses around bases in South Korea.

Continue reading:
http://www.armytimes.com/article/20130906/NEWS06/309060027/U-S-forces-cracking-down-human-trafficking-Korea

Related articles

• Vigilance urged vs human trafficking

Asia Times Online :: Empire and trafficking in Northeast Asia

Source: Asia Times Online 

Check out  Markus Bell's interesting discussion at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KOR-01-050613.html

Markus Bell is a PhD candidate in anthropology at The Australian National University. He is currently researching transnational networks of North Korean migrants. 

USFK video links 'juicy bars' with human trafficking - News - Stripes

http://www.stripes.com/news/usfk-video-links-juicy-bars-with-human-trafficking-1.201373

SOURCE: Stars and Stripes

Human Trafficking Public Service Announcement 
Video source: USFK Public Affairs

By JON RABIROFF AND YOO KYONG CHANG

Stars and Stripes

Published: December 20, 2012

RELATED

• Stars and Stripes stories about the 'juicy bars' in South Korea

Filipino women stand in the doorway of one of the juicy bars in The Ville -- just outside Camp Casey inn South Korea -- as a group of soldiers walks by in July, 2009.

JON RABIROFF/STARS AND STRIPES FILE PHOTO

SEOUL — Two years after the U.S. State Department cited Korean “juicy bars” for suspected human trafficking, U.S. Forces Korea is promoting a video acknowledging that the bars routinely patronized by thousands of American soldiers encourage the sexual exploitation of the young hostesses who work there.

A public service video recently posted on the YouTube page of USFK’s Public Affairs Office states unequivocally that “buying overpriced drinks in a juicy bar supports the human trafficking industry, a form of modern-day slavery.”

Yet American commanders continue to allow U.S. servicemembers to patronize the bars as long as the establishments have not been caught directly engaging in prostitution or human trafficking.

USFK commander Gen. James D. Thurman declined a request to explain whether commanders are sending American soldiers a mixed message regarding the juicy bars, which are found clustered in seedy entertainment districts near some of the U.S. military’s larger bases in Korea.

The bars are primarily staffed by Philippine women who are imported to flirt with servicemembers and encourage them to buy expensive juice drinks — usually about $10 each — in exchange for more time to talk and flirt.

A 2009 Stars and Stripes investigation found that “juicy girls” who fall short of juice-sale quotas are sometimes forced by club owners to prostitute themselves to make up the revenue difference — a practice known as “bar fining.”

In addition, some of the juicy girls arrange to meet customers outside of work, where they strike sex-for-cash deals or pose as girlfriends who then hit the men up for money, purportedly to send home or pay off debts.

Since that report, the Philippine government has tried to tighten its emigration regulations in hopes of reducing the numbers of women brought into South Korea for the primary purpose of flirting with and/or prostituting themselves to American service members.

The U.S. State Department, in its 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, referenced the plight of women who work at the juicy bars near U.S. military facilities as one of its ongoing human trafficking concerns in South Korea.

The recently-posted USFK public service announcement — which aired earlier this year on AFN — puts juicy bars under a much harsher spotlight.

“Right now, young women are being lured to Korea thinking they will become singers and dancers,” the narrator says. “Instead, they will be sexually exploited in order to support their families.”

The spot ends with the words “Stop human trafficking” on the screen, along with the website address for the Defense Department’s “Combating trafficking in persons” page.

Yet USFK officials have declined to put all juicy bars off-limits.

In 2010, then-USFK commander Gen. Walter Sharp said, “The bottom line is that juicy bars … have women that are there to talk to soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines. You can’t presume that things go beyond that, which is what you would have to do if you want to put them (all) off-limits.”

Instead, USFK officials maintain they are doing all they can to make sure that juicy bars frequented by U.S. servicemembers are operating legally.

“(USFK) opposes prostitution, forced labor and any activities that contribute to trafficking in persons,” USFK officials said in a statement provided in response to queries from Stars and Stripes.

“According to (USFK) policy, all personnel are required to respect Korean laws or risk apprehension, trial and confinement.”

USFK said it enforces a zero-tolerance policy toward human trafficking by placing juicy bars caught tolerating or promoting prostitution off-limits, as well as by joining South Korean authorities on “town patrols” in the areas around U.S. bases and maintaining a hotline.

“We may determine that an establishment is engaging in human trafficking by observing a number of factors, including a high turnover of young workers, an inordinate amount of private security or the known solicitation of prostitution,” the statement said.

Yi Hun-hui, president of the Korea Foreigner Tourist Facility Association, which represents about 200 base-area juicy bars, said he was not happy about the video posted on the USFK website.

“Their logic goes over my head,” Yi said. “Everybody is equal before the law.”

He contended there is nothing wrong with a U.S. servicemember spending as much as $100 in a night to drink and talk to a young woman in a public place like a juicy bar.

rabiroffj@pstripes.osd.mil
chang.yookyong@pstripes.osd.mil

Related articles

• 16 Ways to Take Action Against Human Trafficking | The Pixel Project's "16 For 16" Campaign
• Corporate Responsibility for Human Trafficking & Five Steps that Your Company Can Take Right Now - Corporate Social Responsibility
• New report creates a pathway for Obama administration to abolish modern-day slavery | Latina Lista
• International Development - Fighting human trafficking: 5 lessons from the field

North Korea: Human Traffickers and the Chinese Market for Brides - Newsweek and The Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/north-korea-human-traffickers-and-the-chinese-market-for-brides.html

Source: Newsweek and The Daily Beast

How human traffickers are cashing in on the Chinese market for North Korean women—and how some victims escape.

Steven Kim, an American businessman from Long Island, New York, may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides. He acquired this expertise accidentally. He likes to say it was God’s plan.

A decade or so ago he was living in China, overseeing the manufacture of chairs he sold to retail clients in the United States, when he heard about a secret church that catered to the South Korean businessmen who worked in the Shenzhen industrial zone, not far from his apartment. It wasn’t registered with the Chinese government, as required by law, so it operated underground, billing itself as a cultural association. There was no sign on the door and no cross on the roof. The 100 or so congregants had learned about the church as Kim had, by word of mouth.

Kim, a practicing Christian, became a regular attendee. One Sunday he noticed two shabbily dressed men seated in a corner of the room. After worship, he went up to them, said hello, and learned to his astonishment that they were from North Korea. They had escaped across the Tumen River to northeast China and traveled 2,000 miles south to Guangdong province, a journey that took two months. They hoped to find a way to slip across the border into Hong Kong. “They came to church asking for help,” he says. “But the church would only feed them, give them a few dollars, and let them go.”

Kim was outraged. “I asked the pastor, ‘Why do you let them go?’” “Because we’re afraid,” the pastor replied. “If we’re caught helping North Koreans, the church will be shut down.” Kim took the two men home.

That was the start. Kim began to assist North Korean refugees clandestinely. He provided safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries. Before long, he gained a reputation along the new underground railroad as someone North Koreans could count on for assistance. Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them as brides.

Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China. It’s named after Article 318 of the Chinese criminal code, the law under which Kim was arrested in September 2003 as he led nine North Koreans in a prayer meeting at his apartment. Convicted of helping illegal migrants, he spent four years in a Chinese prison. His home office now, on a quiet street on suburban Long Island, is a luxurious contrast to the Chinese prison cell he shared with a dozen felons. On the morning of my visit, his cellphone rings repeatedly with calls from South Korea, China, and Southeast Asia regarding a rescue operation in the works. It is not until lunchtime, when most of Asia is asleep, that his phone finally goes quiet.

A missionary on the lookout for North Korean refugees in Yanbian. (Chien-Chi Chang / Magnum)

Kim clearly has his hands full. The only practical escape route for fugitives from North Korea is through China, and human-rights groups say roughly 80 percent of those thousands of refugees are women and girls who have become “commodities for purchase,” in Kim’s words. The most popular marketplaces are in the three Chinese provinces closest to the North Korean border—Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang—but North Korean brides are sold to men throughout China. Many of the buyers are farmers. Some have physical or mental disabilities that make them unsuitable as husbands in the eyes of Chinese women. In almost every case, the men are buying the one thing they want most in life: a wife.

But why import brides from North Korea? The answer is China’s family-planning laws. Ever since the one-child policy went into effect in 1979, Beijing has enforced it through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilization, and even, human-rights groups charge, infanticide. The policy has had its intended effect of slowing the rate of expansion of China’s population. But there has been an unwelcome side effect: an unnaturally high male-to-female ratio.

Women may hold up half the sky, in Mao Zedong’s famous phrase, but they are treated as second-class citizens in much of modern China. Many couples still favor sons, both to carry on the family name and support them in their old age. In rural areas the birth of a son heralds the arrival of an extra farmhand as soon as the boy is old enough to hold a hoe. Not so long ago in China, an unwanted baby girl might be drowned in a bucket at birth or left unattended to die. These days abortion is the preferred method, and ultrasound tests let couples find out the baby’s sex early in the pregnancy for about $12, well within the means of most couples. There are laws against using ultrasound this way, but they’re widely ignored. “Sex-selection abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” says the British medical journal BMJ.

The result is an epic surplus of bachelors. The Chinese have a euphemism for permanently unmarried men: guang gun—“bare branches” on the family tree. The unmarried men are often desperate—for companionship, for sex, for household help. In rural areas the bride shortage is exacerbated by young Chinese women’s preference for urban life and modern-minded husbands. Young women are fleeing the farm in droves, attracted by well-paying factory jobs and more comfortable urban lifestyles. In the three provinces closest to North Korea, the ratio of young men to young women is a staggering 14 to 1, according to an estimate from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

The situation was all but made for flesh traffickers. As Kim explains, a chain of “suppliers,” “wholesale providers,” and “retail sellers” has developed. Stage one, as he calls it, takes place inside North Korea, where the suppliers lure women from their homes with promises of a lucrative trip to China. These recruiters—either North Korean nationals or Korean-Chinese, and usually male—typically hang out around urban train stations in the border regions and chat up attractive young women who pass by. Their marks are often rural women who have come to the city to sell crops grown on an illegal private plot or scavenged from the forest. They make a tempting promise: you can come home after a few months with more money than you could make in a year here. For an impoverished young woman with no job prospects, it can be an irresistible offer.

Other recruiters travel from village to village, keeping an eye out for potential brides. They spot a pretty young woman and follow her home. Kim explains what happens next. “When they see a widow with a beautiful daughter, they say: ‘Why do you leave your daughter like that? If you send her to China, then she can get money and have an education. Why don’t you send her?’ They keep talking and gain trust, and then—‘OK,’ the mother says, ‘I trust you. Take her.’ Then he takes the girl into China and sells her. This is one of the tricks.” Kim shudders. “Horrible.”

Stories abound of girls who have gone to China and never returned. But many women are young enough, inexperienced enough, or desperate enough to believe “it won’t happen to me.” One former bride I interviewed—she called herself Naomi—described how she was befriended by a traveling salesman from China who offered to guide her to where relatives of her father lived on the other side of the border. She left home in the middle of the night. “I didn’t want my parents to know I was leaving,” Naomi told me. She knew she was taking a risk and didn’t want them to dissuade her. “I thought I would go for a few days and come back.” Only when she was delivered to a Chinese farmer did she realize that the salesman’s “wares” were human, and female.

If trickery fails, recruiters have been known to resort to kidnapping. Hannah, another former bride, was a teacher in Pyongyang until she accompanied the mother of one of her pupils to the border region, hoping to make a little extra money. The friend was planning to purchase fashionable Chinese-made clothing from a Chinese salesman for resale in the capital.

After they concluded the deal, the Chinese salesman invited the two women to dinner. The food was drugged. The two women woke up in a dark room, hands and feet bound, groggy from the narcotic. As Hannah struggled to come to, she heard her friend cry out: “Teacher, I think we’ve been sold!” They were inside China, destined for forced marriages. They never saw each other again. “I never knew such things happened,” Hannah told me.

The supplier’s job ends when he delivers the woman to the Chinese side of the Tumen or Yalu River. His fee, Steve Kim says, runs between $80 and $300 per woman, depending upon the quality of the “product” and the difficulty of the crossing. Out of that sum, the supplier is expected to cover any bribes he must pay to North Korean border guards for information about safe crossing points or an agreement that they’ll look the other way at a prearranged time.

Stage two begins there, where wholesaler providers are waiting to receive the women. The wholesaler’s job is to escort the women past Chinese ID checks to a safer place farther from the border. That is typically somewhere in the Yanbian area of Jilin province. The area’s full name is Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, and it is home to a large number of ethnic Koreans, making it a good place for North Koreans to hide in plain sight—or in the case of the North Korean brides, to be hidden. Some of the women are sold directly to Korean-Chinese men who live in the region. From the woman’s point of view, this is usually the better option. Life with a Korean-Chinese man, in a community where the Korean language is spoken, is preferable to life with a Han Chinese man who speaks only Mandarin and whose culture and food will be unfamiliar.

Other brides move on to stage three and are resold to retailers for between $500 and $800 each. The retailers in turn sell the women to their clients, usually Han Chinese in other parts of the country, for between $1,200 and $1,500 per woman, depending upon her age and appearance.

At some point the woman realizes what is happening to her. She then has two choices: go through with the marriage or try to escape. This is not really a choice. The woman is on her own in a strange country. She knows no one. She doesn’t speak the language. As she quickly finds out, in escaping to China from North Korea, she has exchanged one form of bondage for another. Most accept the inevitable and agree to be sold. They reason, not illogically, that life with a Chinese husband, even an abusive one, is preferable to arrest, repatriation, and automatic imprisonment in a North Korean labor camp for illegally leaving the country. Nevertheless, the couple’s living arrangement will have no standing under Chinese law. Because the woman has no official identity papers, the marriage cannot be legally registered.

Such pseudomarriages may be voluntary—at least in the sense that the woman has the theoretical option of turning down a man’s offer. But it is wrong to consider it a true choice. It is “a means of survival or livelihood,” says Lee Keum-soon, a senior researcher with the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. Lee has interviewed hundreds of North Korean women who have settled in the South. In many cases, she says, a voluntary marriage is indistinguishable from a forced marriage. The woman’s few alternatives may include prostitution or online stripping. A woman who cannot speak Chinese would not be able to work in a restaurant or a store. The North Korean woman “would quickly realize that there was no alternative but to establish a live-in relationship with a Chinese man to avoid a police roundup,” Lee observes. “She would have to choose to live-in as a relatively safe means of staying in China.”

The rule of law—to the extent that it prevails in China and to the extent that a North Korean with no exposure to such a concept is capable of understanding it—doesn’t apply to North Korean refugees. If a woman has relatives in China, they often urge her, not without reason, to strike a bargain with a Chinese man who will feed and house her in exchange for her labor and sexual favors. If she contacts the police or other Chinese officials, she can expect worse treatment. If the police abide by the law, they will arrest her and send her back to North Korea. If they are corrupt, they will sell her to another bride broker.

North Korean brides are “thrice victimized,” says Ambassador Mark Lagon, former director of the U.S. State Department’s human-trafficking office. “They have fled starvation and human-rights abuses in North Korea,” he notes. “They are subject to abuse as undocumented migrants in China. And if they are sent back to North Korea, they face severe punishment, even execution in some cases.”

How bad can it get? Ask Bang Mi-sun. She crossed the Tumen River, motivated, she later said, by one thought: “I might find refuge in China.” Her husband had died of starvation in North Korea. Her elder daughter had disappeared, and her two younger children needed her help. She hoped to find work in China. Instead, she found Chinese police waiting for her, ready to send her back to North Korea unless she agreed to be sold. Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., she described what happened next: “My first buyer sold me to another buyer, and then that buyer sold me in turn to another buyer, each buyer for additional profit.“

“I was being sold like a beast,” she said. “I remember these Chinese brokers would call us, those who were being sold, pigs. Well, I was the best pig they had. I was sold at top price.” Her first husband told her he had paid 7,000 yuan for her—then the equivalent of about $850. “He told me he would kill me if I did not listen to him.” But she soon got a reprieve of sorts: she was abducted and sold her to another man. “I found out that there are brokers who would take the people who had been sold and take them away and sell them again to a third party. I never knew that this buying and selling of people existed,” she said. “I was sold again and again.” Eventually she was arrested and deported to North Korea, where she was beaten and sent to a labor reeducation camp.

She finally escaped again to China and made her way to South Korea. At the Washington press conference, she stood on a chair, lifted up her skirt, and displayed the deep furrows in her thighs, scars where she’d been tortured. She asked, “Why do North Korean women have to be treated like pigs and sold like pigs and suffer these things?”

Many North Korean brides have asked themselves the same thing, and some have made it to freedom. Kim relies on them to tell the friends they left behind in China. After brides escape, “they tell us there are 10, 15 more women like them in their village,” he says. “And then they call them.”

He lifts his hand to his ear, playing the part of a rescued North Korean woman calling from Seoul to a friend in China. “‘Yeah, I’m here. It’s so-o-o good. Why don’t you come?’” The bride who has escaped then gives Kim’s phone number or that of a colleague in Seoul to her friends. “If they want, they contact us,” he says. “That’s how it happens.” The next step is a phone interview with Kim. Does the woman fully understand the risks of escape? Is she willing to take the chance that she could be arrested and repatriated? If she has children with her Chinese husband, is she prepared to leave them behind?

Some women decide not to leave. “Many women have adjusted to their new lives even though they were trafficked,” he says. They have enough to eat. Their living conditions are far better than anything they experienced in North Korea. Their neighbors help shield them from arrest when security officials come snooping. “The husband is happy, and they’re not complaining,” Kim says. “They’re taking it as destiny. They tell me, ‘Don’t bother our family.’ They are living peacefully.”

If a woman asks for help and Kim agrees, he goes to work quickly. He figures out how much the rescue will cost and begins to organize his network on the new underground railroad. If the woman is still living with her Chinese husband, the first step will be to arrange for her to get to a secure location from which she can begin her journey.

Then he sends out a plea for money to his email list of supporters. Typical is an appeal from a January 2010 newsletter: “We have received another call for help from three trafficked North Korean women in China,” the newsletter states. “They are all from the same hometown in North Korea. According to the older woman named Choi, they have escaped from the captors [and are] hiding in a northern city of Jilin province. We ask your support in prayers and financially.”

The basement price of one of 318 Partners’ rescues is $1,300. Most cost much more—$3,000 or above. Money is so tight that Kim sometimes asks the rescued women to pledge to pay back $1,000 of the costs once they get to Seoul and receive financial help from the South Korean government. There is a rough symmetry in that figure. After all, $1,000 is roughly what a Chinese man will pay for a North Korean bride.

Melanie Kirkpatrick, a writer-journalist based in Connecticut, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Japan’s fight against modern-day sex slavery hurt by backward attitude - The Japan Daily Press

http://japandailypress.com/japans-fight-against-modern-day-sex-slavery-hurt-by-backward-attitude-0311022

SOURCE: The Japan Daily Press

By Cynthia Ruble  /   September 3, 2012  / 

According to the “Trafficking in Persons Report 2012,” Japan was rated a Tier 2 country. This means, “The Government of Japan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.” After 8 years of a Tier 2 rating, its “significant efforts” seem to be falling short.

One of the issues reported yet again was Japanese male tourists who continue to provide demand for child prostitution in other countries.

Among the G-8 countries, Japan and Russia share the dubious distinction of a Tier 2 rating. In Asia, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan are Tier 1, or top-rated nations for fully complying with the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking or sex/labor slavery. If you are someone who has never heard of this world-wide scourge, here are some stories from victims all over the world.

Japan also is still not a party to the Trafficking Protocol (UN TIP Protocol) adopted by the United Nations in 2000. It is the only G-8 country not to be so (152 have become parties, including China in 2010.) This protocol defines human trafficking and the measures that need to be taken against it. It states that “The consent of a victim of trafficking…shall be irrelevant.” People who are recruited, though not forced, and later exploited and abused are included as trafficking victims.

Still, in 2012 Japan will not make it clear that this kind of abuse should be illegal. Instead Japan narrowly defines trafficking as the buying and selling of persons, and it hasn’t become a party to the Protocol.¹

In my last article, I quoted the Polaris Project as saying, “Japan is recognized as having one of the most severe human trafficking problems among the major industrialized democracies.” However, the meaning of this was completely missed by an intelligent Japanese friend of mine. She says this is an issue that is not well understood in Japan.

In fact, a Japanese colleague did a search for me and found that the 2012 Trafficking in Persons report, which came out in June, was hardly mentioned in the Japanese press. Could it be an oversight?

The Trafficking in Persons Report began in 2005. I remember at that time reading about this growing world-wide problem and the fact that Japan wasn’t doing much to address it. I was surprised to find out recently that it has made only modest improvement since, and that at the urging of the international community.

Realize that even Tier 1 countries have problems with modern-day sex/labor slavery. No country is perfectly clean. In fact, Japan is not only a destination for sex slaves but also a transit country for persons trafficked from East Asia to North America.

A speaker at the event held for the release of the 2012 report encapsulated the voice of a trafficker: “Come with me, I’ll help you start a modeling career. Pay me $10,000, I’ll get you that job. I love you. I’ll take care of you.”

Polaris Project states, “Once the women and children are brought into Japan, a process of ‘seasoning’ or breaking them down occurs, usually consisting of gang rapes, beatings, forced drug administration, and informing the victims of debts they now owe the traffickers and how they must pay them.”

Humantrafficking.org states that “Japan continues to be an international hub for the production and trafficking of child pornography. Japan is home to an immense sex industry that includes a wide variety of commercial sex operations…” The 2012 report states that “The [Japanese] government reported 842 investigations related to child prostitution and reported 470 convictions…”

As Polaris states, “The domestic trafficking industry targeting Japanese girls and women is also highly organized and lucrative for the criminal networks.” Of course, the yakuza and foreign organized crime organizations are behind a lot of this.

But I was surprised that while in 2011 the report claimed that the yakuza was a significant factor, the 2012 report said the yakuza was responsible for “some trafficking in Japan…” This may be a result of Japan’s recent crack-down on the yakuza, which should be applauded. However, even if much of the sex slavery problem is gang-related, realize that all countries have to deal with organized crime, and it’s not an excuse.

Japan has begun educating its police force, identifying victims and making progress in prosecutions and convictions of forced prostitution of women and children. I think, however, until it takes the advice of the 2012 report and creates a comprehensive anti-trafficking law based on the definitions of the UN TIP Protocol, it will remain a Tier 2 country. I hope Japan will be able to expand its view of victims and its concept of what constitutes just punishment to reflect that of the international community.

Men and women who are duped into bad situations because they are desperate, poor or just too trusting don’t deserve to be enslaved and abused. I’m sure the majority of Japanese would agree if informed clearly about this issue by the Japanese media. Maybe they could push their politicians to bring Japan up to Tier 1 status in this area, too.

Note: The 2012 report also highlights forced labor involving the Trainee and Technical Internship Program run by the Japanese government. Evidently, it’s been rife with abuse, including the death from overwork of a trainee from China recently. It states, “The government has not identified a forced labor victim in Japan in 18 years, despite substantial evidence of abuses against workers in the Industrial Trainee and Technical Internship Program.”

Sources:
Wikipedia page on the UN TIP Protocol

Trafficking in Persons Report 2012

Human Trafficking in Japan (Polaris Project)

1. To become a party means “Ratification, Acceptance, Approval, Accession, Succession.”

Related articles

• 2012 State Ratings Map | Polaris Project | Combating Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• PH seen as model in reducing regional human trafficking | Inquirer Global Nation (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• TODAYonline | Singapore | HOME comments on Govt response to US human trafficking report (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Human trafficking: How US states fare (bbc.co.uk)
• Human Sex Trafficking Luring In Children (wreg.com)

The Internationalist » Guest Post: No Slaves Were Used in the Writing of This Blog Post

http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/07/31/guest-post-no-slaves-were-used-in-the-writing-of-this-blog-post/

Source:    The    Internationaist, Council on Foreign Relations

by Guest   Blogger   for    Stewart    M.    Patrick 

July 31, 2012

A 18-year-old girl rescued from child trafficking poses in Proshanti, a shelter run by the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association in Dhaka June 17, 2008 (Andrew Biraj/Courtesy Reuters).

Below, my colleague Isabella Bennett, a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers an assessment of how to reduce human trafficking.

The latest estimates by the International Labor Organization state that nearly 21 million people are victims of forced labor—and a significant amount of this suffering is fueled by every day products available on American shelves.

In Bloomberg Business Week, E. Benjamin Skinner documents how fish caught by slaves made their way onto plates in the United States. The path is convoluted: Indonesian recruiters deceived desperate men looking for work. Ship captains on the Korean Melilla 203 ship abused the laborers—forcing them to toil for as long as thirty consecutive hours, subjecting them to sexual abuse, and refusing to properly compensate them. New Zealand companies purchased the fish (and New Zealand environmental inspectors reportedly overlooked the slavery and responded to a plea for help by saying, “Not my job”). Finally, U.S. distributors bought the catch, which wound up on American dinner tables.

By ratifying the Trafficking in Persons protocol to the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (TIP protocol), 151 countries around the world have agreed to criminalize human trafficking within their borders. Article 10 of the protocol also commits states to exchange information with foreign authorities and cooperate with foreign law enforcement agencies to prevent and detect human trafficking.

Meanwhile, at sea, the vast majority of major economies engaged in global trade have ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). (The United States stands as an important exception and is not party to UNCLOS, but has ratified the TIP Protocol.) Part VII, Article 99 of that accord requires states “to take effective measures to prevent and punish the transport of slaves in ships authorized to fly its flag.”

And yet, these international frameworks are loosely monitored and do not foster enough cooperation among international law enforcement agencies. In particular, this case underscores one of globalization’s major challenges: the number of sovereign jurisdictions involved in one crime. Indonesian authorities were either not aware of the crime, or chose to overlook it. Korean authorities, under whose flag the ship sailed, did not investigate the labor standards onboard Melilla 203 (South Korea has not ratified the TIP protocol, but did neglect its treaty obligations under the UNCLOS, which it has ratified). And New Zealand authorities failed to identify the slave labor on ships docked in their harbor.

Human trafficking is notoriously difficult to investigate and prosecute due to its clandestine nature, corruption of local authorities, mobility of traffickers, and underreporting because victims fear for their safety or that of their families. However, challenges are compounded when only one country oversees a single link in the chain.  Separate law enforcement agencies charged with investigating and prosecuting crimes are constrained by national boundaries, while the illicit actors permeate borders with ease. The regime is wildly vulnerable to exploitation.

In theory, Interpol coordinates among sovereign jurisdictions, but with an annual budget of $78 million (59 million euros) in 2010, the organization hardly makes a dent in human trafficking worldwide. Indeed, in all of 2011, Interpol reports only one operation on its website. In that operation, Interpol agents assisted Ghanaian police to rescue children between the ages of five and seventeen who were forced to work on fishing boats in Lake Volta. Given that Ghana exports roughly 11 percent of its fish, it is probable that the catch traveled well beyond its national jurisdiction. In total, the Interpol-supported operationrescued 166 children. That amounts to .0000079 percent of the estimated victims worldwide.

Law enforcement operations cannot be expected to tackle human trafficking alone, and rescue is not always a viable solution. High demand for cheap goods, opaque supply chains, and low consumer awareness are underlying structural conditions that contribute to the prevalence of labor trafficking.

Seventy-eight percent of U.S. families reported choosing organic foods in a November 2011 survey, despite the fact that they are often more expensive. In a new Gallup poll, 5 percent of Americans identify as vegetarians for environmental reasons or because they object to the inhumane practices of many meat producers. Is there even a word to describe people who choose to eliminate slave-made goods from their daily lives? How often do we see asterisks and a note that ingredients in a meal were harvested freely by people being compensated according to domestic or international law? The American Humane Association has trademarked the “No Animals Were Harmed” ® disclaimer, and yet, no such tagline exists for cruelty to people.

In the Melilla 203 case, McDonald’s refused to purchase the fish from the New Zealand supplier because it requires all of its suppliers to submit to third-party audits on its labor standards. The 2010 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 requires companies that operate in California with an annual worldwide profit that exceeds $100 million to “disclose what efforts, if any, they have taken to eliminate human trafficking from their supply chains.” This is a laudable first step.

Companies like McDonald’s that prioritize the elimination of slave labor from their supply chains would benefit from printing the fact on their products. As consumers become more conscious of their purchases, a label on a box that distinguishes their product—“This company and its suppliers submit to third-party audits on its labor standards” or “No slaves were used”—would go a long way. For their part, countries, or even U.S. states with large economies where multinational companies have a large stake, should lead the way by requiring companies to publish such taglines on products.

Related articles

• U.N.: Journalism can 'spark action' to help end human trafficking (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• India: Bringing the curtain down on human trafficking (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• New Eastern Europe - Sex trafficking from East to West: A flourishing criminal industry (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

“Product of Thailand” Could Be Result of Slave Labor | Deep Sea News

Two weeks ago I wrote about southeast Asian fishermen, mostly from Cambodia, being forced to work Thai and South Korean fishing vessels. Men are promised other work in Thailand then are forced to stay at sea for up to two years or even longer with no contact with family or time off ship. Their wages are often subject to cuts through several layers of middlemen, making their earning effectively negligible. It is very troubling story that needs much more attention. This is another example of how our choices in the western world affect the lives of those in faraway countries that we typically ignore.

IRIN, the Humanitarian News and Analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported on this major problem recently:

“Taing Ky* and his cousin were told they would be gardeners in Thailand, but instead they were forced to work on Thai fishing boats.

Each year, hundreds of Cambodian men, many impoverished farmers, are lured from their homes with the promise of better-paying jobs in Thailand, only to find themselves on Thai fishing boats plying the waters of the South China Sea.

“We were told we would earn good money,” Taing Ky, 37, a father-of-five from Cambodia’s Kampot Province, about 200km southwest of Phnom Penh, told IRIN. After six months, they managed to escape while the boat was offloading on Benjina island in northern Indonesia. There they were picked up by local authorities.

Thousands of Cambodian men are now believed to be working against their will in exploitative working conditions on long-haul trawlers well beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies, and often alongside Burmese men. ” *-Not his real name

There are reports of 20 hour work days, regular beatings by crew and officers, inadequate food, and being forced to work at gun point. This goes beyond the “oh, it’s just how things go in the third world” mindset. This is blatant 21st century slavery. Very little difference from the types of slavery endured for centuries by Africans and their descendants around the Americas. According to the article, “those deemed expendable are tossed overboard”. Not able to work any longer? No point to your presence on the ship. I imagine that few, if any, survive.

Some of this might be from our choices half a world away, and out of sight. I don’t have data to back this up. Maybe all the fish they haul in is sold in China, Korea, or elsewhere. But I willing to place a high bet that some, possibly most, of the products make its way into the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Sadly, this type of slavery is very hard to bust:

“Thai authorities say there is little they can do about the trafficked Cambodians working on Thai fishing boats, particularly when the alleged crimes occurred outside Thai waters, if they do not report it.

According to UNIAP, most of the deportees who were exploited choose not to report their cases due to fear of their broker, employer, or the police; a lack of understanding of their rights; and/or inability to speak Thai.”

But for those of us with a conscious and care about our fellow humans, even those that we will never meet or know, we should do what we can to reduce our consumption of products from the countries that turn a blind eye to human trafficking and slave labor in their fishing industries. Thailand has a very blemished record in human trafficking. I implore you to care as much as I and not support this inhumane and illegal practice by not buying seafood from these countries. If its a “product of thailand” put it back on the shelf. To make matters worse, many of these fishing vessels care little for sustainable fishing practices and accurate labeling of its products. If they treat their fishermen worse than dogs, how do you think they treat their seafood?

The solution to this problem is very hard. Boycott is the ultimate answer, there needs to be enforcement and international will to make this problem go away. Even that is not enough as the reasons these men get tricked in slavery runs much, much deeper. But, the LEAST we could do is not take part and send the message that fishermen’s livelihoods are more important than saving a few bucks on seafood. I am fortunate enough to live on the coast and purchase locally caught seafood at prices similar to the freezer section at the big chain grocery from fishermen who lives and jobs I can impact directly. This means a lot to me. Cause I know the fishermen here care about the ocean, they are born of the sea and spend all their lives here. I am proud to support my local fishermen.

I feel it is important to know where your food comes from. We are so disconnected from our sources due to the dozens of middlemen between us and the products we purchase. How do we know when our buying power fuels inhumanity and environmental ruin? More importantly, how do we get people to care? Maybe we need an ad campaign in popular magazine and billboards to get the word out. Marine conservation and seafood safety and labeling organizations need to take into account human factors and working conditions, as well as environmental problems and quota management.

Millions of consumers live away from the sea, away from sources of local seafood. Buying frozen products shipped from afar is their only option to enjoy seafood. The challenge is not create a certification process for seafood – which could get mismanaged or corrupted, rely on outdated science, or not take into account various levels of the manufacturing and shipping process – but to get a consensus among western consumers about what they are willing to risk, morally and financially, to acquire and consume seafood. I just know that I’m not willing to risk others’ lives and humanity for my seafood. I hope you feel the same.

Source: Deep Sea News

Related articles

• Labour trafficking, not sex trafficking needs more attention - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Burmese Baited into Thai Fishing Slavery (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Thailand is a regional hub for human misery (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Radio Australia:Connect Asia:Story:Thailand still a hotspot for human trafficking: report (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Labour centres for fishing industry (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Ships of Horror: Pacific fishermen raped, beaten, and fed fish bait... [REPORT] (gcaptain.com)