Report Shows Modern Slavery Exists Worldwide

[Peter1469]

Sad but true.

This route of thing is rampant in the middle East. And parts of the Orient.

Sent from my evil, baby seal-clubbing cellphone.

And Orlando.

[PolWatch]

FYI:
This article is from 2004 but I suspect it is still pretty accurate

'Forced labor occurs in at least 90 cities across the United States, the researchers found, and at any given time, 10,000 or more people are forced to toil in sweat shops, clean homes, labor on farms, or work as prostitutes or strippers.
<snip>
Cases documented in the report include a Berkeley, Calif., businessman who enslaved young girls and women for sex and to work in his restaurant; a Florida employer who threatened violence to force hundreds of Mexican and Guatemalan workers to harvest fruit; and two couples in Washington, D.C., who brought Cameroonian teenagers to the United States with the promise of a better education and then forced them to work 14 hours a day as domestic servants, without pay and under the threat of deportation.
Among the report's major findings:
* While forced labor exists across the United States, reported cases are concentrated in states with large immigrant communities, including California, Florida, New York and Texas.
* Victims of forced labor are trafficked into the United States from at least 38 different countries, with China, Mexico and Vietnam topping the list. Some are born in the United States and later held captive.
* Forced labor occurs in poorly regulated industries with a high demand for cheap labor - sweatshops, restaurants and hotels, in addition to agriculture and domestic work. A lack of official monitoring in these areas means unscrupulous employers and criminal networks can gain complete control over workers.
* Forty-six percent of those trapped in forced labor in America are found in prostitution and sex services, the study estimates. Another 27 percent are domestic workers, and one in 10 works in agriculture. These victims are spread across the economy - sweatshop/factory work makes up 5 percent; restaurant and hotel work makes up 4 percent. Sexual exploitation of children represents 3 percent.'
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...23_16691.shtml

[waltky]

ISIS selling girls as young as 12 years old on the Telegram app...

Islamic State tightens grip on captives held as sex slaves
Jul 5,`16 -- The advertisement on the Telegram app is as chilling as it is incongruous: A girl for sale is "Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old.... Her price has reached $12,500 and she will be sold soon."

The posting in Arabic appeared on an encrypted conversation along with ads for kittens, weapons and tactical gear. It was shared with The Associated Press by an activist with the minority Yazidi community, whose women and children are being held as sex slaves by the extremists. While the Islamic State group is losing territory in its self-styled caliphate, it is tightening its grip on the estimated 3,000 women and girls held as sex slaves. In a fusion of ancient barbaric practices and modern technology, IS sells the women like chattel on smart phone apps and shares databases that contain their photographs and the names of their "owners" to prevent their escape through IS checkpoints. The fighters are assassinating smugglers who rescue the captives, just as funds to buy the women out of slavery are drying up.

The thousands of Yazidi women and children were taken prisoner in August 2014, when IS fighters overran their villages in northern Iraq with the aim to eliminate the Kurdish-speaking minority because of its ancient faith. Since then, Arab and Kurdish smugglers managed to free an average of 134 people a month. But by May, an IS crackdown reduced those numbers to just 39 in the last six weeks, according to figures provided by the Kurdistan regional government. Mirza Danai, founder of the German-Iraqi aid organization Luftbrucke Irak, said in the last two or three months, escape has become more difficult and dangerous. "They register every slave, every person under their owner, and therefore if she escapes, every Daesh control or checkpoint, or security force - they know that this girl ... has escaped from this owner," he said, using the Arabic acronym for the group.

Lamiya Aji Bashar, an 18-year-old Yazidi girl who escaped her Islamic State group enslavers, talks to The Associated Press in northern Iraq in this May 5, 2016 photo. She described how she was abducted along with her sisters and brothers when IS overran her village in 2014 and was passed around from militant to militant, trying to escape many times. Finally she succeeded in March, but only after a mine exploded, killing two girls fleeing with her and leaving Bashar's face scarred and blinding her in one eye.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told the AP that the U.S. continues "to be appalled by credible reports that Daesh is trafficking in human beings, and sex slavery in particular." "This depravity not only speaks to the degree to which Daesh cheapens life and repudiates the Islamic faith, it also strengthens our resolve to defeat them," he said. The AP has obtained a batch of 48 head shots of the captives, smuggled out of the IS-controlled region by an escapee, which people familiar with them say are similar to those in the extremists' slave database and the smartphone apps.

Lamiya Aji Bashar tried to flee four times before finally escaping in March, racing to government-controlled territory with Islamic State group fighters in pursuit. A land mine exploded, killing her companions, 8-year-old Almas and Katherine, 20. She never learned their last names. The explosion left Lamiya blind in her right eye, her face scarred by melted skin. Saved by the man who smuggled her out, she counts herself among the lucky. "I managed in the end, thanks to God, I managed to get away from those infidels," the 18-year-told the AP from a bed at her uncle's home in the northern Iraqi town of Baadre. "Even if I had lost both eyes, it would have been worth it, because I have survived them."

MORE

[Cletus]

FYI:
This article is from 2004 but I suspect it is still pretty accurate

'Forced labor occurs in at least 90 cities across the United States, the researchers found, and at any given time, 10,000 or more people are forced to toil in sweat shops, clean homes, labor on farms, or work as prostitutes or strippers.
<snip>
Cases documented in the report include a Berkeley, Calif., businessman who enslaved young girls and women for sex and to work in his restaurant; a Florida employer who threatened violence to force hundreds of Mexican and Guatemalan workers to harvest fruit; and two couples in Washington, D.C., who brought Cameroonian teenagers to the United States with the promise of a better education and then forced them to work 14 hours a day as domestic servants, without pay and under the threat of deportation.
Among the report's major findings:
* While forced labor exists across the United States, reported cases are concentrated in states with large immigrant communities, including California, Florida, New York and Texas.
* Victims of forced labor are trafficked into the United States from at least 38 different countries, with China, Mexico and Vietnam topping the list. Some are born in the United States and later held captive.
* Forced labor occurs in poorly regulated industries with a high demand for cheap labor - sweatshops, restaurants and hotels, in addition to agriculture and domestic work. A lack of official monitoring in these areas means unscrupulous employers and criminal networks can gain complete control over workers.
* Forty-six percent of those trapped in forced labor in America are found in prostitution and sex services, the study estimates. Another 27 percent are domestic workers, and one in 10 works in agriculture. These victims are spread across the economy - sweatshop/factory work makes up 5 percent; restaurant and hotel work makes up 4 percent. Sexual exploitation of children represents 3 percent.'
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...23_16691.shtml

The government even forces people to bake cakes against their will and under threat of force.

[waltky]

al-Shabab militant group seizing Kenyan woman and turning them into sex slaves...

The sex slaves of al-Shabab
Wed, 24 May 2017 - Last year Salama Ali uncovered a secret - that the al-Shabab militant group was seizing Kenyan woman and turning them into sex slaves.

When Salama Ali started investigating the disappearance of two younger brothers last year she made an awful discovery - not only were radicalised young Kenyan men leaving to join the al-Shabab militants in neighbouring Somalia, but women were being seized and trafficked by the group as sex slaves. Salama's search for information about her brothers had to be carried out quietly and confidentially, as any hint of a connection with the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab can arouse the suspicion of the security forces.

Salama Ali's secret support group

So she met discreetly with other women in Mombasa and the surrounding area, sharing stories and seeking information about male relatives who had vanished. "We discovered there were lots of us," Salama says. But Salama also uncovered something very different - stories of women who had been taken to Somalia against their will. The women were both young and old, from Christian and Muslim communities, from Mombasa and other parts of Kenya's coastal region. They were usually promised high-paid work in another town or abroad, and then kidnapped.

Former sex slaves seen from above

Last September Salama trained as a counsellor and set up a secret support group for returning women. Word spread and soon women began seeking her out and asking to join the group. Some arrived with babies, she says, some with HIV, and some with mental illness caused by their experiences. All are terrified to speak openly, because of the risk of being mistakenly identified as an al-Shabab sympathiser.

Faith and her daughter

In a dark room with the curtains drawn, I meet this extraordinary group of women, who have a story that has never been told. "Men used to come and have sex with me - I can't tell you the number," says one, shaking her head as she recounts her ordeal. "For those three years, every man was coming to sleep with me." "They'd bring two or three men for each woman every night," says another. "We would be raped repeatedly." Some women were forced to become the "wives" of al-Shabab militants, it appears, while others were held as slaves in a brothel.

MORE