Appalling Vistas

“Migration is a fact of our world as is, sadly, the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. Human trafficking facilitates the slavery of our times. As a society drained by a never -ending cycle of emigration we should have enough empathy with the plight of economic immigrants to Ireland to offer basic protections to those in need of them. It is after all the very least we would expect for Irish workers building a new life in a foreign country. (Irish Examiner, 1/9/12)

One of the most horrible episodes of British and European colonial history has to be the slave trade. It was  perpetrated by European empires exporting people from west Africa to the Caribbean and Americas. The purpose of the slave trade was to supply sugar, spice cotton and other commodities to the European consumer market. Carried on outside Europe it was the best kept secret of European brutality until it began to be exposed in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Campaigns to bring an end to this brutality were initiated here in Europe and among those enslaved in the Caribbean and Americas.

In 1823 the Anti-Slaver Society was founded. It is the oldest human rights organisation now under the title of Anti-Slavery International. The Slave Revolt in Jamaica took place in 1831. The brutality of its suppression shocked all decent-minded people. In 1834 slavery was abolished in the British Empire. But of course it took much longer to get rid of the construct of slavery. The deplorable conditions of the working class in Europe is well documented as is the struggle for decent pay, working conditions, trade unions and rights. As recent as the middle of the last century segregation existed in the United States.  The Slave Trade left a trail of deep-seated institutional racism that reappears on a daily basis in work places, football matches and even at political conventions an example of which occurred just a few days ago at the Republican Party Convention in the United States.  The intertwined world of sugar and slavery created the unjust global trade and economic structures that are still to be dismantled.     

However, there is one incident in the abolition of slavery that still resonates in modern times. The British government set aside £20 million to compensate the slave owners for the loss of their property, their slaves. Its equivalent in today’s currency would probably be in the billions of pounds. The slaves were discarded even though their labour was needed to harvest the various commodities needed for the local and European markets. Their owners who exploited them in every possible way for their gain were untouched, even rewarded for the loss of their assets, people, men women and children. The slaves, the workers who generated wealth, were discarded as rubbish. Corporate examples of the Slave Trade are still evident in the modern garment sweat shop and other industries.  

A sharp example of the legacy of slavery was recorded during the past week in an Irish Court. In 2002, a Pakistani man, Mohammad Younis, was brought to Ireland by his cousin, Amjad Hussein, owner of restaurants, to work as a tandoori chef. Hussein acquired a work permit for Mohammad from the Department of Trade and Enterprise. When the permit expired Hussein, his employer, did not renew it as he is supposed to if he wished to keep Mohammad in his employment. Mohammad, who did not speak English lived and continued to work in Hussein’s premises.

In 2009, still without a work permit, Hussein’s wife brought Mohammad to the Migrant Rights Centre to try and rectify situation not caused by him. He gave evidence of his working and pay conditions to the Labour Court. The Labour Court awarded him Euro92,000. Hussein, his employer, refused to pay taking the case to the High Court claiming that since the validity of the contract between him and his cousin, Mohammad, depended on a work permit which Mohammad did not have through no fault of his. The High Court upheld the employer’s appeal and quashed the case. Judge Hogan, appalled by the exploitation, declared that Mohammad had no standing to invoke the protection afforded by employment legislation since a contract of employment  was illegal in the absence of an employment permit, which he, Mohammad, did not have. The judge added that the Labour Court could not lawfully entertain an application for relief if the employment contract was substantively illegal and for that reason its decisions could not be allowed to stand.  

As an exploited undocumented migrant Mohammad has no rights or protections in Irish law. Like the slave in European slavery he is invisible, to be exploited and then discarded while his employer walks free of any obligations. Just like the slave owners of the past.

Truly an appalling vista in a global economy in which millions have to emigrate to have a life. The weakness of a global system that protects free trade and the movement of investments but ignores the protections needed by people to participate in that economy is evident once again.  Of course it is not surprising in the light of exploitation in European history that no European Union member state has signed and ratified the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Migrants and their Families. Equally, an appalling vista.      

Are there no human rights instruments that can protect exploited people like Mohammad Younis? Because if there are not Ireland is fast becoming a scavenger’s paradise run by predators. An appalling vista indeed.

1/9/12