IndiaPost.com - Sabhnani case a ‘wake up call’ on human trafficking

India Post News Service

NEW YORK: The case of the Sabhnanis who have been convicted on charges of human trafficking is a "wake up call" for the community-at-large opine Asian American advocacy groups. 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. 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 suc abuse at all levels." 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." 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." 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.