An Ancient Evil

Slavery is Growing in the West

We expect that "history" will record the early 21st century to be one which allowed international slavery to flourish.  Most of this new slavery manifested itself as people from less prosperous socio-economic regions and countries migrated illegally to more wealthy countries.  They were smuggled across national borders, or brought into countries under pretext, then forced to work as slaves.  

A recent headline in The Guardian claimed that slavery in the UK has increased by 300 percent.  It went on to clarify that this huge increase was due not to an explosion of slaving into the UK, but to better reporting.  In other words, this modern form of slavery has existed for some time, and is only now coming to be exposed.

There has been a 300% increase in the number of victims of modern slavery referred for support in the past six years, and a huge increase in the number of men from Vietnam trafficked to work in illegal cannabis farms.

Almost half (48%) of those referred to the government programme were brought to the UK for sexual exploitation, 39% were trafficked for labour exploitation and 13% for domestic servitude, according to figures released by the Salvation Army.  The charity, which is contracted by the government to deliver all support services for adult victims of slavery in England and Wales, also revealed that one person was trafficked for organ removal.

What forms does current slavery take?  Here is one case:

The highest number of victims overall came from Albania, with 359 referrals, 346 of whom were women trafficked for sexual exploitation. But the most striking rise in referrals was the increase in the number of men from Vietnam. Last year, the Salvation Army helped 101 men from Vietnam, double the number it registered in 2015.

The charity’s annual report highlights the case of one young man whose mother sold the family home for £10,000 so he could travel to the UK, aged 16, to join his father who had left to find work, because he was unable to make ends meet as a farmer in rural Vietnam. He failed to find his father and was instead forced by traffickers to farm cannabis. He was locked alone inside a flat with blacked-out windows, not paid, and had food brought only occasionally by a man who would drop it inside the building and lock the door again.

His traffickers told him that he owned them money for his transport and lodgings, and that the debt had grown to £100,000. He spoke no English, and was not confident enough to go to the police, so he continued to grow cannabis and was also forced to work as a prostitute. It was only when police raided one of the farms where he was working and he was sent to a detention centre that he was identified as a victim of trafficking and referred to the Salvation Army.

In New Zealand we fear that we are only just scratching the surface of the problem.  It has some excellent programmes for foreign seasonal workers that are well monitored and regulated.  These temporary workers are mostly from the Pacific Islands: they come in for harvest season; they are paid at least the minimum wage; they are repatriated back home when harvest is over.  Some of these labourers have been coming back to New Zealand for harvest season for years.  But there is no government programme or agency focused upon the detection and reporting of modern slaving and slavery.  The Department of Labour is supposed to apply the labour laws, but it is hopelessly undermanned.

We expect that were New Zealand to get organized and fund a proper State initiative to detect and punish forms of modern slavery, our detected and prosecuted rates of slavery would increase just as drastically as in the United Kingdom.

Relatively open borders and encouraging migrant employment in a country can be an extremely positive policy.  But it can have severe downsides, which need to be policed aggressively.  Would we tolerate a policy which allowed people to self-certify as qualified airline pilots?  If not, then why would we trust our existing work visa programme, and its "facilitator" organisations, without stringent monitoring and detection resources engaged in "trust, but verify" activity.