Traffickers prey on Cambodian men

[Coventina]

Source: International Herald-Tribune

POPOK, Cambodia: "They killed one crewman for something very simple," said Thung Yeap. "He just wanted to go home. He kept asking. So in the end, the captain shot him dead."

Thung Yeap is one of the lucky survivors of a journey that starts in some of Cambodia's poorest villages and sometimes ends, fatally, in the waters of the South China Sea.

According to local law enforcers and international agencies, hundreds like Thung Yeap, mostly Cambodian farmers, have fallen victim in recent years to traffickers who turn them over to crews on Thai fishing boats, where they work without pay and often at gunpoint.

"It is an issue that needs urgent attention," said Lim Tith, national project coordinator for the United Nations' Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, or Uniap, in Phnom Penh. "It really is a kind of descent into hell."



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/12/news/traffic.1-405492.php

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Slavery is alive and well in the 21st century.

:cry:

[notadmblnd]

1. Big business in India too.

I did a paper on the exploitation of human beings a while back for my political science class. If anyone wonders how countries like India and China can produce so much more for so much less; look no further. Slavery is how they do it.

[silverojo]

5. And that's how the Bushits want America to be - n/t

[navarth]

2. It's heartbreaking

How to stop it?

[navarth]

3. I think many would argue that slavery's how we got successful

and I'm not at all sure that I would argue with them.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. I was about to say -

it worked for us.

1619 - 1945. yeah, it supposedly ended in 1865, but with Jim Crow laws the system was not really collapsed until the returning black GIs from WW2 formed the backbone of the civil rights movement. They'd been to war, had proved themselves to the world, and were ready to fight for the rights at home that they'd been fighting for overseas.

Sometimes i wonder if this is how the Romans felt in the 4th century. What had been a stable world was suddenly beset by barbarians - pirates dominated the oceans, and bandits thrived in the streets while political offices were bought and sold and the empire fought endless wars. Slavery and human trafficking are at record highs for the past hundred years, great nations are splintering, tribalism is increasing. What is a warlord, today, other than a petty king of a thousand years ago?

The dark ages are approaching.

[blendermax]

7. Slavery and Wal-Mart

how do you think it got to be the most profitable company in America?

[freedomnorth]

6. There is more slaves in the world than ever before. n/t.