British Slaves

The UK visa system is enabling unscrupulous employers to treat foreign workers as modern-day slaves, workers who were paid little or nothing, were not allowed out and were sometimes abused or beaten, a BBCinvestigation has found. 

The situations come from "tied" visas - meaning the right to be in the UK can be withdrawn by the employer - and "transit" visas on fishing boats. Transit visas are being used to bring in recruits to the fishing industry who have no right to set foot on dry land - and therefore no access to UK employment rights. Some fishing workers spend weeks at a time at sea, sometimes unpaid, sleeping in cramped conditions, often physically and verbally abused.

With tied visas, employees must stay with the employer they arrived to work for - so if they are mistreated and run away, they are likely to be deported.

Pollution and slavery

China's forced the World Bank to censor a study for fear that one of its findings - that 750,000 people die of pollution-related illness each year - might stoke social unrest.

China's environment watchdog Sepa (the State Environment Protection Agency) and the Health Ministry reportedly asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft was finished last year.

Deaths from diarrhoea and cancer caused by polluted water correspond to 66,000 premature deaths a year.

The World Bank previously reported that 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities were in China.

Meanwhile similar to the slave labour discovered in China , in Brazil more than 1,000 "enslaved" workers have been released from a sugar cane plantation in the Amazon following a raid that has highlighted the dark side of the current ethanol boom. Brazilian authorities said that the workers in the northern state of Para were being forced to work 14-hour days in horrendous conditions cutting cane for ethanol production. The plantation's owner, Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, are one of the biggest ethanol producers in Brazil .

Slavery in the US of A

A multimillionaire couple who run a world-wide perfume business were indicted on federal slavery charges after a battered domestic servant escaped from their mansion on the “Gold Coast” of Long Island, New York.

“It’s truly a case of modern-day slavery. No one would ever think that human beings were being brought into the United States and held for slave labour, and beaten, and tortured in a beautiful mansion right here in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods on Long Island,” said Demetri Jones, an assistant US attorney.

The maids’ ordeal allegedly began when they were brought to the United States in 2002 to do housework for Indonesian-born Varsha Sabhnani, and her Indian-born husband, Mahender Sabhnani, both US citizens.
The two servants slept on mats in the kitchen and were forced to work up to 21 hours a day, seven days a week, from 4am to 1am, prosecutors say, and were fed so little that they resorted to hiding morsels above a ceiling panel.When strangers came to the home they were ordered to hide in the basement or a garage, they said. The maids were promised $200 a month in pay but Samirah told authorities that she later learnt that the Sabhnanis sent only half the amount to her daughter in Indonesia. It was not clear if Nona received any money. Both had US visas that had long expired.

Prosecutors allege the two maids suffered harsh punishment over a five-year period for perceived misdeeds such as taking food or being unable to find an article of clothing.
The arrest warrant says Samirah was forced to take as many as 30 ice-cold showers in a row, run up and down a flight of stairs 150 times as fast as she could, and eat at least 25 “extremely hot chilli peppers at one time”.
Punishment was meted out in the laundry room or bathroom with “a rolling pin, bamboo stick and a broomstick”. Samirah “bears highly visible scars that appear to be permanent over much of her body” including “deep, open knife wounds behind her ears”, court papers say.
She showed investigators “a door stained with [her] blood that was the result of an injury sustained during a beating”.

Immigration agents raided the millionaire couple’s home in Mutton-town suburb when their maid Samirah was found wandering half-naked . The maid showed the manager of a do-nut shop her expired Indonesia passport and sobbed: “Home, I want to go home.” Asked where she lived, she pointed towards the couple’s home and said “Master,” making a gesture as though she was getting slapped .

The Walk of Shame

Not so long ago , there was the Walk of Witness by leading churchmen to mark the abolition of slavery and apologise for their predecessors involvement in the slave trade .

William Wilberforce is receiving much acclaim for his part in the campaign to end slavery but as this blog points out Wilberforce himself did not mind men and women being chained to wage slavery by the capitalist class .

The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag

Full Story here but just bear in mind how Jewish people would feel if constantly confronted by the Nazi Swastika flag where-ever they went , then imagine how the Afro-Americans feel when faced by that reminder of slavery and those who fought to preserve it .

Migrant Workers - Labour turns the screw once more

Migrant workers who come to Britain as cooks, cleaners and nannies could become virtual slaves in their employers' homes under new immigration rules, campaigners are warning. Ministers faced charges of hypocrisy as Labour campaigned on the issue in opposition, highlighting accusations of sexual abuse, physical assault and poverty pay regularly faced by foreign domestic staff.

17,000 non-European Union foreign nationals receive visas every year to work as domestic servants in Britain.
They are legally entitled to leave their employer if they are abused or exploited and to receive basic protection - including the minimum wage - under UK employment law.
That will be swept away by proposed changes to immigration rules, which will severely restrict domestic workers' rights.
In future domestic workers will only be allowed in on non-renewable business visas which will end their ability to get a new job if they are mistreated by their employer.

Kate Roberts, a community support worker , which counsels the victims of abusive employers, said she was horrified by the Government's change of heart. "These changes will remove the most basic protection for migrant domestic workers," she said. "They will be left incredibly vulnerable to exploitation or abuse."

Barbara Roche, a former immigration minister, said: " These new proposals are a very retrograde step. Workers who suffer abuse from employers will feel absolutely alone. "

Diana Holland, the T&G National Organiser for Women, Race and Equalities, said that until 1998 the visa system had turned "migrant domestic workers into slaves". She warned that Home Office policy reversal would strip them of their right to challenge and would once again mean abuse going unchecked.


This month's Socialist Standard carries an editorial on slavery