Category Archives: Slavery

How Scotland erased Guyana from its past

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The portrayal of Scots as abolitionists and liberal champions has hidden a long history of profiting from slavery in the Caribbean.

The mangrove-fringed coast of Guyana, at the north-eastern tip of South America, does not immediately bring to mind the Highlands of Scotland, in the northernmost part of Great Britain. Guyana’s mudflats and silty brown coastal water have little in common with the lush green mountains and glens of the Highlands. If these landscapes share anything, it is their remoteness – one on the edge of a former empire burnished by the relentless equatorial sun and one on the edge of Europe whipped mercilessly by the Atlantic winds.

But look closer and the links are there: Alness, Ankerville, Belladrum, Borlum, Cromarty, Culcairn, Dingwall, Dunrobin, Fyrish, Glastullich, Inverness, Kintail, Kintyre, Rosehall, Tain, Tarlogie, a join-the-dots list of placenames (30 in all) south of Guyana’s capital Georgetown that hint of a hidden association with the Scottish Highlands some 5,000 miles away.

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App sounds alarm for slavery at UK hand carwash sites

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People use Safe Car Wash app to report 930 suspected slavery cases in the period June to December last year

More than 900 drivers have reported potential cases of modern slavery involving workers at hand carwash services, using an app that makes it easy for people to sound the alarm if they have suspicions.

The Safe Car Wash app was launched last year. It gives users a checklist of questions to answer when visiting a hand carwash, including the price of the service (less than £6.70 is deemed suspicious), who takes the money, and whether the people washing cars look fearful. Depending on the answers, they may then be urged to make a report to the Modern Slavery helpline. The information collected by the app is shared anonymously with police and the Gangmasters & Labour Abuse Authority.

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Revealed: Vietnamese children vanish from Dutch shelters to be trafficked into Britain

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Investigation highlights failings of Dutch and UK authorities to care properly for unaccompanied minors

On a crisp winter day in a small village in the north of the Netherlands, a pile of leaves swirls around in the wind outside a brick house, an ordinary scene except for the CCTV cameras outside the front door and the occupants inside – child victims of trafficking. Many of the children are from Vietnam. They live in this protected shelter to keep them safe from gangs who want to smuggle them out of the Netherlands to the UK.

But an investigation by the Observer and Argos Radio of the Netherlands has revealed that, in the past five years, at least 60 Vietnamese children have disappeared from these shelters. Dutch police and immigration officials suspect the children end up in the UK working on cannabis farms and in nail salons.

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Home Office limit on support for slavery victims may be unlawful, court rules

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Judge orders immediate extension to safe housing, counselling and financial support beyond existing 45-day threshold

A high court judge has ruled that Home Office policy to cut off all statutory support to people six weeks after they have been formally identified as victims of slavery is potentially unlawful, ordering that assistance must immediately be extended.

All statutory support under the Modern Slavery Act, such as safe housing, counselling and financial support, currently ends 45 days after the Home Office has informed someone they have been officially recognised as a victim.

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First slavery ‘super-complaint’ accuses police of fuelling victims’ trauma

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Report into police response in England and Wales found failure to handle cases sensitively hinders prosecution of traffickers

Categoric police failings are hindering the prosecution of human traffickers and barring victims of modern slavery from the support they are legally entitled to, according to a new super-complaint to the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services.

The super-complaint – the first on modern slavery – has been submitted by London-based charity Hestia. It outlines how some police officers are not reporting cases of modern slavery to the Home Office and that a failure to sensitively handle cases of modern slavery is discouraging victims across England and Wales from supporting criminal investigations against their exploiters. The super-complaint system allows organisations to raise concerns on behalf of the public and confront fundamental issues.

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Workers making clothes for Australian brands can’t afford to eat, Oxfam reports

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Women in Bangladesh and Vietnam working for Big W, Kmart, Target and Cotton On earning 51 cents an hour

Women in Bangladesh and Vietnam making clothes for the $23bn Australian fashion industry are going hungry because of wages as low as 51 cents an hour, an Oxfam report has found.

The aid group interviewed 470 garment workers employed at factories supplying brands such as Big W, Kmart, Target and Cotton On, and found 100% of surveyed workers in Bangladesh and 74% in Vietnam could not make ends meet.

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‘Surprising’ choice: police chief Sara Thornton tipped to be anti-slavery tsar

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MPs raise fears over unconfirmed appointment that reflects focus on law enforcement rather than victims

MPs have expressed surprise over the appointment of one of Britain’s most senior police officers as Theresa May’s anti-slavery commissioner, eight months after the previous postholder resigned citing government interference.

Sara Thornton, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, will take up the post later this year, the Sunday Times reported, although the Home Office did not confirm the appointment. A candidate would be “announced shortly” it said.

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Slavery in Britain: the photographer documenting the streets where people have been held

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About 13,000 people are kept in slavery in the UK. Amy Romer’s book The Dark Figure* reveals the terrifying ordinariness of the sites of their captivity

In 2013, a 22-year-old Hungarian woman responded to an online ad for a babysitting job in London and, after a telephone interview, was offered the post. When she arrived in Budapest to travel to London, she was met by three men who confiscated her mobile, drove her to Slovakia and forced her on to a coach bound for Manchester.

There was no babysitting job. Instead, the woman had been “bought” for £3,500 by a Pakistani man and was told to prepare for marriage. After being held captive at various Manchester addresses, she finally alerted the police from a house in Cunliffe Street, Chorley, where she was rescued and later repatriated home.

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The Indian village where child sexual exploitation is the norm

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Poverty and caste discrimination mean that children in Sagar Gram are being groomed by their own families for abuse

Many families in India still mourn the birth of a girl. But when Leena was born, people celebrated.

Sagar Gram, her village in central India, is unique that way. Girls outnumber boys. When a woman marries, it is the groom’s family that pays the dowry. Women are Sagar Gram’s breadwinners. When they are deemed old enough, perhaps at the age of 11, most are expected to start doing sex work.

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