Trafficking hits home at Georgetown

by Kayleen Hartman, 1L
Law Weekly
April 1, 2009

Second only to drug and weapons trafficking, human trafficking is the third-most lucrative criminal activity in the world, generating annual revenues of around $9.5 billion.

The United Nations estimates that somewhere between one and four million people are trafficked every year, and around 50,000 of those persons are trafficked in the United States.

With these figures in mind, Thang Nguyen, the executive director of Boat People SOS, visited the Law Center last Tuesday, March 24, to talk about human trafficking and to highlight one way the Georgetown community is affected by it.

Boat People formed in the early 1980s in response to the exodus of Vietnamese from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Those who fled were subject to constant attacks by pirates, and Boat People came about because of a group of concerned people bought a boat and went to sea to provide assistance to vulnerable Vietnamese refugees.

In 1999, the organization opened a division on human trafficking. Boat People SOS focuses on labor trafficking, which Nguyen says is more difficult to spot than the related crime of sex trafficking, but which is nevertheless on the rise all over the world.

Nguyen attributes this to the shifting global labor market, where industrial nations on the verge of being developed countries, such as Taiwan, experience a rise in the cost of labor, creating a demand for cheap human resources. The deteriorating economic climate has only made the situation worse, says Nguyen, because the slump in demand for manufactured products means companies are facing extreme price competition further fueling the demand for low-cost labor.

Students interested in human rights at Georgetown Law have grown accustomed to looking beyond their campus to see the issues that concern them. Nguyen challenged that perspective and told the assembled students the story of 261 Vietnamese workers trafficked into forced labor for a company whose major purchaser provides apparel and catering services to Georgetown. He made clear that labor trafficking is at least one human rights issue that is directly impacted by the operations of Georgetown University.

W&D Apparel, a subsidiary of Well & David Corporation based in Taiwan, runs a manufacturing operation in Al Taljamou’ in Jordan. Al Talkamou is a Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ), one of several industrial parks in Jordan and Egypt that were set up by U.S. trade agreements. Goods manufactured in QIZ’s can enter the U.S. market without tariff or quota restrictions, making QIZ’s an area of high demand for labor, and as a result, Nquyen says, a hotbed for human trafficking.

He reports that W&D’s largest consumer is a company called Aramark, which provides apparel and catering services to almost 600 U.S. universities, including Georgetown.

Nguyen says 261 workers for W&D Apparel were recruited out of rural Vietnam, from among women who had never before left their villages. They were promised a salary of $240 a month, and an eight-hour workday. They signed contracts to go to Malaysia or Taiwan, and in many cases mortgaged their homes to pay the labor broker’s fees.

They got on a plane, and when they landed, their passports were confiscated. They had arrived in Jordan, and had no idea where they were. In contradiction to the contracts they’d been promised, the women were forced to work 16-hour days for $30 a month.

It wasn’t long before the women went on strike. The police were called in, and the women were beaten brutally and ordered back to work. In the face of this coercion, 104 of the women returned to work.

In order to deal with the remaining 157 striking workers, a delegation of the Vietnamese government was dispatched. Oddly, the delegation included representatives of the “labor export companies” whom Nguyen refers to as traffickers. He says that it’s a deeply engrained problem in Vietnam that the government works hand in hand with these traffickers and puts their concerns ahead of the human rights of its own citizens.

“This is organized crime with government involvement,” says Nguyen.

Rather than address the concerns of the workers, the government delegation further harassed the workers, prevented their escape, and tried to force them to return to work. It was then that the story came to the attention of Boat People SOS, who alerted the State Department and, through them, the government of Jordan.

Through their efforts, the 157 workers who had continued to strike were released and repatriated, though Nguyen reports that they still face massive debts incurred through contracts with their traffickers, which the Vietnamese government refuses to do anything about.

The 104 workers who “voluntarily” returned to work remain trapped in Jordan, though Boat People SOS continues to try to secure their freedom. Among their tactics is an effort to expose the companies to economic pressure, by getting consumers involved in a campaign against forced labor.

The issue is a particularly hot one right now, as Georgetown only recently signed a new contract with Aramark to provide catering services. He encourages members of the Georgetown community to work through the school administration to voice concerns about goods and services purchased through Aramark, to contact both W&D Apparel and Aramark directly and to mobilize with student groups at other universities who have contracts with Aramark.

“We are all implicated in the crime of human trafficking,” said Nguyen. This is one opportunity for the Law Center community to be involved in the solution.