Slavery and plunder: How can Europe pay its debt to Africa?

In an effort to come to terms with its colonial past, the Netherlands has apologized for its role in slavery. The country once had an extensive colonial empire in South East Asia, Africa and the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of people were enslaved and sold by Dutch merchants, over centuries. Now, the Dutch government is planning to invest in education and awareness programs to tackle racism. But the apology was not welcomed by everyone.

Forced to Scam: Cambodia’s Cyber Slaves

 

101 East investigates human trafficking and enslavement by Chinese cyber-scam operations in Cambodia and their links to the government and elite.

Chinese cyber-scam operations are stealing tens of billions of dollars from victims around the world.

But few realise that thousands of those perpetrating these frauds are victims too.

Young men and women are enslaved, tortured and forced to scam in countries like Cambodia.

Portugal - Modern slavery for an EU passport

In Portugal, workers from south Asia pick the berries that fill European supermarket shelves. It’s a back-breaking job - with pay under four euros an hour, and ten-hour days. The incentive? The hope of an EU passport.

Maid in Lebanon: 'My employer treats me like a slave' - BBC News

 Hundreds of foreign domestic maids were dumped outside their embassies last summer in Lebanon after the families they worked for could no longer afford their wages.

The horrific scenes were a symptom of the country’s economic meltdown but also Lebanon’s use of foreign workers – a system which human rights groups say amounts to “modern-day slavery".

Should Britain pay reparations for its part in the slave trade?

British banks, prime ministers and parish vicars made millions from the slave trade. Plus Wirecard's missing billions.

The toppling of slave owner Edward Colston's statue amid the Black Lives Matter protests has raised some uncomfortable questions about the United Kingdom's role in the slave trade.

The transportation of more than a million Africans as part of the triangle trade helped build the British economy.

How Britain’s role in slavery and empire shaped modern America - BBC News

Two months after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, which sparked protests around the world, there’s fresh scrutiny of America’s history of slavery — and how it influences the country to this day.

Critics Slam Trump for Support of Confederate Traitors

As President Donald J Trump Press Secretary pointed out, President Trump has no intention of renaming Ft. Bragg and numerous other military bases named after Confederate traitors. This comes on the heels of numerous Confederate statues being removes and the Confederate flag, the stars and bars, being banned in an increasing number of places.

How a propaganda campaign to minimize slavery’s role in the civil war became American history

How a propaganda campaign to minimize slavery’s role in the civil war became American history

Fighting Slavery From Space

101 East shows how space technology is helping uncover modern slavery and free bonded workers.

Stretching across India, Pakistan, Nepal, China and Bangladesh, the "brick belt" is a vast area containing hundreds of thousands of kilns that produce countless bricks.

But behind the walls of many of these kilns are slaves - men, women and children forced to work against their will, with no pay and no way out.

They work under the threat of violence, in hot and dusty conditions. If they try to escape, their employers often claim they have debts to repay, forcing them to return.

Chandravati and her four children aged between nine and 20 work at a brick kiln every day. Her children sometimes work at night so they can attend school.

"The owner abuses us, the contractor also abuses us. He says that he doesn't have money. We are all hungry, our kids are hungry!" she says.

A Moral Debt: The Legacy of Slavery in the USA

A journey of self-discovery and education, spanning the legacy of Confederate America and its modern ramifications.

Journalist James Gannon has inherited a controversial family legacy - that of a clear descendancy from General Robert E Lee, who led the Confederate Army against the Union during the American Civil war in the mid-19th century.

Gannon grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, where an 18-metre high statue of his ancestor dominates the landscape in Monument Avenue, the city's grandest street.

Slavery Routes: For All the Gold in the World

To expand their wealth, the Portuguese set up the slave trade, in which Africa was the centre.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Europe opened up to the world and discovered that it was at the margins of the world's main area for wealth generation: Africa.

Portuguese explorers were the first to set out to conquer Africa's gold. When explorers reached the coast of West Africa, they saw its people as a supply of labour and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade was established.

Economic ambition coupled with a religiously driven effort to expand Christendom Pope, Nicholas V morally endorsed the Portuguese enterprise and a legal framework for the enslavement of Africa.

The US medical system is still haunted by slavery

Read ProPublica's feature piece on how the US is the most dangerous industrialized country in which to give birth, and racial disparities in maternal mortality make it even worse for women of color: https://www.propublica.org/article/no... And they're seeking your help in understanding the problem. If you nearly died during pregnancy or know someone who died due to childbirth related causes, check out this page for more information: http://propub.li/2Ae5RMi

Urmila: Saving Girls from Slavery in Nepal (video)

A former slave fights for the rights of girls sold into slavery while pursuing her own dream of becoming a lawyer.

Urmila Chaudhary wants to change Nepal. The 23-year-old woman fights against centuries-old social structures with one goal: to end child slavery in her country.

At the age of six, Urmila's family sold her to become a household slave, or kamlari, in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu. Every year, her parents received money from her enslavers, for whom Urmila had to work up to 15 hours every day.

Urmila was freed at age 17. Now, she is on a quest for justice. Together with her fellow campaigners, she frees girls from captivity, makes demands of the prime minister to end slavery, holds press conferences and travels internationally.

The west was built on racism. It's time we faced that – video

Dead white men are revered by many as responsible for the advancement of civilisation, says sociology professor Kehinde Andrews. But, he argues, this so-called progress came at the expense of millions of people of colour. Global inequality is not an accident, he argues – it is designed to keep the hierarchy of race intact

Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Bonded Slaves

It is a form of slavery that is passed down from one generation to the next, enslaving millions.


In this episode of Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Al Jazeera's Rageh Omaar investigates slavery that is passed down from father to son, mother to daughter.

Although the practice of bonded labour is common in several parts of the world, in Pakistan and India the systematic enslavement of generations of workers is widespread as governments fail to enforce their own laws against bonded labour.
Rageh Omaar meets men, women and children labouring in quarries and brick kilns, in dangerous conditions and for effectively no pay.

Slaving Away

We expose the dirty secrets behind Australia's fresh food industry and the widespread exploitation of foreign workers.


Seven days a week, 18 hours a day, young Taiwanese worker Kevin labours at a relentless pace, processing chickens at an Australian factory. He is not alone.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers toil in food factories and farms.

Some of these enterprises boast billion dollar revenues. But the profits are not being felt by the workers. Instead, food is picked and packed by exploited labour.

Sometimes using false documents, Asian workers are grossly underpaid, forced to work punishing hours, and face abuse, harassment and assault.

Seafood from slavery: Can Thailand tackle the crisis in its fishing industry?

The hours would be long and the work hard, but spending a year as a fisherman seemed like a good option to Samart Senasook.

Previous jobs as a security guard in Bangkok had been sporadic, so when a man known as Vee promised the 40-year old decent wages on a fishing boat he decided to take the chance.

Vee turned out to be a broker, a link in the chain of human trafficking that supplies the Thai fishing industry with thousands of migrant workers and turns many of them into virtual slaves.

There were times I was about to jump into the sea to kill myself.

Samart Senasook, trafficked fisherman

The boat he was on was impounded by Indonesian authorities for suspected illegal fishing, with Senasook and his crewmates held in custody.

Six years a slave

Looking back on his ordeal, that he says lasted from January 2009 to March 2015, Senasook rarely saw land, as the boat he was on roamed further and further from Thai waters in search of increasingly scarce fish.

Its catch was part of Thailand's multi-billion dollar seafood industry that feeds tens of millions in Europe and the United States.

Senasook describes his life on board as one full of intimidation, sleep deprivation and regular beatings from the boat's captain.

The extent of the situation is hard to gauge. Thai government figures state that there are 145,000 working in its fishing industry, with 80% of those migrant workers, mainly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. However, activist group Raks Thai Foundation suggests there are in excess of 200,000 trafficked, unregistered workers.

Rich Hong Kong Tycoon Compares Protesters To Slaves In America

One can disagree with your political opponents  ideology without insulting not only those you oppose but a group of people whose history is fraught legal discrimination, voter suppression,  Jim Crow, Sundown Towns and legalized physical abuse and death.  

A leading Hong Kong businesswoman and member of the city's Executive Council, which deliberates policy, compared the struggle of pro-democracy protesters to that of slaves in the American South in the 19th century. The remarks, which ran in a local English-language daily, have triggered an angry response from many in the Chinese territory.Laura Cha, who is also a board member at the prominent bank HSBC, urged that protesters seeking further democratic reforms be more patient. "American slaves were liberated in 1861 but did not get voting rights until 107 years later," she was quoted as saying by the Standardnewspaper. "So why can't Hong Kong wait for a while?"

She was speaking at a Hong Kong trade roadshow in Paris.
Aside from the historical inaccuracies, it is considered by many bizarre and inflammatory to link the former British colony's population to the brutal historical experience of slavery in America and the miseries that followed for the country's repressed and marginalised black communities. Those Many Hong Kongers who have taken to the streets fear that China is trying to rein back the city's unique freedoms and that Beijing's future policies may amount to a kind of voter suppression.

Laura Cha has little clue to the awful history of African Americans beginning with slavery which last for more than 150 years.  That was followed by Jim Crow Laws which legalized discrimination against these same people by disallowing them to eat at lunch counters,  separate entrances for private businesses such as movie theaters and department stores and schools which were so underfunded and forced to be separate all came to a head in Brown v.  Board of Education Topeka Kansas 



 

Those Prawns Your Eating Were Produced By Slave Labor

Like so many must have consumer products for the developed worlds markets nobody ever asks who made these available to us.   Like Apple computers made in China, or clothes manufactured in Bangladesh or those Nike shoes that you love made by damn near slave labor in Vietnam and Indonesia.  It's ok because it feeds your desire to have the latest in consumer products.  No matter that the person or persons who produced it aren't paid a living wage just as long as you can have it at a reasonable price.  

Revealed: Asian slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK

Thai "ghost ships" that enslave, brutalise and even kill workers are linked to global prawn supply chain, Guardian investigation discovers

• Trafficked into slavery on Thai trawlers to catch food for prawns 
• Thailand's seafood industry: state-sanctioned slavery?

Slaves forced to work for no pay for years at a time under threat of extreme violence are being used in Asia in the production of seafood sold by major US, British and other European retailers, the Guardian can reveal.

A six-month investigation has established that large numbers of men bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailandare integral to the production of prawns (commonly called shrimp in the US) sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco.

The investigation found that the world's largest prawn farmer, the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, buys fishmeal, which it feeds to its farmed prawns, from some suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned with slaves.

Why India's brick kiln workers 'live like slaves'

In the world of the consumer we never seem to ask where the products we cherish come from or who makes them.  All we care about is how cheap these products are and whether they will make our lives easier or perhaps more manageable.   Yet, those who manufacture these prized must have consumer products are often exploited in the name of profit.    

Just outside of the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, by country roads in a flat green landscape, smoke rises off huge furnaces.
The heat hardens mud clay into the bricks that are making modern India.
Close by the air is acrid with coal soot, catching in the throat.
Like a scene from a long-gone age, men and women walk in single file up and down steps as if climbing a pyramid. They strain under a load, balanced in yoke-like hods, to deliver freshly-moulded bricks to the furnace.

Here we are in the 21 century and one doesn't need to travel  through time to find images that conjure up what life might have been like for the slave laborers that constructed the pyramids of Egypt they just have to travel to India.

  "All of this is against the law," says Aeshalla Krishna, a labour activist with the human rights group Prayas."This is against the minimum wage act of 1948, the bonded labour act of 1976, the interstate migrant workers act of 1979. Child labour. Sexual harassment. Physical abuse. It's all happening. Every day."
The bricks are used to build offices, factories and call centres, the cityscapes of a booming economic miracle, and more and more, these buildings are used by multi-national companies with a global reach.

It doesn't matter that it's against the  law what matters is that modern India is emerging through the abusive labor practices of corporations whose only goal is higher profits and happy shareholders.

Children were everywhere. There was no safety equipment. Stories of illness, withheld wages and other issues were common place.
"They work 12 to 18 hours a day, pregnant women, children, adolescent girls," says Mr Krishna. "Their diet is poor. There is no good water. They live like slaves."
The situation has been like this for decades, if not centuries. Until recently, it was widely accepted as something that would improve slowly time. Campaigners say there's been little sense of urgency.

Though children are being denied an education or any type of future other than working in those kilns to manufacture bricks isn't important money is.