Resources for Teachers – Anecdotes - Human Trafficking, including modern day slavery, contemporary slavery, debt bondage, serfdom, forced labor, forced marriage, transferring of wives,  inheritance of wives, and  transfer of a child for purposes of exploitation.  Also forced prostitution, child prostitution, sale of children, and trafficking in children.

Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

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Anecdotes

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Owed Justice - Thai Women Trafficked into Debt Bondage in Japan

IV. PROFILES - In this chapter, Human Rights Watch profiles four women who were trafficked from Thailand into servitude in Japan. Human Rights Watch interviewed numerous women who recounted similar experiences.

POT - It was a big room and four or five other women going to work in Japan were also kept there. I was surprised to be locked up because I was not allowed any chance to say goodbye to my family, even over the phone. I heard the agents talking about the price for each woman being between 150-160 bai [1.5-1.6 million yen; US$10,000-11,000], but I couldn't really understand what they were talking about and did not realize that we were being sold into prostitution.

KAEW - Kaew explained that she had understood there would be some debt for the airplane ticket and other expenses, but she had never been told how high her debt would be, and she was shocked at the amount. "The other girls said to me, 'that's a lot of debt and you're old; you'll never pay it off.' Then I prayed that it would only take six or seven months to pay it off, and I went with all of the clients I could. . . . The mama said to me, 'don't let your period come, or you'll never finish paying your debt.'" So Kaew also took contraceptive pills daily, though she had been sterilized at age twenty-one, so that she would not menstruate and could work every day.(7) She got her mother to send the pills from Thailand, so that she would not have to buy them from her mama and increase the level of her debt.

The route to hell

Olga, like all the other women, was immediately sold - she was bought by a local bar owner. This pimp instructed her to dance on a stage, and then rented her out to punters at night. If she resisted, he beat her. Like the vast majority of trafficked women, she learnt to become compliant in order to survive.

Vigilance Needed in Fight Against Human Trafficking

The maid revealed that despite being promised a part-time job and a work visa, her employer paid far less than minimum wage, did not offer breaks, held her travel documents, isolated her from calling her family, and threatened to call the police and immigration authorities. She spoke little English and had no idea who she could call for help.

13-yearold girl

A bed, a teddy bear, and a roll of paper towels are the only contents of a closet-sized room where a trafficked 13-year-old girl was sold for sex by pimps to 20-30 men a day

Scale of African slavery revealed

Complicity: Much of this trade in children often has the tacit collaboration of the victims' own families where it is seen not so much as criminal activity but as a way for a large family to boost its poor income.  The story of Joseph in Benin is fairly typical

Online Focus - Slavery in America

Transcript of a NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Putting a Stop to the Exploitation

Concerned human rights activists unite to end the scourge of sex slavery across all borders - by Tom Paquette

Sexual Slavery In Southern California Today?

She was a teenage girl from an impoverished village in Bangladesh. The American couple offered her transport to America and a better life

Child Trafficking

This is the testimony of Thuli, a young girl from Nepal who was trafficked to India and sold into prostitution for Rs 35,000, the equivalent of $720

Child Soldiers

A Honduras case study cited in United Nations, Impact of Armed Conflict on Children

Child Labor

When he was four years old, Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded servitude by his parents, a common practice of poor Pakistani families hoping to pay off debts owed to landlords and local merchants

Child Slave Caught in Glittering Traps

SIKASSO, MALI, and SINFRA, Ivory Coast - Mali's modern-day slave traders do not bother with abductions any more. They lure victims with a smile. "Hey there," a stranger called, leaning out the window of a dented white mini-van as it chugged to a stop on a dirt road. Two teenage brothers looked up at the driver. He introduced himself as Solo. "You looking for work?

Slaves to chocolate: thousands of boys toil on Ivory Coast cacao farms

Aly Diabate, from the country of Mali, was 12 years old when a slave trader promised him $150 and a bicycle for working on a cacao farm in Ivory Coast

The iabolish Complete List of Slave Narratives1

Slave Narratives from around the world

Testimonies

No study or statistics can capture the horror of trafficking and modern-day slavery like the words of its survivors. HumanTrafficking.com has brought together one of the largest collections of testimonies of survivors to help the world hear their voices.

Anecdotes of Workplace Abuse in Malaysia

I worked for a husband, wife, two girls and a boy.  Sometimes I didn’t sleep….

I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. and go to sleep at midnight, sometimes 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m….

There were three families living together in one big house and I was the only maid

If my employers went out, they locked the door from the outside and took the key

I’m just a housemaid, I can’t ask for anything.  I am not allowed to talk to the neighbors

I will go crazy here.  They don’t let me out, the employer won’t let me speak to anyone

One employer explained: I think it’s no good to let them out.  If we allow them out, especially those women from the village, they get influenced, they start to fight back

If I asked for my salary, the employer hit me

I worked for my second employer for two years.  They cut my salary 2000 ringgit (U.S.$526) in order to renew my passport

In Malaysia, the agent or employer holds the salary.  If I want to buy anything, I had to borrow money from my employer

I want to send money home, but my employer won’t let me

Every day something made [my employers] angry.  Every day the woman hit me many times with a wooden stick.  Sometimes she slapped me, sometimes she hit me with a hanger or a comb, sometimes when I was cooking, she hit my head with tools

[My employers] were fussy and cruel.  If I washed the dishes and they were still a little dirty, she would take the glass and hit me with the glass

It was hard to work for them because there was not enough food.  I got food once a day.  If I made a mistake, for example, if we ran out of rice and I forgot to tell the employer, she wouldn’t give me food for two days

The grandmother was always angry.  She never let me take a break.  She always complained about my mistakes.  She also hit me

When the lady went to drop off the children to the grandmother’s house, the man would stay at home….  He raped me many, many times

The agent said I will take care of old people.  They promised me 350 ringgit [U.S.$92.10] a month, with four months deduction

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