Slavery Unravelled – Conversations PODCAST: Modern Slavery – A history and introduction

Welcome to the podcast “Slavery Unravelled: Conversations about being slavery-free” from Be Slavery Free, an NGO charity working to disrupt, prevent, and abolish human slavery globally. My name is Fuzz Kitto, and with Carolyn Kitto, we are the Co-Directors of Be Slavery Free. Be Slavery Free is a coalition and a partnering NGO charity, which is donor-funded and mission-driven. Since 2011, Carolyn and I have been co-directors. She's not only my co-director but also a colleague, my best friend, and the person I'm married to as well. You will hear from her in some of the other podcasts coming up in the future. 

Why do we do anti-slavery? Here's the key reason. His name – well, we'll call him Tway. Tway's family lived in Myanmar, and they were farmers. They observed that their rice crops were getting smaller each year due to the climate changes they were noticing. They calculated that they would soon not be able to produce enough rice to feed the extended family, and that meant a possibility of starvation. They put their minds together as good farmers do and said, “How are we going to solve this problem we're facing?” They decided to learn new techniques for farming and producing the rice they needed. Meanwhile, they decided to send someone to neighbouring Thailand, get a job, and sent some money back to help them buy rice while they figured out what they could do. 

They pinned their hopes on a man named Tway. They pooled their money together and contacted a labour agent. The labour agent said, “Okay, this will be $5,000, and that will get him a job and he can send money back home as you want it.” But all they could raise was just over $1,000. The agent said, “Okay, we can do it for $3,000. I can loan you $2,000, and Tway can pay it back with the money he earns. There'll be enough to pay back the loan as well as to support the family.” So they made all the necessary arrangements, took Tway to the border in Thailand, and he crossed the border with his papers. However, on the other side, another labour agent met him and demanded $3,000 from him. Tway protested, but the agent insisted, leaving him with no choice but to work off his debt on a fishing boat. He spent 17 years trapped on that boat without setting foot on land, until he was finally found and released. When he returned to his family, they were shocked and frightened, mistaking him for a ghost after all those years. 

This heartbreaking story illustrates why we are involved in anti-trafficking, in what is now called modern slavery. People are used, abused, bought, and sold. The trade is in people, but the currency is hope. Human traffickers and those involved in the buying and selling of people and exercising ownership over another person trade on people's hopes—for a better future for their children, for education, for a job, and to provide food and shelter for their families. 

Slavery has a long history, of course. Kate Hodal in The Guardian wrote, “Slavery can be traced back to many of the world's oldest societies, from the ‘cradle of civilization' in Mesopotamia to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as the Mayan and Aztec empires. Male prisoners of war and captured sailors became labourers; women from pillaged areas became concubines and domestic servants; children were used as farm hands or to help around the house. In medieval Europe, serfdom – in which a person is tied to a property instead of a ‘master' – slowly took hold, while the Arab slave trade flourished on the African continent. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, ‘shanghaiing' was a popular practice of tricking or kidnapping men to work on sailing and fishing vessels, while able-bodied men were forcibly press-ganged into the Royal Navy. Europeans colonized the Americas with the help of the transatlantic slave trade and subsequent slave markets, where Africans were inspected, bought, and sold in public squares, during a period known as ‘chattel slavery.' Abolitionists in the UK began campaigning to end slavery in the 1760s, but it wasn't actually abolished until 1833. Thanks to the work of William Wilberforce and the Clapham sect. The US followed in 1865, the last country in the world to abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981. Yet activists believe up to 20% of its population is still enslaved today.” 

So, what is modern slavery? Slavery was defined in the 1926 convention to suppress the slave trade and slavery as the condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attached to the right of ownership are exercised. The definition of slavery was expanded by the 1956 supplementary convention on the abolition of slavery, the slave trade, and institutions and practices similar to slavery, to apply to slavery-like practices, including debt bondage, serfdom, servile forms of marriage, and exploitation of children. 

Modern slavery is an umbrella term that seeks to bring together the variety of situations in which a person is forcibly or subtly controlled by an individual or a group for the purpose of exploitation. The UN notes that there is no international agreement or agreed definition of modern-day slavery or modern slavery, let alone the legal definition of the term. Modern slavery is an umbrella term that is used to describe human trafficking, slavery, and slavery-like practices. It might be slavery, servitude, forced labour, deceptive recruiting for labour or services, forced marriage, trafficking in persons, domestic trafficking, child trafficking, organ trafficking, where people are sold for their internal organs, and debt bondage. 

Slavery offenses in the Australian Criminal Act carry significant penalties, as Australia is a destination country for people who've been trafficked. In Australia, human trafficking leads to exploitation in various forms, including sexual exploitation, forced labour, visa exploitation, forced marriage, and domestic servitude. Each of these is characterized by deception, coercion, force, threats, and abuse, and is an issue of human rights and, in many cases, child protection and gender inequality. Australia acknowledges all these types of exploitation under the term modern slavery, and they have substantial penalties under the penal code in Australia, as do many other countries around the world. 

For instance, in Australia, the maximum penalty for slavery is 25 years imprisonment. For servitude, it's 15 years imprisonment or 20 years if it's aggravated. Forced labour carries nine years imprisonment or 12 years if it's aggravated. Deceptive recruitment for labour or services carries seven years imprisonment or nine years if it's aggravated. Forced marriage carries four years imprisonment or seven years if aggravated. Trafficking in persons carries 12 years imprisonment, and 25 years if it's aggravated. Domestic trafficking carries 12 years imprisonment or up to 20 years if it's aggravated. Child trafficking and organ trafficking carry 12 years imprisonment or 20 years if it's aggravated, and 25 years in prison if the victim was under 18 years of age. Debt bondage carries four years imprisonment or seven years if aggravated. 

Are you starting to get the picture here? Modern slavery is considered in the Crimes Act, as a very serious illegal activity. It's difficult to get convictions, though, in all of these areas. Anti-Slavery Australia, headed by Professor Jennifer Burn, who has worked on many of these cases in Australia, tells stories about people they've defended when they've got permission to do that. 

Jay, for instance, worked as a chef in his home country of India. But wages were low, and life was difficult. Jay heard stories about the opportunities for a decent job and a good salary in Australia. So, he was happy to accept a position in a restaurant here, especially when his new boss agreed to organize his working visa and pay for his international flight. He believed he would be a restaurant chef in Australia. But that's not how it turned out for Jay. His new boss took his passport and forced him to work at least 12 hours a day, often from 8 am until midnight, with limited food and very limited breaks. He was told he would not be paid until he had worked off the cost of the visa, the flight, and the board. However, Jay was not provided with any board, any accommodation. Instead, he was forced to sleep on the premises in the restaurant, where he would be locked in the storeroom at night with no bathroom or kitchen facilities and not released until his boss arrived at the restaurant the next day. 

This is not just in Australia; around the world, there are strong legislative laws and regulations that ban modern slavery. But often, they are not enforced due to resource constraints, corruption, or a lack of application of the rule of law. It's difficult to get convictions in many cases. How could you tell if someone you came across might be caught in modern slavery? There are some significant signs of people who are trapped in these situations: poor self-esteem, deception or coercion, controlled by others, restricted freedom of movement, being monitored all the time, being escorted everywhere, intimidation and threats, which can include threats of deportation. Almost always, there will be threats to the person's family or friends, as they have taken their passport and know their home addresses. Other signs may include no or very limited access to legal documents like their passport or visas, no medical care, no choice allowed over life decisions, serious debt (particularly in debt bondage), being deceived or lacking information about the nature and conditions of work, distrustful of authorities, limited social contact, threatened or actual physical or sexual violence (causing fear and intimidation), and abusive living and/or working conditions, which can include excessive working hours and inadequate accommodation with heating, toilet facilities, or safe conditions. 

There are many ways to start recognizing modern slavery. We call it modern slavery, and some can't get their heads around the “modern” bit of modern slavery. I was speaking at the National Rotary Convention in June, and at the end of my talk, a lady from the Democratic Republic of the Congo stood up and let fly. “What do you mean modern slavery?” she yelled. “In my country, the Belgian colonialists enslaved our people; they slaughtered tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and abused and took control of the entire population. It was slavery. And now you want to call this modern slavery?” She was right, of course, and I understand and agree with her. So much of what we see today that we call modern slavery is a consequence of what has happened in the colonial era. We have more slavery in the world today than at any point in human history, and we have to ask why. 

In the next podcast, I'll answer this question more fully. We have a Modern Slavery Act in Australia, and we'll talk more about this in the podcast. We just had a review of it as well. We have slavery in Australia, estimated perhaps up to 40,000 people who are in slavery in Australia. Around the world, it's about 50 million. But the biggest impact in so many consuming countries is in the goods that we import. Into Australia, we import around billions of dollars' worth of goods made from slave labour, such as electronics ($8.9 billion), garments/apparel/fashion ($6.4 billion), solar panels ($1.3 billion), textiles ($0.5 billion), fish, and seafood ($0.4 billion). It happens around the world, and not always in poor countries. 

Eva was a Filipino. She said, “When my husband became sick and couldn't work, I used an employment agency to find me work abroad. I was sent to Qatar, but the family cheated me, paying me less than agreed in my contract and refusing to give me a day off. I called the agency in the Philippines for help, but they never answered. I had to send money back home to pay for food, school fees, and medicine. I fought with my employer about my salary, but he would say, ‘Your contract is just a piece of paper.' A year passed, and finally, they said they'd let me go home if I went to work for one of their sisters who lived in London. My employer flew me there and flew with me as well. When we reached Heathrow, the immigration officer just asked my employer what I'd be doing and let us through. The sister lived in a flat near Harrods in Knightsbridge, London. She thought she had escaped the abuse she faced as a domestic worker in Qatar, yet the exploitation of the Filipino woman was about to suffer would surpass anything she experienced in the Middle East. The 50-year-old was taken to a luxury flat in Kensington, where her boss was the sister of her madam in Qatar. They made her work 20 hours a day, allowing her only a piece of bread and no wages. She was trapped in a life of servitude, while meters away, Central London bustled with shoppers and people going in and out of Harrods, one of the most expensive department stores in the world. “I do work all the time,” she said, sitting on the floor by her bed. “She would shout at me, saying I was stupid, or calling me a dog in Arabic. I was rarely allowed outside the house and only with her. I was given just a piece of bread and a cup of tea for the whole day. I became emaciated, I felt like a slave, like I was imprisoned. I wanted to run away, but they had my passport. I had my phone, so I was able to get on Facebook, and a friend referred me to a Federation of Filipino Workers in London. One morning, after my employer went to take a nap, I grabbed my phone, found the keys to the door, and ran. I hid inside a nearby church and phoned the Federation. I'm hoping to get justice,” she said, “and go home soon.” 

We have a policy with Be Slavery Free. We never give information without giving you actions that you can do to make a difference and do something about modern slavery. If you're just starting this journey or if you want to know more, you can go to our website www.beslaveryfree.com and look at the resources and contacts to help you learn more. This is the first step: get informed, get an understanding, start to get across it. There are also ways that you can support us as we try to disrupt, prevent, and abolish modern slavery. Join us and find ways that you too can start doing simple things that are going to make a difference, that can actually help people, and you can be a part of a movement that's really going to make a difference. This has been a podcast from Be Slavery Free. Please sign up and listen for more; we will be coming up weekly. You can get informed about modern slavery and make a difference.