we already embraced slavery by buying our clothes, sneakers, toys, etc from foreign sweatshops...sometimes those slaves work on american soil!



Groups allege widespread 'slavery' on Saipan (a US territory)
By Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON - Human rights groups are demanding afull-scale probe of workers' conditions and criminal activities onthe island of Saipan, capital of the Commonwealth of the NorthernMariana Islands - a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean.

''Recent events suggest that the pattern of labor abuse may infact be growing'' in Saipan, the activists assert in a letter toU.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

They also want the commonwealth brought into compliance withmainland labor and immigration laws, from which the islands havebeen granted a temporary reprieve since becoming a U.S. territoryin the 1970s.

The non-governmental Global Survival Network, in a reportreleased here, says involuntary servitude is rife in theterritory's apparel, construction and tourism industries.

Some 40,000 ''guest workers'' - most from China, the Philippinesand Bangladesh - toil as indentured laborers, contributingbillions of dollars to the territory's economy and about $160million in profits for criminal syndicates, the report charges.

Women hired as waitresses from as far away as Russia are put towork as sex slaves, according to the report. Commonwealthofficials say there is no sex industry but one local newspaperreports that ''Saipan . . . is being advertised as a top destinationfor sightseeing and sex tours in the Pacific."

''Tourists can engage the services of prostitutes for a feeranging from $20 dollars to $200,'' according to the SaipanTribune.

As part of an eight-month probe by Global Survival Network, twoinvestigators - one posing as a U.S. buyer and the other as auniversity researcher - interviewed 60 guest workers and usedhidden cameras to videotape conditions in Saipan's factories,night clubs and workers' dormitories. The report describes theseas ''barracks'' patrolled by security guards and ringed withbarbed-wire fences.

Workers are lured by international human trafficking networks,which promise job-seekers good employment in the United States.They pay these ''recruiters'' an average of $5,000for travel and the right to work. Some raise the money by pawningtheir families' belongings and others take loans they are thenexpected to work off.

Upon arrival, they express ''shock and dismay upon discoveringthat 'Saipan USA' is nothing more than a 47-square-mile island inthe Pacific Ocean,'' says the report.