21st Century slavery

Originally published, July 18, 2006
Barbara Kralis
RenewAmerica analyst

"Slave labor [in the Soviet Union] made no demands, could be transferred anywhere at any moment, was free of family ties, had no need for housing, schools or hospitals, and sometimes not even for kitchens or lavatories. The state could obtain such manpower only by swallowing up its sons." --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"

Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn in "The Gulag Archipelago" writes of the slave-labor system, a dominant factor in the Soviet economy under Lenin and Stalin. Once a prisoner himself, he revealed that between 1918 and 1959, 66 million men, women, and children were trafficked to slave labor "islands" or concentration camps within Russia.

Throughout the world's darkest history, we can find entire civilizations built on the backs of slaves. The modern ages reveal forced labor feats that rival the 2,500 B.C. Egyptian pyramids, also built by slaves. Bloody human hands have hacked out thousands of miles of sea and river canals, railway lines, and highways as global industrial empires were built at the price of human bondage. Always behind these enormous human accomplishments stands greed--the reason for the power of man to make other men what they please.

More slaves now than ever

Today, 21st century slavery has changed a little from Solzhenitsyn's 1974 portrayal. The numbers and profits have increased, as well as the clandestine methods of human trafficking--moving victims from one location to another and still to another. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], human trafficking alone generates a staggering $9.5 billion in yearly revenues worldwide. The International Labour Office [ILO] estimates that figure to be $32 billion each year. Moreover, there are more slaves today than any other time in human history. Worldwide estimates are that 27 million men, women, and children, even babies, are in slavery today, at any given time, a number much greater than any other period in recorded history and exponentially growing.

Dr. Kevin Bales, an Oklahoma native, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey Roehampton, England, and serves as a consultant to the United Nations on human slavery and trafficking. Dr. Bales is Director of FreeTheSlaves.net--a non-governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to ending slavery worldwide. Considered one of the world's leading experts on contemporary slavery, Dr. Bales spoke to this writer recently about the phenomenon of 21st century slavery.

"Several crucial differences in the slaves of the old days was they were expensive, you kept them for their whole lives, and you took excellent care of them. Today, they are cheap. In fact, there is a glut of slaves and when you've used them, you throw them away if you don't want them anymore--they're disposable."

"Commodification" of human beings

Herein, in the next 15 columns on human trafficking and slavery, this writer addresses events that are distressingly accurate, discovering just how appalling human trafficking and slavery is. What was found was disturbing statistics and authentic stories of men, women, and children in various forms of slave labor, usually as the result of the trans-national crime of trafficking of human persons, including the sexual exploitation of traumatized women and children suffering isolation from the outside world.

Through research and exclusive interviews with world authorities on human trafficking and slavery, this writer discovered a shocking world that harbors brothels filled with kidnapped women and girls enslaved in prostitution, of wealthy households that victimize women and girls in forced domestic servitude and sex, of young children living in cages beside their workplace.

Forced labor exploitation was found on every continent except Antarctica. Migrant agriculture slavery flourishes in every nation alongside greed, debt bondage, servile marriage contracts, and garment sweatshop factories. This writer's research discovered that trafficking and slavery most often involves violence, beatings, and murder committed by world-organized crime lords, pimps, and traffickers, also known as "coyotes." Pedophilia and ephebophilia are part of child sex tourism [CST] and are rampant worldwide. In addition, law enforcement raids against slaveholders and traffickers are secretly carried out frequently, freeing the victims and restoring them to their human dignity.

Astoundingly, the trafficking of humans is tied for second place with arms dealing as the largest criminal industry in the world. The drug dealing industry remains first. Human trafficking is also the fastest growing organized crime operation, worldwide.

NEXT: Modern Day Slavery Flourishes

Excommunication Is Sought for Stem Cell Researchers

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

ROME, June 30 — Scientists who engage in stem cell research using human embryos should be subject to excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church, according to a senior Vatican official.

Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, who heads the group that proposes family-related policy for the church, said in an interview with the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana published Thursday that stem cell researchers should be punished in the same way as women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

"Destroying an embryo is equivalent to abortion," said the cardinal. "Excommunication is valid for the women, the doctors and researchers who destroy embryos."

It was unclear if the pope supported the position, and the Vatican did not return calls for comment. But such blunt remarks from a powerful cardinal just a week before the church convenes a meeting to discuss the topic could foreshadow a hardening of Vatican policy on the issue, experts said.

On Saturday, Cardinal Trujillo will open the church's fifth World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Spain, and Pope Benedict XVI will attend on July 9, the closing day. As head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, it will be up to Cardinal Trujillo to propose new church policies, though adopting any such measure could require a long and complicated process.

The church has long opposed embryonic stem cell research, and has campaigned against any medical procedure or research technique that harms human embryos or fetuses.

But the threat of individual excommunication — the most serious punishment meted out by the church — was previously directed at women and medical personnel who participated in abortions. Cardinal Trujillo's stand would broaden the use of that sanction to biomedical researchers who use embryos.

"The cardinal's view is that the penalty of excommunication should be extended to stem cell research," said the Rev. Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at the Alphonsian Academy here. "The provisions of canon law about what leads to excommunication are very precise."

But Father Johnstone cautioned that it was unlikely that the church would formally adopt a final position next week. "Clarification of such a delicate point of this importance is unlikely to be made at such a large gathering," he said.

Even some Catholics who are opposed to the use of embryos in research felt that excommunication was too strong a sanction. "If we're defending the principle that human life should not be touched, it should not be done in a punitive, castigatory or burn-in-hell sort of way," said Paola Binetti, a leading Catholic politician here.

The specification of the punishment for embryonic stem cell research was partly needed so the church could catch up with advances in science.

When the 1990 Evangelium Vitae came out reaffirming that abortion would lead to automatic excommunication, "Embryonic stem cell research was not a front-page issue," Ms. Binetti said.

While doctors and scientists claim that embryonic stem cell research holds the promise to cure many intractable diseases, the church opposes the practice because human embryos are used to harvest cells for the work. Some of these embryos are left over after in vitro fertilization procedures, but scientists can also create embryos themselves.

The church regards such early-stage embryos as a human life, not to be used or destroyed. It maintains that there are other ways to obtain stem cells for research purposes — from umbilical cord blood after a birth, for example — though it acknowledges that they are significantly more cumbersome.

According to current church law, excommunication for abortion is "latae senentiae," meaning that it is automatic and does not require an action or proclamation by a church official. This type of excommunication is reserved for acts deemed so serious that no verdict or judgment is required. Even so, many women who have had abortions continue to practice Catholicism, and many parishes take pains to embrace and reintegrate them into church life.

Other acts that result in automatic excommunication include violence against the pope and consecrating a bishop without authorization. Now, experts said, Cardinal Trujillo's remarks raise the possibility that being involved in stem cell research might be added to the category. Secret Papal Archives to Be Opened

By The New York Times

ROME, June 29 — The Vatican has authorized secret files from Pope Pius XI and his pre-World War II pontificate, from 1922 to 1939, to be released from their secret archives.

In 2003, under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican released archival material from the same period in an effort to allay accusations that the Vatican did not do enough to save Jews from the Holocaust.

For years, the Vatican has struggled to defend the reputation of Pius's successor, Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of shirking his responsibilities by looking the other way during the atrocities of World War II.

Peter Kiefer contributed reporting from Rome for this article, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Milan.