The New Face of Slavery - Granma Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Granma International Digital - September 5, 2001 THE NEW FACE OF SLAVERY by Joaquin Oramas READING frequent denunciations of the practice of slavery in this, the 21st century, is like being plunged into old texts, but the reality wounds the sensibility of millions of people. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), ancient and barbaric practices such as slavery and feudalism still persist in the world together with a rapid increase in the trafficking of humans. The ITO cites monstrous acts such as kidnapping persons to subject them to forced labor, or the sale of women, boys and girls to convert them into slaves for the sex market. The central victims of this new face of slavery are women, children, racial and ethnic minorities, and the poor. And the most vulnerable nations are precisely the poorest ones of the Third World. According to the ILO, nine western and central African countries are registering a growing incidence of the exploitation of children for the purpose of work. It refers to cases in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Togo. Extreme poverty is the main factor inducing parents to hand over their children to the trafficking networks through intermediaries. Parents overwhelmed by misery have no other option and thus decide to give up their children, without realizing the dangers they will suffer, affirms the study, noting that trafficking can extend to minors of five years old. The intermediaries promise to find the children paid work and pay out an advance on some occasions, but in real terms they are grabbing profits from the sale of minors. In general, girls are placed either in servitude or on the sex market together with the boys, but they remain in the hands of the procurer networks. In other cases, boys can be sent to work on plantations, construction sites or in mining works, where they labor in subhuman conditions in exchange for food and miserable lodgings. Scientific studies have revealed that under such conditions these minors develop feelings of marginalization from society, which leads them to drugs, crime and psychological disturbances. Separated from their families, they have no protection and remain totally dependent on intermediaries, employers or the procuring networks. In some cases, children are transported to other countries where their defenselessness is taken advantage of and they are forced to work extremely long hours with dangerous tools or substances and in an unhealthy atmosphere. In London, the Anti-Slavery Organization has exposed the existence of slavery in certain nations of the South, like the Ivory Coast, where a young person can be bought for $50 USD, an amount far lower than the price of $50,000 USD for a slave in Alabama, United States, during the mid-19th century peak of that inhuman trafficking. Trafficking in humans and different forms of slavery are not confined to the African countries. In Europe, Spain has more than 20,000 children participating in arduous agricultural work, street selling or the sex trade via chains of exploiters. In Latin America there is the case of Argentina where, in the midst of a grave economic crisis, the sexual exploitation of children would appear to be an invisible issue for the state and its authorities. However, the Pibes Unidos Foundation claimed over one year ago in Buenos Aires that this phenomenon principally affects young girls and teenagers, especially if they are poor. It is estimated that the country has one million working children, with 6,000 living on the streets. In Buenos Aires alone, 2,000 minors were discovered in that situation. This modern form of slavery and prostitution is growing in parallel with increased border migration, particularly given the so-called feminization of migration. Trafficking involves children either sold by their parents or kidnapped, women who become prostitutes or who are taken in by promises of paid work, and a network of criminals and enterprises extending beyond the African borders. Networks trading in humans are enormously profitable. An Asian woman can fetch up to $20,000 USD on the U.S. sex market, according to research. Generally speaking, traffickers seek out inhabitants in rural areas in poor countries and take them, to urban centers in the developed countries. World Migration Organization statistics disclose that since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the increase of ethnic conflicts, between 200,000 and 500,000 people have emigrated from eastern Europe. Many of these are the prostitute victims of Mafia networks. Spanish police confirm that the Albanian Mafia controls a large part of this Eastern European trafficking, utilizing brutal methods to keep prostitutes within their networks. Le Nouvel Observateur French weekly states that the sex market alone moves some $7 billion USD per year, placing it third on the list of illegal businesses, overtaking sales of narcotics and arms. Trafficking and procuring networks deprive women of their identity documents and trick them with promises of jobs, restricting their movements and retaining their wages until they have supposedly repaid their travel costs, an amount determined by the Mafia. In order to prolong those women's enslavement, many traffickers resell those debts to other networks and their victims remain trapped in a perpetual vicious circle of debt servitude, guarded by thugs to prevent them from escaping. The scourge of slavery is no longer something to be read about in history books but is becoming a grave social problem as much in need of urgent solution as the poverty with which it is so closely associated. (c) 2001 Granma International Digital ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytaf-09.06.01-03:26:16-12011