Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Quyen Truong,1 a Hawaiian resident in her early thirties, isn’t ashamed to tell anyone who asks about how she lost her eye. “I tell everybody when they meet me,” she says in her broken English. “I’m not ashamed. My experience—nothing to be ashamed.”2 In 1999, at age twenty-one, she had relocated from Vietnam to American Samoa with the promise of a sewing job that paid $408 a month. She needed funds to help support her younger sister and widowed mother in Vietnam and was hoping for a better life with more money for herself as well as for her family. The video she’d been shown about the job at Daewoosa helped ease the pain of leaving them behind. She would live in spacious quarters, have access to a swimming pool, and be fed three nutritious meals a day.3 What a contrast to the poverty that surrounded her in Vietnam.4
The buy-in was high. Neither Quyen nor her family had the $5,000 required5 to secure the job and pay transportation expenses, but this was a chance to improve her life. Somehow she managed to scrape together the money. When she passed the sewing and fitness tests, she was thrilled. She could now fly to American Samoa and become part of a group of three hundred Vietnamese and Chinese workers making garments for companies such as Walmart, JC Penney, Sears, and Target.6
Her dreams dissolved the moment she entered the company’s barbed wire compound and saw the grim, gray walls and the massive Samoan guards who didn’t speak her language and carried sticks. She had been duped. The spacious room she had been promised turned out to be prison-like quarters, where thirty-six people were stuffed into a muggy hallway with minimal ventilation and bunk beds with half-inch-thick mattresses. The bathrooms had broken toilets. Instead of clear blue water, the swimming pool she had viewed on the video was green with slime that stank.7
As in so many human trafficking situations, Quyen and the other slaves were forced to work grueling hours and were fed just enough to keep them alive—in this case, minimal amounts of boiled potatoes, rice, and cabbage, with no meat.8 Back in their mother country, even if they were poor they had rice cakes, along with meat and vegetable dishes on special occasions.9
By late 2000, Quyen had been labeled as a troublemaker at Daewoosa for objecting to the gruesome conditions and the lack of nutrition. She knew that her outspokenness could cost her. “You can beat anyone who don’t listen to you,” Daewoosa owner Kil Soo Lee had told a Samoan supervisor when faced with a tough deadline on a big contract. “If anyone die, I will be responsible.”10 The workers understood all too clearly that production and the bottom line were more important than their lives. One slipup, one hint of disloyalty could prove deadly.
Lee had built his factory, located about 2,300 miles south of Honolulu, in unincorporated American Samoa.11 The choice was no accident. The area is well known for its poor treatment of workers and pitifully low wages. Yet American Samoa is a territory of the United States, so despite its record of human rights violations, garments made there carry the “Made in the USA” label.12 It doesn’t matter that American citizens don’t sew these garments. It doesn’t matter that they’re produced by skilled workers kept there by force (including sexual assault) and threats of arrest, deportation, and violence.
That wasn’t Lee’s only hold on the women. In addition to being charged from $4,000 to $8,000 to acquire their jobs—the equivalent of eight to fifteen years’ salary in Vietnam or China—the workers were required to sign contracts that contained a three-year commitment and a $5,000 penalty for breaching that agreement.13 Many of them had sold their homes and/or borrowed money from relatives or loan sharks to follow a dream that promised stability and financial gain. They had little to return to. Just to make sure they would continue to grow the company’s profits, which totaled $8 million in 1999, Lee also confiscated the workers’ passports and alien registration cards.14
Armed security guards enforced Lee’s intimidation tactics in a compound that more closely resembled a penal complex than a factory. In November of 2000, Lee ordered his guards to attack any workers who tried to defy his authority15 or who were working too slowly.16 As the guard came toward Quyen with a length of PVC pipe, his thick arm ready to smash her body, the young woman knew she was in danger. The beating, which would literally and figuratively scar her for life, continued for what seemed like an eternity. She didn’t think the pain could get any worse until her assailant raised the PVC pipe and poked it into her eye socket. She would lose her eye as a result.17
To this day, Quyen relives the experience. “It’s like a movie that plays over and over, and I cannot stop it when it happens,” she told the media after being rescued. “Injury to the body can be mended, but injury to the soul and mental being . . . what can a doctor do to treat you?”18
The workers were eventually rescued when one of the captives managed to toss an SOS note from the window of a company car. The note was found and passed along to the Department of Labor.19
The prosecution of Lee in 2003 on fourteen counts,20 including holding workers in a condition of involuntary servitude and conspiring to violate civil rights, was at that time one of the biggest modern slavery cases in US history.21 But it is far from the only one.
Products Made by Slave Labor?
Modern slaves are all around us. We unwittingly participate in their enslavement through acts as simple as buying manufactured products. From cell phones to fast food to clothing, so many of the companies we support with our dollars each day, week, month, and year sell goods produced at least in part by individuals who have been enslaved in the name of profit.
How do we know if the shirt we just purchased as a birthday gift—or the well-made slacks that are such a good buy—were made by a legitimate garment factory or by a place like the Samoan factory? The short answer is we usually can’t be certain that a product doesn’t have slave labor in its composition somewhere along the line. As illustrated in the above story, just because a product is marked “Made in America” doesn’t guarantee it is not, at least partially, a result of slave labor.
Although the stories of individuals victimized by predators like Kil Soo Lee are distressing and far too numerous, a vast number of slave-made products come from China. The Chinese have found a way to convert some of their prisons into prison factories (called Laojiao), which incarcerate those the government feels are a threat to national security or considers unproductive. The practice has become lucrative business for China.
Conceptually, this may sound like a wise plan to keep the prison population busy in a constructive way that benefits their country. In China, however, a person can be arrested for disagreeing with the government or for participating in religious practices not sanctioned by the government. Charges may be something like “not engaging in honest pursuits” or “being able-bodied but refusing to work.”22 Those so charged are not entitled to the same judicial procedures as some other offenders and may be sent directly to prison via an administrative sentence by local public security forces. Additionally, due to Chinese governmental policies, 70 percent of prisoners are not released at the completion of their sentences but are held at the prison and must continue working there.23
Enslaved for Moral Convictions
The prison factory system of Laogai has become a way to deter and eliminate opposition groups, including those who oppose or criticize the government, are human rights activists,24 practice Falun Gong, or have been part of Christian churches that fall outside the government church. Indeed, as shocking as it may sound, our regular buying habits may mean that we’re supporting the slave labor of some courageous Chinese people who have been imprisoned for living out their moral convictions.25
While there are laws against importing slave-made products into the United States, the Chinese get around those laws because each Laogai camp has both a camp name and a public name. The Shanghai Municipal Prison, for example, is also referred to as the Shanghai Printing and Stationery Factory. In Human Rights Brief, Ramin Pejan writes, “Financial information on ninety-nine forced labor camp enterprises collected by Dunn and Bradstreet was released on June 30, 1999. According to this data, the ninety-nine camps had total annual sales of US $842.7 million. These camps represent only 9 percent of the roughly 1,100 known Laogai camps.”26 When the factories are discovered by the outside world, the Chinese government simply closes and moves them or reopens them under other names.
That is not to imply that all slave-made goods imported into the United States are from China, nor that all Chinese-made goods are from Laogais, but it is another example of how slave-made goods permeate our buying habits here in America.
Debt Bondage
Slavery in domestic agriculture—as well as in almost all other forms of human trafficking—usually includes the component of debt bondage. In this form of financial control and intimidation, the captor keeps a tab for all the victim’s “expenses.” These may include (but are not limited to) transportation costs for the victim to arrive at the place where he or she operates as a modern slave, food, shelter, clothing, tips paid, and anything else needed for everyday life. For those trapped in sex trafficking, expenses can also include manicures, makeup, hair styling, condoms, costumes, photo sessions, advertising, and protection.
In the best-case scenario, a worker in debt bondage ends up paying many times the amount he or she originally agreed to pay to acquire the job, or an inflated price for even valid charges. In the worst-case scenario, debt bondage becomes a tool captors use to keep their slaves imprisoned.
In short, the system is designed to keep slaves working harder than they’ve ever worked, harder than any human being should be required to work, and the slaveholder sees to it that the debt meets or exceeds the salary owed. Additionally, forcing slaves to purchase necessities in company stores with inflated markups helps ensure that victims may never be able to repay their escalating debt no matter how many hours they put in. According to evidence in the 1998 El Monte, California, sweatshop case, where seventy-two Thai garment workers were kept for eight years in slavery and debt bondage, the company store the workers were obliged to use charged $20 for a simple bar of soap.27
In Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter’s book The Slave Next Door, Lucas Benitez describes the process of enslavement:
Debt begins when the coyote turns you over to the crew leader. So many of our compañeros have suffered in this way and say being sold . . . feels worse than being an animal. . . . You get sold for $500, but the next day the debt is $1,000. Then they add on rent and food, and your debt increases. . . . If you have a slow day in the fields, the crew leader will say “you owe us more now; you didn’t work well.” You never see the check stubs, so you have no idea where you stand with your debt.28
When victims finally become so weary of their living situation that they muster up the courage to ask their captor to set them free, they are told that they must first repay the debt they have incurred. This not only keeps victims enslaved, it allows the perpetrator to demand more and greater output from the slaves. Physical and psychological abuses inflicted on the slaves help cement those demands, as does the victims’ hope that they will be able to pay off the debt if they just work hard enough. Ironically, that goal often diverts their thoughts from the truth of the matter: they are slaves and cannot leave without threat of physical harm or death.
How can this be happening in our very own country? Again, we have to look at our sense of hierarchy. I remember the caution from my parents as I was helping prepare fresh fruits and vegetables for dinner as a child. “Wash that carefully,” they would tell me. “Remember, the last person to handle it was a migrant worker with dirty hands.” That vision was enough for me to carefully scrub the tomato or apple, sometimes even with soap.
But who are these migrant workers with dirty hands? People of lesser value than those who live in our neighborhoods? Perhaps in the eyes of society they are. In reality, however, they are someone’s mother or father, sister or brother, husband or wife, someone’s child. And for those of us who believe in equality, they are certainly equals.
Antonio Martinez was what some would term a migrant worker. However, a closer look at his life reveals he could be more accurately described as a slave.29
In Hidalgo, Mexico, Antonio was the oldest of six children. He felt the responsibility to support his family because his parents were not in good health.30 One day he met a contractor, also known as a coyote, who promised him construction work in California if Antonio would pay him some 16,000 pesos (about $1,700 in American dollars) to get across the border into the United States. That was a fortune to Antonio. He couldn’t possibly earn—let alone save—a sum like that in Mexico. The coyote reassured him that paying the money back would be easy once Antonio had crossed the border and secured his construction job.31
Two weeks later, Antonio and more than three dozen other hopefuls boarded a bus to the land of opportunity. At the Sonoran Desert, the bus stopped and new coyotes took responsibility for the travelers. Antonio was placed in a group led by a man named Chino. For the next three days, Antonio and his group hiked across the hot, dry desert with just a single day of supplies.32
Hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, they finally crossed the border and were driven to a house in Tucson, Arizona. Instead of being fed and given a chance to rest, Chino ordered Antonio and the others to hand over more cash. Antonio was broke. He had nothing. The ensuing threats of violence made him realize just how helpless he’d suddenly become. But there was no turning back now. He had no funds and no documentation. He was at the coyote’s mercy.33
Then came what must have sounded like good news. Although Antonio wouldn’t be given the promised construction job in California, he would be sent to Florida to make $150 a day in the tomato fields.34 That was a lot of money! His momentary sense of hope, however, proved false.
Chino turned Antonio and seventeen other Mexican workers over to a van driver called El Chacal—the jackal—who crammed them all into the back of a van and made them sit on the floor to escape the authorities’ notice.35 For four days, the van only stopped for gasoline. Even then, its passengers were not allowed to get out. As documented later in a criminal report by senior patrol agent Jose M. Lopez of US Immigration, “During the trip, the men in the group were made to urinate in plastic jugs, and the woman . . . did not urinate until two days into the trip, when the van had to stop to repair a flat tire, because she was unable to use the jug.”36 Although the eighteen migrants who had to share the floor of the van for four long days were given just two bags of chips to share during the entire trip to Florida, each was charged $700 for transportation and food, to be paid in hard labor.37
Upon his arrival in South Florida, Antonio and the other workers who had been crammed into the back of the van were taken to a labor camp run by Abel and Basilio Cuello.38 Any lingering expectations about improving his situation evaporated when Antonio heard El Chacal and the Cuellos haggling over his price tag. El Chacal was demanding $500 for him and for each of the other migrants, and the Cuellos were offering $350 each. “We were being sold like animals,” Antonio recalls.39
The migrants worked long, hard hours in the field. The way the debt and wages were structured, however, made it virtually impossible to repay the amount they supposedly owed and free themselves from the debt bondage that enslaved them.
They were housed in a mobile home at 1365 Sanctuary Road in Immokalee, Florida.40 That home on Sanctuary Road was anything but a sanctuary, with mattresses on the floor and only four or five dishes to share the inadequate meals that left them feeling hungry. “I thought I was going to die there, because I didn’t eat well,” Antonio recalls.41 There were roaches everywhere and holes in the floor, exposing snakes below. One of Antonio’s co-workers awoke one night with a scorpion sting on his neck.42
Worse than the grim conditions, Antonio and the two dozen others who were stuffed into the small mobile home couldn’t leave. The Cuellos made sure of that by locking them in at night. Abel Cuello would show up in the morning to unbolt the door and drive them to the fields.43 This daily transportation to the fields where they were enslaved was charged against their wages, along with rent for their nightly prison, the scant amounts of food they were fed, and the foul water that was supplied.44 Workers used the small amount of salary they had left to purchase toiletries and food on those infrequent occasions when their captors took them to a small nearby grocery.45
An opportunity to escape presented itself when, during one of those rare outings to the store, Cuello fell asleep while standing guard outside. Despite threats of violence should they try to flee,46 when Antonio and the others saw him napping, they seized their chance and raced to the highway and eventually to safety.47
“For four and a half months, I was held in forced labor in the fields against my will, and it seemed like an eternity for me,” Antonio says. “They were watching me all the time, controlling all I did. I thought I was going to die. Thanks to God I was able to escape, and it allowed me to become more aware. I’m out here learning more every day.”48
Cuello pleaded guilty to one count of involuntary servitude. In 1999, he was sentenced to thirty-three months in prison. Two of his relatives, who were co-defendants, were also convicted.49 Before Cuello went to prison, he spotted Antonio and gave chase in his Chevy Suburban, demanding his coyote fee back and swearing at the top of his lungs.50 According to the Miami Herald, Cuello has since created another harvesting company based in Naples, Florida.51
Antislavery advocates believe there are many, many male and female slaves working in our fields and factories. Indeed, the numbers are so high that these slave-based operations often remain undetected. Meanwhile, the personal tragedies continue to mount.
In 1999, a young Guatemalan woman by the name of Maria Choz was forced to come to this country when native Guatemalan José Tecum, who owned the largest home in their community, threatened to kill Maria or her father if she wasn’t given to him. Tecum then smuggled Maria into the United States.52
Authorities responded to a domestic call at Tecum’s home in Immokalee, Florida. Officers observed that Maria “cried and visibly shook.”53 She said she was required to do whatever Tecum ordered—including servicing him sexually—and that she considered herself a slave. Her labor for Tecum included work at a local farm. During the trial, the prosecutor nailed Tecum, saying, “Every paycheck she earned, he took it. And she received maybe one or two or three dollars.”54
Maria’s response in court reminds me of so many other survivors. “I don’t want to look at his face,” she responded when prosecutors requested that she identify Tecum.55 Fear, shame, and pain often prompt such a response. Victims and survivors innately know they never deserved to be treated as subhuman beings in the first place, but sorting that out in their hearts, lives, and minds is a process that takes many years and sometimes is never achieved.
Tap the Power of the Purse
Slave-produced products are all around us, from garments labeled “Made in the USA” but sewn by slaves, to products made by those imprisoned in China for their faith, to the food that we eat every day. Other goods tainted by the slave trade include cell phones, automobiles, jewelry, cosmetics, electronics, sports equipment, rugs, and agricultural products such as tomatoes, sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, and seafood.
How can we help solve this important matter? As we all become more aware and bring awareness to those around us, we can each help break the chain of slavery within the products we use every day. That doesn’t mean boycotting an entire industry, which is often the concerned consumer’s knee-jerk reaction. Just as not all goods coming from China are made by slaves, not all of any one product is slave-made. In fact, even in products known to be contaminated by slavery, such as chocolate or diamonds or tomatoes, only a small percentage of those products utilizes slave labor in its manufacture and delivery. So if we boycott the purchase of all chocolate, diamonds, or tomatoes, we hurt the vast majority of those supplying slavery-free products in return for a fair profit.
A 2010 documentary titled The Dark Side of Chocolate tells the secrets behind child slavery in the Ivory Coast. Children between the ages of eleven and fifteen are coerced or kidnapped from their homes. The men who worked undercover to make the documentary filmed one trafficker telling plantation owners that he could supply them with children for labor for about 230 euros each (that was his price before the typical bargaining ensued). Included in the price was transport and delivery of the children to their buyer, who would have indefinite use of each child for whatever purposes they chose.
Traffickers are motivated by money. By cutting off their income stream, we can stop slavery at its root. We can affect their profits by requesting fair-trade items and informing those around us about the need for fair trade. Tragedies like the kidnapping and enslavement of children on the Ivory Coast will only be averted by taking away the demand and profitability.
Demand Fair-Trade Products
So what can you and I do as consumers? We can insist on fair-trade products. Purchasing fair-trade products is one of the best and safest ways to ensure that the goods we purchase are not tainted with slavery. After being informed by that documentary, I have pledged to buy only fair-trade chocolate products. I can’t in good conscience eat chocolate when, in my mind, I see enslaved children. While my efforts don’t in and of themselves solve the problem, I know each small piece and each individual consumer is important in the puzzle.
A unique business model for fair-trade products brings together producers and buyers with the common goal of creating a sustainable living wage for those involved with a product’s production. Buyers and producers work in cooperation, adhering to a set of fair-trade criteria established by the International Fair Trade Association for handicrafts or the Fair Trade Labeling Organization for agricultural commodities. The criteria include fair wages, good working conditions, safety procedures, and adequate health standards for all workers. Producers also agree to adhere to environmentally sound production methods. Finally, buyers and producers must also promote human rights, especially the rights of the disenfranchised—women, children, and those with disabilities.56
When the opportunity arises, buying fair-trade items ensures that the product was not produced with slave labor. But fair-trade products aren’t always available. That’s where you can make an active difference. Take time to go to the store manager and ask about a product. Politely state that fair-trade items that do not contain slavery in their production line are important to you, and ask the manager to make the appropriate calls to ensure that no slavery taints the product. He or she may or may not be able to give you the information you need. Even so, you’ll have alerted the manager to the fact that selling fair-trade items is important to a sector of their customers. That will influence their future buying decisions. And we all know how loudly money talks.
Some of the world’s brightest individuals have joined in the fight against slavery, so stay tuned to this movement. Universities and scholars are beginning new research studies every day that will empower abolitionists to better engage in the fight against human trafficking. Technology companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google are developing ways to locate and report suspected slavery within the tech world. Outside-of-the-box ideas are needed to track the supply line for products available.
In 2012 California enacted laws that mandate transparency for some larger businesses in an attempt to eliminate human trafficking in their supply chains. These laws pertain to labor performed in the state of California and also to sweatshops or child labor in other countries.
It remains to be seen how effective such laws will be in fighting human trafficking. The good news is that we are seeing more and more attempts to fight human trafficking, not just by increased awareness but by laws that can effect change and give law enforcement and other government officials the tools they need to crack down on traffickers.
Recently I was in a gathering of law enforcement personnel who were discussing how they could interrupt the human trafficking that they knew was occurring in their jurisdiction. One officer brought to the meeting a recent statute that we worked to pass in the last legislative session. It contains a small clause that would enable them to arrest sex buyers for certain acts if they were performed in strip clubs. The group was pleased to understand the implementation of this new law and to have it in their “toolbox” to arrest perpetrators and give victims of sex trafficking opportunities to exit their enslavement.
Getting behind and initiating effective new human trafficking legislation is one practical way regular citizens can stop human trafficking. In 2013 I had an idea for a new law in my state of Oregon that would, among other things, amend Oregon’s Trafficking in Persons Act to specifically address sex trafficking of both adults and children, eliminating the defense that a sex buyer didn’t know the real age of a victim, and to provide compensation for medical bills and other related expenses. I went to my local senator and asked him to write a bill based on a new law that had just been passed in the state of Louisiana. He was pleased to do so, and after many phone calls, written communications, and significant research on my part, “my” bill dropped on the floor of the state senate and I began to learn about politics at a state level. Some of the lessons I learned were interesting and even a little fun; others were shocking and disappointing. Such is politics, but it is certainly a vehicle by which we can effect widespread and long-lasting change.
In the end, my bill was combined with a bill drafted by another nonprofit, and it was then passed into law in July of 2013. We didn’t get everything we wanted, which I learned takes time and a lot of hard work, but we are working toward that end. The daughters and sons who are being cruelly enslaved, beaten, raped, and tortured—in both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, in our state and others—deserve to have us fight for them. Law enforcement and prosecutors need practical tools in the form of laws that will enable them to not only arrest traffickers but also administer justice in the form of strict sentences for human trafficking.
As citizens and as consumers, we hold powerful tools in our hands: money and votes. Using those wisely will help us end modern slavery.
For Discussion