No Justice for Women in DRC

July 28, 2011 at 10:43 AM

By Lyric Thompson, Amnesty’s Women’s Human Rights Group

Two years ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the unprecedented step of extending a diplomatic visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to travel across the country andmeet directly with rape survivors in the country’s war-torn eastern region.

The Secretary heard brutal, firsthand accounts of targeted sexual violence women had suffered as part of a systematic campaign by armed groups intended to terrorize civilians and maintain control.

In response, Clinton committed her office to elevated efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence, including a $17 million investment in survivor services and other programs.

Yet two years later, the headlines coming out of the Congo paint no better picture for women—indeed, it may be worse. Mass rapes have continued, many orchestrated by troops and commanders in the national army, while delays, corruption and disputes amongst Congolese authorities point to a calculated effort to sidestep rather than facilitate the administration of justice.

Just last week, the United Nations publicly implicated two army colonels for blocking investigations into mass rapes committed in North Kivu province over New Year’s Day. To date, no suspect has been charged in the rapes, in which 100 soldiers are reported to have attacked civilians in the villages of Bushani and Kalambahiro with whips and machetes, accusing them of supporting rebel groups. The official number of rape victims is 47, although as with most incidents of sexual violence, the crimes are likely underreported.

Then there were last month’s chilling reports of more mass rapes by 150 members of the Congolese army who had deserted from a training camp and raped over 100 women in Nyakiele village, near the town of Fizi. There are links between the leaders of those attacks and those responsible for the New Year’s Day rapes: the deputy to Colonel Kifaru Niragire, who hasgiven himself up as the leader of the June attacks, was one of nine men—and the first commanding officer in DRC’s history–jailed by a military court on charges of ‘crimes against humanity’ for the January rapes. To date, Kifaru remains on an army base as investigations continue.

Most worryingly, there has been little movement in the delivery of justice for the 387 women, men, boys and girls who were raped in July and August of last year in the largest reported mass rapes on record in the country. Indeed, the news earlier this month was that theinvestigation has been called off due to reprisal attacks against survivors seeking justice. A UN report published last year pointed to the weakness of the Congolese justice system as a major obstacle to ensuring truth, justice and reparation for human rights violations.

How many more brutal accounts of dozens, even hundreds of rapes must surface before justice is served for women in DRC?

While survivor services are of utmost importance, what is critically needed is a simultaneous intervention that will ensure that justice, guaranteed by both national and international law, is served. In the face of these horrific accounts of rape and institutional failures to hold perpetrators to account, policies like Congo’s supposed “zero-tolerance” policy for sexual violence ring frighteningly false.

Indeed, the very credibility of international conventions like UN Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820 and 1888, which were designed to protect women in war, are subject to question if the world’s largest peacekeeping force and the intervention of powerful international spokespeople likeSpecial Representative Margot Wallstrom and Secretary Clinton amount to nothing.

There are a number of measures being piloted to address Congo’s historic abridgement of justice. A draft law is currently being discussed at the national level to create a specialized court for prosecuting perpetrators of serious international human rights and humanitarian law violations throughmixed chambers consisting of local and international representatives.Mobile courts are also being pioneered, intended to take justice to the villages where the crimes are committed. Yet time is running out for women of Eastern Congo.

By whatever means, prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigations must be conducted into these crimes in accordance with international standards and perpetrators must be prosecuted. Survivors and witnesses seeking justice must be protected during investigations, and they must be able to access medical, psychological and other support services.

The Congolese government seems incapable or unwilling to do so directly, but it is under no circumstances to be permitted to stand in the way of international efforts to do so in its stead. The United States is chief among those who has pledged to end Congo’s war on women; now, more than ever, it is time for Secretary Clinton to keep those promises.

It is time to demand justice for rape survivors in Eastern Congo.

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/women/no-justice-for-women-in-drc/

Photograph: Google

With 300 photographs, Exit Art begins to break the silence

BY LILY BOUVIER

Pull aside the long black curtains and enter Exit Art’s dimly lit gallery, and you’ll confront life-size photographs projected, floor-to-ceiling, on six exhibit walls. Each projection is a rotation of images: of Cambodia, Bangladesh, India, the United States; of South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Macedonia; of Israel, Morocco, Thailand, Burma, Hong Kong, Brazil, Spain and Haiti. Each image contains a glimpse of slavery and human exploitation transpiring in the present. From one end of the room comes an eerie red glow, where a neon sign reads, “Silence.”

The exhibit, forthright in both name and nature, is a project of Exit Art cultural center’s SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) exhibition program — which endeavors to foster social change by exhibiting art that delves into current environmental, political and cultural issues. This particular show aims to expose the boundless manifestations and multinational settings of slavery.

“So the selection process was very loose,” explains assistant curator Lauren Rosati.

The show’s curators spent six months researching the work of photojournalists who have documented slavery around the world. Throughout the process, they compiled as many photos as they could find — photos of human trafficking and the sex trade; of exploitation of farm and domestic workers, immigrants and prisoners; of sweatshop, bonded and child labor. “This issue is overwhelming, so we wanted both the quantity of images in the exhibition — and the installation itself — to reflect the nature of the issue. Each projector contains a selection of 50 images, usually from multiple photographers,” Rosati explains.

Regrettably, the impact of individual narratives becomes lost among the overwhelming volume of photos. That said, however, “Contemporary Slavery” stirringly reveals what it calls “one of the dirty secrets of our global economy” — and summons beholders to take action.

READ MORE

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_431/with300.html

Photograph: The Villager

For more information on the exhibit, visit exitart.org

Local Woman Helps Survivors Of Modern Slavery

http://www.local12.com/news/local/story/Local-Woman-Helps-Survivors-Of-Modern-Slavery/ssJ23TIZokGUNKqyJ4cZcQ.cspx

Photograph: Stop Traffick Fashion

‘The emergence of centers supporting male victims belies the assertion that only women and girls are vulnerable to trafficking’

Written by Bermet Moldobaeva on July 27, 2011

Bermet Moldobaeva, Program Officer in Central Asia, International Organization for Migration

In January 2011, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) opened Central Asia’s first all-male shelter for victims of human trafficking. The decision to open a shelter for men was made after a 2010 survey by IOM and the Regional Center for Migration and Refugee Issues revealed that nearly 69 percent of trafficking victims in Central Asia were male and that over 90 percent of trafficking cases involved labor exploitation. At that time, no shelters existed to serve the unique needs of these victims.

The first all-male shelter, located in Tajikistan, provides culturally appropriate rehabilitation and reintegration programs to male labor trafficking victims, many of whom are Muslim. The shelters offer medical assistance, vocational skills training, psychological support, and legal advice and representation. To respect cultural gender norms, IOM decided to staff the shelter with male social workers; this required the training of a cadre of Tajik men in social work, since previous shelters had been staffed by women serving female victims.

Central Asia’s first all-male shelter now provides needed services, while enabling IOM to gather lessons learned and best practices for working with male trafficking victims—lessons that IOM will share across Central Asia and beyond. New shelters are already planned for the region, including rehabilitation and reintegration centers for male victims of labor trafficking in Uzbekistan.

These shelters serve another important function: awareness-raising. The emergence of centers supporting male victims belies the assertion that only women and girls are vulnerable to trafficking. In breaking down such stereotypes, the centers help increase understanding among government and the public that men and boys are at high risk of trafficking too.

IOM would like to express its gratitude to USAID and the American people for their continued support of the fight against human trafficking in Central Asia.

http://blog.usaid.gov/2011/07/first-shelter-for-male-victims-of-human-trafficking-opens-in-central-asia/

Photograph: USAID

Two brothers charged for trafficking 44 workers from Thailand

MARK NIESSE, Associated Press

Updated 11:42 p.m., Monday, July 25, 2011

HONOLULU (AP) — Two brothers who run one of Hawaii’s largest vegetable farms are going to trial this week on federal charges they illegally shipped 44 workers from Thailand, housed them in dirty metal containers and forced them to work for little pay.

Alec and Mike Sou of Aloun Farms each face up to 20 years in prison without parole if found guilty after they backed out of a plea deal last September that came with a five-year maximum sentence. The trial opens with jury selection Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors claim the Sou brothers gamed the United States’ guest-worker visa system in a way that economically trapped the rural north Thailand laborers on the 3,000-acre Oahu farm, which grows a variety of foods including lettuce, apples, bananas, parsley, watermelon and pumpkin year-round in Hawaii’s mild climate.

The Sou brothers and Thailand labor recruiters targeted poor workers in 2003 to work on the farm, promising them three years of work for six days a week at $9.60 an hour, according to prosecutors’ trial brief filed last week. The workers paid about $20,000 in recruiting fees — some of which went to the Sous — but they learned after arriving in Hawaii they would be paid much less, and their visas would only last for a few months, the brief said.

The workers were told if they complained about wages or living conditions, they’d be deported to Thailand with no way to repay their debts, prosecutors wrote. The result would be they’d lose their family land and homes, their attorneys have said.

“Having paid the recruitment fees, they had no other option but to continue working,” said Melissa Vincenty, who represents 34 of the workers. “It’s forced labor when you put someone in a position of indentured servitude.”

The Sous’ attorneys reject those accusations, saying there was no forced labor because the workers could have just quit, and consequences in Thailand weren’t the Sous’ responsibility.

“At most what they did was tell people … the natural consequence of them not doing their job, which is you lose your job. Can that even be a crime?” asked Thomas Bienert, who represents Alec Sou, following a hearing Monday.

The Sous never physically hurt or threatened to hurt anyone, Bienert said.

“There were certain financial obligations that these workers had in Thailand that were separate and apart to their employment with Aloun Farms,” said Thomas Otake, who represents Mike Sou.

Accusations of worker mistreatment by Aloun Farms are similar to the government’s claims in a separate case pending against Los Angeles-based labor recruiting company Global Horizons, which prosecutors have described as the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted in the United States. Global Horizons allegedly exploited 600 Thai workers to work on U.S. farms, including Aloun, prosecutors have said.

The Sous risked trial rather than accept a plea agreement after the brothers disputed some of the facts they had previously accepted in the deal.

They acknowledged violations of the U.S. agricultural guest worker program, but they denied mistreating workers, underpaying them or withholding their passports to confine them to the Kapolei-based farm, which is a key source of vegetables to the isolated islands’ food supply.

Some of the Sous’ admissions before their plea deal was thrown out by Chief U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway may be used against them.

Mollway on Monday rejected a motion to disqualify the Sous’ statements made to prosecutors and agents as part of the plea bargain.

The trial may last for weeks, and the government has submitted a list of at least 52 witnesses it plans to have testify, including 18 of the Thai workers.

Mollway has said she hopes the trial concludes by Labor Day on Sept. 5.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Hawaii-farm-owners-face-human-trafficking-trial-1589649.php#ixzz1TLssZhTw

Photograph found on Hawaii Reporter

Eight children aged from 3 to 14 rescued

By The Nation
Published on July 26, 2011
Police raided a rented room in Chiang Mai’s Muang district Tuesday morning and rescued eight children aged 3-14 from three Burmese human trafficking suspects, who reportedly forced the kids to beg on the street and assaulted those failing to meet a daily target of Bt500.
Provincial Police Region chief Pol Lt Gen Chaiya Siriampankul said police also arrested a Burmese man Tin Win, 57, and two Burmese women Chuay Ji, 54, and Ma Cho, 47.

Previously, two girls, aged 14 and 16, were assaulted but escaped to tell police that they and other kids were forced to beg and the two had also been molested by the gang leader.

The three suspects said they had lived in Thailand for three years and claimed the kids were their relatives, were begging voluntarily, and they just helped by sending the kids to Waroros Market, Night Bazaar and hightraffic areas.

Chaiya said the gang allegedly lured or stole kids from Karen or Burmese families living on the opposite side of Chiang Rai’s Mae Sai district. Taking the kids to live in Chiang Mai, they taught them to speak Thai and beg for money, before dressing them in rags and sending them off to street sites.

If any child didn’t meet the target of Bt500 per day, they would be beaten while Tin Win allegedly sexually harassed the girls, he added.

Police would hunt for their accomplices and rescue 10 other kids who were taken out of the room before the raid, he said. The three suspects face human trafficking, illegal entry charges while Tin Win faced the additional charge of molesting minors under 15.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2011/07/26/national/8-kids-rescued-from-trafficking-suspects-30161216.html

Photograph: AP

‘The Dollhouse,’ an original dance production by The Story Collective

By Bob Workmon
StarNews Correspondent

Published: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 3:14 p.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 3:14 p.m.

Human trafficking – the sale and abuse of women and children for sex – shows up, occasionally, in some cable-news documentary or investigative report, usually late on a weekend night. Despite the resources and time devoted by reporters and new organizations trying to help those trapped in this modern-day slavery, it remains just under the radar for most of us.

What better subject, then, for artistic expression?

That question is posed with every ounce of sincerity possible. Bear with me.

The Story Collective, which is based in Wilmington, consists of choreographers and dancers, a composer and local musicians, a poet and writer, a sculptor and a photographer, among others, who have made the modern sex-slave trade the focus of their artistic expression. On Friday and Saturday night, audiences at the Brooklyn Arts Center in Wilmington will witness the group’s first original production, “The Dollhouse.”

Abigail Printy is the collective’s director. In her office at the Glory Academy of Fine Arts near Castle Hayne, Printy sits behind her desk between a photo montage of happy faces on one wall and a wall that functions as a floor-to-ceiling blackboard chalked up with greetings and affirmations. Printy said from the cool distance between us, unequivocally, that The Story Collective creates work with one purpose in mind: the abolition of human trafficking.

“The Story Collective is a project of mine and two other women – Melanie Haulman and Laura Valentine. We created the organization and the show together as a personal project,” Printy said. “The Story Collective was formed to gather artists together to raise awareness of and provoke involvement in the issue.”

“The Dollhouse” is the first fruit of this collaboration, with choreography by Haulman and Valentine. Haulman is Glory Academy’s artistic director, and Valentine is a teacher there.

READ MORE

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20110726/ARTICLES/110729730?p=1&tc=pg

Photograph: The Story Collective

100,000 N. Korean college students press-ganged into construction work

Some 100,000 North Korean college students have been press-ganged into construction work. “The regime is trying to finish redevelopment of the Mansudae District in Pyongyang by April next year,” a source familiar with North Korean internal affairs said on Monday. “Because it couldn’t finish construction before the deadline, the regime ordered colleges in Pyongyang and other major cities last month to close for 10 months and drafted students to construction sites.”

The regime twice before changed the academic calendar for a “200-day struggle” in 1988 and an “Arirang” mass calisthenics performance in 2008. But mobilizing so many students for construction work is unprecedented.

The North has been carrying out a campaign since 2009 to build 100,000 new homes in Pyongyang ahead of regime founder Kim Il-sung’s birthday on April 15 next year, the target year to become a “powerful and prosperous nation.” But only nine apartment buildings with 500 units had been built as of late last year due to a shortage of money and building materials.

When it became clear that the goal was unreachable, the regime recently drew up a new plan to redevelop at least the Mansudae District. It wants to spruce up the district, home to a 23 m Kim Il-sung statue, with 77-story apartment buildings with 3,000 units and recreational facilities including theaters and parks.

But the mobilization of the students is unlikely to make much difference. “The problem is not manpower shortage but lack of money and materials,” the source said. “Building sites are overflowing with laborers, but most of them are doing nothing because building materials don’t arrive in time.”

The regime is not even giving the students a proper meal, the source added. Instead, it is reportedly forcing them to donate materials, such as sand, cement and gasoline, in exchange for a promise of membership in the Workers Party or a youth honor award when construction is complete.

There are rumors that the real reason the students are being forced to work on building sites is to avoid an uprising emulating the Jasmine Revolutions in the Middle East, since students are among the most likely to have heard about the uprisings.

englishnews@chosun.com / Jul. 26, 2011 11:32 KST

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/07/26/2011072600937.html

Photograph: AP

Mexican cartels move into human trafficking

By Anne-Marie O’Connor, Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 3:50 AM

MEXICO CITY — The Salvadoran single mother was hoping to support her children in the United States. Instead, gunmen from the Zeta drug cartel kidnapped her in Mexico and forced her to cook, clean and endure rapes by multiple men.

Now the survivor of this terrifying three-month ordeal is a witness for a growing group of legislators, political leaders and advocates who are calling for action against the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation in Mexico.

As organized crime and globalization have increased, Mexico has become a major destination for sex traffic, as well as a transit point and supplier of victims to the United States. Drug cartels are moving into the trade, preying on immigrant women, sometimes with the complicity of corrupt regional officials, according to diplomats and activists.

“If narcotics traffickers are caught they go to high-security prisons, but with the trafficking of women, they have found absolute impunity,” said Rosi Orozco, a congresswoman in Mexico and sponsor of a proposed new law against human trafficking.

In Mexico, thousands of women and children are forced into sex traffic every year, Orozco said, most of it involving lucrative prostitution rings.

“It is growing because of poverty, because the cartels have gotten involved, and because no one tells them ‘no,’ ” said Teresa Ulloa, the regional director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. “We are fighting so that their lives and their bodies are not merchandise.”

READ MORE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/mexican-cartels-move-into-human-trafficking/2011/07/22/gIQArmPVcI_story.html

Photograph: William Booth/The Washington Post

The youngest rescued child was 10 days old and the oldest 4 years

Chinese authorities have rescued 89 trafficked minors as young as 10 days and the oldest 4 years and arrested 369 suspects after uncovering two child trafficking gangs, authorities said Wednesday.

The busts highlighted China’s thriving black market in children — mostly involving buyers who want more children or those who want them as slave labor — that endures despite harsh penalties for traffickers, including death.

It was not clear from the reports posted Wednesday on the Ministry of Public Security website if sex abuse also might have been a motive. Calls to the ministry went unanswered.

One case stretched across 14 provinces in China and the other involved a trafficking ring that mainly sold children in Vietnam through neighboring Guangxi province.

A report by the People’s Daily, posted on the ministry’s website, said raids were carried out on July 20 in 14 provinces in the south, east and north of the country.

The operation involved 2,600 officers and the People’s Daily said the youngest child was 10 days old and the oldest 4 years.

A separate People’s Daily report that wasn’t published on the ministry’s website said the Vietnam operation on July 15 resulted in the rescue of eight infants aged 10 days to 7 months. Thirty-nine people, of which at least four were Vietnamese, were detained.

A total of 89 minors were rescued and 369 suspects arrested in both operations, the reports said.

Police sent the rescued children to orphanages as their parents had not been found.

It is often difficult to trace the parents of trafficked children and the law has not clearly defined the circumstances in which a buyer of a child should be punished. While many babies are stolen, some are sold by their parents.

Liu Ancheng, deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security Criminal Investigation Bureau, was quoted in the People’s Daily report as saying that if the buyers have not abused the children, they cannot be held criminally responsible.

Liu said the “dreadful practice of buying and selling children” is a result of ignorance of the law in rural areas as well as traditional Chinese social norms that call for people “to have both sons and daughters” and children who will look after a parent in old age.

China’s traditional preference for male heirs means some families sell their female babies in order to try for a boy, since the country’s one-child policy limits most urban couples to one child and rural families to two.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=14166907

Photograph: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images

Healing war wounds in Congo

By: Carol Sanders

Posted: 07/22/2011 1:00 AM

Their bodies aren’t destroyed but the spirits of many child soldiers have deserted them.

“Their eyes are completely vacant,” said Darcy Ataman, a Winnipeg music producer who just got back from the Democratic Republic of Congo. His Song For Africa organization is working with Sen. Roméo Dallaire’s Child Soldiers Initiative to put a stop to the use of children for killing and get them making music instead.

To get into the conflict zone, they were accompanied by United Nations security from the moment they landed in Kigali, Rwanda, and transported to the centre for ex-child soldiers over the border into Congo.

The UN transit centre at Goma houses kids ranging in age from eight to 16.

“It looks like a concentration camp,” said Ataman, who was not allowed to photograph the children inside the fortress surrounded by brick walls topped with razor wire.

At first glance, the former warriors seemed like normal children, said Ataman. There were kids singing and dancing in the middle of the dirt compound. When he got closer, it occurred to him that they have raped and killed en masse with AK-47s bigger than their underdeveloped, malnourished bodies.

“Others were catatonic,” said Ataman, who’s worked with kids in some of the poorest places in Africa.

The child soldiers were different. “They’re not interacting and (they’re) hard to engage,” said Ataman.

As soldiers, they weren’t allowed to have possessions. Their leaders got them high and kept them loyal with doses of “brown-brown” — a combination of gunpowder and cocaine that “fries their brain to the extent that they’re prepared to kill.”

At the transit centre, they’re protected and can stay for three-month stints, he said. “It’s a lot more pleasant, except now they don’t have any power (over others),” Ataman said.

It’s a short space of time to try to re-program the kids to get them back into their villages, he said. “They don’t want them institutionalized.”

The camp’s walls are lined with murals explaining their right to play, go to school and have their basic needs met. The rehabilitation centre raises pet rabbits to help the child soldiers connect with another living being and to learn to be gentle.

They go to classes, get taken care of and get a chance to play and learn job skills. Art is used as therapy, said Ataman who marvelled at their greeting cards made out of banana leaves. “You can see how much talent there is.”

The camp also has a rudimentary music program. “Music was the only thing that got them involved,” he said.

In the fall, he’ll return with recording equipment and help the kids cut their tunes and become local rock stars. During his trip, the project won the support of camp officials. Local radio stations — the major medium in that part of the world — agreed to give the ex-soldiers’ songs airplay.

“I don’t know if you can ever get rid of your injuries,” he said of the youths’ emotional war wounds. “You can only try to get your hopes and dreams back. That would be amazing.”

Some kids who leave the safe haven see no future for themselves and return to their militia groups, he said. Ataman saw young people who had few skills or job opportunities hanging out in the poverty-stricken conflict zone.

The wealth from mining is leaving the country and not invested in its children. They’re Congo’s renewable resource whose potential is being squandered. “They’re extremely resilient and intelligent and the world’s missing out on that,” he said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 22, 2011 A9

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/healing-war-wounds-in-congo-126001533.html

Photograph found on voiceseducation.org

Burmese Army Uses Rape To Demoralize And Terrorize Ethnic Communities