UK: Diplomatic Immunity Prevents Prosecutions For Modern-Day Slavery

Are UK-based foreign diplomats trafficking women into their London homes, only to treat the unsuspecting domestic workers as modern-day slaves? And can such high-level traffickers escape punishment for their exploitative acts by exploiting legal loopholes of "diplomatic immunity"?

Great Britain's Human Trafficking Centre has been presented with charges that servants are suffering horrific treatment at the hands of diplomats who stand accused of beating and sexually abusing their domestic workers. Kalayaan, an organization that provides support for migrant workers in the UK, has come forward with information of at least six such cases of individuals who "were moved across borders for exploitation by means of deception or coercion – the international definition of human trafficking."

"Many have been deceived about their working and living conditions, the salary they will receive and many are confined to the house and have their passports removed," said Jenny Moss, a community advocate for Kalayaan. "Sometimes they are threatened that if they run away, the police will put them in jail."

In each case, the workers were admitted to the UK legally under a domestic worker visa programme especially for diplomats which prohibits alternative employment outside the diplomatic mission. Diplomats and senior government figures who claim diplomatic status enjoy immunity from prosecution in the UK and no charges have been brought in any of the cases.

One employee for a Middle Eastern diplomat reported that she was forced to work 17-hour days doing all the cooking and cleaning as well as the nanny work without a day off or pay, that she was also subjected to violent attacks by the diplomat and his wife, and that she was barred from leaving the house for six months, except to buy milk.

"From the very first day I was treated like a slave, and it immediately became clear that the diplomat wanted more from me than just to look after his son. He sexually molested me and would become angry when I refused his advances," the worker told Kalayaan.

Kalayaan has brought several such cases to the attention of government authorities in the past year, only to see justice denied, due to diplomatic immunity:

Although the woman reported her allegations to police, they advised her that the couple could not be prosecuted because of their diplomatic status. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) contacted their embassy but were told that since they have returned to their home country they cannot be chased for the compensation payments ordered in January.
The domestic worker was 21 when she came to Britain. "From the first night I knew something was wrong," she said. "I was made to share a room with the diplomat and he came into my bed and touched me all over.
"I was so scared but I spoke no English and had no money and no phone. I was trapped. I was paid nothing, never allowed to leave the house, and only given scraps to eat.
"They made me get up at six to cook, clean and care for them and their children; I didn't get to bed until one in the morning. They treated me like dirt, throwing things at me, shouting at me and hitting me ... I hand-washed all their clothes until my hands were inflamed. If I didn't do what they asked they would beat me and smash my head against the wall. Every time I asked to go home they threatened me. They said they would destroy my passport and harm my family. I was terrified because I knew they could; they have power in my country."

Rooting For Kari

There's a good reason for readers of this blog to pay attention to the Academy Awards this year, at least the short film category: one of the nominees for Best Live Action Short Film is KARI, a 17-minute offering by writer-director-producer Gregg Helvey on modern-day slavery in India.

At the film's official website, Helvey reveals some behind-the-scenes information on the origin of the project, and the the two-and-a-half years' work that went in to its creation:

After I graduated from the University of Virginia in 2001, I had a brief stint as a National Geographic Traveler, where I first learned that slavery still exists. The editor I was working for was starting a nonprofit targeting sex slavery in Eastern Europe. It blew my mind to hear the horrific stories of young women being sold into slavery. As I dug into research, I learned that the most prevalent yet least-known form of modern-day slavery is bonded labor. The majority of films I had seen exposed sex slavery and human trafficking, but there are very little on bonded labor. I read about some brick kilns in India and Pakistan where entire families are forced to make bricks in order to pay off “loans” they are tricked into taking. The slaves are forced to work through intimidation or violence and, if they attempt to escape, they are often beaten and then charged for the price of their bandages. If they do escape, then the loan givers will force extended family members to work in their relative’s stead. Often, the victims are both illiterate and innumerate, thus making it difficult to fully understand their own situation. These bogus loans can be passed down through generations, resulting in families who have only ever known a life of forced labor.

Hopefully, even if it doesn't win, the very nomination and mention during the high-profile Academy Awards will ensure greater exposure of the film, and especially of its subject matter.

The film is playing this week at Arizona's Sedona Film Festival, and at San Jose California's Cinequest Film Festival. In March the film will be screened at Nebraska's Omaha Film Festival,
San Francisco's Asian American Film Festival, and Fort Wayne Indiana's Winsong Pictures Film Festival.

(What, I wonder, does it say about our 500+ cable channel culture, that short films, Academy Award-nominated or otherwise, have so little market that they must make the rounds of film festivals in search of their audience?)

A big vote of thanks to the persevering Gregg Helvey for his work in bringing attention to the evil of modern-day slavery.

For more background on the cruelty of South-Asia's back-breaking brick-making industry, see this 2007 report by the New York Times.

For a recent story on the desperate measures kiln-workers in neighboring Pakistan are resorting to in order to escape the brick-making industry, read this harrowing report from last December.

Blind Eyes In Ireland

The slave next door: police have jailed the husband-wife controllers who were running a large prostitution ring encompassing almost 35 brothels across Ireland. The 70 prostitutes in their service included many women who had been trafficked into the Emerald Isle from Portugal, Venezuela, Brazil and Nigeria.

The court heard women would be sent from their home country with promises of education or steady jobs.
...
Women arrived in Ireland via Britain or mainland Europe and were "soon put to work" in rented apartments across Ireland.
The court was told they were frequently moved around flats to in different towns north and south of the border to provide punters with "variety".
...
Judge Neil Bidder QC told Carroll and Clark: "You made huge profits from the women who were exploited. You had no care for those women and you were both prepared to profit from their unhappy trade.
"You set up brothels all across the Republic and Northern Ireland, renting from unsuspecting landlords and moving women from brothel to brothel as your economic needs dictated."

Judge Bidder said that, though Clark and Carroll did not traffic women themselves they, "turned a blind eye."
He said: "If you choose to close your eyes to people who bring prostitutes into your business you must share some of the responsibility for their activity.
"It is more than a coincidence that several of the Nigerian women tell dreadful stories of coercion and all ended up working for you."

Using the internet and mobile phones, the couple had been able to move their headquarters from Ireland and supervise their organization from a small Welsh town, Castlemartin, in Pembrokeshire, in order to escape the growing scrutiny from Irish police.

They employed pimps in Ireland to run the brothels.
The women’s services were advertised on the internet. When men rang the Irish numbers on the sites, the phones were answered in Wales by Carroll and his wife, who directed punters to the Irish brothels.

The couple pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and conspiracy to money-launder. Their daughter, a fourth-year law student, was charged with money-laundering. They were not, however, convicted of trafficking, as Judge Bidder explained during the sentencing:

"I'm not sentencing you for trafficking those women and accept you were unaware of the personal circumstance of the women who worked in your brothels and you were not responsible for any violence and threats of violence.
"But the Nigerian women who were threatened with dreadful coercion all ended up working for you.
"You did not ask and did not care what personal tragedies had befallen those women submitting for your profit. You were willing to exploit them."

Are we to believe that today's slaves are so invisible that even those that are exploiting them can be unaware of their existence? If someone is jailed for seven years, is that sufficient justice for cases like this:

Robert Davies, prosecuting, said the business had used foreign sex workers "so they would not have homes to go to at night".
The Nigerian women also underwent "terrifying and humiliating" rituals involving menstrual blood and killing chickens to "put the fear of death in them", Judge Neil Bidder was told.
Instead of the promised work as hairdressers and seamstresses, they were sent to apartments in the Republic and in the North and put to work as prostitutes. Some of the girls were as young as 15.
"They were cynically catapulted into a miserable existence and exploited," Mr Davies said.

For more on the evil of human trafficking in Ireland, see here.

Also please visit Ruhama, a Dublin-based NGO which works with women affected by prositution.

Upwards Climb

I appreciate radio talk show host Dennis Prager's weekly advice on happiness, courtesy of his Happiness Hour every Friday.

He suggests that since happy people make the world a better place, we therefore have a moral obligation to be happy.

Naturally, life being what it is, and human nature itself being what it is, this is not an easy duty to live up to. But if there's one change that's overtaken me as I've gotten older, it's coming around to share Dennis' belief about the moral obligation to not succumb to despair. If I could travel back in time to counsel my younger, perennially depressed self, I would do all I could to encourage this habit, of working to cheer oneself up.

If we're not genuinely happy, then at least we should act happy... because, often enough, that sincere effort is sufficient to be of service to us. It shifts us forward, ever so slightly. It helps us climb upwards, from out of the gloom, one step at a time.

Is there really any other way to overcome the inevitable grief, and suffering, that goes hand in hand with life's rare delights?

Our memory holds the key to happiness: to remember better times, to use those memories as the spark that lights a candle in darkness, and lifts us out of despair, through the imagined possibility of rejoicing, of learning to feel a renewed joy once again.