FEATURED: Call+Response, a film

Call + Response is documentary created by musician Justin Dillon set for release this fall about the horrors of modern-day slavery. Dillon came across the issue of human trafficking while on tour in Russia where he met many women who, eager to improve their lives, ended up enslaved instead.

Eager to make change, Dillon created Call + Response, which goes undercover from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India, revealing that last year, slave traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined.

Dr. Cornel West connects the music of the American slave fields to the popular music we listen to today, and the film offers this connection as a rallying cry for the modern abolitionist movement currently brewing, setting the stage for performances from Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists such as Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, members of Nickel Creek and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Rocco Deluca to turn the chilling reality into inspiration for change.

“There is a sea of change happening in human rights activism,” argues the site. “The world’s issues cannot be solved alone by governments and non-profits, but require community-based participation… all profits from the use of the film, DVD, soundtrack, iTunes downloads will be directed, by the viewers, to projects with clear start and finish points. Our goal is to fund and celebrate completed projects together in community. We are closing the loop by allowing viewers to become participants in the solution.”

Watch the trailer and find out more about this project at Call + Response…

FEATURED: Love146, a charity

From the Love146 site:

Love146 works toward the abolition of child sex trafficking and exploitation through prevention and aftercare. Love146 trains aftercare workers, multiplies safe homes, aids socioeconomic development programs in high risk communities and provides a voice for these victims of modern-day slavery. Founded in 2002 (as Justice for Children Intl.), Love146 is a registered public charity. Love146 is a 501c3 non-profit organization.

Read in-depth about their programs here.

Australia: Prosecution Doesn’t Need To Prove A Boss Is Knowingly Engaging In Slavery

Victor Violante at The Canberra Times covered a big-deal trafficking case in Australia the day before yesterday. The court held by a 6-1 majority that Wei Tang, 46, a Melbourne brothel owner, intentionally possessed and used slaves. She paid each of the four Thai women–in Australian on tourist visas–$20,000 each and then held them in debt bondage at her brothel.

The court held that the prosecution did not have to prove Tang knew her treatment of the five women amounted to slavery. It sufficed that she exercised powers consistent with a sense of owning the women in question.

“In particular, a capacity to deal with a complainant as a commodity, an object of sale and purchase, may be a powerful indication that a case falls on one side of the line [between employment and slavery],’” Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said.

“The evidence could be understood as showing that they had been bought and paid for, and that their commodification explained the conditions of control and exploitation under which they were living and working.”

This decision essentially overturns a Victorian Court of Appeal order which set aside a jury’s guilty verdicts on the grounds that the trial judge had failed to address the jury on whether Tang intentionally exercised a power of ownership to enslave the victim.

Tang is the first person in Australia to be convicted by a jury of possessing and using a slave since the federal anti-slavery laws were introduced in 1999. It is because of this case that Australia’s slavery laws were changed in 2004 to recognize debt bondage.

Read the whole article at The Canberra Times…

U.S. Contracor In Iraq Sued For Human Trafficking

Dana Hedgpeth at The Washington Post reported today that Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, a Washington law firm, has filed a lawsuit against KBR, one of the largest U.S. contractors in Iraq, for allegedly engaging in the human trafficking of Nepali workers with its Jordanian subcontractor.

It’s the same old story we’ve heard a million times: 13 Nepali men were recruited to work as kitchen staff in hotels and restaurants in Jordan but once they arrived, they had their passports confiscated by recruiters and shipped off to do some other thing.

In this case, that other thing was toil at a military facility in Iraq. This is where the usual narrative changes. Driven into the war-torn country in cars, the men were stopped by insurgents–12 of them were kidnapped and later executed, according to Agnieszka Fryszman, a partner at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll.

The thirteenth man survived and worked in a warehouse in Iraq for 15 months before returning to Nepal.

Read about the case at The Washington Post…

Skinner At The National Constitution Center

Journalist E. Benjamin Skinner and author of A Crime So Monstrous discusses modern day slavery with Carolyn Davis of The Philadelphia Enquirer at the National Constitution Center in commemoration of the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (mp3).

“I think today there is a conception that slavery no longer exists because it’s illegal in every country, because there has been so much bloodshed over the last century and a half to enshrine this idea of abolition, this idea of freedom,” said Skinner. “And yet today, there are more slaves than at any other point in history. Now for that to mean something, ’slavery’ has to mean something. And if we accept the idea that slavery exists in a world that has abolished it in every country, we must adopt a new definition, which is, in fact, the original definition: those that are forced to work under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence, these are people that cannot walk away and by that mere definition, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history.”

Listen to the whole thing here…

Britain Starts With The Kids

Beginning next month, slavery and the abolition of the trade will be a mandatory part of the history curriculum for secondary school pupils in Great Britain. Campaigners believe that educating kids about the slave trade will help better equip them to understand and eventually combat modern-day slavery.

The move is applauded by Anti-Slavery International who think it important that students learn about Britain’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Director Aidan McQuade says it “will help students better understand modern slavery and will hopefully inspire a new generation of abolitionists to take up the fight to stamp out slavery in all its forms.”

More from The Press Association and The Guardian Online.

Marichu Baoanan Fifth Avenue Speak-Out

Last Friday many stood along New York’s Fifth Avenue as Marichu Baoanan recounted her hardship as a modern-day slave at the hands of former UN ambassador Lauro Baja.

“What I want to say to people like me who were oppressed or will be oppressed: don’t be afraid to speak out or to come out in the open,” she said. “Let us fight for our rights. We are not alone. We need to face people who abuse us and our weaknesses because if we do not speak up, they will continue to abuse us.”

Last July 15, Baja filed a motion to dismiss all 15 civil charges, including trafficking, forced labor and racketeering, brought against him, his wife Norma Baja, their adult daughter and the Baja-owned Labaire Travel Agency. The former UN ambassador invoked the Vienna Convention and is seeking the shelter of diplomatic immunity.

Though public cries have been made to waive Baja’s diplomatic immunity from within Philippine Congress, by Congresswoman Liza Maza, neither the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the Philippine Consulate Mission in New York, nor the Philippine Mission to the UN in New York–Baja’s former pos–has taken action on Baoanan’s case, though they have publicly claimed that they do not tolerate trafficking and abuse.

Read the whole article at The Philippine Reporter.

1995 Thai Slave Laborers Naturalized

Yesterday, Teresa Watanabe at the Los Angeles Times reported the naturalization of some of the Thai laborers that had been enslaved in an El Monte sweatshop in 1995.

“I’m an American and this is my home now!” said Maliwan Clinton, 39, as she waved a miniature American flag at the Montebello ceremony. The journey from slavery to freedom took 13 years.

Many of the 70 El Monte workers who have acquired citizenship this year or expect to do so soon.

More than 40 of them had gathered Sunday to celebrate with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which successfully fought for a $4-million settlement from manufacturers and retailers for their exploitation and won an uphill battle to gain legal status for the workers.

“Because of their courage, they were able to take what was a horrific experience and emerge from it as victors,” said the legal center’s Julie Su, their lead attorney for 13 years. “I’m really proud of them, but I’m also proud of America because this nation opened its arms to them and showed its best ideals of freedom and human rights.”

The El Monte case drew international attention, blazed new paths in immigration and labor law, led to legislation offering visas for victims of human trafficking and became the subject of an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution.

The case marked the first time in federal court that garment workers successfully held manufacturers and retailers responsible for the actions of their labor contractor.

You can read about their long road to freedom at the LA Times.

Governator Takes On Human Trafficking

At the XXVI Annual Border Governors Conference (BGC), California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger invited stronger cooperation among the Border States to combat human trafficking across the US-Mexico border.

“The practice of trafficking human beings is modern-day slavery and it should not be tolerated by any society,” Governor Schwarzenegger said. “California has a proud legacy of offering protection and safety to the victims of such horrific crimes and I am pleased that the Border States are coming together at this year’s conference to collaborate on solutions to this crime that will work on both sides of the border.”

The forum featured experts from the US and Mexico, including leaders in the fields of law enforcement, international human rights, victim assistance and human trafficking survivors who will discuss the impact human trafficking has had on the border region and look at collaborative solutions to fight it.

Read the article at the Imperial Valley News.

Slavery Is Endemic To The Human Psyche

In an interview on GRITtv with Laura Flanders, I discuss how slavery is endemic to the human psyche.

We like to think, in our enlightened 21st century world, that slavery could not possibly exist. Yet 145 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the CIA estimates that 14,500 to 17,000 foreigners are “trafficked” annually into the United States, threatened with violence, and forced to work against their will. Most of us aren’t inclined to listen, Bowe says. But this is what globalization means.

GRITtv with Laura Flanders, brings participatory democracy right to your computer. Read more about GritTV right here.