human trafficking case dismissed in hawaii

Yesterday U.S. Chief District Judge Susan Oki Mollway dismissed all charges against Alec and Mike Sou of Aloun Farms in Hawaii at the request of federal prosecutors. The brothers were accused of trafficking 44 laborers from Thailand and forcing them to work on their Hawaii farm. A number of issues arose with the indictments that would have made it difficult for the prosecution to carry its burden of proof. The U.S. Department of Justice supervisor on the case recommended dropping the charges after an earlier ruling by the judge, failure to utilize witness testimony effectively, and other issues made it unlikely the State could prove its case.

Prosecutor Susan French conceded federal law in 2004 did not make it illegal to charge laborers recruiting fees when the brothers recruited and brought the 44 Thai workers to Hawaii. Each worker was charged between US $16,000 and $20,000 for the chance to work on the Aloun farm. Mollway's ruling Tuesday meant prosecutors couldn't claim in court that the recruiting fees were illegal. The law was changed in 2009 to make charging such recruiting fees illegal.

Federal prosecutors also failed to effectively use the witness testimony of Mattee Chowsanitphon to demonstrate a different violation of federal law. Under federal guest worker rules, employers are required to pay for plane tickets. However, it's alleged the recruitment fees paid by the Thai workers were being used to purchase their plane tickets to Hawaii. But the government didn't connect the dots clearly enough during the 3 days of testimony before a jury. Clare Hanusz, an immigration attorney representing many of the Thai workers said:

The government never really connected the dots to show that was the workers' money and that was illegal... There were things that were done that were clearly in violation of the law. I guess because of procedural issues with a number of issues in the indictment, everything got thrown out.

The workers paid the recruitment fee in exchange for a guarantee of US $9.60 hour wages for three years and the Sou brothers were supposed to take care of securing their guest worker visas. Neither promise turned out to be true. The workers were paid much less than $9.60 an hour. The Sous and their attorney claim hefty deductions were made for taxes. And they blame the government for the not renewing the visas after the first few months. The Thai workers would not have been able to earn money to repay their recruitment and travel debts without valid visas, but the Sous maintain that's not their fault.

While I'm certainly not an expert on the legal problems of this trial nor am I claiming that Mike and Alec Sou are human traffickers, I do want to address the comments of one of the jurors. He said:

The government didn't prove that they were being caged and prevented from seeing anybody... They had freedom to move around, they had their passports, they were being fed, and the only thing that prevented them from working was rain.

This juror's comments reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of human trafficking and modern slavery. Modern slavery doesn't rely on shackles and the lash like in the Biblical story of Pharaoh and the Jews to keep people imprisoned. It utilizes less overt forms of control. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has identified several modern forms of slavery, including:

• Chattel slavery, where the enslaver has complete power over the life and liberty of the slave;
• Debt bondage, where migrant workers used as forced labour as a form of repayment for a loan;
• Human trafficking, which involves transporting people away from their home and coercing them into work via deception or violence;
• Serfdom, where serfs labour under landowners in exchange for the right to work on the fields of the landowners;
• Child labour and servitude, where underage children are forced to work in contravention of the law for little or no pay;
• Forced labour, where people are  illegally recruited to work under threat of violence; and
• Forced marriage, when women are forced into lives of indentured servitude and live in fear of violence and aggression.

The human trafficking and slavery case being made against the Sous looks like debt bondage. Retaining a passport and apparent freedom to move (not being held in a cage) don't disprove that the Thai workers were being held by an ever mounting debt created by the Sous that the could never pay off. It started with the incredibly high recruitment fee (many of the workers mortgaged their homes and properties to pay the fees; the others likely borrowed the money, possibly from the Sous, their associates, or other organized crime groups connected with human trafficking). The workers were no doubt enticed by the promise of high wages ($9.60 hour guaranteed for 3 years) and stability (employment for 3 years, employer handle the worker visas).

But those wages and legal guarantees turned out to be false. I doubt taxes were ever mentioned by the recruiters. Neither was the possibility that their work visas might lapse, trapping them with their employer. Prosecutors stated the workers were threatened with deportation by the employer if they complained about their low pay or living conditions. These are the hallmarks of debt bondage slavery.

The juror points out the workers were being fed even when they couldn't work because of weather. I wouldn't be surprised if it was by the employer, the Sou brothers and Aloun Farms, who was very likely not doing it out of the goodness of his heart but adding the costs to Thai workers' debts - most likely by deducting it from future wages. It's not mentioned directly where the workers were housed but the implication is in housing owned by the employer. In many cases similar to this, workers are housed by the employer and living expenses are deducted from their wages.

The purpose is to trap the workers under a mountain of growing debt. Costs continue to mount while pay is much less than promised or perhaps none at all if employer-generated expenses eat up all the wage. Interest can compound the problem, preventing the worker from ever paying down the principal. Or, as the prosecutors described it, debt bondage slavery economically entraps and manipulates the laborers through debt. It's not iron bars but dignity, honor, obligation and the perceived actions of law that prevent the laborer from leaving. Although none where mentioned in this case, threats of physical violence against the laborer's family back home can be used to persuade him / her to stay when these softer methods don't work.

Huge initial debt, lies about wages in the new country, illegal migration, growing debt for employer-provided living expenses and housing, and threats based on that illegal status and debt leveled at the worker and his/her family are the tools of psychological manipulation used in debt bondage slavery. It doesn't require cages and chains to imprison the individual. Clearly, governments and NGOs committed to fighting human trafficking and modern slavery aren't doing enough to educate people about what the modern face of slavery looks like.

Several of the Thai workers have received a T visa, a special government visa granted to trafficking victims, to remain in the US. They are continuing to seek compensation from the Sous in civil lawsuits. If they win, it will be interesting to see how the courts handle the issue of debts owed to the Sous and Aloun Farms. Will they be declared illegal or nullified on some other grounds? Or will the remedy include repayment plus damages?

With an increased focus on stopping human trafficking both in the United States and globally, cases like this one are important. Win or loss, each court battle demonstrates the structural and procedural hurdles in the law that must be changed and the attitudinal barriers that must be overcome in order to finally wipe human trafficking and slavery from the face of the planet.

Obviously, making sure the law you're charging in the indictments was on the books at the time the alleged crime happened is important. As is putting together solid witness testimony to link together the steps of the crime. These were failures by this prosecution team. Its dismissal unfortunately doesn't give us any insight into the more subtle problems that can arise in a human trafficking case. Issues around burden of proof, for instance, and the elements required to prove each of the 12 charges federal prosecutors filed against the Sous weren't addressed. This dismissal shouldn't be interpreted as dooming similar cases.

But what did emerge from this story is the perception gap. People, jurors, don't want to believe it's slavery unless it's in its most egregious form. No cages, no beatings, no crime. That's an important factor to keep in mind when prosecutors write their indictments and prepare their cases. It's also important for legislators to consider when they draft and amend trafficking laws.

Human trafficking is perceived by organized crime as a low risk and high profit activity. It has recently moved past arms trafficking to be the second most profitable activity for organized crime behind drug smuggling. Actions by the government and third sector must focus on reversing the balance so that trafficking is high risk with little to zero profit. Routine criminal convictions and seizure of assets are critical pieces of that strategy.

obama enlists night elf mohawk as special envoy to china

Apparently hard time in China no longer just includes applying lead paint to children's toys and poisoning toothpaste. Now you can be sentenced to 12 hours a day farming gold in Azeroth in addition to physical labor and political indoctrination at some Chinese re-education camps according to a former prisoner at the Jixi re-education through labor camp in Heilongjiang province. As reported to the Guardian:

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour... There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

For those of you who have no idea what this means, let me explain briefly. In a game like World of Warcraft, a player purchases items or abilities for use in the game through currency generated and collected while playing the game. Defeating monsters, completing tasks and quests, and other activities earn your character gold.[1] Gold can be exchanged directly from one character in the game to another. You might do this to help a beginning player or to pay for goods or services rendered to your character by another character. Gold farmers earn this in-game money through hours and hours of boring, repetitive play (grinding) and then trade it to another character in exchange for real money, dollars and pounds, deposited into real bank accounts. In other words, virtual money becomes real money for the gold farmer.[2]

Some crazy facts & statistics about gold farming in China:

• approximately £1.2 billion (over $2 billion USD) worth of virtual currencies were traded through China in 2008
• 80% of all gold farmers are in China
• there are roughly 100,000 full time gold farmers in China
• a 2009 law in China makes it illegal to trade in virtual currencies without a license from the central government

It's long been "sound" economic policy to export low-skill, labor intensive jobs overseas while retaining the bulk of the surplus value for the home country, or, as the nature of businesses change, the transnational entity. But now we're exporting our supposed entertainments as well. This is more than tourism to underdeveloped nations like Thailand, Brazil, or the Philippines to take advantage of inexpensive accommodations in beautiful, exotic locales, five star food and drinks at fast food prices, and, increasingly, cheap sex with economically exploited women (and children). We're literally paying people to play the game for us, doing all the grinding while we enjoy the benefits of the work through shiny gear, flashy spells, and such.

This problem of so called gold farming has led some companies hosting MMOs like Blizzard and NC Soft to block Chinese game accounts in attempts to thwart the trade. Non-tradeable currencies like prestige, honor, and valor points which must be earned by the character are alternative methods to eliminate the secondary, and for the game companies, undesired, market in gold. The problem with these alternate currencies, however, is that their usefulness primarily manifests at the upper experience levels of play. High level characters can often generate money rather quickly but value these other forms of currency more as the sole way to purchase much of the best equipment in the upper echelons and later stages of the game. Low and mid tier characters, on the other hand, still rely primarily on tradeable currencies for advancement, meaning the demand for cheap gold, even when collected in conditions virtually amounting to slavery, is unlikely to diminish anytime soon.

Beyond the annoyance of gold spamming adverts in the open chat channels, gold farming has another more immediately detrimental effect on the in-game economy. The availability of so much cash without the corresponding investment in labor by the players actually logged-in to play means prices are heavily inflated in the marketplaces of games like World of Warcraft. It's like the Federal Reserve just continuing to print money, except the printing presses represent thousands of hours of forced labor by political prisoners who get no pleasure out of the game. Prisoners are expected to keep playing until they can barely see things. And I doubt very much Doritos and Mountain Dew are on tap.

Prisoners aren't even allowed the small pleasures of leveling up.

The nerd in me wonders if the owners of the prison camps have calculated the strategies to maximize their profits. Do the prisoners group up to complete lucrative dungeon runs? Are certain classes and professions prized more than others? Do they cooperate to collect rare materials and craft them into extremely valuable gear to be sold at in-game auction houses to fetch gold? Or do they just kill monsters, collect the drops, and repeat? It seems to me somebody could make a fortune consulting for Chinese prison camps to answer these questions and determine what gameplay generates the most wealth. Not that I'm advocating any "light treason" and violations of fundamental human rights. But it does beg the question how invested the prison officials are in getting rich off inmate labor through virtual currency trading.

Do you think when officials from the United States and Europe meet with their Chinese counterparts, they discuss World of Warcraft? Does the issue of gold farming in prison camps enter talks about human rights and trade? Or does the perception that video games are for kids, are just for fun, and what is being bought is virtual obscure the underlying issue of prison labor products being widely and openly traded on the international market, even in the US where there is a ban on importing such items when they are physical, durable goods? How should US laws handle the exchange of virtual goods for real dollars? Or should the law not get involved at all?

Now that the real and the virtual worlds so freely mix, it's hard to keep track of what is valuable since all value is relative. It's a strange new world where an accounting could in all seriousness be required to determine if my game character is worth more money than my car. As an attraction at Disney World proclaims, welcome to the world of tomorrow.

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[1] A player is a real person. A character is the proxy of that person in the game, also called an avatar or a toon.
[2] I'll avoid a lengthy and technical commentary on the exchange of the real for the virtual a la Marx or Baudrillard. But it is interesting to think how effort measured by time is now fungible between serious pursuits (work) and entertainment (the game).

Ukraine & US agree to combat human trafficking

Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko signed a Memorandum of Agreement to combat human trafficking in Ukraine. The agreement emerged from the third of a series of so-called "strategic partnership" and dialogue initiatives between the US and Ukraine as part of the Obama administrations efforts to build "deeper consultations" and "committment[s] with selection nations." These bilateral talks seem part of a larger strategy on behalf of Obama to reconnect America diplomatically with the world after eight years of a less cooperative, more unilateral approach to international relations adopted by Bush. Other issues discussed were energy resources, strengthening democracy and rule of law in Ukraine, attracting private investment, and global issues such as food security and HIV/AIDS.

Sec. of State Clinton characterized human trafficking as a "tragic worldwide blight" when discussing the Agreement. However, I have been unable to uncover the nature of assistance pledged by the US and what, if any, additional enforcement mechanisms and investigative resources will be employed to combat human trafficking as a result of the talks. She mentioned the recent "repatriation" (other sources described it as a "transfer") of a trafficker from Ukraine to the US as an example of Ukraine-US cooperation on the issue. The trafficker is alleged to have taken $1 million US dollars in profits from the women he exploited. I assume the intent is to prosecute this alleged trafficker in American courts.

Read the press release.

I was aware that trafficking of people from the former Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine, was a major problem. Most of the articles I have found online intimate the problem addressed by the US-Ukraine Agreement is one of sex trafficking; i.e. the women victims of the crime are forcibly employed (indentured servitude, slavery) in businesses such as brothels, strip clubs, and "happy ending" massage parlors.

For those unfamiliar with the scheme, poor women are often lured from their home countries by promises of legitimate employment as waitresses, hostesses, models, etc. Sometimes they are lured by promises of marriage to a "wealthy foreigner" and citizenship in another country. The least often used method, as far as I know, of obtaining the women is the blockbuster "Taken" scenario in which women are initially kidnapped or taken by force. (This scenario also underlies the speculation of a "white slavery ring" spiriting Natalee Holloway away to Amsterdam from Aruba). Once away from home, seizure of passports and other identifying documents, isolation / imprisonment, huge debts attributed to unexpected "transaction costs"for transportation, or threats to family members often keep the women at the mercy of those involved with trafficking in persons.

The brothels in Amsterdam and other Western European countries are filled with women and girls trafficked from Eastern Europe, Russia, and even parts of Asia. Trafficked persons was one of the concerns behind the decision to close down and restrict a substantial segment of the sex work industry in Amsterdam's "redlight district" in 2006.

What doesn't get as much notice is the trafficking in persons for labor. Maybe it isn't as sensationalistic as naive girls being taken advantage of sexually but it's a major problem nonetheless. A few video and radio reports did mention the Ukraine-US Agreement would also combat this form of trafficking.

After poking around the interwebs for a little while, I managed to turn up some figures. The number of men, women, and children from the Ukraine suspected of being the victims of human trafficking is more than 100,000.[1] A 2007 study determined that more Ukrainians had been the victims of human trafficking than any other Eastern European country since the dissolution of the USSR.[2] I wasn't able to readily find an estimate of the number of Ukrainian women in Amsterdam, German, or American brothels.

There has been much recent literature about the importance of storytelling, the opportunity to tell one's personal narrative and to be heard and acknowledged, in the healing process and transforming the discourse from "being a victim" to being a subject, an agent, who experienced a crime happen to them. In focusing so much on capturing and punishing the traffickers, I fear we overlook the people who were trafficked, failing to acknowledge them and hear them as subjects in the world.

Let's hope this Memorandum of Agreement between the Ukraine and US signals renewed efforts to prevent human trafficking in the first instance and more vigorous efforts to intercept, arrest, and punish those individuals involved. The problem seems easy to manage when you focus on capturing the bad guys. The narrative ends (seemingly happy) when s/he gets their just deserts at the hands of the criminal justice system. There is closure. The curtain falls. Balance has been restored.

But I also wonder about the resources being invested in helping the victims of trafficking as part of this Agreement. What efforts are being made to make them whole again? To return them home or help them obtain visas in their new country? What economic, emotional, and psychological support do we rally to help them cope with the inhumane treatment they've been forced to endure? This narrative, unfortunately, doesn't wrap-up so nice and neatly.

That's the story that needs telling.