Category Archives: Human trafficking

Libya releases man described as one of world’s most wanted human traffickers

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Abd al-Rahman Milad, AKA Bija, is accused by UN of being directly involved in sinking migrant boats

Libyan authorities have released a man described as one of the world’s most wanted human traffickers, who was placed under sanctions by the UN security council for being directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats.

The coastguard commander Abd al-Rahman Milad, known by his alias Bija, is suspected of being part of a criminal network operating in Zawiyah in north-west Libya. He was arrested last October but was freed on Sunday after the military attorney general of Tripoli dropped charges against him “for lack of evidence”.

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Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US

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Chocolate companies are among the defendants named in a lawsuit brought by former child workers in Ivory Coast

Eight children who claim they were used as slave labour on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast have launched legal action against the world’s biggest chocolate companies. They accuse the corporations of aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of “thousands” of children on cocoa farms in their supply chains.

Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by the human rights firm International Rights Advocates (IRA), on behalf of eight former child slaves who say they were forced to work without pay on cocoa plantations in the west African country.

The plaintiffs, all of whom are originally from Mali and are now young adults, are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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The baby-selling scheme: poor pregnant Marshall Islands women lured to the US

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Dozens of women from the Pacific island victims of brazen trafficking ring that operated for years

Rolson Price still scans Facebook for her picture. He’s seen her occasionally, at the periphery of someone else’s photo, instantly recognisable.

But he’s never met her, and concedes he never will.

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Essex lorry tragedy must spur greater effort to stop trafficking from Vietnam

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Criminal networks are depending on the chaos of Covid and Brexit. Now more than ever we need focus and international cooperation to prevent further tragedies

Trials in the UK of the drivers and haulage organisers involved in the Essex lorry tragedy in which 39 Vietnamese migrants perished ended in guilty pleas and convictions. Vietnam also convicted the agents who brokered the victims’ journeys to the UK and sentenced them to terms of imprisonment.

While these are positive developments in achieving some measure of justice for the victims, they won’t do anything to stem the smuggling and trafficking of Vietnamese migrants to the UK. No justice system has reached the actual masterminds and profiteers behind this horrific crime: the organised crime groups.

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The great opportunity: how Covid transformed global crime

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2020 led to surges in everything from domestic abuse to black markets in fake vaccines

By the end of March, one week into the UK’s first lockdown, recorded crime in Lancashire had dropped by a startling 40% compared with the four-year average.

“At first there was some mild panic,” says DCI Eric Halford, of Lancashire Constabulary. “Most senior officers expected a surge in demand.”

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They risked all to cross the Red Sea. Now a cruel fate awaits in Yemen

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Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land

Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.

“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.

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Silent victims: the hidden Romanian women exploited in the UK sex trade

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Sex traffickers can make profits of over £1m a year per brothel – and Covid lockdowns have only made it easier for them to operate

Three weeks ago, police entered a brothel in south-east England after receiving intelligence about criminal activity there. Inside, they found eight Romanian women wearing face shields and masks, and laminated Covid-19 health and safety sheets on the wall. An industrial-size bottle of hand sanitiser stood by the front door.

“On the surface, this did not look like a place where criminality and sexual exploitation was taking place,” says Cristina Huddleston, a trafficking victim support specialist who joined the raid that evening.

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Priti Patel not following her own anti-trafficking policy, judge rules

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Ruling could halt deportation of hundreds of asylum seekers who arrived in UK during pandemic

The deportation of hundreds of asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats could be halted after a judge ruled that the home secretary was departing from her own policy on identifying victims of trafficking.

The high court case was brought by three potential victims of trafficking – one from Eritrea and two from Sudan – who recently arrived in the UK on small boats. Trafficking in Libya is well-documented, and there is a particular risk that asylum seekers who have passed through the country have been trafficked.

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Bilal Fawaz: ‘I became best friends with darkness and pain a long time ago’

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After being abused as a boy in Nigeria and trafficked to London at 14, boxing and piano playing gave him hope and at 32 Bilal Fawaz is finally able to fight professionally

“There is beauty in darkness,” Bilal Fawaz says with a poetic flourish as we sit on an old bench outside the Cricklewood Boxing Gym in this stark corner of north-west London. “I became best friends with darkness and pain a long time ago.”

The sky is sombre, with black clouds rolling in, and Fawaz talks with electrifying force. He is a newly professional boxer but his past is haunting and his future uncertain. Fawaz was abused as a boy in Nigeria and then trafficked to London.

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EU accused of abandoning migrants to the sea with shift to drone surveillance

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Border agency Frontex accused by campaigners and MEPs of evading its responsibilities towards people in distress

The EU has been accused of condemning migrants to death by critics of its recent €100m (£90m) deals for drone surveillance over the Mediterranean Sea.

Campaigners and MEPs have accused the EU’s border agency Frontex of investing in technology to monitor migrants from afar and skirt its responsibilities towards people in distress.

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Senior Libyan coastguard commander arrested for alleged human trafficking

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Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, is suspected of being behind the drowning of dozens of refugees

The UN-backed government in Libya has arrested a coastguard commander alleged to be one of the world’s most ruthless human traffickers.

On Wednesday, authorities in Tripoli said Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, and suspected of being behind the drowning of dozens of people, has been arrested in the Hay-al-Andalus district of the city and is now being detained by Rada special forces.

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Former England boxer turns pro after winning fight with Home Office

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Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who was trafficked as a child and has won right to stay in UK, signs with top promoter

The former England amateur boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who won his 16-year legal battle with the Home Office for the right to remain in the UK, is launching his professional career after being signed by MTK Global, one of the world’s largest boxing management agencies.

Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has spent his adult life struggling to establish his nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.

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Behind the Channel crossings: migrant stories of life or death in tiny inflatables

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Two refugees’ efforts to reach Dover reflect persecution in Sudan and rising tensions over migrants in Europe

On the night he attempted to cross the Channel, Abdulfatah Hamdallah left his blanket and bicycle behind at the camp in Calais.

They were the only possessions he would leave behind: his backpack was lost at sea when he drowned attempting to make the perilous crossing over the Dover Strait to England in a dinghy, with shovels for oars.

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British trafficking victim sues Priti Patel alleging abuse of personal data

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Lawyers argue human rights of ‘extremely vulnerable’ woman were breached by Home Office access to personal and confidential details

A British victim of trafficking is bringing a case against the home secretary, Priti Patel, arguing that her department unlawfully accessed personal information including details of her intimate thoughts.

If the case succeeds it could have implications for tens of thousands of others who may also have had their personal information accessed by officials. Five other survivors of trafficking have threatened the minister and her office with legal proceedings on this issue.

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Former England boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz wins 16-year battle to stay in UK

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Exclusive: Fawaz, who was trafficked to the UK from Nigeria as a child, won his Home Office appeal last week

The former England boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz has won his 16-year legal battle to live and work in the UK after the Home Office granted him leave to remain for 30 months.

Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has been struggling to establish his adult nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.

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‘I had no choice’: the desperate Nigerian women who sell their babies

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With limited access to abortion and antenatal care, many young mothers are falling prey to the country’s human traffickers

Two months after 17-year-old Ebere fell pregnant last year, she considered having an abortion. But she was told by a doctor that such a process – eight weeks into her pregnancy – could lead to complications.

Going home to her parents after visiting the doctor wasn’t an option for Ebere, who feared her strict father would beat her and shame her in their neighbourhood. The father of the baby had denied all responsibility and threatened to kill her if she ever tried to contact him again.

A nurse, who saw the troubled young girl sitting in the hospital, approached her to find out what was wrong. Ebere explained her situation and the nurse showed her a Facebook page of a man she said was a social worker who helped pregnant women in her position. She told her to call the phone number.

“When I called and explained my situation, he asked me to meet him at a popular restaurant in town,” says Ebere, speaking to the Guardian in her home city of Enugu, in south-eastern Nigeria. “When we met, he offered to take me to his home and care for me until I gave birth, but only if I was willing to sell the baby to him.”

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‘The situation is critical’: coronavirus crisis agony of Spain’s poor

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Charities struggle to help country’s most marginalised groups, including sex workers

Paloma Pérez, a smoker who has dealt with pancreatitis and cancer, has more reason than many to fear the coronavirus as she waits out the lockdown in her house in the mountains outside Madrid.

To limit her exposure, the 74-year-old has told the home help who used to pop in twice a week to stop coming, and her main meal of the day – usually fish or meat, but with a decent variety of sides – is left outside her closed front door by the Catholic charity Cáritas.

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‘They are starving’: women in India’s sex industry struggle for survival

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Exclusion from government Covid-19 relief has left many reliant on private food donations, as fears raised over protection from transmission after lockdown

Rasheeda Bibi has five rupees to her name. A worker in India’s sex industry, she lives in the narrow lanes of Kolkata’s Kalighat red light area with her three children in a room she rents for 620 rupees (£6) a month.

As a thunderstorm rages through the city, Bibi worries about the leaky roof of her small room.

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Bangladesh sends food aid to sex workers as industry goes into lockdown

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Up to 100,000 women could be left unable to support families as brothels are closed amid fears of Covid-19 outbreak

The government of Bangladesh has started sending emergency food and aid to the tens of thousands of women working in the country’s commercial sex industry as brothels across the country close.

To try to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the authorities have ordered the lockdown of the sex industry, closing the country’s biggest brothel in Goalanda in the Rajbari District of Dhaka until 5 April along with many others across the country.

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Slavery in New Zealand: inside the story of the Samoan chief who abused power for profit

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Joseph Auga Matamata lured villagers to his adoptive country promising work and study, reaping ‘bags of cash’ from their unpaid forced labour

When Loto* saw the police arrive at the rural property in New Zealand where he had been held captive for nearly two years, the man who had imprisoned him there told him to run. Instead, Loto quietly waited to be discovered by police.

Loto had spent 17 months being held as a slave on a property in Hastings on New Zealand’s North Island. He was never paid for his work and was subject to cruel beatings from Joseph Auga Matamata, a 65-year-old Samoan chief, or matai.

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