December 3, 2008

KBR Subcontractor Keeping 1,000 Asian Workers In a Warehouse

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I’m no expert in human trafficking, but this strikes me as worthy of criminal punishment. McClatchy:

About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who’re from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions….

The laborers said they paid middlemen more than $2,000 to get to Iraq for jobs that they were told would earn them $600 to $800 a month. Some of the men took out loans to cover the fees.

“They promised us the moon and stars,” said Davidson Peters, 42, a Sri Lankan. “While we are here, wives have left their husbands and children have been shut out of their schools” because money for the families has dried up. The men live in three warehouses with long rows of bunk beds crammed tightly together. Reporters who tried to get a better glimpse inside were ushered away by armed guards.

One man held in the warehouse said there are “about 12” toilets for the 1,000 men. Because of this news report, the Kuwaiti subcontractor has said it will return the men to their home countries and give them back pay. The men, unsurprisingly, are skeptical.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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