Modern day slavery, more commonly known today as trafficking in people remains a serious crime against the human race. John R. Miller, Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons announced during the Underground Railroad Freedom Center Dedication in Cincinnati, Ohio (August 2004), that this crime crosses international boundaries, and exploits more than 800,000 men, women and children annually. These numbers do not include those persons subjected to internal slavery in countries such as India, Brazil and Pakistan, when considered, inflates the total well into the millions.
The People Trade
Modern slavery is linked to organized crime. The FBI places the revenue attained through organized crime in the billions of dollars. This crime can be broken down into the trading of three commodities; drugs, weapons and people. The people trade is distributed among tasks of domestic servitude, factory and farm labor, child soldiers and perhaps the largest, sex slavery.
Slavery Tied to KBR / Halliburton Subcontractor
Adam Ashton of McClatchy newspapers released a story on December 4, 2008 involving a Kuwaiti based firm, Najlaa International Catering Services. Najlaa is a subcontractor to KBR, the Texas firm formerly known as Halliburton. In a major business scam, 1,000 laborers from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh paid brokers more than $2,000 for jobs that promised $600 to $800 a month. These workers were stripped of their passports and forced to live in windowless warehouses without work or pay. Forced into cramped and unsanitary conditions with minimal food allotments of food, they had lived this way for three months at the time reporters investigated their situation. Those same reporters were barred from the laborer quarters by armed guards.
In the course of this investigation, reporters uncovered yet another camp, a mile away from the warehouses that held 50 men. These men were living in huts crafted out of tarps and pieces of carpet. They had been denied both food and water. Clearly such conditions illustrate victims of human trafficking, the euphemism for modern day slavery.
Become A Modern Abolitionist
Modern slavery is everyone’s problem. None of us are truly free until the insidious practice of human slave traffic is eliminated from our world. John Miller said there is much that every citizen can do to end this tyranny. We can talk with our neighbors and raise local awareness of this issue. We can report suspicious behavior on hotlines designed to eliminate this crime against humanity. We can urge legislators on the state level so laws can be created to aid law enforcement. Demands can be made on congressmen and senators to do more than persecute women and children, the true victims of slavery. We can support the media when reports on human trafficking are presented. In so doing, we support the efforts of National Georgraphic, NBC Dateline, and other media sources in spreading the truth regarding modern slavery.When we join in the fight for the freedom of other people, we make the world safer and more humane for us all.
