I stand here half-naked because I have no clothes.
In 2017, footage from Libya showed migrants being sold as slaves.
These men are sold for 1,200 Libyan pounds,
$400 a piece.
The exploitation prompted outrage.
And was described as modern slavery,
a term now used for the 40 million people worldwide
that are being exploited.
From trapped construction workers in Dubai...
We have no life.
to women exploited for sex by traffickers...
I was also taken into a few other countries
for the sole purpose of being trafficked and being sold.
the fight to end modern slavery has become a celebrated cause
championed by celebrities...
Beaten, starved, tortured, raped.
and governments.
This house and this country that is leading the campaign
against modern slavery.
But this fight isn’t completely what it seems.
While EU governments promise to tackle slavery in Libya...
It is essential
to prevent these situations,
to denounce them
and to condemn them
within international law.
behind closed doors,
they spent millions strengthening borders
and returning people to overcrowded Libyan prisons.
Migrants! Migrants!
People! People! Boat!
Stop! Stop!
It was a policy that left more people at risk of being sold into slavery.
Now we are stuck in a jail in Libya.
Governments have pledged millions to tackle modern slavery.
We’re going to deal with human trafficking
and end the scourge of modern-day slavery.
But how genuine are these attempts?
There’s a lot of propaganda that governments put out today
to say that they want to address human trafficking.
And is the term being used to justify tough immigration policies?
This is how governments are misleading us about their fight
to end modern slavery.
[System Error]
There’s immigrants in the back, but they’re...
they’re all lying on the ground.
OK, are they breathing?
I don’t think so.
In October 2019,
39 people were found dead in a refrigerated lorry in Essex.
Politicians quickly pointed to human traffickers,
who move people by coercion in order to exploit them.
We are dealing with those that are using people
for the most appalling purposes.
But in this instance,
those who had died had not been coerced into traveling to the UK.
One of the fathers of one of the people who died
has said since his son was just trying to create a better life
for himself and his family back in Vietnam.
And they can’t do it legally.
Vun and Loc left the country for a better future for their family.
So their children would have a better life.
With no access to legal routes,
those inside the lorry had used human smugglers
to try to cross into the UK.
So they’d been in that lorry
because they’d been trying to enter the UK without permission,
and it was the only way they could do that.
While smugglers need to be held accountable
for profiting from desperate individuals,
governments also focus the blame on these criminals
to distract us from their own policies
that help fuel modern slavery.
That politicians point to sad and tragic instances like this
as being trafficking is because it makes us think the person to blame
is that baddie who put them in the back of the lorry.
It’s hostile immigration policies
that are making people have to get in the back of a lorry
to be able to travel.
But it’s not ideal for politicians to have us think about that.
So they like to talk instead about modern slavery
and wanting to catch the slavers and the traffickers.
Governments use the fight against modern slavery
to justify tough immigration policies.
In 2015, the UK created a bill to tackle modern slavery.
The Modern Slavery Bill
will be one of the first acts of its kind in the world.
But the government also introduced two immigration bills.
We’ve toughened the sanctions on illegal working
to make clear that the UK is no soft touch.
These made life impossible
for those who had entered the UK through irregular means.
They don’t have the right to work,
so they’re forced into the shadowy parts of our economy.
And when you look at that prime minister’s speeches and policy plans,
you can see that she's using modern slavery as a kind of moral foil
for those immigration plans.
In the US, the Trump administration did something similar.
But you have the human traffickers,
and they use these children as passports to get into the country.
Pointing the finger at traffickers and parents
for the hardship caused to migrant children
instead of his own policies that separated families.
Yes or no, are we still putting children in cages?
Does it differ from the cages you put your dogs in?
-Yes. -In what sense?
It’s larger.
Governments say they want to solve modern slavery.
But really to make the change,
there has to be institutional change,
systematic changes, that are hard, not just easy fixes.
The systems and institutions
that are used to manage migration around the world
inherently make migrants vulnerable to trafficking.
And yet governments don’t want to do anything about immigration systems.
It is often governments own policies
that drive people into modern slavery.
Loose US gun laws have seen arms flood into Central America,
fueling bloodshed.
My administration will never ratify the UN Arms Trade Treaty,
I hope you’re happy.
This has pushed thousands
on precarious journeys across borders.
I got to Matamoros and tried to cross the river,
but some guys didn’t let me pass.
They put their guns on me,
and told me I had to pay like the rest.
This has left vulnerable individuals even more at risk of exploitation.
While President Biden has promised
to help tackle the flow of illegal weapons,
his government is still deporting hundreds of thousands of migrants
back to their home countries.
I imagine that going back to Guatemala is not an option for you.
No, I can’t go back.
So that’s why I’m very scared.
We absolutely have to solve
border policies and immigration policies
if we want to have the slightest chance of reducing modern slavery.
In the UK, victims of modern slavery are also detained and deported.
The government has said, “Yes, you are a victim.
I’m just going to deport you anyway.”
We deport children who’ve been recognized as victims
and lock them up in immigration jails.
They act like you are criminals,
so it’s not really a detention center or a processing center,
it’s a prison.
Immigration concerns
trump this alleged morality about modern slavery,
and we see that repeatedly.
If you actually wanted to solve exploitation,
you would not be criminalizing migrants.
In February this year, Kent police raided a number of properties
in a bid to save victims of sex trafficking.
But as a result, a number of women were arrested on immigration charges.
Governments say that they're tackling modern slavery,
but they use that as kind of like a guise
to raid and deport and terrorize,
especially migrant sex workers in the UK.
When sex workers actually go and report violence,
including trafficking, to the police,
nothing is done about it.
In some cases, sex workers are actually arrested themselves
for prostitution offenses or immigration offenses.
Anti-trafficking rhetoric
has kind of been weaponized against sex workers.
Many sex workers dislike the fact
that governments are criminalizing the sector
as a way to stop sex trafficking.
If you criminalize a sector,
no one in there has any rights.
The people who become bosses
are people who want to make profit from criminality,
and the people they’re going to exploit
have no way to challenge that.
They can’t go to the authorities, they can’t seek help.
They would like governments to listen to their concerns.
Most sex workers are mothers just trying to put food on the table,
put shoes on their children's feet,
escape poverty, to escape violence,
to escape exploitation in other jobs.
Addressing the issues of poverty,
which I guess are longer issues that governments do not want to solve,
versus temporary measures of criminalization
are more obvious to people,
more flashy, more appealing to the media.
More recently, politicians have shifted the blame for modern slavery
onto us, the consumers.
The most powerful voice of all
belongs not to business or government
but to the consumer.
And if enough of us turn our backs on companies that exploit forced labor,
modern slavery will cease to be commercially viable.
But can buying fair trade products really help solve exploitation?
Telling us that we as consumers can shop our way out of modern slavery
is not correct and also really problematic.
We’re being made responsible for something that’s actually
a systemic failure.
We could have laws called joint liability laws
that make brands legally responsible
for the conditions in their supply chains.
Instead, we tell people to try to shop ethically.
Calling for more rights for those at risk
might instead prove more beneficial than changing our shopping habits.
As a consumer, start demanding systematic changes.
If you’re seeing governments cut back on social protection,
scapegoat migrants, and pit workers against each other,
stand up.
Today, millions of people around the world
are trapped in situations of exploitation.
It works really well for politicians
to talk about exploitation as modern slavery.
It makes us think that the problem is really rare
and it's caused by criminals.
And in reality, people become exploited or modern slaves
because they're vulnerable to bad work.
Modern slavery is used as a guise for the government to be able to...
you know, feel good about themselves.
What the government are doing and increasingly doing
increases the risks of exploitation.