An interesting article from yesterday's Independent on Sunday on slavery in
the UK follows. If we had a halfway competent police force then I'm quite
sure that 95% of the slavery mentioned below could be stamped out. I
suspect that the reason why the UK legislation is behind that of the rest
of Europe is the slavery that's involved with the numerous Saudi Arabian
households in the UK, usually in large houses and invisible even from the
police (except when entering the country). We don't want to upset Saudi
Arabian royals do we?
Keith
Think slavery is a thing of the past? Think again
IoS campaign highlights the thousands who fall victim to enslavement in
Britain almost 180 years after its abolition.
By Emily Dugan
Sunday, 17 October 2010
William Wilberforce said future generations of Britons would see slavery as
"a disgrace and dishonour to this country", yet, more than 200 years since
its abolition, the shaming trade and exploitation of human beings still
thrives.
Tomorrow will mark Britain's first ever Anti-Slavery Day, intended to
highlight the plight of the thousands of people in the UK and around the
world who fall victim to its modern incarnation every year.
While Britain has much to celebrate since taking a determined stance
against the trade in 1807, experts warn that the UK is failing to act
against the continuing scandal of slavery on our doorstep.
Across the country, people of all ages and races are being coerced to work
against their will, often under the threat of violence. Some of these
"slaves" may get paid but frequently their "wages" are derisory sums, far
below the legal minimum.
They include the 4,000 people, mostly women, who are trafficked annually
into the UK, to work in the sex trade; the hundreds of domestic servants
locked away with no pay; the innumerable underground migrants forced to
toil in fields for little or no wages by gangmasters; or the children
smuggled into the country to farm drugs, beg or steal.
Anthony Steen, the former Tory MP for Totnes and now chairman of the Human
Trafficking Foundation, saw his Private Member's Bill to establish a
national Anti-Slavery Day go through all its Commons stages in February.
"Everybody believes in the back of their minds that slavery has gone, but
it hasn't; it's still a canker in our society," he said.
Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International, said: "When we're
talking about slavery in the UK today, we are not using a metaphor. Slavery
describes the condition of people controlled through either force or
coercion and made to work without pay in our factories, restaurants and on
building sites. Even everyday homes can hide people unable to escape
slavery, including abused domestic workers, women trafficked into
prostitution and children forced to be 'gardeners' on cannabis farms."
MPs will debate the issue tomorrow, but critics argue that the Government,
for all the talk, is failing to live up to its ancestors' proud record.
Britain's anti-slavery legislation is now weaker than the rest of Europe's
thanks to the coalition's decision to opt out of an EU directive on human
trafficking. The directive includes an agreed definition of the crime that
makes it easier to prosecute offenders and guarantees greater protection to
victims. Police and legal experts complain that existing UK trafficking
laws make it notoriously hard to prosecute offenders. There have been just
10 convictions for labour trafficking under the Asylum and Immigration Act
of 2004, and 140 convictions for trafficking under the 2003 Sexual Offences
Act.
The hidden nature of the crime makes getting accurate victim numbers
difficult in part, because so little police, academic and government time
is devoted to it. One senior police source said official inaction came down
to one thing: "Victims of human trafficking cannot vote."
What statistical evidence exists offers a disturbing glimpse of the extent
of the problem. Kalayaan, a charity working with domestic slaves, helped
356 escaping servitude last year alone. In April, a Scotland Yard
investigation into organised networks trafficking children to the UK
discovered that 180 children had been taken from a single Romanian village.
Despite this, the UK Human Trafficking Centre insists, in figures released
today, that just 215 children were referred to the authorities as victims
of trafficking between April 2009 and June 2010. In the same period, 59
Vietnamese children were referred to the authorities as potential victims,
the vast majority brought to the UK to look after cannabis farms.
When suspected child victims are discovered and taken into care, such is
the lack of protection given that many go missing and are believed to be
lured back into the control of the gangs that brought them here.
Christine Beddoe, director of End Child Prostitution and Trafficking, said:
"The Government's response is appalling. We don't just need to release
people from the cannabis factory or brothels, we need to provide the
support that means they can have their lives back and get back on the road
to healthy adulthood. That's just not happening at the minute."
Ms Beddoe believes adopting the EU directive would improve matters. "It is
unacceptable to put party politics ahead of the safety of some of the most
vulnerable in our society."
Anti-slavery campaigners are also concerned that funding for Operation
Golf, Scotland Yard's successful operation targeting Romanian gangs that
force children into crime, will soon run out, and there is little
confidence that it will be renewed. The Met's human trafficking team was
closed nine months ago.
Funding for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) is also under threat.
Set up following the Morecambe Bay disaster when at least 21 Chinese
cocklepickers drowned while working for an illegal gang, its funding is
threatened by cuts. Instead of facing cuts, critics argue, the GLA should
be expanding its remit to tackle the exploitation of workers in industries
other than agriculture, forestry and food processing.
Agricultural work: Trapped in a low-paid job from dawn till dusk
Nikhil, 25, was picking cabbages and cauliflower in a Gloucestershire field
for an unlicensed gangmaster when The Independent on Sunday spoke to him.
"I came here from India as a student to do a diploma in hotel management
and I needed money. This is not what I thought I'd be doing; I thought I'd
be working in a shopping mall or a restaurant, but I couldn't find other work.
"I'm picked up at 6am and get dropped back late in the evening. We get
about £28 a day, but what we do is piecework. We are worried that if we
don't pick enough the money will be low.
"I wasn't given any protective clothing -- but my friends told me to buy
some boots. I've heard that the minimum wage is £5.81 an hour, but my boss
didn't tell me. I don't make anything near that amount. I'd rather work on
my own land now, having seen what the jobs here are like.
"For people like myself, things will always be like this. And I can't
protest or nobody else will employ me."
The Gangmasters Licensing Authority is currently investigating his employers.
Sex trafficking: Locked up and forced to have sex with 20 men a night
Thippawal, 36, from Bangkok, paid an agency to bring her to Britain for
restaurant work in 2008 so she could send money home for her daughter's
schooling. But when she arrived in the UK she was locked up and made to
work as a prostitute.
"When I got to Heathrow, the man that met me took my passport. He took me
to a house in west London and said I had to work as a prostitute. I showed
them the contract which said I had to work in a restaurant, but they just
laughed. They said if I tried to leave I would die. They made me work 24
hours a day saying I had to pay off my debt to them for bringing me over --
which they said was £65,000. I had to have sex with 20 men a night and some
of them would hit me.
"I tried to escape three times and when they caught me they stabbed my
ankles with a knife. I was never paid. After a month I managed to get out
and called the police from a hotel who saw my cuts and bruises but didn't
take photos or interview me. So in court, there was not enough evidence.
Now my family have been threatened."
Thippawal was sheltered in a safe house by the Poppy Project.
Domestic slavery: No pay for being on call 24 hours a day
Izzeldin Ahmed, 50, is a father of five from Sudan. For the past nine years
he worked in virtual slavery for Sheikh Mohammed Ibrahim and Naglagla
Ibrahim -- members of the Saudi royal family. The Ibrahims paid him nothing
for working 24 hours a day during the six months of each year he spent in
London -- only giving him what amounted to less than £7 a day on his return
to Saudi Arabia. Now an employment tribunal has ruled they must pay him
almost £200,000 in unpaid wages. "For six months of the year the family
would be in London. They would take my passport and they never paid me any
wages in Britain. If we tried to leave in London we would get nothing. They
would pay me in Saudi Arabia -- and then it would be about £200 a month.
"I was on call 24 hours a day. I had to drive them around and stand for up
to three hours at a time waiting for them outside restaurants or cinemas. I
had to always be in sight. They would call me a donkey, a monkey, a dog.
"One day he told me I was sacked and put me out on the street in London. I
had no way of getting home."
Child smuggling: Made to beg and steal in London
A group of 28 Romanian children were placed in care last week after a
police raid on suspected child traffickers in east London. The children,
aged from three to 17, were brought to the UK and forced to beg and steal
in central London. A boy of three was taken to hospital with bruises and
facial injuries. In some cases their parents in Romania are understood to
have handed their kids over to gangs who have loaned them money at high
interest rates.
Drugs trade: Children working on cannabis farm
A 15-year-old Vietnamese boy found during a police raid on a house in
Doncaster, along with £85,000-worth of cannabis, had been working since he
was 12, trafficked via France with the promise of a factory job. He was too
scared to leave, having been beaten. He became aware that he was involved
in criminal activity only nine days before his arrest, but was still
sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to farming the drugs. The
EU trafficking directive would protect victims like him from such sentences.
IoS campaign
The Independent on Sunday today launches a campaign urging the Government
to sign up to the EU directive on human trafficking. The directive will
strengthen our laws to protect victims and make it easier to prosecute
those who enslave them. Readers can call on David Cameron and Nick Clegg to
do the right thing by signing the petition on the campaigning website 38
Degrees.
To sign the petition, go to:
<http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/stop-human-trafficking>www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/stop-human-trafficking
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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