Where is the Furor Over Modern Slavery?
According to antislavery.org there are many forms of modern slavery with one of them being forced labor. The organization reckons there are 24.9 million people forced into labor around the world today. Most are in Asia, but they do say 1.5 million are in developed countries.
“Forced labour happens in the context of poverty, lack of sustainable jobs and education, as well as a weak rule of law, corruption and an economy dependent on cheap labour.”
- Amnesty international reports that Qatar has been using forced labor to build the stadia and infrastructure for the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Most are temporary workers Bangladesh, India and Nepal. According to Amnesty “all the workers we spoke to had their passports confiscated by employers. What’s more, if they want to leave Qatar they have to get an “exit permit” approved by their company.
- A Center for Global Policy report accused China of pressuring hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims to pick cotton in the province of Xinjiang.
- The BBC reports in May of 2022 “Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls “re-education camps”.
- A Regent University professor claims “Mauritania was the last nation to abolish slavery, which it did in 1981. However, it did not pass a law criminalizing the practice until 2007…the Global Slavery Index for 2018 estimates that 90,000 people in Mauritania are living as slaves…”
I have just quickly gathered this information. There is not much press coverage in the United States which is surprising given how exercised a segment of our population gets over seeing a statue commemorating dead Confederates. I imagine there will be calls to boycott the World Cup and to stop buying I-Phones, cotton t-shirts, and Nike products once the word gets out.
