Slavery in international law is governed by a number of treaties, conventions and declarations. Foremost among these is the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948) that states in Article 4: “no one should be held in slavery or servitude, slavery in all of its forms should be eliminated.” Protection from slavery is reiterated in the Slavery Convention. This is affected by the Optional Protocol to the Abolition of Slavery and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR, governed by the Human Rights Committee, is responsible for internationally monitoring present conditions of slavery.
Abolitionism has its roots in the 1807 Abolition of Slavery Act of Great Britain. Many academics in the field perceive this as the beginning of the end of the traditional form of slavery: chattel slavery. In the 19th Century, Britain controlled the majority of the world through its colonies. Consequently, in passing this law to abolish slavery, the British Parliament abolished slavery in the vast majority of its colonies.
Bad intent baked into the Constitution
However, slavery has continued to persist in some countries long after most international laws banning its practice. The most conspicuous guilty party is the USA. Although many acclaim the significance of the Thirteenth Amendment to the American Constitution of 1865 as banning slavery, the reality is that Americans never wholeheartedly accepted the 13th Amendment in the international spirit if feeing all individuals from tyranny. The small detail of the 13th Amendment is the middle part of the first statement in the Amendment emphasised below:
"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation" |
The beginnings of the Americal Slavery Gulag
It would appear that as soon as this Amendment was passed, large number of African Americans were rounded up and put in prison for minor offenses such as vagrancy which is a ridiculous state of affairs given that many ex-slaves had nowhere to live. This practice of rounding up African Americans on similar offenses continues to this day. With the rise in drug addiction, rather than attempt to treat and assist addicts the most common justification for incarceration in the USA is related to minor drug charges.
Today the population of this unacceptable Gulag exceeds 2,000,000. This is the largest number of slaves in any country whereas all other developed nations have none.
The commercial slave trade continuesAlthough Great Britain abolished commerce in slaves, US corporations continue to enjoy the benefits. US corporations, especially those in the technology and food industries, contract prison labor, as it is legal and often completely encouraged by government legislature. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) serves as a federal tax credit that grants employers $2,400 for every work-release employed inmate. "Prison insourcing" has increasingly grown in popularity as the cheaper alternative to outsourcing with a wide variety of companies such as Whole Foods, McDonald's, Target, IBM, Texas Instruments, Boeing, Nordstrom, Intel, Wal-Mart, Victoria's Secret, Aramark, AT&T, BP, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, Honda, Macy's and Sprint and many more actively participating in prison insourcing throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
The rent-a-slave business is boomingA large number of prisons are privately run and the stock prices of the largest private prison operations, CoreCivic and Geo Group, skyrocketed in 2016 following the election of President Trump, with CoreCivic experiencing a 140% increase and Geo Group rising 98%. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated in a February 21, 2017 memo that the Obama administration had "impaired the U.S. Bureau of Prison's ability to meet the future needs of the correctional system" and rescinded the Obama directive that would curtail the government use of private prisons. In 2017, CNN attributed this rise of private prison stock to President Trump's commitment to lowering crime and toughening immigration, translating to more individuals to be arrested, therefore leading to an increase of private prison profits. Both companies donated heavily to the Trump election campaign in 2016.
Too many innocent victims snared by a corrupt systemMany people are in prison for their pre-trial periods and the situation with minor drug "offenders" continues to swell this slave population. The fact that the 13th Amendment considers anyone who is duly convicted of a crime to be worthy of the status of a slave begs the question as to whether the majority of prisoners should be in prison for what they have been accused. The disgraceful and popular US practice of plea bargaining, leveled against many who are innocent, forces them to plead guilty so as to stay in prison for shorter period. This achieves two things: 1. It causes the rate of conviction for law enforcement to be artificially augmented helping advance the careers of prosecutors and police officials, and 2. It raises the number of people condemned to slavery, many of whom have committed no crime.
Legal decisions and convictions need to be based on the truth and not bullying and misrepresentations. As a country that wishes to convince the world that it is a bastion of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, the people of America need to understand that 13th Amendment of the Constitution significantly sullies the otherwise wholesome image of that Constitution. It causes many normal people in the rest of the world to wonder why Americans, not only tolerate this affront to humanity but happily go about purchasing the products and services of companies who benefit from this offensive practice.
