Indians trafficked to Iraq now free

by Jacob on August 16, 2006

In screening online news reports for trafficking cases involving Iraq, this report from DailyIndia.com caught my attention: Two Indians forced to work in Iraq freed now.

Kailesh Ram and Zakir Hussien from the north Indian province of Uttar Pradesh paid labor contractors “huge amounts” to take them to Dubai for work, but once in the Middle East, the pair were forced to work in war-ravaged Iraq, according to a report cited in a Khaleej Times newspaper article.

It’s not clear whether these two men were trafficked into Iraq to work for US military contractors, but their form of exploitation certainly matches the type inflicted upon the case of the twelve Nepali victims we mentioned in an earlier post.

I’m going to speak to my colleague Supriya Awasthi, South Asia Director for Free the Slaves about finding out more about this trafficking case.

Earlier in the year Supriya took Ginny Bauman, Free the Slaves’ Partnerships Director, and me to visit our partners in Uttar Pradesh, and I can attest that it is a place of desperate poverty—I can understand why the men mentioned above would want to leave to find work elsewhere. Be sure to read Ginny’s post from the trip and view (online, for free!) The Silent Revolution, our documentary about Sankalp, an organization working to end slavery in the troubled region.