Lured Into Bondage

So far, most of the efforts to stop forced-labor trafficking are much like the EICC: voluntary industry efforts at self-cleansing. They do not attack forced labor at its roots, where recruiters still operate with impunity. In Indonesia's neglected West Kalimantan province, "the scale is unbelievable," says Elizabeth Dunlap, who oversees the IOM's countertrafficking program in Indonesia. Across the Sulu Sea in the Philippines, a labor broker discloses his back-channel sources for tourist visas to Europe: bribes of several hundred dollars "deposited into the accounts of girl- friends or other fronts" for two cabinet-level bureaus and a prominent Western embassy in Manila. In Singapore, a labor broker puts migrants recruited across Southeast Asia onto fishing boats paying as little as $130 per month. According to several of its labor contracts obtained by NEWSWEEK, all but $50 per month is withheld until the crewman completes a three-year stint on the high seas, during which time "no fixed working hours" are set, "no overtime pay" is given and workers can be traded from boat to boat at the captain's discretion. Applicants pay $1,000 upfront for such jobs, and their contracts stipulate that sailors who quit for any reason face a $2,000 penalty.

Some of the recruits appear to be surfacing in service jobs not far removed from the mainstream consumer. Juren, 26, works up to 13 hours every day as a janitor for a company that has the contract to clean Kuala Lumpur supermarkets owned by Tesco. He earns $200 a month, half the pay a job tout promised him in 2006 before he left his village in Bangladesh, and twice what he actually pockets after his service deducts for food, housing and job-placement fees. Having invested his family's savings, sold a small rice field and borrowed from loan sharks to pay a labor broker $3,000, Juren figures that he'll clear only $600 for his three-year stint. Four other janitors working for Tesco's cleaning contractors tell similar stories. One, who shares a one-bedroom flat in Kuala Lumpur with 12 other janitors, says he came dreaming of "making my parents comfortable" and leaving something for his children, but landed in "a kind of prison." Tesco, the world's third largest retailer after Wal-Mart and Carrefour, says it "adheres to local labor laws" in Malaysia, denies using forced labor and says it conducts "regular audits" to make sure foreign workers are treated fairly.

Though more industries are trying to police good corporate citizenship, many have yet to target forced labor. That means companies with an industry seal of approval may not be treating workers well. Thailand's Sirichai Fisheries supports the U.S.-based Marine Stewardship Council and practices environmentally friendly fishing. But NEWSWEEK has interviewed four past crewmen on Sirichai vessels and seen written complaints to a Cambodian human-rights group from three others. All claim to have endured treatment that fits the ILO's definition of forced labor. They say they were trafficked into Thailand on tourist visas, forced to hand over their passports and compelled to board a boat bound for Africa even though the recruiter promised them cannery jobs in Thailand. "We thought we were finished," says Long Thorn, one of Sirichai's initial Cambodian recruits. "We didn't know how many years we were sold for. They lied to us."

The experience of forced labor offers shades of misery, as the stories of Long and his neighbor Chann Ham show. They were crewmates on a Sirichai voyage to Somalia in 2005. After the monthlong journey, they were assigned to separate fishing boats, each supplied every two months by a "mother ship" from Thailand. Long repaired nets, sorted fish and cleaned catches of tuna, shark and octopus, sleeping just four hours a day during peak times. After 27 months, he was re- turned home and paid $155 per month, less than the $190 he was promised, but enough to double the size of his family home and by a slick red motor scooter. Chann, racked by constant seasickness, tried to stow away on the mother ship but was forced back aboard his vessel by a Somali guard who, he claims, fired several live rounds between his legs. Ten months later Chann was shipped home and paid less than $500, or about $1.60 per day— enough only to buy a cow, and his father's disapproval. "The people who stayed had a lot of money when they came back, but [my son] couldn't stay," says Chann's father. "I don't know who to blame for this."

Absent clearly enforceable global rules, it is easy to pass the blame around. Sirichai's general manager, Wiriya Sirichai- Ekawat, admits there have been troubles with Cambodian recruits, but he blames labor brokers who were paid by Sirichai for their services in 2005 but were "not our people." Asked if the company's treatment of foreign employees amounted to slavery, he said: "We never do that." In an e-mail, the Thai company's managing director, Wicharn Sirichai-Ekawat, says Sirichai has only one policy: "To follow the law." He says Sirichai is the only Thai fishing company that does not use illegal labor. Chuop Narath, deputy director of employment and manpower in Cambodia's Ministry of Labor, says Sirichai's recruitment practices are illegal.

The risks won't deter hungry young men like Cambodian Tuon Sina, a 22-year-old newlywed with an infant child to feed. Last fall he left his ancestral village for Thailand and boarded a fishing boat for Somalia. He had heard of past troubles, but he'd also seen older neighbors return rich after working abroad and wanted "to follow their example." His mother's protests went unheeded. "I tried to stop him but I could not," she says. "It's a risky adventure for money."