100,000 North Koreans sent abroad as ‘slaves’

Tens of thousands of impoverished North Koreans have been sent abroad to work as “state-sponsored slaves” whose wages are confiscated and used to buy luxury goods for the regime, human rights activists have claimed.

The practice, used since the 1980s to help fill the hermit kingdom’s coffers, has reportedly accelerated under Kim Jong-un, who took power following the death of Kim Jong-il, his father, in 2011. Until 2012 there were thought to be up to 65,000 North Korean workers around the globe, often in terrible conditions. That number has since risen to around 100,000, activists told The New York Times.

Ahn Myeong-chul, the head of NK Watch, a Seoul-based rights group, told the newspaper Pyongyang was “exploiting their labour and salaries to fatten the private coffers of Kim Jong-un. We suspect that Kim is using some of the money to buy luxury goods for his elite followers and finance the recent building boom in Pyongyang that he has launched to show off his leadership.”

More at the Telegraph

A year ago The Rubin Report already reported:

Inside Saudi Arabia: Butchery, Slavery & History of Revolt

Meet the new head of the United Nations panel on Human Rights: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Abby Martin takes us inside the brutal reality of this police-state monarchy, and tells the untold people's history of resistance to it. With a major, catastrophic war in Yemen and looming high-profile executions of activists, The Empire Files exposes true nature of the U.S.-Saudi love affair.

Empire Files

ISIS sex slaves subjected to rape freed by secret resistance network

Women and young girls held as sex slaves by depraved Islamic State militants are fleeing their captors with the help of a heroic underground network of resistance fighters. Risking certain death and torture in a bid to flee their brutal oppressors, many spend several days making their way through Syria and Iraq to the safety of government-controlled territory. Many of them have been subjected to appalling violence, rape and sexual abuse at the hands of ISIS fighters and commanders.

ISIS has carried out 'systematic sexual crimes' against girls from the Yazidi community since kidnapping more than 3,000 girls from their homes in northern Iraq last August. Unjustly regarded as ‘devil worshippers’ on account of their unusual beliefs, the Yazidi have for centuries been one of the most persecuted minorities of the Middle East. Islamic extremists regard them as infidels, worthy only of being killed. Those considered the 'most beautiful' by ISIS leaders are sent to horrendous auction houses where they are stripped naked and sold to the highest bidder.

More at Daily Mail Online

How black slaves were routinely sold as ‘specimens’ to ambitious white doctors

The history of human experimentation is as old as the practice of medicine and in the modern era has always targeted disadvantaged, marginalised, institutionalised, stigmatised and vulnerable populations: prisoners, the condemned, orphans, the mentally ill, students, the poor, women, the disabled, children, peoples of colour, indigenous peoples and the enslaved.

Human subject research is evident wherever physicians, technicians, pharmaceutical companies (and others) are trialling new practices and implementing the latest diagnostic and therapeutic agents and procedures. And the American South in the days of slavery was no different – and for those looking for easy targets, black slave bodies were easy to come by.

There is a rich and rapidly expanding scholarly literature examining the history of human subject research, including studies of the burgeoning bio-medical economy in the US in the 20th century. The Tuskegee experiment and other episodes of medical racism all feature prominently.

The history of the acquisition and exploitation of slave bodies for medical education and research in the US, first explored in depth by historians James Breeden and Todd Savitt, focused primarily on medical schools and the traffic in slave bodies in Virginia. Savitt’s work drew attention to professional medicine’s use of slaves in classroom and bedside demonstrations, in operating amphitheatres, and experimental facilities.

Savitt argued that African Americans were easy targets for ambitious and entrepreneurial white physicians in the slave south. Slaves, as human commodities, were readily transformed into a medical resource, easily accessible as empirical test subjects, “voiceless” and rendered “medically incompetent” through the combined power and authority of the enslaver and their employee, the white physician. Savitt suggested that “outright experimentation upon living humans may have occurred more openly and perhaps more often owing to the nature of slave society,” and also that “the situation may have been (and probably was) worse in the Deep South.”

More by Stephen Kenny, University of Liverpool at disinformation

Also see: usslave.blogspot.com

Prince Andrew and the under-age 'sex slave'

British Prince Andrew abused an underage girl at an orgy where she was being used as a sex slave, it was sensationally claimed last night. In an extraordinary legal allegation, a woman said she was ‘forced’ to have sex with him at parties in London, New York and the Caribbean.

Last night the prince issued a strongly-worded denial, with Buckingham Palace saying ‘any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue’. But his alleged victim immediately hit back by saying she would not be ‘bullied into silence by aggressive attacks’.

More at Daily Mail Online – The Guardian

The Queens Arrest Is Imminent - The Queen has granted herself (and her family) a new right of absolutely secrecy unsurpassed in British history, in an attempt to cover up paedophile claims and arrest warrants. Truth Seeker

Stand with Anti-Slavery Activist Andy Hall

Andy Hall is a British campaigner with a special focus on the rights of migrant workers. Two years ago he undertook an investigation on behalf of Finnwatch into potential labour abuses at Natural Fruit, part of NatGroup, a Thai company that processes pineapples and supplies retailers around the world.

Instead of addressing the allegations published in Finnwatch's report, Natural Fruit decided to try and silence Andy with lawsuits. He could now face 7 years in prison and $10 million in legal damages for his investigations.
If this case proceeds and Natural Fruit are successful this would not only be a grave miscarriage of justice for Andy Hall. This process could set a dangerous precedent for other companies in Thailand that might take a similar approach when allegations are raised of modern slavery in their supply chains. This threatens the work of anti-slavery campaigners but also workers in Thailand who might be too afraid to come forward and report abuse.

Petition: Stand with Anti-Slavery Activist Andy Hall

Slavery

Atheist Experience

Primark clothing label "Forced to work exhausting hours"

Primark is keen to investigate how a label bearing the hand-stitched words: "Forced to work exhausting hours" was found inside one of its dresses. Swansea shopper Rebecca Gallagher bought a floral dress at the budget retailer and was alarmed by what she found.

"I was amazed when I checked for the washing instructions and spotted this label," Gallagher told the South Wales Evening Post. "To be honest I've never really thought much about how the clothes are made. But this really made me think about how we get our cheap fashion. I dread to think that my summer top may be made by some exhausted person toiling away for hours in some sweatshop abroad."

The shopper, who says she called Primark but didn't receive a response after being placed on hold, sees the wording as a "cry for help - to let us people in Britain know what is going on", although the label's origin will be difficult to verify. While it could have been added once the garment arrived in Britain, the label may also have been sewn in by a factory employee - a mystery that Primark is attempting to unravel.

Vogue.com UK

Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar's preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.

This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022.

According to documents obtained from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August. More than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents.

Full story on The Guardian

Government corruption: Made in China - By prison labor

It's easy to produce cheap goods when you don't have to pay your workers anything. (Brasscheck tv)

The American South's Shocking Hidden History: Thousands of Blacks Forced Into Slavery Until WW2

On July 31, 1903, a letter addressed to President Theodore Roosevelt arrived at the White House. It had been mailed from the town of Bainbridge, Georgia, the prosperous seat of a cotton county perched on the Florida state line.

The sender was a barely literate African American woman named Carrie Kinsey. With little punctuation and few capital letters, she penned the bare facts of the abduction of her fourteen-year-old brother, James Robinson, who a year earlier had been sold into involuntary servitude.

Kinsey had already asked for help from the powerful white people in her world. She knew where her brother had been taken—a vast plantation not far away called Kinderlou. There, hundreds of black men and boys were held in chains and forced to labor in the fields or in one of several factories owned by the McRee family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful in Georgia. No white official in this corner of the state would take an interest in the abduction and enslavement of a black teenager.

More on Alternet - Also see usslave.blogspot.nl

China Might End System of Forced Labor Camps

A top government official in China has indicated the country plans to reform its forced labor camps.

Chinese Prison slaves

Over the past 20 years China has become the world's biggest exporter of consumer goods. But behind this apparent success story is a dark secret - millions of men and women locked up in prisons and forced into intensive manual labour.

More of China's dirty secrets

Slaves of Dubai

White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

The story of King Leopold II of Belgium's brutal colonisation of central Africa, turning it into a vast rubber-harvesting labour camp in which millions died.

Belgian television will show the BBC documentary "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death," about Belgian King Leopold II's reign of terror in his private Congo colony in 1885-1908. The documentary, hardly the stuff of controversy anywhere else, almost didn't make it onto the airwaves here.
Louis Michel, the Belgian foreign minister, and the Royal Palace both pressured state television not to broadcast "White King." The Royal Palace expressed its "concern" about the documentary's "historical accuracy." "This is a partisan work and its thesis is completely one-sided," Mr. Michel said. "The film is a biased diatribe."

As a compromise the state television documentary was "put into the right context" by Belgian "specialists." Jan Van den Berghe of Belgian television says: "We have had the facts qualified by Belgian specialists such as the curator of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren."
The blood-stained history of the former Congo Free State isn't much in dispute anywhere except in Belgium, where it is seldom mentioned. The CFS was a private colony of Leopold II's until 1908 when he sold it to Belgium. He turned the CFS into a labor camp, laying the foundation of his immense personal fortune. His managers on the ground -- the king never set foot in the Congo himself -- used mutilation and killing to get the natives to bring in the rubber. Often, wives and children were taken hostage without food or water to speed up the work. In the 23 years of CFS rule, about half the Congo's 20 million inhabitants perished.

Red Ice Creations

Gay marriage is like slavery says Scottish Catholic leader

Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien said countries which legalise gay marriage are “shaming themselves” by going against the “natural law,” and should not consider their actions “progress”.

He claimed same sex unions were the “thin end of the wedge” and would lead to the “further degeneration of society into immorality.” In a series of controversial comments, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if same sex marriage were legalised, “further aberrations would take place and society would be degenerating even further than it already has into immorality.”

The interview, conducted by John Humphries, followed an article Cardinal O’Brien wrote for the Sunday Telegraph, in which he likened gay marriage to slavery. He wrote: “Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that ‘no one will be forced to keep a slave’.

Telegraph

New British Slaves: Jobseekers forced to clean private homes and offices for nothing

Unpaid jobseekers have been forced to clean private homes and offices for more than a month at a time under government employment schemes, despite mounting evidence that the controversial policy is reducing the overall availability of paid work by replacing temporary jobs and overtime for other staff.

A succession of high street shops have pulled out of the schemes this week amid criticism that using unpaid labour to carry out routine tasks such as filling shelves amounts to a public subsidy for employers, but the practice extends far beyond the retail industry.

The Guardian has now discovered through a freedom of information request that a major government contractor, Avanta, has compelled jobseekers to work as unpaid cleaners in houses, flats, offices and council premises under the work programme.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has previously stated that all mandatory schemes must be for "community benefit". However, under government rules, this can be defined as increasing the profit of organisations where the unemployed are sent to work without pay.

Full story on The Guardian

Richard Dawkins expresses disbelief over slave owner ancestor story

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist, is used to criticism from those who do not share his views on religion or the origins of mankind. But he has expressed surprise at the latest attack, which claims the scientist faces awkward questions because some of his ancestors were slave owners.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Henry Dawkins had amassed more than 1,000 slaves in Jamaica by the time of his death in 1744, and quoted campaigners calling on Dawkins to pay reparations. But Dawkins hit back on his blog, describing the interview and subsequent article as "surreal".

"At the end of a week of successfully rattling cages, I was ready for yet another smear or diversionary tactic of some kind," said Dawkins, who clashed on the BBC Today programme with Giles Fraser, formerly canon chancellor of St Paul's cathedral, on Tuesday. "But in my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined the surreal form this one was to take."

The Guardian

iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think

Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy”. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

More on AlterNet

Chocolate's Child Slaves

Everyone loves chocolate. But for thousands of people, chocolate is the reason for their enslavement. The chocolate bar you snack on likely starts at a plant in a West African cocoa plantation, and often the people who harvest it are children. Many are slaves to a system that produces something almost all of us consume and enjoy.

The CNN Freedom Project sent correspondent David McKenzie into the heart of the Ivory Coast - the world’s largest cocoa producer - to investigate what's happening to children working in the fields. His work has resulted in a shocking, eye-opening documentary showing that despite all the promises the global chocolate industry made a decade ago, much of the trade remains unchanged. There are still child slaves harvesting cocoa, even though some have never even tasted chocolate and some don't even know what the word "chocolate" means.

In the documentary "Chocolate’s Child Slaves," CNN discovers a human trafficking network and farmers using child labour for an industry offering low prices and little more than broken promises.

More on The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery