Human Trafficking
What is Human Trafficking?
From the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Article 3, paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons defines Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring
or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of
the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having
control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a
minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation,
forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of
organs
Elements Of Human Trafficking
On the basis of
the definition given in the Trafficking in Persons Protocol, it is evident that trafficking in persons
has three constituent elements;
The Act (What is done)
Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons
The Means (How it is done)
Threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or
giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim
The Purpose (Why it is done)
For the purpose of exploitation, which includes exploiting the prostitution of others, sexual
exploitation, forced labour, slavery or similar practices and the removal of organs.
To ascertain whether a particular circumstance constitutes trafficking in persons, consider the
definition of trafficking in the Trafficking in Persons Protocol and the constituent elements of the
offense, as defined by relevant domestic legislation.
Source: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html
Click here to see a video (11 minutes) about human
trafficking in the U.S.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGAaWjsAOCA&feature=fvst
Sixteen-year-old prostitute Maya waits for a customer inside her small room at Kandapara
brothel in Tangail, a northeastern city of Bangladesh, on March 5, 2012. She earns about
300-500 Taka per day ($3.66- $6.11) serving around 15-20 customers every day. Maya's
son Halim, a four-year-old child lives with her parents in another Barisal. She cannot save
money for her child as she has debt and barely afford daily expenses. Maya is one of
hundreds of mostly teenage sex workers living in a painful life of exploitation in Kandapara
slum's brothel who take Oradexon , a steroid used by farmers to fatten their cattle, in order
to gain weight and appear "healthier" and more attractive to clients. (Reuters/Andrew Biraj
Source:
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=human+trafficking+infographic&hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1040&bih=825&tbm=isch&tbnid=egJ0l2hItUDSnM
:&imgrefurl=http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2012/07/fear-in-writing-fear-in-life-guestpost.html&docid=fM2q54wHdqgthM&imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A1vYEc4ce8/T_7W7ZuOoWI/AAAAAAAAC8Y/23m99IGShzo/s1600/humantraffickinginfographic2.jpg&w=1280&h=800&ei=QScUImUOYrhiwKRsoGYCw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=294&vpy=154&dur=2770&hovh=177&hovw=284&tx=152&ty=92&sig=1092846946921322314
25&page=1&tbnh=126&tbnw=202&start=0&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:80
Slaves Among Us: Human Trafficking in the Seattle Area
by Wenda Reed
She may bus tables at your local restaurant. She may do your nails or serve your coffee. Maybe
he landscapes your yard or lays your carpet. Perhaps she’s your neighbor’s nanny or
housekeeper, or she’s one of many young women living in a house in a suburban neighborhood
where men come and go all night.
They are “invisible people” in the words of Assistant U.S. Attorney Ye-Ting Woo, the leading
prosecutor of human trafficking-related cases in the Western Washington District. They are
victims of modern day slavery — confined not by chains, but by locked doors or physical
violence or, more often, by a psychological cage constructed of threats, debts, forced isolation,
lies and language barriers.
“I just keep quiet,” says a young African woman rescued from domestic servitude, speaking on a
video prepared by the Refugee Women’s Alliance (ReWA) and the Seattle Police Department.
She was told by a local couple who hired her as a housekeeper that the three children she left
behind in Africa would be sent to good schools and that she would get to visit them every year
in December. The visits never happened. “I wake up at 6 in the morning. I had to do everything,”
she says. “I work up to 9:30 [p.m.]. I go to bed at 10.”
“They told me not to communicate with other people, even if they visit us [or] come to the
house. So I just keep quiet.”
There are hundreds of foreign-born people like her enslaved among us in Washington State. In
legal terms, they are victims of “a severe form of trafficking in persons — the recruitment,
harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the
use of force, fraud or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary
servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery” (federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of
2000). The majority in Washington are exploited for their labor, say those who work intimately
with victims; some are forced into prostitution or sexual slavery.
Worldwide, the United Nations estimates that at least 12.3 million adults and children are
enslaved, 56 percent of them women and children. A relatively small number — about 17,500
— are trafficked into the United States from abroad, according to U.S. State Department figures.
Other governmental and human rights groups place the number at about 50,000.
No one counts how many of them end up in the Seattle area. That’s partly because the number
is fluid as people pass through this gateway state on their way to other destinations. Mostly, it’s
because “the victims of trafficking don’t know they’re victims,” says Lan Pham, executive
director of the Asian & Pacific Islander Women & Family Safety Center (APIWFSC), one of three
organizations in Seattle federally funded to serve those caught in human trafficking. Hemmed in
by fear and isolation, “most victims don’t want to be found,” she says.
APIWFSC has served about 100 clients with human trafficking connections in the past four years.
The Refugee Women’s Alliance serves about 10 clients a year. The third local organization, the
Seattle office of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), serves 20 to 30 people at a time. A
few more end up at other agencies. Intensive case management may take six months to three
years as a client moves from slavery to independence.
“There are hundreds we aren’t finding,” says Detective Harvey Sloan, human trafficking officer
for the Seattle Police Department and co-chair, with Woo, of the Washington Advisory
Committee on Trafficking (WashACT). “The numbers we know of are way lower than what’s out
there,” agrees Kathleen Morris, a caseworker with the IRC and program manager for the
Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network (WARN).
They come here legally or illegally, into Sea-Tac Airport or the Port of Seattle, over the Canadian
border or up the I-5 corridor. Although some areas of the country report high concentrations of
people from one particular area of the world, victims in Seattle come from Asia, Africa, Russia,
Eastern Europe, Mexico and South America. “We’re equal opportunity exploiters,” Sloan quips.
Most do not speak English as a first language.
Those who are rescued are found by law enforcement, are identified by first responders and
medical personnel or by people working in social service agencies, or discovered by church
members or good Samaritans who notice something wrong. Here are some of their stories.
COMING TO AMERICA
I met Sophie in a Bellevue coffee shop after she finished her nurse’s aide shift at a local hospital.
She is beautiful, self-assured and soft-spoken. “For a long time, I felt uncomfortable even
thinking about it,” she says of her months of servitude.
She lived in Novosibirsk, Russia. “In my country, after age 25, it is hard to get married,” she says.
It was especially difficult for her because she had a son by a previous marriage. At 29, she was
subjected to continual pressure from family and peers. She posted her photo and profile on an
online dating site and met a man — “a handsome, white American, a former military man.” She
fell in love with him. He came to Russia to meet her family, asked her to marry him, and applied
for a fiancé visa to allow her to come to America. Ten months later, she arrived at his home near
Boston with her 10-year-old son.
Immediately, her fiancé put her to work remodeling his house. She did plastering, nailing and
electrical work for him, while waiting for the marriage ceremony. The law requires that
someone in the United States on a fiancé visa must get married and get a green card within 90
days. The ceremony happened just before the deadline, but Sophie’s new husband said he
couldn’t afford the green card. “You are illegal now,” he told her after the 90-day limit had
expired.
His behavior changed. “At first, he was so sweet: ‘Honey can you do this?’” she says of the work
on the house. “He became more and more controlling.” Sophie has a bachelor’s and master’s
degree and was a nurse in Russia, but her husband refused to allow her to take ESL (English as a
Second Language) classes so that she could work in America. “If you want to go somewhere, you
must go with me,” he told her. “I feel like I’m choking in this house,” she says.
When his children visited, Sophie suggested that they help with dishes and other chores. Her
husband told her, “You son will do the dishes; he’s the slave from Russia,” she remembers. “He
said, ‘You guys are here to help me do the jobs,’ He began to call us names. He became rude; he
became sexually rude.”
She met a Russian-speaking man on the Internet and called him on the phone, crying. He invited
her to come to Seattle to stay with him and his girlfriend. Taking her son, Sophie fled, but her
husband tracked her cell phone records and followed her here. “I think he came to get rid of me
and my son because we didn’t obey,” she says. He began to beat her, but her Seattle friend
came home and called 911. Rescued by the police, she was referred to ReWA, where she
received help with her divorce and obtaining a green card and free ESL lessons. Almost four
years after coming to America, Sophie hopes to pass state exams to work, once again, as a
nurse.
Although we often think of slaves as arriving in large groups, smuggled in boats or vans, most
come to the Puget Sound area individually, as Sophie did, according to Woo and other local
experts. They often enter the country on short-term legal visas issued to fiancés, students,
workers or visitors. Many are brought here by family members and then exploited.
A locally publicized case in 2007 concerned Lamyaá, a young Moroccan girl invited to Tacoma by
her uncle and his wife to help look after their new baby. In return, he promised to enroll her in
school and guide her toward U.S. citizenship. At first, the couple did allow Lamyaá to attend
school, but made her sleep in a 5- by 10-foot room with the window blocked. They did not give
her a house key and took away her identification papers, a common ploy used by traffickers to
prevent their victims from leaving.
After a while, her uncle took her out of school to be “home-schooled.” Instead, she worked 12to 14-hour double shifts at the couple’s Lakewood coffee shop without compensation, cared for
the couple’s two young sons, cooked meals and cleaned the house. Her computer was locked,
and she was ordered not to talk to customers.
She was rescued after a couple of teens called authorities because they thought it was weird
that she couldn’t go anywhere. “How many people bought coffee there and wondered, ‘Why is
she working instead of in school?’” asks APIWFSC’s Lan Pham.
Emma Catague, community organizing program manager at APIWFSC, describes a typical
scenario: “Relatives or fiancés promise education or marriage, but when they get here, the
promises aren’t kept.” She and Pham give the example of a client who was brought to the
Seattle area to be a domestic helper to the sister of her boss in China. She worked very long
hours, seven days a week, for no pay.
People trafficked by one individual or couple are the most common types of clients Anne Ko
sees as the human trafficking caseworker at ReWA. She mentions a woman recruited by an
affluent couple from the Seattle area to be their nanny and housekeeper. “She had to work day
and night for almost no money; she couldn’t leave the house and was forced to leave the room
when guests came,” Ko says. She was rescued because her captors did allow her to go to church,
and the young woman told someone there about her living situation.
“You lose control of your entire self when you are enslaved,” Ko says. Often people have no idea
that they are illegally trafficked, she adds. “They feel it’s their own fault they’re in the situation
they’re in.”
Individual traffickers or couples may also recruit groups of people from their own country of
origin to work in the fields, in a business, or, commonly, in a restaurant. “They will recruit
people by saying, ‘Come here, and you’ll get this,’ and when they arrive, it turns out differently,”
Catague summarizes.
Chinese nationals were convicted in two 2006 federal cases for paying recent immigrants, some
of them illegal, extremely low wages to work long hours in their restaurants. In both cases, the
workers were housed together in the owners’ nearby homes. One of the owners transported
the workers from her home to her restaurant in vans. The judge called her and her codefendnt
“predators” who “exploited” those she illegally harbored and induced to remain in the United
States.
APIWFSC caseworkers helped several people who were working for very little money at a
Chinese buffet restaurant in Lynnwood. That case came to light when the boss, who had
recruited the workers from China, became angry and chased one of them through the
restaurant with a butcher knife, drawing police officers. Twenty workers were found housed in
one apartment. The people hadn’t thought to complain. “It would be normal business in China,
but it’s trafficking in the United States,” Pham says.
Even when they find out that they’ve been deceived, victims are rarely able to break out of their
captivity.
“The trafficker holds your passport; they control you; you can’t leave,” Catague explains. “The
traffickers exploit the culture of the place they recruit from; they use physical and psychological
imprisonment; they exploit vulnerabilities,” Pham adds. “Sometimes, a trafficker will rape a
woman, and then he will emotionally own her. She won’t go back to disgrace her family.”
The threat of harming the victim’s family back home is a powerful deterrent, Pham and Catague
say. The traffickers say, “I know where your family is.” The threat of deportation is also held
over the victim’s head.
Those who are enslaved by traffickers are naturally isolated. “Most of the (foreign-born) victims
don’t speak English, they have no nearby relatives; they come from places of civil unrest and
great poverty,” Catague says. In addition, traffickers watch their every move and step in if they
try to talk to members of the public.
“If they get too chatty, someone’s there to control them and take them away from the
conversation,” Morris says of trafficking victims.
AN INSURMOUNTABLE DEBT
In addition to threats and violence, many victims of human trafficking are kept imprisoned by a
huge debt owed to those who smuggle them into the country.
Smuggling — the movement of consenting people across an international border for a fee — is
not the same as human trafficking. The migrant’s relationship with the smuggler may end upon
arrival at his or her destination. It becomes trafficking when the person is subjected to ongoing
exploitation by the smuggler or by someone who takes delivery of the immigrant.
The traffickers often make sure that the debt cannot be repaid. The terms change after the
victim arrives in the United States.
“For example, a woman is promised a job as a hotel maid in America,” Sloan says. “When she
gets here, the trafficker says, ‘Now pay me $4,000.’ She’s told, ‘You must work as a prostitute
(to pay off your debt) before you can get your regular job.’”
Local Hispanic victims have usually been smuggled over the border with Mexico, Sloan says. In
the Phoenix area, coyotes (smugglers across the southwestern United States/Mexico border),
bring groups to safe houses. “The fee for the victims goes up from $1,000 to $5,000, once the
people are in the country,” he adds. Many of the Hispanic immigrants transported to
Washington end up in the agricultural fields, the fishing industry, construction or other jobs with
minimum regulation. Three Hispanic women who were smuggled over the Mexican border
ended up in Seattle, where they were rescued. Two of them were raped by coyotes.
In November 2009, a federal grand-jury indictment was brought against a couple living in the
town of Pacific in South King County. For at least three years, they and a small network of
smugglers brought immigrants from a Mexican town to live in their garage while they worked
off their smuggling debts. Children in the group said they were sexually molested or beaten. The
family was fed twice a day and a chain was kept on the refrigerator so that they couldn’t get
more food. They were threatened with physical harm if they talked to anyone.
Criminal smuggling networks are often involved in trafficking victims to the Seattle area over the
Canadian border, either at the Peace Arch crossing or in remote areas of Eastern Washington. If
they’re from a country that is part of the British Commonwealth, they can get into Canada
without a visa, Sloan explains. South Korea has a similar treaty with Canada, and a few years
ago, transport of young Korean women across the border was a focus of local efforts to help the
victims and prosecute the traffickers.
In the last three years, Woo has prosecuted several cases that have resulted in federal
convictions. A Chinese national from Vancouver, B.C., convicted in July 2009, admitted
smuggling “25 to 99 Korean citizens” into the United States for a fee, and transporting most of
them through Washington to Los Angeles to work. “Many of the aliens were required to pay
significant smuggling debts and compelled to work in various locations throughout the Unites
States, including engaging in sex work … resulting in debt servitude,” Woo argued.
A Korean national was sentenced in February 2008 for illegally bringing about 20 Korean people
a month, mostly women, into the United States from Canada. The women wound up working in
massage parlors and brothels to pay their smuggling debt. In another 2009 case, a Bellevue
woman was sentenced for employing Thai women as prostitutes in three massage parlors,
which were fronts for brothels, in Bellevue, Kirkland and Sea-Tac. They were also paying off
their debts.
One of the highest profile cases, coming after a 21-month investigation, resulted in the 2007
convictions of a Chinese man and a Chinese couple from Seattle, who ran brothels and an escort
service. The victims were young, undocumented Asian women from half a dozen countries,
some of whom paid up to $50,000 to be smuggled into the United States in shipping containers.
Sloan called them “the 10-day girls,” explaining that “customers want new women all the time,
so they are trucked around from place to place.”
Partly because they are often moved, “the market for sex slaves is so hidden,” Pham says. She
recounts a recent case when a brothel was raided on Beacon Hill and APIWFSC helped two of
the victims. A woman connected with APIWFSC lived close by and never saw any evidence of
the brothel.
The foreign-born sex slaves are usually not walking Aurora Avenue and other hot spots with the
local prostitutes, Morris says. “They’re working in brothels or for escort services. We think of it
as a shady business, but the brothels are often homes in residential neighborhoods.”
Many of the clients Morris has served “really thought they would be able to pay off their debts,”
she says. “But they get in a cycle of supposed debt and they’re trapped.” They are paid very
little, but charged for every little thing they use. “In some places, there are fines for everything
at work — swearing, having the wrong posture, having elbows on the table — and then the rent
is exorbitant,” she adds.
A GLIMMER OF HOPE
The people who come to the Seattle area as victims of human trafficking are “not different from
us,” Morris says. “They are like us, trying to pursue an opportunity to make a better life for
ourselves.”
“Even though they are exploited, they have a glimmer of a dream that they may get out of the
situation and be able to make money,” Sloan says.
They have a little more chance of escaping in the Puget Sound area than in other parts of the
country because of the extraordinary partnership between law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations that help the victims.
Detective Sloan gives 30 to 40 presentations a year to local law enforcement departments and
all kinds of government and non-governmental agencies to teach them to recognize signs of
human trafficking. When victims are identified, they are referred to ReWA, the IRC or the
APIWFSC for practical and legal help. “We’re pretty much hands-off as far as deporting victims
of potential human trafficking,” Sloan says of local law enforcement agencies. “But at the
border, they’re not always so sensitive.”
“Here in Seattle, we work well together,” Sloan says, a point echoed enthusiastically by local
experts working directly with victims. “If we (the police) do a brothel raid, we try to get the
women away from the traffickers and call one of the non-governmental organizations,” he says.
If the victims eventually agree to cooperate with law enforcement, they are issued a visa that
allows them to stay in the United States. Federal grants help pay for Sloan’s outreach efforts
and the services to victims.
There is also room for help from the public. “No one connects (the slavery) with the reality of
our daily life,” Morris says. She asks people to be alert and aware of the people in their
neighborhoods.
“Is there a live-in housekeeper who seems fearful, withdrawn and isolated?” she asks. “Is there
a teenager working during the day when she should be in school? Is someone working an
extraordinary number of hours?”
Sloan advises watching for red flags, including people whose documentation has been taken
away, who are not allowed to have any money, or who are kept isolated. If one person is
speaking for a whole group, that’s another red flag. If possible, he suggests that we ask
questions of people we might wonder about: What is their job? Are they being paid? Are they
allowed to leave? Has anyone threatened them if they try to leave?'
When we see possible exploitation, “we think maybe it’s just their culture,” Morris says. But
that should not dissuade us from making an anonymous phone call to start an investigation.
“Slavery is wrong in any culture,” she says.
Wenda Reed is a Seattle investigative reporter and frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.
Source: http://www.seattlewomanmagazine.com/articles/feb10-6.htm
Click here to see a National Geographic Video on human
trafficking (11 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlx7Ip_k6TA
Eleven-year-old Shefali, a prostitute, has her eyebrow threaded in front of her small room at
Kandapara brothel in Tangail, Bangladesh, on March 5, 2012. Shefali was born in Kandapara
brothel as her mother was also a prostitute. She has to serve around 20-25 customers per
day. Shefali doesn't know how much she earns as her Madam takes away all of her income.
In exchange she gets food three times in a day and some gifts
occasionally. (Reuters/Andrew Biraj)
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/06/world-day-against-child-labor/100317/
Source :
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=child+labour+infographic&num=10&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1040&bih=825&tbm=isch&tbnid=jqOLkTAo4YvVkM:
&imgrefurl=http://fashionoffreedom.wordpress.com/category/news/page/6/&docid=Xy00s3Ams6CpGM&imgurl=http://fashionoffreedom.files.
wordpress.com/2012/07/human-trafficking-and-child-labourinfographic.jpg%253Fw%253D560%2526h%253D320&w=560&h=320&ei=4SScULXrJLDxiQKL1YCICw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=227&vpy=477&dur
=173&hovh=170&hovw=297&tx=93&ty=112&sig=109284694692132231425&page=1&tbnh=146&tbnw=255&start=0&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:1
3,s:0,i:113
Source :
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=human+trafficking+infographic&hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1040&bih=825&tbm=isch&tbnid=KlVmok6nljKVY
M:&imgrefurl=http://stopthetraffik.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/exciting-new-human-traffickinginfographic/&docid=FPDf4dWkda5qGM&imgurl=http://stopthetraffik.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/trafficked-stats-boardjpeg.jpg%253Fw%253D640&w=600&h=424&ei=QScUImUOYrhiwKRsoGYCw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=733&vpy=148&dur=1250&hovh=189&hovw=267&tx=191&ty=114&sig=109284694692132231
425&page=1&tbnh=126&tbnw=178&start=0&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0,i:89
Source : http://www.google.com/imgres?q=human+trafficking+chart&num=10&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1040&bih=825&tbm=isch&tbnid=1Y6dJHBkC04RM:&imgrefurl=http://notenoughgood.com/2012/01/monitoring-trafficking/us_human_trafficking_chart-752955/&docid=ZxngX-
UVe4AY0M&imgurl=http://notenoughgood.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/us_human_trafficking_chart-752955.jpg&w=720&h=396&ei=_ScUOTTLKf0igLm9oHwCA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=4&vpy=162&dur=3246&hovh=166&hovw=303&tx=183&ty=42&sig=109284694692132231425
&sqi=2&page=1&tbnh=131&tbnw=246&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:71