U.S. tax dollars tied to human trafficking, report alleges

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0606060120jun06,1,6574250.story

U.S. tax dollars tied to human trafficking, report alleges

WASHINGTON -- For the first time since Congress mandated its annual publication, a State Department report cataloging human trafficking across the globe includes allegations that American taxpayers financed such abuses.

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Yet this year's report includes a special section on reforms the Defense Department instituted after an investigation prompted by "Pipeline to Peril," a series published by the Tribune in October that detailed human trafficking into Iraq for privatized U.S. military support operations.

Brokers and subcontractors from Asia to the Middle East have worked in concert to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries, often employing fraud or coercion along the way, seizing workers' passports and charging recruitment "fees" that make it difficult for workers to escape employment in the war zone.

U.S. military leaders in Iraq have acknowledged confirming widespread abuses against such workers, who are brought to Iraq to do menial labor on U.S. bases for contractors and subcontractors. Those businesses ultimately receive their checks from the U.S. government. The abuses corroborated by military investigators included violations of U.S. human-trafficking laws.

Michael Horowitz, a neoconservative at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, brought together the coalition of powerful evangelicals who pressed for legislation that would eventually become the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPA. This was their second step in a foray into US foreign policy that began with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which places “promoting religious freedom as a core objective of US foreign policy,” according to the State Department. Critics say it simply won evangelicals an office in the State Department, freed more cash for “faith-based” groups and gave them sanctioning power, a criticism they echo for TVPA. After such success with the religious freedom campaign, says Horowitz, “I just knew that issue number two was going to be the trafficking issue.”

The coalition—including Chuck Colson, the former Nixon aide who found Jesus while serving time for Watergate, and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, which operates on the belief that all non-Christians “will spend eternity in hell”—linked up with the abolitionist feminists and won a sympathetic ear in Chris Smith, the antichoice New Jersey Republican.

Still, the offspring of such unlikely political bedfellows takes after its evangelical parent in one significant way: in a section of the bill, the term “sex trafficking” refers to all commercial sex. This pleased conservative feminists but more significantly enabled the broader social agenda of the Christian right. If trafficking is prostitution per se, then evangelicals can fight all prostitution, throughout the world, in the name of trafficking, funded by “anti-trafficking” initiatives.

Donna Hughes, chair of the women’s studies department at the University of Rhode Island, is the most vociferous of the abolitionist camp. She writes frequently for the National Review, is said to work very closely with Chris Smith and Horowitz
http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/conscience/archives/c2004sum_sextrafficking.asp

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - About 2,500 foreign construction workers rioted over wages and working conditions at a building site in Dubai, smashing equipment and vehicles in the second violent protest by construction workers in a month in the fast-growing city.

Witnesses said workers employed by Al-Ahmadiah Contracting company demonstrated for more than four hours Wednesday at the Dubai Marina, clashing with riot police and smashing vehicles and machinery at the waterfront site, which includes residential towers, outdoor cafes and a marina.

"We get 450 dirhams ($123) a month," one worker said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. "It's not enough. We can't save any money."

Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Mansouri of Dubai Police said three workers were arrested.

Last month, workers rioted at the site of a building intended to be the world's tallest skyscraper, smashing cars and offices and causing an estimated $1 million in damages. After the protest, the United Arab Emirates government said it would pass a law to give laborers the right to form trade unions and bargain collectively.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060427/ap_on_re_mi_ea/emirates_workers_protest

Human brokers and subcontractors from Asia to the Middle East have worked in concert to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries, often employing fraud or coercion along the way, seizing workers' passports and charging recruitment "fees" that make it difficult for workers to escape employment in the war zone.

U.S. military leaders in Iraq have acknowledged confirming widespread abuses against such workers, who are brought to Iraq to do menial labor on U.S. bases for contractors and subcontractors. Those businesses ultimately receive their checks from the U.S. government. The abuses corroborated by military investigators included violations of U.S. human-trafficking laws.