'Modern-Day Slavery' Prompts Rescue Efforts
Also, a recent emphasis on fighting trafficking, including a 2000 federal law, has freed up federal funding -- more than $90 million last fiscal year. With the funds, Break the Chain and other groups, such as Ayuda in Washington and Boat People SOS in Falls Church, have begun training police officers, social workers, nurses, interpreters and others to recognize signs that a worker could be exploited or trapped.
In her training seminars, Zarembka teaches them to ask key questions:
"Are you allowed to leave?"
"Have you been physically and/or sexually abused?"
"Have you been threatened?"
"Do you have your passport?"
"Have you been paid for your work?"
A Vanished Employer
It was a good Samaritan who brought Kurinah Muka to Zarembka and Break the Chain.
Muka had been a live-in maid at an Alexandria high-rise, her days at once tedious and cruel. She was kicked by the woman who employed her, forced to work 19-hour days and allowed to eat only the food that others rejected, she said. For nearly two months of work, she said, she was never paid. Muka described her ordeal in a written statement to immigration officials, who later investigated and said witnesses corroborated her account.
She came from a poor farming village in Indonesia. Her husband's monthly income as a truck driver was about $75. She earned 70 cents a day working on a rice farm.
When a recruiter from an employment agency showed up in September 1999 looking for maids for foreigners, Muka signed up, leaving behind her two young children.
For three months, she said, she and about 300 other women were held in a camp, with guards at the door to prevent them from leaving. They slept in rooms of 20 women, were taught Arabic vocabulary for cooking and cleaning and told to obey employers. She said she was forced to sign a contract promising her $800 a month, although she was told her real earnings would be $200 to $300.
When she arrived at Dulles International Airport in 2000, she was met by her employer, a diplomat at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington. He told Muka she would be working for a woman who called herself Princess Halla, who later told Muka that the diplomat was the father of her 5-year-old boy and 8-month-old daughter, Muka said.
"My life was misery working for Halla," wrote Muka, who worked from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
|
|
 
Alexandra Santacruz greets CASA of Maryland's rescue workers. Her employer, Efrain Baus of Ecuador's mission to the Organization of American States, was surprised by her claim of exploitation, according to his attorney.
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
|
|
_____Correction_____
In some editions of the May 3 Post, certain references in the article about the mistreatment of foreign domestic workers incorrectly implied that two Ecuadorian officials are employed by the Organization of American States. The officials, whose maids are seeking back wages, work for Ecuador's mission to the OAS.
|
|
|
|
Getting Help
A 2004 CIA report estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year through fraud, force or coercion. Many victims of trafficking are forced to work in prostitution or the sex entertainment industry. But trafficking also occurs in forms of labor exploitation, such as domestic servitude, restaurant work, janitorial work, factory work and migrant agricultural work. Often, victims' passports, money and identification are confiscated.
The federal government operates a 24-hour toll-free trafficking referral and information hotline. The hotline helps organizations and victims of trafficking by providing referrals to aid organizations. The hotline number is 1-888-3737-8888.
More information is also available at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking
|
| |
|
