US finger pointing reflects its own forced labor reality

While the United States has been using the "forced labor" excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, it is indeed one of the worst countries for forced labor, said scholars on Friday.

Fu Zitang, deputy director of the China Society for Human Rights Studies and president of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, or SWUPL, said the US has taken upon itself as the "international leader" in the fight against forced labor in recent years.

"In fact, the United States is one of the worst countries in the world for forced labor, both historically and today," he said. Fu was addressing a seminar on forced labor in the US, which was organized by the Human Rights Institute of the SWUPL in Chongqing.

The US released its annual "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices", pointing fingers at the human rights situation in other countries and wantonly interfering in their internal affairs. For instance, the US has constantly smeared Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region of using forced labor.

Peng Shengyu, a fellow at the Kunlunce Institute, said forced labor in the US has never stopped throughout its history. At the end of the 18th century, US southern planters introduced a large number of slaves to expand cotton production. Meanwhile, factories in the north of the US relied on child labor.

Statistics have shown that in the past five years, as many as 100,000 people were trafficked to the US for forced labor every year, half of whom were sold to sweatshops or subjected to domestic servitude, Peng said.

"A large number of child laborers in the United States are engaged in agricultural work, and many children start working at the age of 8," he said, adding that more than 100,000 people are detained in private prisons, engaging in high-intensity and low-paid forced labor for a long time. The US has not ratified the Forced Labour Convention (1930).

Kazuyuki Hamada, a former senator from Japan, said foreign workers, especially from developing countries, lured by false promises of good jobs in the US, soon find themselves enslaved in miserable conditions.

"When they arrive in the US, many of them have a visa. Unfortunately, this is a cover-up effort of the illegal slave labor system," he said.

"Traffickers are coaching them how to avoid custom inquiries and the Labor Department's checking process."

Amjad Magsi, professor in the Pakistan Study Center at the University of the Punjab, said most media coverage in the US about human trafficking focuses on the sex trade, but other common forms of forced labor are found in sectors, including hotels and hospitality services, agriculture, manufacturing, health and elder care.