Sold to the Sea

Human Trafficking at Sea

ETCHINGS ON THE WALL IN THE ROOM WHERE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS WERE HELD:
“Don’t think too much about life. It cannot be destroyed so easily.”
“Let’s fight together.”
“No matter the rain is heavy; even it may dissolve a mountain; my love will survive.”
“Let’s pass through the difficult journey.”
“You are on your own in Thailand.”

See video:

Click on this link to read and download the Complete PDF Report 

Lesson Plan for The Help (2011) "Criadas y Señoras" -in Spanish-

Told through the point of view of three different women living in Jackson, Mississippi, The Help chronicles events from late summer of 1962 through 1964. Skeeter Phelan, who has just graduated from Ole Miss, returns home to the family plantation, ambitious to become a writer.

Taking the advice of a New York editor to hone her skills, Skeeter begins to write a column for the local newspaper while searching for a topic that she truly cares about. 

Missing her beloved childhood family maid and confronted by the overt racism of her friend Hilly Holbrook’s campaign to require a separate bathroom for the black help, Skeeter proposes to write about the lives of the black maids in Jackson. Knowing she will need to interview black maids to tell their stories but without realizing the danger of what she is asking, Skeeter approaches Aibileen, the maid of one of her close friends.

With an increasing sense of bitterness at the injustice of her situation, Aibileen agrees to help, and later recruits Minny and eventually other maids. As they work on this project to tell their true stories, including stories of the prejudice and injustice that the maids experience in their everyday lives, a close relationship develops between Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny. The three women come to confront and resist the intimidation experienced daily by the black maids. Woven throughout the stories are the key events of these seminal years of the civil rights movement.

Click to see futher information on the film

ACTIVITIES

Before watching the film

For an overview of the Civil Right Movement and the conditions of black people living in America, students can visit the following pages:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#events-1960

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/index.html

https://hunniebrown.wordpress.com/lynching-in-america/

Address the following topics to help students add to their background knowledge: 

1. Where did most Afroamericans live?

2. What was the Second Great Migration that occurred between 1940-1970?

3. Why did coloured people move to the North in such numbers?

4. What kinds of work were typical for coloured people in the South? Why?

5. What were the Jim Crow laws?

6. How did this affect the daily lives of coloured people, especially in the South?

7. What violence or threat of violence affected them?

8. What was their response? How did they resist the violence of racism?

While watching the film

Your Food Ties to Slavery

Antonio Martinez stood in the hot sun, exhausted from a cross-country journey, and waited. Just 21 years old, he had traveled from Mexico to the U.S. with the promise of a well-paid construction job in California. But now he stood in a field in central Florida, listening to one man pay another man $500 to own him.

“I realized I had been sold like an animal without any compassion," Antonio thought at the time, more than 10 years ago.

He was right. In modern times, in the United States, Antonio had been sold into slavery in Florida's tomato fields.

IMMOKALEE: A STORY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Antonio is not alone

Unfortunately, Antonio’s case is not an isolated one. Many enslaved farmworkers in Florida pick the tomatoes that end up on sliced onto sandwiches, mixed into salads and stacked on supermarket shelves across the country. Over the last decade, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an award-winning farmworker advocacy organization, has identified more than 1,200 victims of human trafficking picking produce in Florida's fields.

These slaves often work for 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week. They are kept in crampt and dirty trailers, constantly monitored, and have wages garnished to pay a debt invented by the trafficker to keep victims enslaved. Many victims face threats to themselves or their families, regular beatings, sexual harassment and rape. They can't leave, can't seek help. They are in every way trapped.

Exploitation in the tomato industry isn't just the work of a handful of immoral individuals – it's the result of a supply chain which is set up to support the exploitation of the very people who keep it running.

Prostitution: Victims or Whores?

Extract 

by Captain Danielle Strickland

I’ve been immersed recently in prostitution legislation. A year and a half ago I was neck high in a raging debate around the legalising of prostitution in Canada. Some very vocal proponents were upholding the ‘rights of women’ to prostitute themselves. After all – it is their body. This neo-liberal feminism (far from the classic feminism that spear-headed abolition, women voting and the rights of children around the world) suggests that prostitution isn’t oppression but a profession and should be dignified with proper acceptance, education and wages – with protection of workers rights. There is a classic case of a ‘co-operative brothel’ operating right now (albeit illegally) in Victoria, BC on the west coast of Canada.

The problem is that the rhetoric around legalising prostitution sounds pretty good (in promised form anyway)… a society that no longer judges women or uses morality as a grid to punish those who don’t adopt a pure lifestyle… billed as a liberation and a right – it makes opposing it sound like a puritanical rant against the freedom of women. You’d think the only people left opposing legalizing prostitution were a bunch of old fashioned, purist holy rollers trying to save poor lasses from the den of iniquity and the fires of hell.

The truth is that classic feminism rages on and presents from a women’s right perspective, an impressive argument against legalising prostitution. Not simply theoretical in recent years they have presented a new model many governments around the world are adopting to combat violence and oppression against women through sexual slavery and prostitution.  It all started in Sweden.

Gunilla Ekberg was at the helm of the new legislation that suggested (with a proper understanding of prostitution) any society that seeks to uphold the rights of women and children must stop it. On it’s website at the height of the experiment Sweden had written, ‘we want the world to know that in Sweden, women and children are NOT FOR SALE.’ Bring it. (Swedish Model of Sex Industry Reform) This women’s right perspective suggests abolition as the only proper feminist response to prostitution. But why? Well, it’s all about understanding oppression. Let’s break it down:

Who are they?

Prostituted women are almost always oppressed women. Studies the world over suggest that women who end up working by selling their bodies are desperate. 84% of prostituted women in Australia (where prostitution has been legalised for 14 years in the State of Victoria – but more on that later!) said they would do anything else if they could. They are most likely to be uneducated, from low economic backgrounds, minorities, addicted and abused. It’s not exactly a poster child for women’s rights. Unlike the popular media suggests prostituted persons do not consists of young sexually liberated women choosing to exercise their ‘right’ to sell themselves  - they are overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and neglected – suffering from abuse. 

Read: Harms of Prostitution

Lesson Plan for the Film: Elysium

Elysium’s takes place in 2154 in a devastated Los Angeles.  Max -the hero- is now a man, but through flashes back to his childhood, we can learn he was an orphan raised by nuns alongside a girl named Frey, who remains his love-interest throughout his life.  Max has a checkered past -he’s a reformed thief, trying to scratch out a living among the rest of his poor peers on Earth.  They live in the shadow of Elysium, a utopian, wealthy and privileged world, devoid of illness, which shimmers in the sky like beacon, always visible but impossible to reach.

The film has many logical flaws and will not get points for originality. However, it has lots of strong sci-fi violence and teens will love it. The plot is very easy to follow and the film can be used to deal with and analyze topics such as migration, frontiers, the role of countries that do the dirty work and keep migrants far away from the first world (Kruger), injustice, poverty, bravery… Then, I believe it can be a good educational film and resource.

Clik to see further info. about the film

ACTIVITIES

Before watching the film

Click on the link: 

See the pictures, read the extracts of the news and answer the questions.

Elysium (2013)

Elysium is a 2013 American dystopian science fiction action thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Neill Blomkamp, and starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. It was released on August 9, 2013. 

The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth, and a luxurious space habitat called Elysium. It explores political and sociological themes such as immigration, health care, exploitation, the justice system, and class issues.

In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp 
Stars: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley  

Follow this link to see Lesson Plan

SEE THE TRAILER

Las Patronas: Mexican Women's Group Aiding Migrants

Norma Romero Vázquez, director of Las Patronas, receives National Human Rights Award from President Enrique Peña Nieto Norma Romero Vázquez, member of Las Patronas—a group of women who work in support of migrants who cross Mexico on their way to the United States—regrets how “Mexico has become fractured,” marked “by violence, impunity, apathy, discrimination, and by the lack of real opportunity.” Upon receiving the National Prize for Human Rights from the hands of President Enrique Peña Nieto, the activist maintained that “rather than advancing, we have deteriorated, because the idea of progress sustained by taking advantage of those who have less is nothing more than a violation of human rights.” On Thursday afternoon Romero Vázquez received a medal, acknowledgment, and a cash prize for her work helping undocumented migrants.  Day in and day out, a group of 14 people, including her, give food and water to foreign migrants who travel hanging on to The Beast—the cargo train—when they pass through Amatián, Veracruz. She also deplored how, in reality, migrants are not considered as people, “but as merchandise that can be exchanged, negotiated, and eliminated without thought.”

“My wife and children didn’t pass away. They were murdered by Europe”

By Boštjan Videmšek, Athens

Wasim Abu Nahi, 36, a Syrian refugee of Palestinian descent, recently underwent an almost indescribable personal tragedy.

It came to pass on July 21, as Turkish traffickers dropped him off on the cliffs in front of the Greek island Samos, accompanied by his thirty-year-old wife Lamise, his four-year-old son Oday and his tiny daughter Layan, who was nine months old.

Since the Greek coast guard refused to provide assistance, and since his wife was injured and both his children were exhausted and dehydrated, Wasim left them behind to search for water, food and any help he could get. He was soon arrested and imprisoned by the local police, who refused to even listen to his pleas. As he sat helplessly in his cell, a forest fire broke out on the island, eventually claiming the lives of Lamise, Oday and Layan. The police’s reaction to this unspeakable tragedy was to arrest Wasim’s two Syrian companions who had sailed with him to Greece and charge them with causing the fire, even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support the charges.

After keeping Wasim imprisoned for five more weeks, they eventually let him go. With the help of friends and local activists, he immediately travelled to Athens, where he met with his nephew from Sweden. Together, they then returned to Samos and, after a few gut-wrenching hours, found the remains of Wasim’s family. Utterly broken, Wasim travelled back to Athens, where he is now stranded. Since he hasn’t been awarded refugee status, he cannot even file for an asylum. He is living with one of his Syrian acquaintances in the anarchist quarter called Excarhia, which was where I met him. What follows is his story. 

“My family and I, we used to live in Dubai, but in the spring I lost my job. I come from Latakia by the Mediterranean sea. We decided we would head to Turkey and try to worm our way into the European Union. Our ultimate goal was to reach Sweden, because I have some relatives there. I wanted to go to Sweden, where my nephew could help me find some work. Everything had already been arranged, you know. My wife and children would have probably been awarded refugee status, since they had Syrian citizenship. It would have been a bit harder for me, since I only have Palestinian papers, but I know I would have gotten by somehow."

Christmas Solidarity Marches for Justice

The Christian Cultural Movement, SAIn Political Party, and Youth Solidarity Path, invite you to join more than 30 solidarity marches organised throughout the month of December in Spain and Latin America, with the purpose of representing the voice of the impoverished in the streets and of emphasising that hunger and other attacks on human life can be eradicated if the political will exists.

Extracted from: solidaridad.net

Every day, more than 100,000 people -half of them children- die of hunger

Campaingn for Justice in North-South Relations
AGAINST THE CAUSES OF HUNGER,
UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY
Thou Shalt Not Kill (God)

“HUNGER IS THE MAIN POLITICAL PROBLEM OF HUMANITY”

More than 2,500 million people in the world live on less than 1.50 euros a day, and 90% of the world’s population owns only 17% of its wealth. As a result, the economic North has built walls and fences along their borders with poorer nations in an attempt to fence in hunger. Along these borders, violence and death await the millions of migrants who try to cross through Central America, across the Strait of Gibraltar, into Melilla, or over to Lampedusa.

Amidst the reorganisation of the imperialist economic system (or “crisis” as they call it), the world’s wealth has increased, while hunger has multiplied and the gap between rich and poor has grown. And as the richest 10% owns 83% of the world’s total wealth, the 3 biggest fortunes are equal to the GDP of the 48 poorest countries.

But yet again, the media machine of the First World would love to convince us that climate change is the main cause of hunger, tens of thousands of deaths, and the suffering of millions of families affected by the illness, loss of homes, famine and drought after typhoons or hurricanes.

HUNGER IS NOT A PROBLEM RELATED TO FOOD PRODUCTION, NOR OVERPOPULATION, NOR CLIMATE CHANGE, BUT OF PLANNED, SYSTEMATIC ROBBERY.

The IMF and World Bank have been responsible for the implementation of the plans of “Structural Adjustment” that are now arriving on European shores but have been impoverishing Latin America, Asia, and Africa for over 25 years. These adjustments are provoking and increasing unemployment; precariousness; exploitation; the death of immigrants within our borders and evictions. And these measures help us to understand more and more what the oppressed of the Earth have been suffering for decades.

The Millennium Development Goals have been being used as a weapon against the poor, presenting them as the ones who are responsible for the injustices they suffer. On the other hand, they hide the robbery and exploitation of the economic North over the economic South. Meanwhile, instead of ending hunger (which is its main responsibility), the UN tries to exterminate the hungry by referring to abortion and contraception as “sexual and reproductive health”. That is how they refer to more than 2,000 million children aborted in the world in the last 25 years.

FIFA in Conspiracy with Qatari Authorities over Salvery: 2022 Qatar World Cup is Built on a Graveyard

Qatar’s construction frenzy ahead of the 2022 World Cup is on course to cost the lives of at least 4,000 migrant workers before a ball is kicked, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has claimed.

However, this dramatic situation, which received great press coverage last week due to an investigation published by The Guardian newspaper, is not new. In May and June 2011, a Human Rights Watch research team travelled to Qatar to conduct in-depth interviews with migrant construction workers. They interviewed local residents who help migrant workers in distress, representatives from four embassies of countries that send significant numbers of migrant construction workers to Qatar, local employers, local recruitment agents, and Qatari government officials. Through their research, they found that in Qatar workers are forced to work in slavery conditions, which led to their deaths in many cases. See Abridged HRW's Report Despite their reports, letters and requests for governments, companies and the FIFA to take steps to protect workers from abuse and exploitation, nothing has been done in these two years, and the situation is getting worse rather than better.

The key factors which trap migrant workers in Qatar in exploitative jobs are:

Lampedusa Deaths Are No 'Accident'

Thursday, October 10, 2013

By Nina Perkowski

Last week’s catastrophe is the latest in a series of incidents that have left 19,142 people dead over the last 24 years – this includes only reported and documented deaths. Many others, having died and disappeared at sea, will never be part of these statistics.

October 3rd, 2013 will go down as one of the deadliest days at the European external borders in decades. 363 people are now thought to have died in one single, tragic incident early that Thursday morning. And while the continuous, everyday deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean are met by silence, the magnitude of this ‘blood bath’ spurred the Italian and international media to report on it widely.

It was around 3.30am on Thursday morning when a boat with 518 people, most of them from Somalia and Eritrea, got into distress about 550 meters off the Lampedusa coastline. The motor had broken down, and water started flowing into the ship. Survivors say that their mobile phones had been taken away from them for the journey to avoid detection, so they used their ship’s horn and signaled SOS also optically.

Three fishing boats passed in their vicinity and did not help, nor did they notify the coast guards.

At around 6.20am, somebody on the boat lit a blanket to attract attention. The fire spread and panic broke out. When people moved to one side of the ship, it capsized and sank. Alerted by screams of people in the water, a boat of local fishermen came to their help and rescued 47 people. The fishermen assert that they informed the coastguard by 6.40am, and that it then took 45 minutes for them to arrive at the scene – despite its vicinity to the harbour. This delay is not the only accusation made against the coastguards. According to local newspapers, legal charges have been filed against them for failure to assist people in danger. Two boats of the Guardia di Finanza nearby did not join the rescue effort. In addition, some of the fishermen report having been hindered in rescuing more people. While the coastguard denies these accusations, it would not have been the first time that help to migrant boats in distress came too late.

Stop Violence at the Borders!

In Henry David Thoreau's essay: Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience), he says:

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. – the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.…

In the memory of Clement…

“It is the military police… and also the Spanish Guards… my brother, he has been beaten in front of me.”

“Our brothers die each day that is passing, Morocco watches in silence, Spain watches in silence. Each day that is passing, they (Spanish Civil Guards) are killing our brothers. It is inadmissible that Spain knows that… The journalists come here to take pictures, as you come to take pictures but nothing… But God is there.”

“The Spanish Guards can stop us and maybe they could repatriate us to our countries instead of taking us from inside and putting us outside with the Moroccans who kill us.”

“They should try to stop massacring us like bandits. We are humans, we all, we are humans.”

“They take your passport and they refuse to give it back to you.”

“It’s been 2 years that I’m not calling my family because they took everything… my phone, all my cards, my passport. They took everything. The money. They took everything.”

“His heart has stopped beating. He passed away.”

New Report Shows How the Crisis in Europe and Rising Xenophobia Limit Healthcare of Vulnerable Groups

PICUM Report

11 April 2013

The organisation Doctors of the World held a conference on “Access to health care in Europe in times of crisis and rising xenophobia” in Brussels on 9 April 2013. The aim of the conference was to present a report summarising the outcomes of a study carried out in 14 cities in seven European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Spain and the UK) in 2012 which shows the impact of the EU crisis and rising xenophobia  on access to healthcare for people facing multiple vulnerability factors. The report also provides background information particularly on the situation of access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in each of the seven countries.

The results were presented by four of the organisation’s national members.  Thierry Brigaud (France) and Michel Degueldre (Belgium) presented the results of the European survey, addressing the social determinants of health, the barriers to health care and the health status of the population in the 14 cities studied. In this frame, they also invalidated myths such as the perception that migrants are “health tourists” or the idea that migrants do not contribute to financing the public health system. 

Álvaro González, president of Doctors of the World Spain, addressed the situation in his country in relation to imposed austerity measures and how this is destroying the public health system. The Royal Decree Ley 16/2012 established the copayment of medication and the exclusion of adult irregular migrants from access to health care. According to González, the health system model is changing from universal healthcare to an insurance system where healthcare is limited to the participation in the labour market.  He noted that the Millennium Development Goals have established universal health care as a political objective. Instead, Spain limits the number of groups receiving treatment, the number of health services and overall spending.  This development directly affects migrants in an irregular situation and is untenable from different points of view: it violates human rights treaties, it is more expensive since the costs of emergency treatment are higher than the costs of preventive care, it is unethical and it leads to public health problems. He stressed the important role of civil society mobilizations to fight these tendencies.

XMAS MARCHES FOR JUSTICE

CAMPAIGN FOR JUSTICE IN 

NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS

"You shall not kill" God

MARCHES AGAINST THE CAUSES OF HUNGER, UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY

15 December at 19h, in Getafe, Madrid

From the City Hall Square to General Palacios

16 December at 19h, in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid

From Mayor Street to Cervantes Square

23 December at 18h in MADRID

From España Square to Puerta del Sol

Organised by Christian Cultural Movement, SAIn Political Party 
and Solidarity Youth Path

Communiqué

CHRISTMAS SOLIDARITY MARCHES FOR JUSTICE

Campaign for Justice in North-South Relations

AGAINST THE CAUSES OF HUNGER,

UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY

You shall not kill (God)

Every day over 100,000 people die of starvation; half of them are children.

“HUNGER, UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY ARE POLITICAL CRIMES.”

In the European Union 89 million tonnes of food are thrown away yearly. One hundred people could be fed with the food thrown out by supermarkets. Meanwhile, each day 100,000 people die of starvation on a planet full of natural wealth. Hunger crushes 85% of the world population.

In the midst of the reorganization of the imperialist economic system – the so-called "crisis", the wealth of humanity has increased, but hunger and the gap between the rich and the impoverished have also soared. The richest 10% owns 83% of the world’s wealth, with the top 1% alone accounting for 43% of global assets.

Speculation on food commodities markets: in 2007, pension funds, insurance, banks, etc. sought another source of profitability and found it in food. In Africa alone, mutual funds and multinational companies invested in 41 million hectares of arable land. Speculation on food results in an immediate increase in prices. In 2010, wheat rose by 130%, rice by 74% and corn by 31%. What do international agencies do about this crime? They keep quiet and hide the truth. What do we do? Speculation on foodstuffs is a crime we cannot tolerate.

HUNGER IS NEITHER A PROBLEM OF FOOD PRODUCTION NOR OF OVERPOPULATION; IT IS A PLANNED ROBBERY.

Dadaab Refugee Camp

A Somali refugee girl sits perched on a tree in Ifo camp

Brendan Bannon is a photojournalist on assignment for Polaris Images: 

"I first went to the Dadaab refugee camp, close to the border between Kenya and Somalia, at the end of 2006. Strangely enough, the camp was flooded then. The same parched ground recorded in my photographs was covered by 3 feet of water. Then, people were fleeing from the camp, not fleeing to the camp as they are today. Dadaab has become the largest refugee camp in the world, and Kenya’s fourth largest city: 440,000 people have gathered in makeshift shelters, made of branches and tarps. 

Experiencing Dadaab again last week was profoundly humbling. I was confronted with deep suffering and need. Slowing down and talking to people, I heard stories of indomitable courage and determination and of making horrible choices. Most of these people have survived 20 years of war in Somalia, two years of drought, and it’s only now that they are fleeing their homeland. They are accomplished survivors. 

One morning, I was talking to a family of ten. I poured a full glass of water from a pitcher and passed it to a child. He took a sip, and passed it on to his brother and so on. The last one returned it to me with enough left for the last gulp. Even in the camp, they take only what they need to survive and share the rest. What you see on the surface looks like extreme fragility, but it’s actually tremendous resilience and the extraordinary affirmation of their will to live." 

Paula Nelson

Click here to see other pictures of Dadaab refugee camp by Brenda Bannon