India Post News Service

NEW DELHI/ NEW YORK: A multi-millionaire Indian American couple, found guilty of virtually enslaving two Indonesian maids, has been ordered to pay nearly US$ one million in back wages to their former housekeepers by a US court. The court declared on July 12 that the workers are entitled to double the amount of unpaid wages they were owed by their employees, Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani. OTHER CASES- Indian extradited to the US, a man accused by the Florida police of murdering his 20 year-old American niece.

A slum lord in Oakland, California; of South Asian origin; rented houses which were in a rotten shape and abused the immigrants who came to the country. A New Jersey doctor butchered his wife and stuffed her in small packets and dumped them in garbage bins. India has extradited to the US Indian national Kamlesh Agrawal, accused of killing American citizen Deepa Agrawal, on July 13 through the joint efforts of the US embassy in New Delhi, the Indian government and US Department of Justice.

Deepa was murdered on July 11, 1999, and Kamlesh fled to India shortly after police discovered his niece's body and a warrant for his arrest was issued by the State of Florida. These are just few cases of violence being meted out by and to South Asian immigrants in US. The laws were such that most of these culprits got away, initially. Echoing that exploitation of immigrant women is not uncommon, Deepa Iyer of the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT), an advocacy group for South Asians, said, "Unfortunately, situations such as these where immigrant women are exploited are not at all rare.

There are cases where South Asians are sometimes the exploiters - such as in the Sabhnani situation - as well as cases where South Asians themselves are being exploited in homes." Iyer further says that the media attention that this particular case is receiving will hopefully be a reminder that women continue to be subjected to deplorable and abusive employment conditions as domestic workers - and that the legal system as well as community members and policymakers need to be vigilant in preventing succubus at all levels."

The case of the Sabhnanis and Kamlesh Agrawal who were convicted on charges of human trafficking and murder respectively is a "wake up call" for the community-at-large opine Asian American advocacy groups. Most of the South Asian women are also victims of domestic violence. Many cases have been witnessed where NRI's take wives from India and torture them there. The wives passports are snatched and harassment is rampant. Reacting to the guilty conviction by the jury recently, Liezl Tomas Rebugio, Anti-Trafficking Project Director with National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) told India Post, "Although it is an Indian couple that has been implicated in this case of trafficking of two Indonesian women, it also a wake up call for the community at large.

It reflects on how widespread trafficking is." Rebugio said she had worried about how the mainstream media, which already carries a huge anti-immigrant sentiment, would spin this case. "I feared that it would further fuel that anti-immigrant sentiment among the mainstream media and the general public, who are prone to saying that 'this is what immigrants do'." Nevertheless, Rebugio feels, regardless of the particular ethnic group involved, the community as a whole needs to unveil the shame of human trafficking and say that abuse of foreign workers, or any workers for that matter, would not be tolerated.

Rebugio said that while it was common among South Asians to bring domestic workers from their home country, it was not common that they would abuse them. However, as a warning, Rebugio says that confiscating the travel documents of their workers was in itself a crime. Rebugio, meanwhile, says that it is now more important to focus on determining why such exploitation takes place and on how the society can prevent it from happening. "One thing is to talk about it, and ensure that community knows what trafficking is all about; to ensure that they call local civil rights organizations to ensure that the workers are offered protection and also ensure that workers know that they have rights in the United States."

The exploitation of the two Indonesian women at the hands of the Sabhnanis also speaks of the lack of protection such workers have under federal laws, Rebugio points out. "For example, domestic workers are not covered under the OSHO (The Occupational Safety and Health Act) and also the National Labor Relations Act," she says, "They don't have the same kind of federal protection as other workers. That can increase the trafficking situation, more so because the workers face language barriers, isolation, are ignorant about their rights under Trafficking laws."

The victims of Sabhnani's Samirah and Enung deserved the money because they "were beaten, tortured and subjected against their will," while they worked 24 hours a day and seven days a week for the Sabhnani household, judge Arthur Spatt said in the ruling. Samirah, who worked at Sabhnanis' home from February 2002 to May 2007, was awarded US$ 620,744, while Enung, who was at the house from January 2005 to May 2007 is owed US$ 315,802. The Indonesian women, who were hired as household helps, had testified in court that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives and forced to take cold water showers for what were perceived to be their "mistakes". The prosecutors had claimed that the back wages amount to US$ 1.1 million but the defence had given a much lower figure of US$ 214,000.

The couple, who had a flourishing perfume business, were convicted in December last year on 12 counts including modern day slavery, forced labour, involuntary servitude and harboring illegal aliens. While Varsha, 46 was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined US$ 25,000, her 51 year-old husband was sentenced to three years and four months in prison and fined US$ 12,500. Rebugio also pointed out that a bill called the Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act, which was recently passed by the House, is simmering in the Senate. "Organizations such as NAPAWF are advocating for these workers, especially since a number of them work for diplomats, who enjoy diplomatic immunity." Most of the immigrants- with tinkle in their eyes come to Uncle Sam- hoping for a bright job prospects and good money.

Sadly majority of them are hired as cheap labor in restaurants, Indian beauty salons, grocery stores, sweat shops. They are highly exploited and poorly paid. Also lot of time they are conned by the gangsters and they are forced to get involved in criminal activities. The US Department of Justice estimates about 14,500 to 17,500 humans are trafficked into the US every year, most of them from the Pacific and East Asian countries.