This is one of those posts I said I was going to write a little while ago.
When is slavery not slavery? When it’s ‘debt-bondage’, apparently.
Wei Tang was a madam, with five Thai sex workers in her “employ”. Or at least that’s what she argues. She ‘bought them’ for $20,000. Their visas were obtained fraudulently. She confiscated their passports and told them they each had $40,000-$45,000 in debts to “pay off” before they could keep their own money. They paid off their debt by sleeping with 900 men, in 10-12-hour shifts, six nights a week. And yet she says she believes she had an employer-employee relationship, not a slave-owner relationship, with them.
She was convicted but that case has been in the High Court of Australia recently on appeal. (Court documents, Word document)
All the women had previously worked as sex workers in Thailand. But that’s pretty different from being effectively imprisoned. Even being told you have a debt but you can work it off at your own pace is better than what these women were forced into. Some of the comments from the judge have worried me along the way.
Justice Michael Kirby said if slavery was not carefully defined, “then lots of harsh employment contracts are going to slip over into slavery and are going to be prosecuted with a potential of 25 years imprisonment on conviction …
“There are an awful lot of people working in back rooms of restaurants and in the rag trade (whose employers) would be susceptible to … prosecutions for slavery.”
I find it hard to believe the case was overturned on appeal once and that the Crown has had to take this to the High Court. And she’s cross-appealed for an acquittal. To me, this sort of revolting trafficking should be illegal and simple to prosecute. That it’s not saddens me. Since it all started, the Federal government has added “trafficking” and keeping someone under “debt bondage” as new and separate offences under the law to avoid the weasel wording the has been going on in this case.
What’s stupid is the debate about whether Tang knowingly intended to keep slaves. Who cares? Either it was slavery or it wasn’t! I thought ignorance was no excuse? If slavery is defined so narrowly that we can all pat ourselves on the back that we have eradicated this cruel practice, because “look, aren’t we good? We don’t sell people on open markets in chains any more and knowingly buy other people!” then we have missed the spirit of the original international treaties. To which, I might add, Australia is a signatory. There’s a really good opinion piece on this by Anne Gallagher called “A Question of Bondage”.
We have already had this stupid discussion about how we define torture in this brave new century to weasel out of our human rights obligations in one “theatre” of operations. Let’s not do it with something as vital as non-consensual sexual servitude. [Note: I intended to write this around May 16 when I first read about it. I’ve searched for more information, like an outcome, but as far as I can see, the judges have reserved their decision, whatever that means. If anyone has more information, please let me know.]
Aveline, I wish you were here to fight this one, babe. I really, really do. Miss you.