More money, more problems, as Biggie Smalls used to say. And with more money comes excess, as throughout the world those with wealth sometimes cause problems for those without.
And that includes sacrifices, murder and modern-day slavery.
Case in point: Uganda. In that African nation, an economic boom has brought with it the unexpected side effect of bringing back ritual sacrifice. Apparently Uganda’s well to do are paying witch doctors to abduct children and sacrifice them for wealth and good health, as the superstition goes. As mutilated bodies are found along the roadside, villagers used in fear as human sacrifice is in style. And it is a lucrative business.
Meanwhile, in Haiti there is the plight of the restaveks, children of poor families who are handed over to rich acquaintances or relatives as domestic servants. The term is derived from the French “reste avec,” which in Creole means “to stay with.” The practice amounts to modern-day slavery in this former slave colony, and the United Nations has condemned it as such. This leaves as many as 300,000 restavek children susceptible to abuse, beatings, neglect and illegal labor practices.
Slideshow: ‘Restaveks’ — just one of Haiti’s horrors
The devastating earthquake has left thousands of Haitians unable to care for their children, and unscrupulous countrymen and women more than willing to capitalize on their misfortune. A foundation has even been set up to end child slavery in the Caribbean nation. As the group’s website says, “It’s hard to believe that there are children who go through life without a single tender touch. Or that cowhide whips are bought on street corners to be used on children.”
Abuses are found elsewhere around the globe. For example, maids are brought to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states by sketchy recruiters, “rented” out to other employers, unpaid, abused and beaten. Some women are used as sex slaves. Among those abused migrant workers in the Gulf are Kenyans, Indonesians and others who face sexual assault, torture and starvation. One Kenyan girl was recently found dead locked up in a freezer.
Earlier this year, Saudi authorities discovered that a Sri Lankan maid was kept against her will by her employers for 14 years. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has executed two Indonesian maids since 2008.
The latest woman, who was convicted of murdering her employer’s wife and beheaded, had suffered prolonged abuse and was told she could not return home. Under a peculiarly exploitative sponsorship system called kafala, migrants’ visas are tied to their employers, who can prevent them from leaving the country or changing jobs.
Meanwhile, a Saudi woman received a three-year prison sentence — out of a maximum of 15 years — for stabbing, beating and burning her Indonesian maid. According to Human Rights Watch, typically Saudi employers are not prosecuted for abusing their domestic workers. There are 7 million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, mostly domestic workers, including 1 million drivers, who are needed because women are not allowed to drive.
And in the affluent Saudi city of Jeddah, thousands of children are forced by their masters to roam the streets and beg for money. The children — who come from poorer countries such as Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Pakistan and India — are sold by families who are threatened, or tricked into thinking their children will find a better life. What they actually find is a Dickensian world of brutal beatings and mutilations, mired in poverty and with no education.
Further, members of the oil rich Saudi royal family receive dividend payments as if they are shareholders in a corporation. These payments account for $2 billion of Saudi Arabia’s 440 billion budget. Royals are able to confiscate land from commoners, or seize profitable enterprises for themselves. As a Wikileaks cable revealed, greed and corruption are widespread and unchecked in the Arab nation, as some Saudi princes find ways to siphon and skim billions more dollars for their personal benefit.
And for the past 30 years, Dubai has been built on slave labor. Home to the world’s tallest building, the city of excess is built by slave labor from the Third World, including expatriates from Africa, the Philippines and the nations of the Indian subcontinent.
Companies lure these laborers with the promise of big money. In the end, the companies steal their passports and their money, and force the migrants to work 12 hours a day, six days a week in the desert sun. On average, they earn an average of $175 a month, lacking a minimum wage, and some make as little as $8 a day, according to Human Rights Watch.
Tiger Woods paid more than $50 million for a proposed golf course and resort in Dubai, but the plan was abandoned. Woods’ real estate development would have included a 360,000-square-foot hotel, and 292 residential plots for palaces, mansions and villas — at least some of it presumably built with slave labor.
Even in the United States, which abolished slavery nearly a century and a half ago, slavery is still alive and well. In June, Bidemi Bello, a Nigerian woman and a naturalized American citizen, was convicted in federal court of importing two young Nigerian women to serve as slaves in her luxury suburban Atlanta homes.
Promising that they would become nannies, Bello seized their passports and forced the women to clean and provide childcare. Days ago, Bello was sentenced to over 11 years for human trafficking. She faces deportation upon completion of her sentence.
At any given time in America, at least 10,000 people but likely tens of thousands are suffering under forced labor. According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated 12.3 million adults and children, 56 percent of them female, are the victims of global modern slavery.
In addition, the slave trade yields $32 billion for traffickers each year. But sadly, budget cuts in the U.S. — specifically, the U.S. State Department antislavery office — are only prolonging the problem.
The Occupy Wall Street protests in over 900 cities around the planet have focused attention on rising economic inequality and the gap between rich and poor. But these recent cases of excess among the world’s wealthy make us realize how bad things can get.
Oh, the things that some people will do for money. Or, to put it another way, the terrible things that some with money will do to those who don’t have any.
