Human Trafficking Around the World (62 page)

On the Dirty List was another company owned by the José Pessoa Group, Agrisul Agrícola Ltda., which was a signatory to the National Pact for the Eradication of Slave Labor (Instituto ETHOS, 2007; Repórter Brasil, 2010). In 2007, 831 workers were rescued from Agrisul Agrícola’s Debrasa facility. Located in Brasilândia, the facility cultivates cane sugar and manufactures alcohol (Camargo & Hashizume, 2007). In 2007, 50 indigenous workers there were discovered living in a small (15 m × 6.8 m) prison cell–like cement block of masonry, while smaller blocks (9.4 m × 2.8 m) each housed 20 persons. The structures were infested with insects and covered with mold, the mattresses were dirty, and sewage flowed in the open. The José Pessoa Group did not accept responsibility for negligence and simply stated that had the inspection occurred at the beginning of the sugarcane season the outcome would have been different. It also argued—in contradiction to the mobile unit report—that indigenous persons were treated the same as all other workers. “The accommodations are more than 20 years [old] and have gone through checks before … and there never was a reaction like this,” said Pessoa. “They were dirty because of the use throughout the season.” When addressing the inhumane treatment of indigenous workers compared to other workers, a representative said: “The company has only one kitchen. Everyone who works in the industry has their meals in the cafeteria. It’s the same food that goes to the field [and is eaten by indigenous workers]. … There was never differentiation” (Camargo & Hashizume, 2007). The issue is that until 2012 there was no monitoring system to confirm whether signatory companies were compliant with the National Commitment to Improve Labor Conditions in the Sugarcane Industry. Violators did not face punishment and could still use the fact that they were a signatory to further their interests (Gomes, 2010b). Verification of compliance with the National Commitment, conducted by independent auditing firms, started in 2012. As of June 2012, 169 companies had obtained a seal signifying that they were compliant with the best working practices established by the agreement, and 86 companies, also signatories of the National Commitment, were being audited to receive the seal (General Secretariat of the Presidency of Brazil, 2012; SugarCane, 2012).

Brazil has added two critical anti-trafficking legal tools to combat slave labor. In 2012 the government passed a constitutional amendment that allows for the expropriation of land used by businesses that employ workers in slave labor. The senate still needs to determine the official criteria for defining slave labor and the process by which land is seized. Experts are concerned that the nation’s powerful agricultural lobby will push to make the rules so complex that it will be difficult to implement the amendment. Also, in 2012, Brazil’s Penal Code was updated to add the employment of workers in slave labor to a list of heinous crimes, which doubles the possible detention for those charged with labor violations from 30 to 60 days (Looft, 2012).

The government has made great efforts to collaborate with the nations where Brazilians are trafficked in order to interrupt and weaken international trafficking rings. Brazil has teamed with Argentina, Canada, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States on cases that involve the trafficking of Brazilian victims. As a result of these investigations there have been at least 56 arrests (U.S. Department of State, 2006, 2010). The federal police investigate international trafficking as well as internal trafficking when it involves more than one state. Within the federal police, the Central Division of Human Rights specializes in investigations of crimes against human rights, including human trafficking. The Federal Road Police Patrol has a unit dedicated to human trafficking cases that occur on the roadways (UNODC, 2009a). Additionally, after three years of testing, an integrated human-trafficking database that collects data from law enforcement, the judicial branch, and anti-trafficking centers around the country was launched in 2011. The data collected is on sex trafficking and slave labor as well as other federal-level crimes. Implementation so far has been uneven (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2011, 2012).

The dearth of trafficking convictions is a serious problem. The number of convicted sex-trafficking offenders has decreased each year since 2008. Additionally, sentencing for those involved in fraudulent recruiting is not sufficiently stringent. Access to shelters, assistance, and protection for victims is often inconsistent, with the result that victims do not receive the services they need.

The National Commitment to Improve Labor Conditions in the Sugarcane Industry is an extremely positive step in Brazil’s anti-trafficking efforts. Still, the fact that companies on the Dirty List and companies who have exploited laborers before or after signing the agreement have remained signatories undermines the effectiveness of the agreement. This situation stands in direct contradiction to the goal and intent of the agreement and allows exploitative companies to reap financial benefits from their alleged commitment to human rights practices. Fortunately, this may change with the recent verification of compliance for all signatories.

Conclusion

In examining the human trafficking scenarios in 24 nations, we discovered that each country has its own environmental, cultural, and geopolitical factors that create a unique set of anti-trafficking issues and obstacles. For instance, in India you cannot address the issue of trafficking without also discussing the caste system, an ancient tradition that places countless people into slavery and indentured servitude at birth. Under what is called the silent apartheid, members of the Scheduled and Backward Castes are born into servitude and forced to work in brick kilns, embroidery factories, and rice mills as well as perform as domestic servants and workers in the agricultural sector. NGOs estimate that at least 2 million human trafficking victims in India are Dalit (formerly the Untouchables, now known as the Scheduled Castes) bonded laborers. Slavery also exists in Niger, where an estimated 8,800 to 43,000 persons are subjected to traditional hereditary slavery. Despite the fact that the Nigerien Penal Code prohibits slavery, slaves are forced to work as shepherds, agricultural workers, domestic servants, and sexual servants. In a landmark case, Hadijatou Mani Koraou, a victim of hereditary slavery, brought suit against the Nigerien government before the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice. The court found that Nigerien courts had failed in their opportunity and obligation to protect Mani when she came before them. Instead, in a previous court proceeding, a judge had held that a marriage between a free man and a slave woman is lawful as long as he cannot afford to marry a free woman and if he fears to fall into fornication. The Nigerien ruling illustrates the power of customary law and tradition over written law.

In South Africa, custom and the role of traditional healers are so powerful that activists must work with members of the healing community to facilitate awareness and change. This has been particularly true of AIDS awareness. Many South Africans once believed that a person could be cleansed of HIV through sex. When NGOs, such as the Jo’burg Child Welfare in Marshalltown, began to collaborate and build relationships with traditional healers, they were much more successful in spreading the word on how to protect oneself and prevent the spread of HIV. This collaboration could be immensely helpful in disseminating information on Muti murders, in which people are abducted and killed, and their body parts and organs removed for the purpose of traditional healing. Some of the female victims are raped before they are killed, and body parts such as ears, tongues, head, heart, kidneys, and genitalia are removed from both female and male victims. Supporters of these traditional practices believe the use of human body parts can bring wealth and fertility, and altering client belief in this practice will be a challenge. Healing groups such as the National Traditional Healers Organization have met with the Department of Women, Children, Youth and People with Disabilities to discuss how to end this form of trafficking and the demand for body parts. Collaborations at the community level between human rights advocates and traditional healers would help healers and community leaders to spread awareness about Muti murders in a direct and meaningful way.

Despite nation-specific differences, the characteristics of human trafficking are remarkably similar the world over. There are common methods used by traffickers, regardless of whether they are trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. Fraudulent recruitment, often through newspaper advertisements or in person, is used to lure trafficking victims. For instance, in India, recruitment advertisements for a U.S. company, Signal International, allegedly promised participating workers permanent residence in the United States and—for additional fees—permanent residence for their spouses and children. Of course, none of it was true. False promises do not come only in paper form but also through fake romantic relationships that are used to manipulate potential victims. Members of the Carreto family, who ran a Mexican sex-trafficking ring, did just that; the men wooed young girls, one whom was only 14 at the time of her trafficking experience. The traffickers would first court the women, then, when they had the victims’ trust, they would rape and physically isolate them. To extend their control the traffickers told the women, many of whom had children with the traffickers, that they would never see their children again if they did not cooperate. Physical isolation, which was essential in the trafficking cases of the convicted Carreto family and the alleged cases of human trafficking by Signal International, is a common tool to limit and control the movement of victims. Another method is the use of armed guards, which is illustrated in a case that involved Thai agricultural workers who had come to the United States on temporary work visas. An armed guard not only controlled their movements but also charged them for food, even though the traffickers refused to pay the victims. The workers, who were taken to Katrina-ravaged buildings in New Orleans to perform demolition, lived in squalid shelters riddled with debris and mold. There was no electricity or running water, so the victims cooked with contaminated water, and because the guard charged the unpaid workers for food, they soon began to go hungry and had to build traps to capture pigeons to eat.

Other methods used to control and limit the movements of victims include physical and mental abuse, withholding victims’ visas and other identifying documentation, threats of deportation, and threats of harm to the victims or the families of the victims. Furthermore, debt bondage makes it nearly impossible for victims to escape, as they have no financial means to do so. Charging victims exorbitant initial fees is an efficient and profitable means of manipulating and controlling victims. In order to pay the fees, victims sell land, borrow money from family members, sell family heirlooms with cultural and symbolic value, and take out loans from loan sharks who charge astronomical interest rates. As inflated debts continue to mount, the victims’ nominal wages are allegedly perpetually deducted as partial payment. The traffickers obtain free labor, and the victims are placed in debt bondage. This is exactly what happened to Gomes da Silva, a forced-labor victim in Brazil. He accepted a job with decent pay, free lodging, and free food. Instead, traffickers took him to a cattle ranch that was surrounded by armed guards in a desolate area of the jungle and charged high fees for basic necessities such as travel, food, and lodging. His debt, of course, continuously outweighed his pay, and the traffickers told him that he was not allowed to leave until his debt was paid. Not until 12 years later was he able to escape.

One way to destabilize these trafficking methods is to increase transparency in the labor and sex industries. Of course, that is easier said than done. Many nations do have laws in place that, if adequately enforced, would sufficiently monitor the formal labor market. Yet, without enough labor inspectors, as is the case in Poland and South Africa, satisfactory enforcement is next to impossible. Even in countries where there may be a sufficient number of inspectors, such as Germany, they are often not adequately trained to properly identify human trafficking. The same is true for police, prosecutors, judges, and even counseling centers. Since many nations have just recently introduced forced labor as a form of human trafficking to their criminal codes, these groups are regularly unfamiliar with how to recognize and protect potential victims of forced labor, in particular. The result is that victims are often not recognized and face arrest and punishment for offenses they committed as a result of their trafficking experience, such as immigration violations. The commercial sex industry has been identified as a haven for human trafficking for far longer, and most police and other critical players have a better understanding of sex trafficking than labor trafficking. That said, commercial sexual exploitation is often part of the informal labor market and is incredibly difficult to monitor. Potential sex-trafficking victims are often identified during brothel raids. Foreign victims are recognized because of their immigration status, a red flag for police and investigators. But internally trafficked victims who are citizens or residents slip through the cracks and, in nations where prostitution is illegal, frequently face arrest and punishment. In order to increase transparency in the sex industry, some experts recommend legalizing prostitution in nations where it is illegal, arguing that decriminalizing prostitution would help regulate the sex industry and thereby limit potential trafficking. Others hold that most nations simply do not have the infrastructure and resources to adequately regulate the sex industry. While prostitution is legal in many nations, few governments actually regulate it. Whether those countries that regulate prostitution, such as Germany and Mexico, do so successfully and what impact this has on sex trafficking are worthy of further investigation.

Not surprisingly, a consistent factor in the trafficking scenarios of all nations is that persons who are marginalized are often the most vulnerable. In both the trafficking itself and the treatment of victims afterward, race, socioeconomic status, and gender are all significant factors. So is a lack of national status. For instance, persons of the hill tribes in Thailand are often without citizenship, despite having been born and raised in the nation for generations. By law, they are entitled to identification, but the registration process for permanent residence and citizenship requires a DNA test or a witness who can testify on their behalf for persons without a birth certificate—and there are many who lack them. David A. Feingold, director of the Ophidian Research Institute and UNESCO international coordinator for HIV/AIDS and trafficking, claims that citizenship is the single greatest risk factor for a hill tribe person in Thailand to be trafficked or otherwise exploited.
¹
Residency is no small matter—it allows access to health care and education, which are the building blocks of social and economic stability and mobility. Without it, people hover on the periphery of society, struggling to survive and taking jobs that are available to them. They commonly have no choice but to accept jobs in the informal economy, where regulation is nonexistent. Their situation makes them ripe for exploitation by traffickers. In China, the nation’s Household Registration System
(hukou)
creates a semicaste structure in which people are defined by the place where their parents were born and by urban or rural origin. (They can choose the
hukou
of either parent.) The rules are relaxed for those who can satisfy the strict housing and high income requirements, but others must attain temporary permits that allow them to find work in other cities. According to James Farrer, former director of the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University in Tokyo, these workers experience much of what illegal migrants and temporary visa workers face in other nations, such as long hours and underpayment or nonpayment of wages.
²
They also have few social resources and are left without access to public services such as child education and health care.