Lured Into Bondage

Most of the trafficked workers end up in relatively remote outposts of the global supply chain—factories, plantations, fishing vessels—that ultimately serve mainstream consumers everywhere. In mid-2007, the State Department warned that "customers for the products of forced labor are often completely ignorant" of their origins. In fact, by following several of these chains through a complex string of middlemen to their end customers, NEWSWEEK TRACED forced labor to the world's third largest retailer and second largest hard-disk-drive maker, who deny current ties to forced labor or knowledge of the original source.

One reason the shadowy global market for forced labor is overlooked and underpoliced is that most media coverage focuses on the trafficking of women into prostitution, even though it is a small subset of the problem, with the total population of trafficked prostitutes now believed to number about 2 million worldwide. "We talk a lot about trafficking for sexual exploitation [because] sex and violence sells newspapers," says Richard Danziger, of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM). "Only now are we getting the message across that human trafficking goes well beyond that."

The flows follow the same path as voluntary labor migrations, from Latin America to the United States, from South Asia to the Middle East, but the largest flow is likely within Asia. With huge pockets of poverty close by labor-hungry export powerhouses, Asian nations are a main departure point for labor migration. Last year the four main labor exporters in Asia—the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Cambodia—sent a combined 2.5 million workers abroad. Many of them go to more-developed neighbors where, human-rights observers say, weak legal protections—styled to preserve national competitiveness against low-cost rivals China and India—render migrants easy targets for exploitation. In its latest report, the State Department ranked only Hong Kong and South Korea among the "tier one" countries making a serious effort to combat human trafficking. Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan were all ranked in tier two (trying but need to do more), and Malaysia alongside Burma and North Korea among the worst cases.

The report singles out Malaysia as a "regional economic leader" with the re- sources and government infrastructure to fight the trafficking of men, women and children into sex and commercial trades, but is making no significant effort to do so. It says Malaysia has failed to prosecute traffickers and has twice announced plans to create a shelter for foreign trafficking victims, but has yet to follow through. The report urges Kuala Lumpur to do more. Malaysia's foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, calls the State Department report "all false, not true," and adds that "Malaysia is a country that does not en-courage trafficking in persons."

But Malaysian law effectively makes every foreign worker a captive of the company that hired him or her. In the name of immigration control, employers like Local Technic are required to report runaways to the police. No one holds company managers accountable for lies told by independent labor recruiters inside or outside the country. And Western electronics giants give them business.

Local Technic, for example, has sup- plied parts and services to a company called JCY HDD, which sells components to the major hard-drive makers, including Western Digital, the second largest disk-drive maker, which says that in the past it did receive some parts and services from Local Technic. Western Digital is a member of the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), which aims to improve working conditions and environmental stewardship globally, and requires members to audit the labor practices only of direct suppliers, not subsuppliers like Local Technic. Steve Shattuck, a Western Digital spokesperson, says the company requires suppliers "to exercise the same diligence with their suppliers," and that its current products do not contain parts or services provided by Local Technic. A JCY spokesman confirmed that Local Technic is a supplier, but declined to comment on forced labor.