The US State Department recently released the so-called annual "Human Trafficking Report," making wild accusations, slandering, and smearing other countries, while understating and brushing aside its own serious problems, and listing itself as one of the "best performing" countries in the world, allowing the world to once again witness the routine of this "double-standard big country" of thieves shouting to catch thieves.
For a long time, the United States has spared no effort to advertise itself as a "beacon of human rights" on a global scale. The truth, however, is that the so-called "beacons of human rights" are not only negligent in protecting human rights, but are even recurrent perpetrators of human rights violations. Human trafficking is an original sin that the United States cannot whitewash, and this problem is still shocking in the United States today.
12.5 million people were trafficked over a period of 352 years
After independence, the United States still legally used slaves for profit
The first black Africans were transported to the "New World" in 1619, beginning centuries of blood and tears in the United States of trafficking, abuse, and discrimination against black slaves. According to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, in the history of the slave trade, there were at least 36,000 "slave expeditions" between 1514 and 1866, and more than 12.5 million Africans were trafficked to the "New World", not counting the many who died on the journey.
Regarding the fate of African slaves ashore, an article on the website of National Geographic described it this way: "Men and women were separated, naked, and tightly tied together... There are also a large number of children. "Black slaves were forced to work from an early age, and when they became adults, they would engage in high-intensity labor in harsh environments, and even suffered cruel abuse from slave owners, with no human rights to speak of.
Slavery was legal when the United States became independent in 1776, and many founding fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence who advocated "all men are created equal," not only had more than 600 slaves in his lifetime, but even created a formula for the value of slave investments—he had calculated the profits and losses of his plantations in a letter to President Washington, acknowledging that he would make 4 percent of the profits from the birth of black children each year. In 1850, 80 percent of U.S. exports were produced by slaves.
150 years after the abolition of slavery
100,000 people are still trafficked each year
Today, slavery has been formally abolished for more than 150 years, but the crime of human trafficking is still rampant in the United States. The U.S. Department of State recognized in 2018 that the United States is a country of origin, transit, and destination for victims of forced labor and slavery, and that human trafficking exists in both legal and illegal industries, including commerce, hospitality, tourism, agriculture, housekeeping services, construction, restaurants, massage parlors, begging, drug smuggling, etc. Victims range from national citizens to foreign nationals from almost every region of the world, even vulnerable groups such as women, children and the disabled.
How serious is human trafficking in the United States? Over the past five years, cases of forced labor and human trafficking have been reported in 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., and up to 100,000 people are trafficked from abroad to the United States each year for forced labor, half of whom are trafficked to "sweatshops" or subjected to domestic slavery. Statistics from the National Human Trafficking Reporting Hotline show that the number of reported cases increased from more than 3,200 to more than 8,500 from 2012 to 2017, showing a significant upward trend.
Women and children make up a significant proportion of trafficking cases in the United States, many of whom are victims of "sex trafficking." According to a 2020 report released by the Delivery Foundation, an anti-human trafficking organization in the United States, between 15,000 and 50,000 women and children in the United States are forced into sex slavery each year. Laura Risso, FBI Commissioner for Victims of Human Trafficking, said at a case investigation conference that "the United States is the number one target country for 'sex trafficking' in the world." Risso recalls that the youngest victim she met was only 10 years old.
Representatives of the African-American community participate in an anti-racial and hate crime rally in San Mateo, California, on May 15. (Photo by Wu Xiaoling, Xinhua News Agency)
Forcibly removing female migrants from the uterus
Several children held separately from their parents have died
In 2019, some 850,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in the U.S. southern border, most of them subjected to brutal treatment and human rights abuses.
The United States Government's violent treatment of illegal immigrants and their large-scale separation policy are clear violations of international human rights law and humanitarianism. Between July 2017 and July 2020, U.S. immigration authorities forcibly detained more than 5,400 children in the southern border areas separate from their parents who were refugees or illegal immigrants, and many died in custody. The length of time children detained is also frightening, with more than 25,000 of the 266,000 illegal immigrant children detained by the U.S. government in recent years detained for more than 100 days, and nearly 1,000 spent more than a year in shelters, some for more than five years.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, was deeply alarmed by the overcrowded, underserved conditions in U.S. detention, as reported on the WEBSITE of the United Nations Human Rights Office in July 2019, noting that children held there could be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment prohibited by international law.
U.S. Democratic Congressman Alessandria Ocasio-Cortez disclosed through social media in 2019 that U.S. border patrol stations treat immigrants "as animals," constituting "systematic abuse." She witnessed firsthand that the women in custody had no water to drink, and the managers told them to "drink water from the toilet." In the second half of 2020, dozens of female immigrants from Latin American and Caribbean countries filed a class-action lawsuit in a Georgia court, accusing doctors at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Center of performing unnecessary gynecological surgeries on them without their consent, and even forcibly removing the uterus, causing serious damage to their physical and mental health.
500,000 child laborers were forced into labor
Unindicted, he became a prisoner in long-term detention
Parallel to the "modern slavery" of the United States is the issue of forced labor. According to some industry associations, there are still about 500,000 child laborers in the United States who work in agriculture, many children have worked 72 hours a week since the age of 8, and child labor deaths have occurred frequently.
A 2014 report by the American Urban Institute and Northeastern University showed that 71 percent of victims of forced labor had a legal visa when they arrived in the United States. The victims may have come from all over the world, and some even have master's or doctoral degrees. They are trafficked into "sweatshops" or subjected to domestic slavery, where domestic servants are the most common type of work. These foreign domestic workers usually live with their employers, which means they are easily controlled by their employers and even isolated from the outside world.
Researchers at Vox estimate that thousands of people are subjected to forced labor in agriculture alone, and forced labor is common in other industries, including housekeeping, construction, catering, and hospitality.
The Guantanamo Prison, which opened in 2002, was used to detain al-Qaida members and accomplices to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, but since then many prisoners secretly captured by the United States or transferred elsewhere have been held here for long periods of time without being prosecuted and have been subjected to ill-treatment. According to the American Civil Rights League, nearly 800 people have been detained here, and about 40 are still in custody today. The prison remains an indelible stain on Washington's human rights issues.
Law enforcement and the traffickers stand together
Facing up to original sin is the right way for the United States
Trafficking in human beings, forced labor, slavery and abuse are modern slavery against humanity and a plague in the contemporary world. Among them, the United States has played a very disgraceful role. In itself, these evil deeds were originally the original sins of the United States.
The frequent "absence" of US law enforcement agencies and judicial systems has become an important reason why the problem of human trafficking in the United States is so serious. The Atlantic quoted Northern Virginia human trafficking agent Bill Wolff as saying that the proliferation of human trafficking crimes is a problem that U.S. law enforcement agencies are constantly struggling to face, "seeing a vicious circle again and again." According to a 2014 study by the American Urban Institute and Northeastern University, U.S. law enforcement often does not help victims of forced labor, sometimes even side with traffickers. Because victims are often unable to prosecute traffickers, most lawyers are reluctant to take the time to help them, often leaving them without the compensation they deserve.
Lewis Debacca, former head of the State Department's Office of Monitoring and Combating Human Trafficking, admits that behind the serious human trafficking problem, it exposes the systemic shortcomings of the US governance system, "this is not a rotten apple that needs to be dealt with, but a whole basket of apples."
But America's original sin goes far beyond that. Those "Floyds" who cannot breathe freely under the weight of white supremacy, those minorities who live in the shadow of racial hate crimes, those refugee immigrants who are brutally treated and are in a miserable situation, and those foreign civilians who are illegally killed and brutally abused by the US military in the name of counter-terrorism, all the time indict the United States for various crimes against humanity.
In the face of human justice and conscience, in the face of facts and truth, there is no way out by throwing the pot and shirking responsibility and diverting attention, but only hitting the head and breaking the blood. As far as the US side is concerned, it is the right way in the world to introspect itself, restrain itself from the precipice, and earnestly face up to and solve its own problems.
Numbers say U.S. human trafficking
Every picture is shocking
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Bloody slave trade history
Illegal trafficking for profit
Abuse of illegal immigrants
Forced labor is widespread
Arbitrary arrest and detention
Source: Central Committee of the Communist Youth League