Kil Soo Lee ordered one of his victim’s eyes gouged out when she complained of not being paid. He allowed his underlings to kick, stomp and beat women and children with pipes and chairs, and he charged his victims $5,000 to $8,000 – the equivalent of five to 10 years' salary in their native countries – for finding them jobs they thought would lead to a better life.
Now behind bars in a federal detention center in Honolulu, Lee awaits sentencing for trafficking more than 200 Vietnamese and Chinese garment workers into American Samoa, where he used starvation, beatings and threats of arrest to imprison them in his forced-labor factory.
Lee, who was convicted last year on 14 counts, including 11 counts of extortion, money laundering, involuntary servitude and conspiracy to violate individual civil rights, could face up to 30 years in prison in the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department.
Thousands of miles away, Antonia and Librada Jimenez-Calderon each have been sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison for luring four Mexican teens to the United States with promises of marriage and a good life. Instead, they held the girls captive in a New Jersey brothel where the 14- to 18-year-olds were forced to have sex with at least six men per day.
Each year an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across borders, including 16,000 into the United States. The tales of Lee and the Jimenez-Calderons – although grim – signify great successes in the United States’ battle against modern slavery and human trafficking. Stepped up with the adoption of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and the creation of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, the United States’ campaign is a leading force in the fight to end the trade and enslavement of people.
Profiting in People
While trafficking and slavery have previously existed in different forms, the pace of trade and enslavement picked up after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, says Marco Gramegna, director of counter-trafficking services for the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, Switzerland. Looser border controls and social upheaval left “people looking for a better life,” he says. “Criminal organizations get hold of these people to exploit.”
The profits can be staggering. Human trafficking generates $7 billion to $10 billion a year for criminal organizations, outpaced only by trafficking in arms and drugs, according to the U.S. State Department.
“Criminals recognized quite early that there was a lot of money to be made in trafficking in persons,” says David Ould, deputy director of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest international human rights organization, based in London.
Recognizing the growing international trade in human beings, the United Nations adopted the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in 2000, including a protocol that deals specifically with human trafficking. These codes entered into force late last year, allowing signatory countries to cooperate in the fight against trafficking, regardless of the bilateral agreements that might be in place. “It’s a phenomenal first step,” says Laura Barrett, chief operating officer for the American Anti-Slavery Group. “It lays the groundwork.”
Here and around the world, the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act wins high praise. The law both defines new crimes and toughens penalties for existing crimes related to trafficking and forced labor. Victims receive government assistance and can apply for T visas to remain in the United States if they agree to assist authorities in investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases.
Under the law, the United States, which provided more than $70 million last year for anti-trafficking programs around the world, also can aid foreign countries that are drafting anti-trafficking laws. “We hope not only to prevent additional victims from being deceived and brought into slavery,” says Chad Bettes, public affairs office for the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in Washington, D.C., “but also to let people on the demand side, so to speak – the people who are buying people, using people – we want them to know that this is a crime, and they can be punished harshly for their actions.”
Incentivizing Abolition
For fiscal years 2001-2002, the U.S. Justice Department launched 20 trafficking prosecutions, more than double that of 1999-2000. At the same time, the number of defendants more than tripled, from 24 to 79.
Another key element in the campaign is the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which reviews the progress made both in the United States and abroad. The report rates foreign governments on their efforts. In the three-tier system, Tier 3 countries don’t fully comply with minimum standards to combat trafficking and are making no efforts to do so.
When the report was issued in June 2003, 15 countries landed in Tier 3, including Greece and Turkey. Those countries had 90 days to show they were making substantial progress or face possible economic sanctions. Following a reassessment last September, only five countries – Burma, Cuba, Liberia, North Korea and Sudan – remained on the list. “Sanctions are but one very small piece of the puzzle, and we only want to use them as a last resort,” Bettes says.
While U.S. law is stronger than that of any other country, flaws still exist, Barrett says. When the State Department ranks the countries, it doesn’t look at what action actually is being taken, she says, citing South Korea as an example of a country that has received a Tier 1 rating after passing many laws addressing trafficking. There has not been a commensurate decrease in trafficking and sex slavery in South Korea, however.
Tier 2 category countries “have been given some incredibly wide latitude,” Barrett says. “I have to question whether some of our strategic allies in the Middle East were bumped up as cooperation for the war on terror.”
Lack of Local Awareness
While the U.S. and U.N. laws against human trafficking generally are well-known at the highest government levels around the world, knowledge often hasn’t trickled down to local law enforcement officials. In some places, politicians and police offers are even in cahoots with traffickers.
“Even if (victims) have laws to protect them, they’re frightened to testify, frightened to provide evidence,” says David Weissbrodt, a University of Minnesota law professor who served on the board of the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
It’s not uncommon for victims to be deported, rather than being offered the chance to stay in the country, as they are ostensibly allowed under the trafficking law. Terry Coonan, a law professor and executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., continues to litigate cases for trafficking victims.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services department (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) still deports victims without advising them of their rights in many cases either because they are unaware of U.S. law or unable to recognize the crime as trafficking, Coonan says. He recalled the words of one local police officer who told him, “They’re just little Mexican hookers.”
Despite the new laws and increased prosecutions, one key issue remains: locating and identifying trafficking victims, who often are kept hidden. “The number of victims that actually surfaces are just the top of the iceberg,” Coonan says.
Freedom
A Magazine from the National Underground Railroad Freedom CenterNOT FOR SALE
The Fight to End the 21st Century Slave Trade©Summer 2004 - By Susan Ladika