Week of 05/09
May 10th and 11th
Slavery: Collier county’s connection
Narrative of the Life Frederick Douglass
May 12th and 13th
How To Combat Modern Day Slavery
Federal definition of Human Trafficking
1. Traffickers:
a. Recruit
b. Abduct
c. Transport
d. Harboring, or
e. Provide
2. Persons, by means of:
a. Force
b. Fraud, or
c. Coercion (psychological & physical)
3. For the purposes of:
a. Commercial Sexual Exploitation
b. Forced Labor or Services
*Cases involving persons under 18 yrs old who is commercially, sexually, exploited are not required to show force, fraud or coercion.
*Anybody under 18 yrs old, who is involved in prostitution, is a victim of trafficking under federal law.
The five most common types of slavery include: chattel slavery, debt bondage, sex slavery, forced labor and child soldiers.
Chattel Slavery: This is where men, women and children are bought and sold as property. Owners have a right to do as they please with their property whether that means beating, raping or even killing the slaves without getting into any trouble with law enforcement.
Debt Bondage, or Bonded Labor: A kind of slavery that holds its victims in an endless cycle of debt and poverty. Extreme poverty will often force parents to offer themselves or their own children to work towards paying off a loan. Most are told they will only work until the debt is paid off. However, the loaner will charge high interest rates on the loan. This in turn often makes paying the loan off impossible. As a result, the debt is inherited by the victim’s children when the parents die. This can cause a vicious cycle that can claim several generations.
Sex Slavery: Some are lured by the promise of a well-paying job, while others are sold by poverty-stricken parents and still others are simply kidnapped then beaten and forced to work in brothels. If, by chance, a victim does manage to leave the sex trade alive, the mental and emotional toll of the experience is extremely overwhelming.
Forced Labor: Results when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to slave conditions; working without pay while enduring physical and mental abuse with often harsh and dangerous surroundings. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers and even human mine detectors.
Child Soldiers: This is a practice most prevalent in Africa where tens or even hundreds of thousands of children are abducted from their homes and forced to commit heinous acts of crime and warfare.
Identify the Modern Day Slavery
Rose and Christie were just teenagers in Cameroon when they were promised a chance to go to school in the United States. What they got was - slavery. They worked 15 hours a day for years - they were paid nothing. Rose was beaten. Finally, she couldn't take any more. Rose opened the door and ran. She wasn't wearing shoes, it was October and bitterly cold in suburban Washington, D.C.. She was frightened, "and I told myself I really give up I don’t care whatever happen with my life right now I think I’ve tried my best running away…" Rose called the number of a Cameroonian man who visited her slave owner's house occasionally and seemed concerned about Rose. The man picked her up hours later. Another Cameroonian man found out what was happening. He took Rose into his home. Rose told him there were others just like her. Eventually, Rose was reunited with her friend Christie and other young Cameroonian girls who had been enslaved.
Ramphal and his entire family were slaves in the rock quarries of India for as long as anyone can remember. Slowly - with the help of grassroots activists, Ramphal and the other slaves in his village realized that freedom was possible. Getting there was dangerous. "If I would move in my house or out of my house, if I want to sit somewhere, get up, if I want to eat, if I want to drink - anything that I wanted to do - I required permission." The villagers of Sonnebarsa began meeting with other slaves across the area and demanding their rights. Violence broke out at a meeting. A slave owner was killed. Slave owners retaliated by burning Ramphal's village. What little the families had was gone. Nine slaves were jailed and charged with murder. Ramphal was one of them. Other freed slaves in the area took in the desperate families, still some babies in the village died. Legal activists worked to get the slaves out of jail. Grassroots activists applied for leases to mine nearby rock quarries. They won the leases. The men were freed. Finally the villagers were able to build a new village - Azad Nagar or 'Land of the Free.
Like tens of thousands of children in Haiti, Cam-Suze was held as a restavec, a child slave. There she says she lived in misery. Now 15 years old, she was first enslaved at the age of 6. Like many restavec children in Haiti, she was forced to work for a family. Looking back, Cam-Suze remembers: “I did a lot of work. I would carry water, I would sweep. I would take the children to school [and] they would beat me, they hit me. Her days would start at 4 in the morning, before anyone in the household was awake. She would work until the children were ready to go to school, taking them to classes she couldn’t attend herself. While the children were in school she would do domestic chores, including hauling drums of water from its source, two hours away. “If I took too long, I would come back and they would beat me,” says Cam-Suze. For years she survived this monotony, her days ending at one in the morning. All of this was before being rescued by Limye Lavi, Free the Slaves partner organization in Haiti. Now, reunited with her mother, Cam-Suze recognizes that she “went through a lot of misery and it’s thanks to Limye Lavi that I’m here today, not doing that any more.” She goes on to say that now she’s happy because “I’ve been delivered from the misery and now I’m in school.”
Like many stories of trafficking and slavery, Kwame's begins with a dream. His parents were told he would join a successful sales business. And like each of these stories, the promises quickly turned to lies."The man mentioned that I was going to be involved in his selling business and I was a bit interested," says Kwame. His parents believed it too, never guessing he would be trafficked to Yeji, the infamous fishing region around Ghana's Lake Volta. Countless children work in the fishing industry, doing the dirty and dangerous jobs nobody else wants to do – jobs they are forced to do.Kwame toiled under the deceptive fisherman for 8 long years. When asked to describe this work, he replied: "We wake up around 4 am to the river to pull net into the boat and bring the fish to the river side by 8am. After delivering the fish we then return back onto the river to work and it's after all this before we are given food." The rest of the day was spent mending nets in preparation for even more fishing in the afternoon. His first meal of the day was eaten in the afternoon, the second (and last meal), just before bed. When asked how he was treated, Kwame responded: "they beat us." He went on to describe how: "at times, as a way of punishment, they paddle the boat away from us while on the river and we have to swim long distance to catch up with them. Some times if you are not lucky you could get drown in the river." Kwame was released after eight years of backbreaking labor and heartbreaking abuse. He was released by Free the Slaves ally in Ghana.
Samura and Sankalp were slaves. When they began to organize for freedom, they were burned out of their homes by angry slave owners. Samura remembers, "There was not one single cloth to wear, no food to eat, no utensils, nothing." So where is the success you might be asking? It actually got worse. They had no place to live. Their children survived while they watched other young village children die. Still they believed things would get better because local activists had quietly taught them their rights. "Sankalp [the grassroots activists] initially told us how we could all collect together, fight against the exploitation of slave owners and then live our own lives." The women owned their freedom despite hunger and fear and violence. Activists helped the burned out villagers get a lease to a quarry. They had been quarry slaves their entire lives. Suddenly they were doing the same work but making money. They immediately invested in their future. They sent their kids to school. Shyamkali is learning with her kids, "My children come and teach me but they lose patience very soon."
Rambho was tricked into slavery after his father died. He worked 16 hours a day weaving carpets. When his fingers bled - the slave owner dipped them in oil and lit them on fire. That was before the raid that changed Rambho's life forever. Rambho and 10 other boys were rescued by Bal Vikas Ashram - a grassroots organization in northern India that not only frees children from slavery, but houses them for six months as they recover from years of abuse, educates them and helps them learn to play again. Activists from the Bal Vikas Ashram also go to the remote villages where the traffickers sweet talk parents with false promises. The activists explain what is really happening and help vulnerable parents organize to demand their rights and earn a living. Today, after 6 months in the ashram, Rambho knows how to read and write. He is back home and activists have helped his mother reclaim the family home that was lost when her husband died. Rambho says he wants to be a guard when he grows up. He wants to keep other children free from slavery. "I won’t let anybody go there even by mistake. I’ll tell them that they hit you and they beat you and I would not let them go there ever."
Miguel wanted to work in the United States because his young son had cancer and Miguel couldn’t afford the medicine on the salary he made in Mexico. He didn’t have the cash to pay for his journey to the United States so he accepted an offer to get a ride “now” and pay “later”. He soon found himself in a worse situation. He was enslaved in the orange groves of Florida. Every day Miguel was threatened with violence. “Well, I felt like a slave from the moment that I arrived because we couldn’t pay for the ride and because we had to pay for that and then they started to threaten us.” Miguel said. “It was horrible.” One day some people from an organization called Coalition for Immokalee Workers visited the workers at the site. They started asking questions about Miguel’s work. At first he didn’t trust them but his instincts told him to ask for their card. Later he decided to call them and after talking with them he started to trust them. He set up a time to meet and the CIW set up a rescue. Now Miguel is working because he wants to. He has the freedom to take days off and work overtime if he wants to. He is able to send money back home to his family now. His son is healthy.
When Helia LaJeunesse was five years old, her mother died. She went to live with her grandmother until she too passed away. A neighbor took Helia in until she was about twelve years old. The woman of the house made Helia do all the cleaning and all of the chores around the house. Helia was verbally and physically abused, and she wasn’t allowed to go to school. Even the neighbors would tell the woman that she was mistreating Helia. The woman would reply that since she didn’t have a family, Helia was an animal, and should be treated like an animal. Not until the community threatened to burn down the woman’s house did she let Helia go to communion class. Helia finally mustered enough courage to escape. She was enslaved again, “I would have the hope that somebody would deliver me. I always have that hope and I believe that not everybody can be the same way.” Eventually, Helia married and had children. One night during the political unrest in Haiti, masked men broke into her house, raped her and took away her husband. She has never see him again. She couldn’t feed her children and eventually sent them into the child ‘restavec’ [slavery] system in Haiti. Finally, with the help of Limye Lavi – an anti-slavery group FTS works with in Haiti – Helia has brought her children home. Despite her optimism and sheer will power to create a future different from her past, times are incredibly difficult for Helia.
**All stories were taken from, http://freetheslaves.netTypes of Modern Day Slavery
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