A Crime Most Banal

http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/28/a-crime-most-banal-indonesias-human-trafficking-fix/

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Local governments are struggling to tackle human trafficking inside archipelagic Indonesia.

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On the surface, Ira* seemed a normal 15-year-old Indonesian girl.

Her government carers warned me she could be aggressive toward strangers, but as I looked at her in the interview room, the walls of which were adorned with children’s pictures, I detected nothing of the sort. In fact, she appeared to be the exact opposite.

Hailing from a village close to the city of Sukabumi, West Java province, Ira seemed to fit the Javanese stereotype perfectly (the Javanese are the largest of Indonesia’s ethnic groups, comprising 40 percent of the archipelago’s 250 million people). She was calm and painfully polite. She had a voice so quiet and fragile I feared it would snap under the awkward weight of the questions I would ask. Then she had the trademark Javanese smile, emotionless, revealing nothing at all of the harrowing experience she had been subjected to just a few months earlier. Ira had been a victim of human trafficking, a crime that pervades Indonesia.

The 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of…coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power…for the purpose of exploitation.” Child trafficking is defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation”.

A common perception of the crime is that it is something that takes place across borders, involving shadowy international crime syndicates that seize victims and then transport them to other countries where they are effectively enslaved. In fact, this is only half of the picture.

The other half is trafficking that takes place within borders, where victims are ensnared by the familiar, recruited by their families, friends, neighbors – even their peers at school – and then trafficked to another part of the country where they are exploited. In Indonesia, this type of trafficking is a serious threat to human security.

In her short life, 15-year-old-Ira told me she had been trafficked twice – the first time by her neighbor, the second – shockingly – by her own husband.

The neighbor was a broker for a recruitment agency. He offered her a job in Jakarta as a babysitter for US$50 per month. Her parents, needing the money, thought she should go to help the family.

But upon arrival in Jakarta, Ira was deceived. The terms of her employment had changed. She was to be a full time domestic worker, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the employer’s children. She found the job tiring, with little sleep and with a salary half what she had been promised. She wanted to return home, but her employer refused – she could only return when she had repaid the fee her employer had given the broker for her services.

Trapped in debt bondage, Ira was forced to stay in Jakarta until she could pay off her employer, a situation that would expose her to the dangers of city life and lead to her second, more harrowing trafficking experience.

While paying her debt, she met and married a man in the local neighborhood. Once the debt had been paid, she returned with him to her village in Sukabumi to meet her family. Her husband soon insisted they return to Jakarta to live, which they did, but upon their return, her husband began to take her to bars and nightclubs, where he offered her to potential customers for sex – at a price.

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/man-convicted-of-human-trafficking-in-b-c-filipino-nanny-case-1.1343710#ixzz2XO75hWq9

Man convicted of human trafficking in B.C. Filipino nanny case

Franco Orr speaks with CTV News about how allegations of human trafficking have impacted his family. May 30, 2013. (CTV)

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The Canadian Press
Published Wednesday, June 26, 2013 9:31PM PDT 
Last Updated Wednesday, June 26, 2013 11:00PM PDT

VANCOUVER -- A B.C. Supreme Court jury found a Vancouver man guilty of human trafficking Wednesday night, which Franco Yiu Kwan Orr`s lawyer says is a first in Canada.

Orr was also found guilty of employing a foreign national, specifically his Filipinio nanny Leticia Sarmiento, illegally and making a misrepresentation that could induce an error in the administration of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

However, the jury acquitted his partner, Oi Ling Nicole Huen, of human trafficking and employing a foreign national illegally.

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"My clients are in shock, frankly, they're stunned," said defence lawyer Nicholas Preovolos outside of court, noting the jury apparently believed the allegations against Orr but not Huen.

"It's odd, and it's frustrating for them."

The Crown declined to comment on the verdict.

Sarmiento, 40, had worked for Orr and Huen, taking care of their three children since 2007, first in Hong Kong and then, starting in September 2008, in Canada.

During the trial, Sarmiento testified that she was told by the couple that her working conditions would be the same as in Hong Kong, where she had two days off a week and regular hours, and that she would become a permanent resident in Canada after two years.

Sarmiento said that unlike in Canada, she was also allowed to socialize with other people, had her own cell phone to make frequent calls to the Philippines and took the children under her care out of the home on her own.

But she said all that changed when she arrived in Canada, where she was forced to work 16-hour days, seven days a week and also clean the house.

"When they see that the (other) nannies are talking to me, Mr. Orr would approach me and he would tell me there's no need for you to talk to the nannies," she said, describing her past experiences visiting a local community centre.

In June of 2010, Sarmiento called 911 and told responding police officers she needed help, testifying she called the police after an altercation over the type of milk she fed one of the children turned physical when Huen pushed her.

She packed her things under the watch of police officers and was then taken to a women's shelter, the trial heard, but the six-month work visa she travelled to Canada on had long-since expired.

She now works as a cleaner.

During cross-examination, Preovolos pointed to inconsistencies between her testimony at a preliminary inquiry and trial, and in one case noted she said she was never left alone in the house but then remembered being left alone once.

"I struggle to understand how it is that the jury was able to find beyond a reasonable doubt that her evidence was reliable," he said outside court.

Orr is expected to return to court July 10 to set a sentencing hearing and will remain on bail.

Preovolos said the maximum sentence on the human-trafficking charge is life and five years each for the two remaining charges but he'll ask the judge to impose a conditional sentence.

His client is 50-years old, has three daughters under the age of 10, has never been in trouble with the law, is a respectable citizen and is not a danger to the public, he added.

Preovolos said his client will likely ask him to explore whether there are grounds for an appeal.

"There's never been a conviction, I believe, on the human-trafficking offence in Canada," said Preovolos, adding he, too, was surprised and disappointed by the verdict.

Read more: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/man-convicted-of-human-trafficking-in-b-c-filipino-nanny-case-1.1343710#ixzz2XPeX5CXz

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/nyregion/housekeeper-accuses-a-peruvian-diplomat-of-human-trafficking.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Housekeeper in New Jersey Accuses Peruvian Diplomat of Human Trafficking

Damon Winter/The New York Times

María Ríos Fun said she was forbidden from leaving the house except to drive her employers’ children to and from school.

By KIRK SEMPLE

Published: June 25, 2013

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A Peruvian woman has accused a top official at Peru’s mission to the United Nations of entrapping her in a life of involuntary servitude in the New Jersey suburbs, forcing her to work as many as 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for little or no compensation.

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The woman, María Ríos Fun, said that the official, Marita Puertas Pulgar, first secretary of the Peruvian mission, and her partner, Alexis Aquino Albegrin, had promised her fair wages and a humane work schedule when they recruited her in Lima, Peru, last year to work in their house in Wayne, N.J., while Ms. Puertas was stationed at the United Nations.

But on her arrival, Ms. Ríos said, the couple subjected her to a grueling work schedule with one day off every six weeks and a campaign of intimidation and coercion.

Ms. Ríos, 40, filed a lawsuit last week in United States District Court in Newark accusing Ms. Puertas and Mr. Aquino of trafficking her for forced labor. “The defendants preyed on her vulnerability, isolated her, and required her to work long hours for virtually no pay,” the lawsuit said.

In a statement issued through their lawyer, Ms. Puertas and Mr. Aquino said, “We are surprised by the allegations by Ms. María Esmeralda Ríos Fun, which we reject categorically.”

The couple said they would refrain from further comment in order not to harm the judicial process.

Every year, thousands of foreigners are issued special visas to come to the United States and work for foreign diplomats. But immigrants’ advocates contend that some diplomats, behind the cover of diplomatic immunity, take advantage of those employees, violating local and federal labor laws and sometimes confining them to a form of modern-day slavery.

A report by the Government Accountability Office in 2008 found that since 2000 at least 42 foreigners brought to the United States to work as domestic workers said they were abused by their employers.

The authors of the survey asserted that their tally was likely an undercount because many victims were probably too fearful to speak up.

Ms. Ríos said in an interview that she had worked for Ms. Puertas and Mr. Aquino in Buenos Aires, where they were stationed in the early 2000s, and later in Lima, Peru. She had little complaint with their treatment of her during those years.

Before coming to the United States last October, she said, she signed a contract establishing the terms of her employment: She would work as a “housekeeper” seven hours a day, five days a week, at a wage of $9.82 per hour and overtime pay of $14.73 per hour. In addition, according to the lawsuit, she would be granted paid holidays, sick days and 15 paid vacation days per year, as well as three meals per day, six days per week.

But as soon as she arrived, Ms. Ríos said, her employers revealed hidden intentions. She said she was ordered not only to clean the two-story, four-bedroom house but also to cook for the couple and their four young children — the youngest of whom was 18 months old — and drive the older children to and from school. Amid her cleaning and cooking duties, she said, she would baby-sit for and change the infant, as well as care for house guests and tend to the garden.

Ms. Ríos’s work days often began at dawn and ended at 10 p.m., and she was given only “very basic food, like bread and coffee,” the lawsuit said. “Ms. Ríos Fun frequently was hungry.”

Instead of paying her the rate stipulated in the contract, she said, the couple told her they would pay her a flat rate of $900 a month, significantly less than her base salary not including overtime. Even so, Ms. Ríos said, they paid her only several hundred dollars each month after deducting money to cover the cost of clothing and toiletries they purchased for her.

She was given only four days off in six months, she said.

The couple isolated Ms. Ríos, who does not speak English, by forbidding her to leave the house except to drive the children to and from school, the lawsuit said. It also said that they subjected her to “verbal abuse and psychological coercion.”

On April 27, Ms. Ríos called a national human trafficking hot line that was listed in documents she had been given at the United States embassy in Lima. She fled and was eventually introduced to Safe Horizon, an agency in New York City that helps crime victims, which has provided her with counseling, shelter, legal representation and other support.

The lawsuit said Ms. Ríos was seeking the return of her belongings as well as unspecified back wages and damages for trafficking and breach of contract. She also might be eligible for a T visa, which is reserved for victims of human trafficking, said her lawyer, Dana Sussman, staff attorney for Safe Horizon’s anti-trafficking program.

“I don’t want others to go through what I did,” she said.

Legalizing Prostitution?

This study shows how the legalization of prostitution would increase human trafficking.
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/1/Neumayer_Legalized_Prostitution_Increase_2012.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/nyregion/in-albany-all-or-nothing-strategy-on-womens-equality-act-ends-with-nothing.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

All-or-Nothing Strategy on Women’s Equality Legislation Ends With Nothing

By THOMAS KAPLAN

Published: June 23, 2013

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In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomodescribed New York State as the “equality capital of the nation” and called on lawmakers to pass a 10-point Women’s Equality Act that would strengthen the state’s laws against sexual harassment, human trafficking, domestic violence and salary discrimination. Much of the legislation had widespread support.

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Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had insisted he would accept nothing less than the entire package, even if dropping the abortion language.

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But after more than five months of advocacy by the governor — including a trip to Seneca Falls, a landmark of the women’s suffrage movement — lawmakers ended their annual session over the weekend without approving a single element of the proposal, in large part because one of the measure’s provisions would have strengthened abortion rights language in state law.

The bill’s failure followed an abrupt strategic shift in the final days of the session. Until then, Mr. Cuomo, as well as women’s right’s advocates and other Democratic elected officials, insisted that they would accept nothing less than the entire 10-point package, even if dropping the abortion language might allow them to win nine of the proposed provisions. But on Friday, the advocates splintered — Naral Pro-Choice New York stood by the all-or-nothing approach, while others, including Mr. Cuomo, urged accepting a partial victory — and the entire package sank.

The result has left many lawmakers disappointed.

“Women’s equality and health should not be compromised because of a political game of chicken,” said Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, a Queens Democrat, who opposed ceding any element of the package.

There was little agreement, even about the substance of the legislation: Mr. Cuomo and women’s rights advocates said it would simply codify in state law the right already guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, but abortion opponents said it would expand the availability of abortions.

The Assembly, controlled by Democrats, voted for the entire package, but the Senate, controlled by a coalition of Republicans and independent Democrats, approved only the nine provisions not about abortion. When the leader of the independent faction of Democrats, Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, tried to attach the abortion language to a bill on medical records, the effort failed by one vote.

Some advocates of the legislation now want the Assembly to come back and approve the non-abortion measures, even while hoping to strengthen abortion law at some other time. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, has not ruled that out.

“The bottom line is the other nine points provide important protections for women in the workplace and in the community,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, “and it’s a disappointment that with such broad support, and such broad bipartisan support, those have yet to become law.”

But some lawmakers were adamant that the abortion issue was inseparable from other women’s rights concerns.

“I think it’s inappropriate and unfair to leave out women’s health when you’re claiming to be an advocate for all these other parts of a woman’s life,” said Assemblywoman Didi Barrett, a Hudson Valley Democrat who is a former board member of Planned Parenthood of New York City and Naral. “They’re all really important, but if a woman can’t make choices about her own body and her own reproductive health, you’re really not delivering equality in these other areas.” 

In addition to the abortion language, the legislation, according to the Cuomo administration, would have banned sexual harassment in workplaces with fewer than four employees. It would also have banned employers from denying jobs or promotions to workers because they have children, bar landlords from discriminating against victims of domestic violence, and increase potential damage payments in pay equity discrimination cases.

Opponents of abortion said the collapse of the legislation demonstrated that the only issue of concern to the bill’s champions was abortion.

“That’s what we were saying from Day 1: that this was just a smoke screen for abortion expansion, and the only reason they were bundled together was for political reasons, which we found unconscionable,” said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference.

“It would have been very nice to see these other pieces pass, but their agenda is abortion,” he added. “They couldn’t get that, so they torpedoed the whole thing.”

One thing is certain: the abortion issue will be a prominent one in next year’s legislative elections. Naral Pro-Choice New York ran an independent-expenditure campaign for some candidates in 2012, and Andrea Miller, its president, said, “One of the things that this made crystal clear, and probably one of the most important things that this session demonstrated, is what our roadblock is, and that roadblock is the State Senate.”

Mr. Cuomo, through a spokeswoman, said he believed the debate had advanced the topic of women’s rights, and that now it was up to voters to respond.

“Issues that have long been nonstarters in the Legislature, including stronger laws against human trafficking, sexual harassment in the workplace, income inequality and other critically important protections, are now in their strongest position in years to become law,” said the spokeswoman, Melissa DeRosa. “In the end, the public will hold individual legislators accountable if they stand in the way of finally achieving equality for women in New York State.”

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/19/19042103-modern-day-slavery-state-dept-says-millions-of-human-trafficking-victims-go-unidentified?lite

Modern-day slavery': State Dept. says millions of human trafficking victims go unidentified

Nita Bhalla / Reuters

Phul Kumari, 25, stands with her child in front of a window in a village community center in  in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh in 2011. From a poor rural community in India's Jharkhand state, Kumari was trafficked to Uttar Pradesh to become a bride.

By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

Nine 7-Eleven store owners and managers who authorities say ran a “modern-day plantation system,” employing dozens of immigrant workers at New York and Virginia convenience stores, were just one thread in a vast human trafficking and forced labor web that stretches around the world and into American homes.

Investigators filed indictments earlier this week against the eight men and one woman who were accused of hiding dozens of illegal immigrants from Pakistan and the Philippines at a string of convenience stores in two states.

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The nine defendants arrested by investigators allegedly employed more than 50 illegal immigrants at ten 7-Eleven franchises in New York and four more in Virginia, using stolen identities to cover up their illicit activities, authorities said on Monday.

But while these alleged victims were discovered, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that millions of victims of human trafficking slip past law enforcement every year as he released the State Department's 2013 Trafficking in Persons report.

"When we think of the scale of modern-day slavery, literally tens of millions who live in exploitation, this whole effort can seem daunting, but it's the right effort," Kerry said. "There are countless voiceless people, countless nameless people except to their families or perhaps a phony name by which they are being exploited, who look to us for their freedom."

Federal agents and police raid more than a dozen convenience stores in New York and Virginia, and arrest owners and managers for allegedly forcing foreign workers to work very long hours, for very little pay in their stores. Jay Gray reports.

Only about 40,000 victims of human trafficking have been identified in the past year, the report said, based on information obtained from governments around the world. The estimated number of men, women, and children who are trafficked at any one time worldwide may reach as high as 27 million, according to the report.

“Because reporting is uneven, we can’t say for certain how many victims of trafficking are identified each year,” said Ambassador Luis C. deBaca, director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, in an introduction to the report.

“That means we’re bringing to light only a mere fraction of those who are exploited in modern slavery,” deBaca said. “That number, and the millions who remain unidentified, are the numbers that deserve our focus.”

The report designated 21 countries as Tier Three, signifying that they make no significant effort to meet minimum standards of compliance set by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a 2000 law that allows for the prevention and prosecution of human trafficking.

After the release of the State Department's 2013 Trafficking in Persons report Secretary of State John Kerry talks about the importance of American leadership in combatting human trafficking.

The Tier Three countries listed by the report are: Algeria, the Central African Republic, China, the Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, North Korea, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

Yet the number of traffickers convicted by the Department of Justice fell over the past year, the report said, recording 138 traffickers convicted in 2012, according to the report. A year earlier, 152 convictions were obtained by the Justice Department in trafficking cases, the report said.

Justice Department task forces reported fewer investigations for 2012, as well, saying that the department conducted 753 investigations into human trafficking suspects last year, compared to 900 investigations into 1,350 suspects in 2011.

As many as 100,000 U.S. children may be victims of domestic human trafficking, according to estimates cited by a 2013 Congressional Research Service report. The tally of victims brought into the U.S. by traffickers each year might be as high as 17,500 people, according to the report.

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In another domestic case announced by investigators this week, a woman with cognitive disabilities and her young daughter beaten and threatened in their Ohio homefor more than two years, authorities said. Three people were arrested for holding the two victims captive against their will since May 2011, according to the U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio.

Jessica L. Hunt, 31, and Daniel J. Brown, 33, and Jordie L. Callahan, 26, allegedly held the two victims captive and kept them under surveillance using a video monitor in an Ashland, Ohio apartment, according to an affidavit filed on June 17 in Ohio’s Northern District Court.

Police were alerted to the alleged abuses when the adult victim was arrested in October of 2012 for shoplifting a candy bar, and asked to be taken to jail rather than back to the apartment, according to the affidavit.

The victims in Ohio were forced to shop and clean for their captors, as well as care for their pit bulls and pet reptiles, according to the affidavit. They were denied food, beaten, and threatened with firearms, as well as snakes including a poisonous coral snake, and 130-pound Burmese python, and a ball python, according to the affidavit.

"We are yet again reminded that modern-day slavery exists all around us," said Steven M. Dettelbach, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. "One of our nation's core values is freedom, yet this woman and her child were denied freedom for two years.”

The chief executive of the Polaris Project, a non-governmental organization that works to prevent human trafficking, said the report brought attention to the “appallingly high rate” of global human trafficking in a statement.

“The average American should understand that human trafficking is much larger and more prevalent than most people realize, and they may come across human trafficking in their daily lives,” Polaris Project CEO Bradley Myles told NBC News in an email. “Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable women, men and children right here in the U.S. are lured or forced into commercial sex or to provide labor against their will.”

President Barack Obama has named human trafficking as a priority of his administration, and last year signed an executive order tightening safeguards and adding protections against use of trafficked labor by the government and federal subcontractors. In April, the White House hosted a forum on its efforts to crack down on human trafficking.

“But for all the progress that we’ve made, the bitter truth is that trafficking also goes on right here, in the United States,” Obama said in a speech on human trafficking in September 2012. “It’s the migrant worker unable to pay off the debt to his trafficker.  The man, lured here with the promise of a job, his documents then taken, and forced to work endless hours in a kitchen.  The teenage girl, beaten, forced to walk the streets.  This should not be happening in the United States of America.”