Social justice news
May 2000

CIA reports as many as 50,000 come to U.S. as "slaves"
Claretian Father slain in Philippines
U.N. revisits sanctions policy
Berrigan earns long sentence for depleted uranium protest
U.S. may surpass Russia as world incarceration leader
Newsbriefs

CIA reports as many as 50,000 come to U.S. as "slaves"
A Thai woman lured to Southern California with promises of a job as a cook instead finds herself waiting hand and foot on a wealthy woman who threatens her with death if she tries to leave. A Vietnamese girl is bought by a Silicon Valley man as his personal prostitute. Chinese or Indian "immigrants" are forced to work in restaurants or sweatshops for years to pay off "smuggling" fees, only to find they can never completely get out of debt.

For more information: Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking Download the CIA report American Anti-Slavery Group

This is the modern face of slavery in America.

The U.S. Constitution may have abolished slavery in 1865, but thousands of men, women, and children live in indentured servitude in the "land of the free." According to a newly released CIA report, each year as many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe are brought to the United States under false pretenses and forced to work as prostitutes, abused laborers, or servants.

"Trafficking in persons, especially women and children, this modern-day form of slavery, is prevalent across the globe and likely to increase in the United States," says the 79-page report, "International Trafficking in Women in the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery."

The report describes case after case of foreign women who answered advertisements for what turned out to be non-existent au pair, secretarial, or waitress jobs in the United States. Instead, they are taken prisoner, held under guard, and forced to work excruciatingly long hours under threat of death.

While the stories may shock the average American, they don't surprise Hae Jung Cho, project director of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) in Los Angeles. In its two-year history, CAST has assisted two dozen formerly enslaved clients with housing, medical care, immigration, and job referrals. Although no Catholic organizations are members of the coalition, CAST links victims with Catholic Charities in Los Angeles.

"A lot of these people have been traumatized and even tortured by their so-called employers," says Cho. Prosecuting these torturers—who are often involved in international organized crime—can be difficult if not impossible. "There actually aren't specific laws against trafficking," she says. "Trafficking" is defined as the recruitment and/or transportation of people using violence, the threat of violence, or other forms of coercion for the purpose of exploiting them economically or sexually.

There are laws against "involuntary servitude"—in other words, slavery—but juries are often reluctant to convict on those charges because they imagine slavery to be something that only happend to African-Americans more than 100 years ago. "The modern face of forced labor doesn't involve chains and bars, it involves coercion and psychological threats and economic oppression," says Cho.

Two bills that would address the issue of trafficking are currently before Congress. In the House, a bill sponsored by Reps. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) and Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.) contains language that only pertains to sex trafficking, and a provision that would have allowed victims to receive temporary asylum status in the U.S. has been dropped from the legislation because of fears it would open a floodgate to illegal immigrants.

Cho prefers the Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), which frames the issue in terms of human rights and offers protection to victims. "A lot of victims are really more terrified of the INS than they are of the traffickers," says Cho. "Traffickers play on this fear and threaten them, saying the INS will put them in jail forever. Or they threaten their families back in the home country."

Although "sex slaves" often get the most attention, the problem is bigger than that, says Cho. "Half of our cases involve domestic workers, people working in sweat shops and restaurants, even home health care workers," she says. "We see this as about human rights and worker rights." —Heidi Schlumpf

U.N. revisits sanctions policy
The U.N. opened debate in April on ways of better targeting and enforcing sanctions while making them less harmful to civilians in an acknowledgment of the growing humanitarian costs of sanctions policy in Iraq. The debate was also an opportunity for other nations subject to sanctions and embargoes—countries like Cuba, Libya, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and others—to weigh in with protests over the Iraqi sanctions.

For more information: Previous SOTE report on Iraq When sanctions don't work War by another name—U.S. Catholic U.N. Office of Iraq Program AFSC's Campaign of Conscience Fellowship of Reconciliation "Life and Death in Iraq": a special report from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Military Action Network: Iraq Crisis Out There explores Iraq Pacifica Radio Iraq links US State Department: "Saddam Hussein's Iraq" US DOS: Crisis with Iraq Vatican comments on sanctions in general and Pope John Paul II on Iraq sanction

The French ambassador to the U.N. proposed that sanctions committees make decisions by majority rather than consensus rule, alluding to the fact that the U.S. can block any proposals on sanctions with which it does not agree. After the debate, the Security Council voted unanimously to form a working group, which would include outside experts, to review sanctions policy.

These developments follow upon the resignations in the last few months of two U.N. officials with responsibilities in Iraq. Citing declining literacy rates and an increase in dropouts among Iraqi children, and suggesting a resulting violent anti-Western mentality, Hans von Sponeck, a German diplomat who coordinated the U.N.'s Iraq relief efforts, resigned his post last February. He told the French news agency that U.N. sanctions are a "human tragedy" and are condemning a generation of Iraqi youth to a bleak future. He also believed the U.N.-backed program to allow limited Iraqi oil sales in exchange for food shipments to the country was not meeting the needs of the Iraqi population.

A week later, Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, which oversees food distribution under the oil-for-food program, told CNN she was resigning because of the failure of the U.N. and the Iraqi government to agree on the U.N. Security Council's resolution to partially suspend sanctions in return for full Iraqi cooperation with a new weapons inspection commission.

Few question the dire conditions under which Iraqi citizens, especially children, the elderly, and the chronically ill, have to live. Since the imposition of United Nations sanctions against Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War, almost 600,000 Iraqi children have died—half a million over normal mortality rates—and 6,000 are dying monthly from malnutrition and unchecked illness, according to U.N. sources. Medical supplies are hard to come by, hospitals lack sheets, disinfectants, and refrigeration for drugs, and ambulances go unrepaired. Diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, and malaria, once almost eradicated in Iraq, are spreading.

Most urban water- and sewage-treatment facilities do not function and cannot be repaired for lack of parts, and chlorine cannot be obtained, resulting in nationwide contaminated drinking water. Unprecedented social problems-widespread street begging, especially by children, and crime-are increasingly commonplace. The Iraqi dinar has plunged in value, and with it the salaries of the once-stable Iraqi middle class.

More contentious is the international argument over whose policies are responsible for these conditions—the U.N. sanctions or the Iraqi government's response to them. For the time being, at least, the U.N. Security Council has decided to take a closer look at the way it imposes sanctions, not only against Iraq but against other countries as well.

The United States and Great Britain put much of the blame for deteriorating conditions in Iraq on the failure of Saddam Hussein's government to adhere to the oil-for-food program. These governments also accuse the Iraqi government of hoarding medicines and other medial resources. In turn, Iraq accuses the U.S. and Britain of influencing the delay of contracts under the program, to which Washington responds it only wants to make sure Iraq is not buying items that appear to be for humanitarian purposes but could have military uses.

At the same time the U.N. was debating a review of sanctions policy, U.S. Representative Tony Hall (D-Ohio) was concluding a fact-finding trip to Iraq. After the four-day visit, Hall called for a separation of Iraq's disarmament obligations from humanitarian issues. "There is no question there are humanitarian concerns here," Hall told the Associated Press.

"There's malnutrition, all the top diseases . . . and the water is not clean. There's a story of some hurting people, especially children who are malnourished, and they need food and medicines. . . . And that's really the purpose of my trip." Despite this suffering, Hall continued, "The outside world is very concerned [about weapons of mass destruction]. . . . We cannot have weapons of mass destruction exported out of this country. . . . That's the bottom line."

Catholic leaders, including Pope John Paul II and the United States Catholic Bishops, have condemned the sanctions against Iraq. The pope has called them "pitiless. . . . The weak and innocent cannot pay for mistakes for which they are not responsible."

Former U.N. official von Sponeck blames both the government of Iraq and the U.N. for the suffering of the Iraqi people. "I do not think it is fair to make the civilian population subject to bargaining," von Sponeck said. "The real victims are those who walk the streets of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul."—Joel Schorn

Berrigan earns long sentence for depleted uranium protest
On March 23, Maryland Circuit Judge James T. Smith Jr. sentenced former Josephite priest and noted Catholic peace activist Philip Berrigan and three other Catholic pacifists to unusually long prison terms after the group was convicted for using hammers and blood to damage two Air National Guard A-10 Warthog warplanes last December. Berrigan and company were protesting the United States' use of depleted uranium in air campaigns against Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.

For more information: Military Toxics Project: "Don't Look, Don't Find" The future under fire: U.S. Catholic Gulf War Veterans Association Depleted Uranium "fun facts" from the Department of Energy Depleted uranium management DOE "final" plan for DU disposal Depleted understanding

Berrigan received 30 months in prison for malicious destruction of property and conspiracy. Smith far exceeded the 6-to-12 month guidelines sought by prosecutors. Elizabeth Walz, 33, a Catholic Worker from Philadelphia, was sentenced to 18 months, exceeding the guidelines' 0-to-1 month sentence. Susan Crane, 56, of Baltimore, and Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly, 50, of New York were sentenced to 27 months each, exceeding the guidelines' 2-to-9 months.

Smith also ordered the defendants to pay $88,622.11 in restitution for the damage. The large damage total justified stiff sentences, Smith said.

Calling themselves "Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium," the four admitted to using bolt cutters to gain access to Warfield Air National Guard Base in Middle River, Maryland., during the predawn hours of December 19, 1999. The activists hammered and poured blood on two A-10s, which use Gatling guns to fire various types of depleted uranium shells. "This criminal plane fired 95 percent of the depleted uranium deployed by the U.S. during the Gulf War . . . poisoning humans and the elements in Kuwait and Iraq," the four wrote in a statement.

Smith agreed to prosectors' pretrial motion prohibiting "the defense from introducing evidence and/or propounding argument concerning depleted uranium." The motion, upheld for most of the trial, prevented the defendants from using a defense based on international law or necessity. The motion also kept the defense from calling various expert witnesses to bolster their case.

U.S. may surpass Russia as world incarceration leader
Even with falling crime rates and slowing prison population growth, the number of Americans behind bars will likely surpass 2 million by the end of next year, according to the Justice Department.

At the middle of last year, prisons and jails held 1,860,520 adult. With an increase of 60,000 prisoners over the previous year, the United States may have matched or even surpassed Russia as the country with the highest rate of incarceration. The growth rate of state and federal prison populations slowed to 4.4 percent in 1999, the lowest since the 2.3 percent growth in 1979.

Much of the decline was at the state level, since the growth rate for federal prisons actually increased to 9.6 percent last year from 7.9 percent in 1998. In the federal system, growth is being driven by drug and immigration law violators.

The U.S. prison population has grown steadily for more than a quarter-century, helped by increased drug prosecutions and tougher policies against all offenders. Given current rates, the total prison and jail population will likely hit 2 million in the second half of 2001. One of every 147 U.S. residents was an inmate in an adult jail or prison at the middle of last year. In Russia, one of every 146 people was behind bars in 1998, the last year for which figures were available, according to The Sentencing Project, a private group that advocates alternatives to prison.

Last year's U.S. total included more than 1.1 million state prisoners, more than 606,000 men and women in local jails, and about 118,000 federal inmates. Prisons and jails held fewer than 800,000 people in 1985. Crime rates have been declining since 1993, but longer sentences, especially for drug crimes during the 1980s and for violent crimes in the 1990s, have driven prisoner populations. More mandatory minimum sentences and less generous parole have also contributed to the increase.

Other findings:
The number of women in U.S. prisons doubled since 1990 to more than 87,000 in 1999.

Among black men in their 20s or early 30s, about 11 percent were in prison or jail. For the same age group, 4 percent of Hispanic men and 1.5 percent of white men were prisoners.

Louisiana had the highest total incarceration rate, with more than 1 percent of the state's population imprisoned. Texas and Georgia followed closely behind.

California had the highest total number of prisoners, with more than 239,000, while Vermont had the fewest, with only about 1,200.

Ninety-eight people were executed in 1999—the highest number of executions since the return of capital punishment in 1977.

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