3071-The political economy of new slavery

62 Trafficking and International Law
employment agencies to find employment in the first place and this
is often the first stage of a chain of exploitation, which clearly falls
under the heading of trafficking. Interviews with Indonesian domestic
workers in Hong Kong reveal a sophisticated system of debt-bondage
and forced labour. Migrants take loans from the brokers, who scour
Indonesian villages to persuade young women to migrate for domestic
work overseas. Those sent overseas find that their wages are reduced by
ad hoc and unagreed amounts to repay the original loan plus interest,
and are afraid to leave their employment, however bad the conditions,
because of threats and degrading punishments meted out to those who
resist. Employers withhold passports and other personal documents
as an extra method of control. To date it has proved very difficult to
persuade either the Hong Kong or the Indonesian governments to protect
such women. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence
against Women listed the following abuses suffered by women migrant
domestic workers in her report to the UN Commission on Human
Rights in 1997: 4
• Debt-bondage, because women invariably have to borrow money to
pay exorbitant fees to the agents, and feel bound to stay and work in
order to pay off these debts.
• Illegal confinement, because employers or agents keep their passports
and they are not allowed to leave the premises without accompaniment
or supervision, are discouraged or even forbidden to speak
to other domestic workers.
• Cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment, by slapping, hair pulling,
spitting, humiliating, name calling, having no room of their own,
having to sleep in corridors, on the floor even in the bathroom or
kitchen; sexual harassment is usual, rape is not exceptional.
• Long hours of work without sufficient food and rest.
• Not being allowed to change jobs legally, even in the face of ill
treatment.
Attention in the past five years has focused on the rise in the
trafficking of women into Western Europe and other richer countries
for work in the commercial sex industry. In particular, there has been
much publicity concerning the trafficking of women within Central and
Eastern Europe and from there to Western Europe. However, similar
patterns of trafficking in women are also seen within Asia, Africa and
the Middle East. Europol (Europol, 1999) has drawn up some general
observations on the nationalities of women trafficked into the European