Perpetuation of slavery?
PADMINI SWAMINATHAN
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Account of modern-day subjugation through case studies of asylum seekers
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ENSLAVED — The New Slavery: Rahila Gupta; HarperCollins Publishers, A-53, Sector 57, Noida-201301. Rs.350.
Has slavery really ended? If not, what are the defining features of modern-day slavery? What have immigration policies and practices to do with continuation and perpetuation of slavery? These are some of the several questions that Gupta raises through a graphic account of the personal stories of five ‘slaves’, and the ‘slave route’ that each of them were ‘forced’ to take, before they all ended up in the U.K. seeking asylum.
Of the five, the case of Fariha Nur, a Somali woman, forced to flee a strife-torn country, is a telling example of humanity’s insensitivity to victims of war and persecution. Despite acknowledging the war situation in Somalia, the U.K. has denied asylum to Fariha Nur because the U.K. Secretary of State “is of the view… that individuals from all sections of Somali society were at risk of being caught up therein and that the situation was no worse for members of the Eyle clan [to which Fariha Nur belonged] than for the general population…” At the time of writing Fariha was still struggling for an asylum status to enable her to work and study.
Human smuggling
Teenager Natasha’s story is tied to the mass political, economic and social upheaval following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Trafficked into prostitution, the saga of her journey and thereafter her ‘enslaved’ life in the U.K. makes the author wonder why the system is unable to hold her traffickers to account and/or tackle the problem of demand that enables such trafficking and prostitution to flourish. Naomi Conte’s is a familiar story of war and poverty impacting particularly harshly on orphaned girl children; in this case, Naomi found herself forced out of Sierra Lone and ‘enslaved’ as a domestic servant in the U.K. apart from being raped and impregnated.
The story of Liu Bao Ren, the only male case study in the book, provides a chilling account of human smuggling across borders by organised gangs the cruelty of whose methods and modes of transporting desperately placed humans rises in direct proportion to governments’ attempt to make their immigration laws more stringent. Amber Lobepreet represents the case of small town women married abroad, forced to endure marital violence for the sake of ‘family honour’ and ultimately thrown out on the streets by the marital household while the state is paralysed into immobility in order to be seen as non-interfering with a minority culture. Following the personal accounts, Gupta engages in an elaborate discussion of British policy relating to immigration, the needless complexity that the state has introduced in designating persons as either political refugees or economic migrants [which distinction fails to accommodate several types of asylum seekers], and in all cases demanding standards of proof that asylum seekers can never provide given the circumstances of their flight out of their countries of origin. More important, in our opinion, are some uncomfortable questions that Gupta asks that shift the onus of proof from the hapless individuals to the acts of omission and commission of the developed country governments. Thus for example, Gupta observes: “Many of those places where there is war and conflict are run by regimes which have been armed by the British Government… When Blair commits himself to reducing the number of refugees, you would expect him to announce economic development initiatives in refugee-producing countries, or, at the very least, a refusal to sell armaments to certain regimes.”
New perspective
Similarly, Gupta notes that the Home Office is not only aware that illegal immigration happens but is also happy that it carries on since it helps Britain economically. “Whether you like it or not, toilets need to be cleaned and hospitals need to be staffed. If you clamp down too hard, it will destabilize the economy and the social structure… If the need to maintain purity of culture overrode all other considerations then these sectors should pay extremely high wages and improve conditions to such an extent that the indigenous unemployed might be attracted to these jobs.” However, the paranoia about immigration has taken such a hold on the British psyche that, despite clear gains being reaped by the economy with little or no investment, the numbers of laws dealing with immigration have risen in direct proportion to increase in paranoia.
Enslaved brings a refreshingly new perspective to an old problem; it also brings out the new ways in which an old problem that was supposed to have been eliminated persists. The contents however require much tightening on several counts. To mention two: one, the link between the personal accounts and the general discussion on immigration laws and practices is at best tenuous; two, Amber Lobepreet’s account reads more as a case of domestic violence rather than forced marriage and requires an altogether different engagement than that provided by the author.
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