Aloun Farm Owners, Thai Labor Recruiter, Await Sentencing for Forced Labor Violations; Hawaii’s Influential Government and Banking Officials Back Defendants in Court
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN - Samporn Khanja was just 14 years old when his father died and he was forced to abandon childhood games for management and farming duties at his family’s 25-acre farm in Maha Sarakham, Thailand. He and his three sisters made enough money to get by financially from the cucumbers and rice that they harvested and sold in the nearby Chinatown marketplace, but Samporn wanted more for his life and family.
So when Samporn saw an advertisement for a full-time landscaping job in Hawaii for $9.60 an hour posted by the Oahu-based Aloun Farms on the Thai Department of Labor bulletin board, Samporn jumped at the chance to work in Hawaii and get his family ahead financially. Little did Samporn know that this decision he made in 2004 would land him 6 years later in the midst of a U.S. federal investigation over forced labor, document servitude and visa fraud and jeopardize his family’s ownership of the very land needed for survival.
On Monday, July 19, 2010, at 1:45 p.m. in Honolulu’s U.S. District Court, Judge Susan Oki Mollway is scheduled to sentence the men responsible for bringing Samporn and 43 other Thai workers to Hawaii in September 2004.
It was nearly a year ago in August 2009 that brothers Michael Mankone Sou and Alec Souphone Sou of Aloun Farm were indicted on three counts including forced labor, document servitude and visa fraud for their role in the recruitment that Thai workers say left them in deep financial trouble. But Aloun Farms has a long history in Hawaii’s farm industry and its avid and powerful supporters, including government officials and senior banking executives, who are downplaying the Sous’ criminal indictment.
Aloun Sou and his wife Somphone, who immigrated to Hawaii from Laos, founded their farm business in 1977 on 5 acres of leased land in Waianae. They raised 4 children, including Michael and Alec, who eventually took over the family business. In addition to farming Asian vegetables, green onion and herbs, the Sous began distributing their produce in 1983 to Hawaii supermarkets. In 1995, the farm business was formalized into Aloun Farms operating on 880 acres in Ewa and Kunia. Today, as Hawaii’s second largest farm covering 3,000 acres on Oahu, they harvest mostly Asian vegetables with the help of 180 people, conduct tours and educational programs for school children and sell pumpkins during the fall season. They claim on their web site, that one of their four values is “respect for the people whom we work with.”
The Sous, who are of Laotian and Thai decent, are politically connected to some of Hawaii’s most influential people. They’ve held fundraisers and community events for some of Hawaii’s most powerful and hosted high-ranking politicians and government officials, religious leaders and business executives.
The Sous were able to obtain through The Aloun Foundation, their non-profit 501(c) 3, several loans from the Department of Agriculture including $642,000 and $2,100,000 for farm labor housing and $346,500 from the same department for rural rental assistance payments for a total of $3,088,900 from 2004 to 2009. (Eleven Thai workers say they were housed in storage containers without air conditioning or indoor plumbing and the rest were crammed into a two-story, five bedroom house in Waianae).
More:
http://boss.hawaiireporter.com/aloun-farm-owners-thai-labor-recruiter-await-sentencing-for-forced-labor-violations-hawaiis-influential-government-and-banking-officials-back-defendants-in-court/
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