NYTimes.com Article: Modern-Day Slavery

[jpino@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by Julio Cesar Pino jpino@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Marxism list

What this fine-sounding editorial fails to mention is the role of multinational
capital in keeping slavery alive. Thus, Thai brothels are often owned by 
Japanese
firms who sub-contract the sale of women, and US companies buy rugs made in 
India and
Pakistan by child chattle.BTW, even though he's a liberal, read Bales's book; 
it will
make your flesh crawl. JC

Julio Cesar Pino
jpino@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\

\----------------------------------------------------------/

Modern-Day Slavery

September 9, 2000



By a conservative estimate, there are 27 million people working under
various forms of slavery in the world today, and the number is
growing. In contrast to the slavery America knew, today's
slaveholders mainly exploit people of their own race. But as in the
American past, they use violence and threats to force people to
labor for no pay. Slavery is illegal everywhere, but it thrives
because of the corruption of police and government authorities.
Many people are unaware that modern slavery exists.

 People held in some form of bondage pick sugar cane in the
Dominican Republic, make the charcoal used in Brazil's steel
industry and work as prostitutes in Thailand. In Mauritania and
Sudan blacks are forced into domestic and agricultural slavery in
Muslim households. Similar forms of oppression are not unknown in
developed nations. The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that
45,000 women and children are smuggled into the United States each
year with false promises of decent jobs. Instead, most find that
their passports are stolen and they are forced to work as
prostitutes or maids, on farms or in sweatshops.

 But the majority of people who are treated like slaves, perhaps 20
million, according to the United Nations, are South Asians in debt
bondage. The system is chillingly described in "Disposable People,"
a survey of contemporary forms of slavery by Kevin Bales, who
teaches at the University of Surrey in England. Whole families,
including children, are trapped into peonage to pay debts incurred
by medical expenses, a funeral or crop failure. Their debts are
inflated by outrageous prices for food and usurious interest rates.
Families can essentially be enslaved for generations.

 Slavery and related kinds of servitude are a growing business
because the number of desperately poor people is increasing and
globalization has disrupted rural communities. In many nations,
children, mainly girls, must drop out of school to work. A girl in
a northern Thai village can be sold into prostitution for $2,000 ?
a huge sum there. A Thai survey found that many families knowingly
sold daughters into prostitution because they felt pressure to buy
consumer goods such as televisions. Girls stay until they contract
AIDS, and are then sent back to their villages to die in disgrace.

 While slavery is illegal, it is hard to eradicate. Even the
United States lacks adequate criminal penalties for those who
traffic in human beings. Moreover, the victims ? the potential
witnesses ? are usually deported. This may change, however, as both
houses of Congress recently passed a bill that would criminalize
trafficking, end the rapid deportation of victims and provide help
for them here and modest programs to prevent slavery abroad.

 Slavery and forced labor are even more difficult to fight in
nations where they draw support from traditional structures of
power and corruption, the devaluation of women and, in India, the
caste system. Educating the poor about how to avoid falling victim
helps, as do small loans and skill training. India has an excellent
program to pay off laborers' debts and give them training and land.
But Dr. Bales argues that local officials and judges often sabotage
it.

 The first step in combating modern variations of slavery, however,
is education. The developed world needs to realize that slavery
exists, and that its victims may have helped produce the clothes,
rugs and other goods we buy. It is especially important for people
in nations where it is widespread not to accept it as a traditional
practice but to see it as one of the most serious abuses of human
rights.
   


The New York Times on the Web
http://www.nytimes.com

/-----------------------------------------------------------------\

\-----------------------------------------------------------------/

HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson
Racer at alyson@xxxxxxxxxxx or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company