Black Lives Matter- research and awareness

The Modern Day Slave Trade

Trigger warnings- slavery, forced labor, violence and gore, sexual assault, forced prostitution.

In 1865, the United States abolished slavery. On April 19, 1865, the last of the American slaves in Galveston, Texas, were freed.

However, this was far from the last of slavery.

While you may not hear about it in the news or read about it in school, slavery has never gone away. Our education system makes it seem like slavery is just a thing of the past. Sadly, this is far from the truth.

The Slave Trade of African Migrants

To start, we're going to discuss the very real slave trade happening right at this very moment. In Africa, hundreds of thousands of migrants leave their home countries to find a better life in Europe. However, heat and hunger are far from the only problems along the journey through the Sahara.

There are also slave hunters.

Trans-Saharan smugglers offer them help and passage, however many migrants find that the opposite happens. Migrants end up in a cycle of slavery: including prostitution and forced labor. These human beings are incarcerated and sold from trafficker to trafficker. Slaves are branded with numbers as punishment and identification, sold at auctions, and forced into unpaid labor and prostitution rings. The area from Northern Africa to Southern Europe is a dangerous place. Slavery is even making it's way into the southern areas of Italy. Slaves are forced to work in fields that produce tomatoes and olives, and are forced into prostitution.

There is documentation of the selling and reselling of slaves to owners. In Libya, a slave auction was recorded. Libya is one of the countries with the highest numbers of slaves. Migrants who have entered Libya have been taken by the militia, incarcerated, held for ransom, and sold into slavery. There are open slave markets there. African migrants are taken by the military and brought to a detention center, where they are then sold off.

Sunday Iabarot was one of the thousands of victims of the modern day slave trade. Iabarot left Nigeria in 2016 for Europe in order to get work. However, when he arrived in Libya, he was captured and sold as a slave. He was sold and resold, given barely any food, and faced traumatizing punishment.

When Iabarot attempted to run away, a number three was carved into his cheek.

Joy, a 23-year-old Cameroonian migrant who had aspirations to become a model in France, was captured by the Liberian militia, incarcerated, and forced into inhuman conditions. Joy was pregnant at the time, so while she was left alone for the most part, many of the other women were raped and forced into prostitution.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), almost half a million sub-Saharan migrants are currently trapped in slavery in Libya.

So what solutions have been put in place to help these migrants?

Well, so far they're been all but productive.

The EU has backed these militias and has put laws in place to limit African migration to Southern Europe. Essentially, there's been a halt to the refuge for these innocent people and immunity granted to these militias.

Some organizations have been at work building safe shelters and rescuing slaves, including:

The Tunisian Red Crescent, No Cap (short for no to caporalato, a labor system I'll explain in a moment),

3 in 5 foods (wine, cheese, fruits, vegetables, and olive oil ) in Italy are unethically harvested by Black migrants. This is due to a racist system called caporalato, that exploits Black migrants in order to pay them minimal wage and produce cheaper product. The founder of No Cap, Yvan Sagnet, was once a victim of this system himself. Workers are forced into harsh labor with the promise of a larger wage than they actually got (Sagnet was promised $33 dollars a day, but after the slave owners deducted food and other expenses, he was only left with $4.50.) Sagnet says that if you find a jar of tomato sauce that's less than $2.25, it was made using caporalato. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is doing nothing to help African migrants, and if anything, is actually severely harming them. Salvini claims that migrants help the Mafia, "If there were no migrants desperate to be exploited, it would be more difficult for them to do business," the minister said in this disgusting statement on the matter. These migrants are not asking to be exploited at all: they're being captured and sold, roped into a slave labor system that leaves them penniless and hungry. Sagnet says that this isn't about the Mafia at all- it's about the government wanting cheap foods. According to TIME, everyday items that are made through slavery are "cell phones, pet food, jewelry and canned tomatoes." Sagnet and his organization is working on a slavery free certification for products, so that consumers can be sure that they aren't unintentionally supporting the slavery of African migrants.

Make sure to keep an eye out for overly cheap products, because oftentimes that are made by slaves, many of whom are African. If you ever vacation to Italy (or already happen to live there), keep in mind your prices, and make sure not to buy anything that's less than the reasonable amount (i.e. $2.25 or more for tomato sauce). Check your brands and know what is made ethically, and make sure that you aren't buying into modern day slavery.

80% of women who arrived in Italy from Libya were forced into sex trafficking. Many targets are Nigerian women from the Southwest. These women are promised jobs at parlors and beauty salons, by slaveowners who claim to be family friends who are concerned for the woman. Once the woman arrives, the kidnappers claim that she owes tens of thousands of dollars in debt for her trip, and the woman is forced into prostitution for three to five years in order to pay it off or else the slaveowner will harm them or their families. Once women are freed, they may return home, start a business, buy a house, and support their families. However, oftentimes these women become sex traffickers themselves. It's an abusive, inhumane, and horrifying system of sex slavery, and it's nowhere near ending. While there are organizations like the Progetto Integrazione Accoglienza Migranti (PIAM) that help women, waiting lists for shelters and counseling are long. A victim by the name of Gladys, who explained the system above to TIME through her own experience, was captured and sold into sex slavery, and had difficulty once she was freed. It took her several months before shelter could be provided to her. Once again, Italy has a role in this slavery. Yet, the government does nothing about it.

Slavery Through the Prison Systems

Black Americans take up about 15% of the population. But in recent data, 38.5% of inmates are Black, while 57.6% of inmates were White.

It's obvious that there's a problem here.

But it's time to look even deeper beyond the surface- it's time to talk about prison labor.

The UNODC (The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) states that inmates who are doing labor must be payed and treated the same as workers in a free setting. The majority of nations fall short on actually enforcing these protections for those incarcerated, hence creating a slavery risk. In this line of U.S. legislation, the law states that prison labor may be used "as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The Fair Labor Standards Act does not at all include inmates in its protections. All in all, forced prison labor, also known as slavery, is legal in the United States. Local governments and companies have exploited prisoners by paying them mere pennies a day for their forced labor by the prison system.

Over 70% of immigrants who are detained in the U.S. are detained in privately owned prison centers.

Yes, those exist. It's disgusting that private prisons exist, and the fact goes unnoticed all too often.

Immigrants who are detained by private prisons are at serious risk for forced labor with no pay. Many are traumatized and abused, and forced into a slavery system.

Black and Brown communities are targeted by police, over incarcerated, and then exploited for slave labor. Slavery never left the United States or the world. It just changed forms.

Also, on the topic of no pay, you know that worldwide pandemic that's going on? State governments in the U.S. have handled this horribly, as well as the federal government. As a resident of the U.S., I can for sure say that the leadership at the topic regarding this pandemic is utterly nonexistent, aside from Dr. Anthony Fauci, but he doesn't get to make mask mandates. His power is limited to just briefing the public and being an advisor. States are left to fend for themselves. States have been using forced prison labor to make hand sanitizer and masks. The inmates, who are slaves, are payed virtually nothing.

I'll continue on with the prison system in another chapter, and I'll get a list of organizations that use slave labor in order to make products.

Until then, please be careful of the products you buy. Do your research on large corporations and understand what you're buying into. I hope that knowledge modern day slavery spreads to the world, so we can put an end to this inhumane practice. Share this information, and be conscious of you and others' actions. Read through my conversations and sign petitions and make calls, and thank you for all you do. Take care of yourselves and stay safe! Educate others!

Resources

https://time.com/longform/african-slave-trade/

https://www.freedomunited.org/prison-labor-and-modern-slavery/

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp