Making the Connections

In finding a way to connect human trafficking to the theme of the class, I thought of a book I read last summer. “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein (we saw her in the film No Logo) looks at what Naomi Klein calls Disaster Capitalism, and the effect it is having on people all over the world. Watch this video for a way to understand the idea that she is talking about.

So understanding what exactly disaster capitalism is, how do we connect it to our class? Much of what we discussed related to the market, if in indirect ways. The creation of the consumerist culture (and the effect it is having on the environment) is what primarily affects us in the United States in this model. But when we extend our gaze further, we see the harm this system is doing to people all around the world. “Free Trade Zones” in Jamaica, pregnancy tests and short-term contracts in maquiladoras, and the debate over ‘fair’ trade are some of the topics discussed in this class, and direct consequences of this economic system. How does this connect to human trafficking?

For that we turn to Asia. People know about the sex workers in many Asian countries, notably Thailand, where they are young girls forced into this line of work either because they were kidnapped and forced to work there or their parents gave them into this system, either through coercion or through their own will. Girls as young as 11 are forced to sleep with sometimes 30 men a day, given shots to prevent them from getting pregnant and abortions (unwilling or willing) when they get that way. Condoms are sometimes distributed, but after sleeping with so many men a day with condoms it can actually irritate the skin and cause abrasions, meaning that the risk of transmitting HIV/AIDS or other STI’s is higher the next time a ‘customer’ refuses to wear a condom. These girls are often brought from rural areas of Thailand, but they are sometimes trafficked in from other countries such as Laos or Cambodia. This means that when the police who are bought off by the pimps eventually raid the place, the girls who are not Thai are ‘illegal immigrants,’ subject to prison time where they are often raped by prison officials. They are often beaten, and then usually sent back to the brothel. They are often discarded, like a used up piece of trash, by the age of 16 or 17.

“Okay, I get it. This is horrible. What does this have to do with our class?”

This topic has everything to do with what we have been discussing in class. The disaster capitalism Naomi Klein talks about has happened to most of the Asian countries, with the most devastating of consequences.

In the 1990’s, Naomi Klein traveled to the Asian Tigers, “globalizations most robust success stories.” (Klein, 264). The markets in these countries had begun to fall because of a rumor that Thailand did not have enough money to back up its currency. This led to banks calling in loans, which popped the real estate market. Construction stopped, creating massive job loss. After this happened in Thailand, thecrisis spread to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Pilippines and South Korea. The countries drained their reserve banks to deal with the crisis, which means that the countries were actually going to go broke. All in all, $600 billion in foreign investment left the countries in on year, which is money that took decades to come in to the market in the first place. This had a huge impact on the people, with a 50 percent suicide rate hike in 1998 in South Korea.

The international community decided not to help the Asian countries, with people such as Milton Friedman, and people in charge of Morgan Stanley, Citibank, and George Schultz of the Hoover Institution. (Those names have an entire new meaning now when it comes to bail-outs, don’t they?) The Clinton administration made it clear they would not help, and the IMF eventually responded with a list of demands created from the same line of thinking as those in the Chicago School. This crisis was seen as an advantage by Alan Greenspan, then the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a time when they could radically shift Asia’s economy into one more like the United States. The IMF demanded that the governments make dramatic budget cuts, laying off public sector wokers in the process (Klein, 269). They forced all the countries to privitivze basic services,create independent central banks, have low social spending and “flexible” work forces (i.e. no unionization) and total free trade.

This was not even done to countries democratically; the deputy of premier of Thailand discussed the fact that instead of voting on the new rules in the National Assembly they were issued by emergency decrees by saying “We have lost our autonomy, our ability to determine our macroeconomic policy. This is unfortunate.”

After this action by the IMF, investors thought the Asian countries were in much worse shape then they originally thought. And so even more money began pouring out of the countries, creating an even worse economic situation.

Throughout this crisis, the people were dramatically affected. The International Labor Organization estimated that approximately 24 million people lost their jobs; Indonesia’s unemployment rate increased from 4 to 12 percent. Thailand was losing approximately 2,000 jobs a day. Because the IMF demanded South Korea cut government budgets and raise interest rates, 2300,000 workers were fired every month in that country.

Again, this is all devastating. What does this have to do with human trafficking?

The simple answer is this: when social spending is cut by governments, those who suffer the most are the ones who already had the least. In these instances, women and children in families already struggling to make it by were those most hurt by the bad economy. Because of this lack of income, families are driven to do things they would never have considered in any other circumstance. This includes selling their children.

“Many rural families in the Philippines and South Korea sold their daughters to human traffickers who took them to work in the sex trade in Australia, Europe and North America. In Thailand, public health officials reported a 20 percent increase in child prostitution in just on year — the year after the IMF reforms.” (Klein, 273).

Access to health care and education even began to fade for these families, meaning that the layoffs have an even harsher reality for those not able to pay for the trip to the cities and their hospitals and universities. This means that people have to go work for places like sweatshops or other kinds of factories, and their children get sent to brothels, because there is no other option for them.

We need to understand this connection if we want to put an end to it. Madeleine Albright is a perfect example of this disconnect; in one trip to Thailand she scolded them for the prostitution and drugs, with the high rate of AIDS linked to these, and trned around and praised the economic policies that Thailand had enacted just a year previously.

This is not beyond our control. The IMF and the World Bank may not be democratically elected, but they are controlled by countries whose governments are. If we hold our governments and our money accountable, we will begin to change the structures that promote these actions. It is not enough to say the people in these countries “want” to work in these jobs, or they are not trying hard enough to find alternatives. When it is our policies, our economic structure, and our money that is forcing countries to go trough this, we need to take responsibility for our actions.

That is, essentially, what this class is about. Taking responsibility for our actions. So the next time we buy clothes with ‘Made in Thailand,’ know that we financed the creation of those factories, the poverty of those families and the exploitation of that region. WE did it, our country and our so-called ‘values’, and it is time we did something about it.

Social Justice and Human Trafficking

There are hundreds if not thousands of organizations around the world dedicated to fighting the scourge of human trafficking and working for the preservation of human rights. Undoubtedly some of those groups are more effective in their goals than others, though all should be recognized for their hard work on the subject and the collective progress that is being made as I type this.

One aspect of this had piqued my interest and made me want to learn more. The idea of corporate involvement in human trafficking is something that I talked about earlier, specifically with Blackwater and the other military contractors who are accused of holding people against their will in Iraq. Other companies, however, mostly transnational corporations that exploit the resources and people of a country, mostly in the Global South, have been accused of this as well. How those companies dealt with it is something I was interested in.

For example, in this article that I found Marriott International was listed as one of the transnational companies that had pledged to work towards eradicating the criminal practices happening at their properties. A Catholic group is working with the international airlines to train workers about the dangers of child sex tourism and what signs to look out for in their passengers. Over 600 companies that are signed on to the Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism. Of those companies only 5 are based in the United States, a fraction of the companies that actually need to sign on if the Code of Conduct will be effective.

That is one of the arguments of this article. That the steps being taken by companies to help stop the practice of human trafficking are largely ineffective, or that the companies are not even trying to take the steps and so progress is not being made. In the age of transnational companies having an effect on some countries international and domestic policy, the fact that some companies still do not see something like human trafficking as something they should be concerned with is very troubling and disconcerting for me. Because really. Of all the social justice issues to not take a stance on, human trafficking? Over 95% of the people who have been freed from this system were either physically or sexually assaulted, and millions are affected every year. If companies to not start taking a role in this, I am not sure what kind of progress state government alone can make.

Web Resources

Human Trafficking is a Web Resource dedicated to all things human trafficking. It seems to have just about every angle covered, from recent updates to the status of human trafficking in countries around the world.

The Polaris Project is a group working for a world without slavery which, while slightly more broad than my topic, also includes human trafficking. It deals primarily with the United States and its role in all these different aspects of modern day slavery, including where people can get involved in various cities both in the United States (such as Denver) and even Tokyo.

CBS News has a page dedicated to the story they did on forced teenage slavery and prostitution, titled “The Realities of Human Trafficking.” It is a good resource for news stories and other links like that, as a way to back up what the other website talk about.

The FBI has a page dedicated to human trafficking and how they are working to stop it. They encourage people to report anything they think might constitute human trafficking, as well as promoting resources for victims of human trafficking.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seems to have a more comprehensive site than the FBI, even walking a person through the prosecution that would happen of a person accused of human trafficking. It is, again, a good resource for people in the United States who need assistance. But the odds that a person being held against their will would be able to access the DOJ website and understand what it is talking about is slim, at best.

Interpol aims to provide communication and mutual assistance between law enforcement agencies around the world, this is their website on human trafficking. I feel these types of organizations are extremely important because one country putting its foot down will not be enough to truly end this problem; it will take international cooperation to really make a difference.

The UN GIFT (Global Intitiative to Fight Human Trafficking) provides some great resources and definitions of human trafficking. This is another international body that can work to get things done beyond a country’s borders, when needed.

This report on Estimated Human Trafficking in the United States provides information on a study funded by the United States Government in an attempt to find how much human trafficking does occur within the United States. A great resouce for detailed information on the United States and its role in this problem.

This Trafficking in Persons Report of 2007 was done by the State department. It is slightly more recent than the other report I linked to, but they both seem to be full of important information.

This Fact Sheet for Schools teaches people involved in the education system how to look for signs of trouble and what they should do if they suspect something. While people who have been trafficked are not often out in public I fee it is vital for people in those positions of authority to be trained in what to look for in order to help just in case they ever find themselves in that position.

This blog called Radical Left makes the argument that the Western Left is being hypocritical and pushings its values on other countries. I have a huge problem with the article – for one it uses the word “trafficked” in quotation marks to show their disbelief that these women are even forced anywhere against their will in the first place. All I have to say to that is… “wtf”???

Human Trafficking in War

The war contractor Blackwater USA became infamous when its employees shot 17 civilians in the streets in Iraq. As detailed by Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”, an extremely critical expose on the company and military contractors in general, Joseph E. Schmitz, the Inspector General at the Pentagon, was accused of failing to investigate allegations of human trafficking by Iraq contractors. Some companies, including KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton), had thirty-five thousand “third country nationals” working in Iraq. There was an article written by Cam Simpson of the Chicago Tribune called “Pipeline to Peril” documenting how twelve Nepalese citizens were sent to Iraq in August 2004, afterward which they were abducted and executed.

Other kinds of abuses, such as seizing the passports and other documents after they have entered the country so as to prevent them from leaving. This was after deceivng the workers about teir safety or contract terms, and in one case allegedly tried to force men into Iraq under the threat of preventing their access to food and water. It has been well known that the Coalition of the Willing, countries who joined in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, were fairly limited. The private contractors have found bodies within those countries, recruiting nationals from countries that forbid their military from engaging but could not keep their citizens from fighting of their own volition.

It is difficult to look at these instances from an outsider’s perspective without getting angry about what is happening and not being stopped. American-based companies like Blackwater are recruiting from countries like Chile and sending those troops, who have been trained both in their home countries in addition to Blackwater’s land in the United States, in to hostile territory. While the men (and it is mostly men) sign up on their own and are not forcefully conscripted the fact that they are sent to a war zone and possible forced into unsafe conditions is absolutely unbelievable. The act of holding somebody’s passport to make them work for you is the same situation workers face in countries like the United States and France in cases of domestic slavery, people forced to work as nannies, cooks and maids for no wages. The only difference with this situation is it is companies continuing the practice, not individual people, and that company is on direct contract with the United States of America.

A person could try to say that these men knew what they were signing up for, that it is their fault they are in that situation. But falsifying contracts is a common act in cases of human trafficking, and it in no way reflects the intelligence or competence of the person who finds themselves unwittingly trafficked. It is not their fault, something that has to be realized if any help can be directed their way. Sympathy for trafficking victims is usually reserved for children or people forced in to prostitution, and even then it is addressed by most people with either misunderstanding as to how people got in that situation or a serious amount of victim-blaming.

“How did they not suspect they were in danger?”

“Where were the parents, why didn’t they figure out what’s going on?”

None of those questions answer the problem of how the system allows for this to happen, yet they are what people think they need to be asking.

History of Human Trafficking

The secretive nature of human trafficking means the numbers are vague and details are hard to come by. The history of human trafficking is almost as difficult to pin down, with the stories varying by region, time period and technologies available at the time.

For simplicity’s sake I will be focusing on the human trafficking involving the history of the United States. By far the most notorious story of human trafficking in the United States was that of the the African people being brought to the Americas to work as slaves. The conditions were horrific and the legacy of those actions are still felt today, with over 20 million people forcibly transported over the Atlantic Ocean. At least 20% of the people died on the way, a staggering statistic when considering that it is probably a low percentage compared to the reality. That does not even take into account the internal displacement that happened during the time period, when practically the entire continent was caught up in the slave trade.

Other groups have been abused in the history of the United States, such as the Native Americans (Trail of Tears, reservations), people of Japanese descent (internment camps) and many other groups. While those may not technically qualify as human trafficking, it was government policy to forcibly remove these people from their homes and move them to another government-sponsored location for a variety of reasons. The majority of human trafficking, however, deals with non-government actors dealing with the sale of human beings for profit in the back market.

The United States did not begin monitoring trafficked people until 1994,  when it began  being covered in the Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. There have been numerous laws passed against it in the United States, and the U.S. has been active in advocating against it internationally as well.

However, what is important to note is the fact that even in the  United States, with all of its laws and all of the government action, this is still something that happens. Approximately 14,500 and 17,500 people are kidnapped and brought to the United States every year. Housemaids, sex workers, farm laborers or factory workers are brought in to the country – perhaps with their permission – but then held here against their will and not paid for their work, making them victims of human trafficking. These are groups of people that are already marginalized from the greater American society, due to cultural or language barriers and a growing nationalistic public that rejects the modern immigrant in favor of the “home-grown” American. When an entire group of people, migrant workers or other kinds of “untouchables”, is ignored by society at large it is relatively easy for the people who make up that class to be abused and have no justice on their behalf.

According to this article, approximately 800,000 men, women and children are kidnapped and transported every year. Keeping in mind that the number is probably lower than reality, it is a staggering amount of people this problem affects today in the world. (The source that provides that statistic is problematic, but still a good resource.) According to an abolitionist on Change.gov, eight out of ten of the people trafficked in the world are women or girls, and half of the trafficking victims are chidren.

There are no such thing as “firm numbers” when it comes to human trafficking, just like there is no such thing as an unbiased source. Abolitionists claim the higher numbers are accurate so as to bring more attention to their cause, while governments claim the numbers are lower so as to project success on their part in slowing the trafficking itself. Taking sources with a grain of salt is necessary, but at the same time completely disregarding different points of view is a mistake. As I further explore this topic it is something I will be keeping in mind as I look at sources and the information they present as fact.

Coming from the United States, and an immigrant background, gives me an interesting perspective on this topic. Hardly being aware of the existence of human trafficking, let alone the practice in this country, made the knowledge startling and difficult to deal with. Having a diverse background, with family coming from Barbados all the way to Quebec and up to Denmark, it made me examine how human trafficking might have played a role in all three parts of my heritage. Barbados was involved in the slave trade, Quebec in expelling its Native population and Denmark’s Viking heritage equally as brutal as anything we have heard about Columbus or the other various explorers who “discovered” the Americas. This is not something people usually think about in relation to their own social location, but I have been forced to as I chose this as a topic. Again, something to think about as I move forward into this project. Information is difficult to come by – typing in “history of human trafficking” on Google brings up links all the way back to 2003 or the slave trade but hardly anything inbetween. It is an interesting phenomenon that I hope to look at more in the future as I continue my research.

Human Trafficking

There are people in the world who are taken from their homes, removed from their friends, families and cultures, and forced to work off their “debt” to their employers in whatever ways available. Whether it is sex, manual labor or any other kind of work about which the person doing it has no choice in the matter, these are all common fates for people around the world. It even happens in the United States, according to Kevin Bales in the book “Disposable People.”

How can something be so close to us? Is this really something that can happen right underneath our noses, both in this country and around the world? We benefit from it, perhaps unwittingly but it is still the reality. In every country, on every coast, it happens.

“But what about educating people about it? Isn’t that enough?” Of course the privileged of the world will know how bad it is to participate in human trafficking; the problem is the vast amount of inequality around the world that makes the practice of human trafficking an almost inevitable result. In a world where natural resources are owned by companies, policy of countries is controlled by international forces and work is scarce, the commodity that is most valuable in today’s society is people. It has been so throughout history, and it is true today; people are worth a serious amount of money and investment, though in the eyes of some it might not be in their value as a human being but in the amount of labor they can produce that the value shows itself.

It goes against the ideals of today’s United States to acknowledge the existence of human trafficking within its borders, let alone committed by American citizens and American companies. It was not always so, obviously, but the world has changed (for the most part) and it is no longer socially acceptable to participate in the practice of human trafficking. The secrecy involved makes it difficult to track, but through this blog I hope to spread information and encourage action on behalf of the privileged in society so as to change the reality we are living with. It may be a small blog for a small class, but the more information about this topic on a forum such as the internet the better – in this kind of subject, there is no such thing as a bad discussion. Any discussion is good, and that is what I hope to contribute to through this blog.

http://skylight.wsu.edu/s/cfccb8e8-4452-467b-8f92-18b2fcf162c2.srv

A Note on Hurricane Katrina

We talked in class about the issues of disposability and the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I found an interesting article that I thought I would share with the class about the isue; commentary about Condoleezza Rice on “The View” talking about New Orleans. Enjoy!

Where’s my Kleenex?

Our assignment was to write down everything that we threw away, or used up, for a week and think about where the “stuff” came from. It seemed easy enough at first as I wrote down the empty yogurt container and tea bag I used that morning. I try to reuse products anyways, using canvass bags instead of plastic at the grocery store, a “wrap-n-mat” for my sandwiches, and bringing a coffee mug to campus instead of buying new coffee every day and throwing away the cup. I thought this was going to be a piece of cake and I was going to be known as Super Sustainable Chelsea.

It was easy, that is, until I caught a cold. Suddenly I was throwing paper away all over the place and simply not caring. I made myself some soup, using energy to heat it and recycling the tin can afterwards. It was a privilige I knew many people in the world do not have, and I felt ridiculous for making such a big deal out of the cold. But the reality was I felt miserable and I wanted to feel better, no matter what it took. NyQuil saved my life eventually, but I went through a whole box of Kleenex (product placement!) before unconsciousness took over.

That is when I realized how much easier it is to not be sustainable. My house only gets the recycling picked up every two weeks, and when it does finally get taken it is a tiny fraction of the giant pile of recycling waiting for judgement day in my kitchen. When I say giant pile of recycling, I mean Giant Pile of Recycling Soon to Become the Dreaded Recycling Monster. The amount of times I have kicked a tin can coming in for my coffee in the mornings are too many to count, along with the amount of times I have just barely resisted the urge to chuck everything in the giant garbage bin belonging to the apartment complex next door to us. It would be so. much. easier.

Therein lies the problem for sustainability. There are people who will not make the connection about how finite our resources are and how each person contributes to the problem in such a massive amount- either because they do not have time or opportunity to find out about the issue or because of simple stubborness to change. Even thinking about where that seemingly endless supply of Kleenex came from, and the work that must have been involved in making it and sending it to me, is an almost overwhelming concept that made my cold-stricken mind shrivel into the corner. I did not go anywhere without a good bundle in my pocket, and would have been even less of a happy camper without it. Would I have survived? Yes. But I made my choice and used a ridiculous amount of disposable product, and I felt better because of it. I feel guilty, but not enough to swear off Kleenex.