[NYTr] CENSORED: Human Trafficking Builds US Embassy in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Rich Winkel (activ-l)

TOP 25 CENSORED STORIES OF 2007

#5 Human Traffic Builds US Embassy in Iraq

Source: CorpWatch, October 17, 2007
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14173

Title: A US Fortress Rises in Baghdad: 
Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World's Largest Embassy 

Author: David Phinney
Student Researcher: Kristen Kebler and Angela Purcaro
Faculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.

The enduring monument to US liberation and democracy in Iraq will be the
most expensive and heavily fortified embassy in the world "and is being
built by a Kuwait contractor repeatedly accused of using forced labor
trafficked from South Asia under US contracts. The $592 million,
104-acre fortress equal in size to the Vatican City is scheduled to open
in September 2007. With a highly secretive contract awarded by the US
State Department, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting has joined the
ranks of Halliburton/KBR in Iraq by using bait-and-switch recruiting
practices. Thousands of citizens from countries that have banned travel
or work in Iraq are being tricked, smuggled into brutal and inhumane
labor camps, and subjected to months of forced servitude "all in the
middle of the US-controlled Green Zone, right under the nose of the US
State Department. 

Though Associated Press reports that, The 5,500 Americans and Iraqis
working at the embassy are far more numerous than at any other US
mission worldwide, 1 there is no mention in corporate media of the 3,000
South Asian laborers working for contractors in dangerous and abysmal
living and working conditions.

One such contractor is First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting. FKTC has
procured several billion dollars in US construction contracts since the
war began in March 2003. Much of its work is performed by cheap labor
hired from South Asia. The company currently employs an estimated 7,500
foreign laborers in theaters of war.

American FKTC employees report having witnessed the issuance of false
boarding passes to Dubai, and passport seizure from planeloads of South
Asian workers, who were instead routed to war-torn Baghdad. Former US
Embassy construction manager for FKTC, John Owen, disclosed to author
David Phinney that the deception had all the appearance of smuggling
workers into Iraq.

On April 4, 2006, the Pentagon issued a contracting directive following
an investigation that officially confirmed that contractors in Iraq,
many working as subcontractors to Halliburton/KBR, were illegally
confiscating worker passports, using deceptive bait-and-switch hiring
practices, and charging recruiting fees that indebted low-paid migrant
workers for many months or even years to their employers.

Section 1. (U) of the Pentagon directive states, An inspection of
contracting activities supporting DoD in Iraq revealed evidence of
illegal confiscation of worker (Third Country National) passports by
contractors/subcontractors; deceptive hiring practices and excessive
recruiting fees, substandard worker living conditions at some sites,
circumvention of Iraqi immigration procedures by
contractors/subcontractors and lack of mandatory trafficking in persons
awareness training. This FRAGO [fragmentary order] establishes
responsibilities within MNF-1 for combating trafficking in persons. 
An April 19, 2006 memorandum from Joint Contracting Command in Baghdad
to All Contractors again states that, Evidence indicates a widespread
practice of withholding employee passports to, among other things,
prevent employees jumping to other employers. All contractors engaging
in the above mentioned practice are directed to cease and desist in this
practice immediately. 

The Pentagon has yet to announce, however, any penalty for those found
to be in violation of US labor trafficking laws or contract
requirements. In a resignation letter dated June 2006, Owen told FKTC
and US State Department officials that his managers at the US Embassy
site regularly beat migrant workers, demonstrated little regard for
worker safety, and routinely breached security. He also complained of
poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and medical malpractice in
labor camps where several thousand low-paid migrant workers, recruited
from the Philippines, India, and Pakistan lived. Those workers, Owen
noted, earned as little as $10 to $30 for a twelve-hour workday.
Rory Mayberry, a medic subcontracted to FKTC to attend construction
crews at the Embassy, shares similar complaints about treatment of
migrant laborers. In reports made available to the US State Department,
the US Army, and FKTC, Mayberry called for the closure of the onsite
medical clinic, listing dozens of serious safety hazards, unsanitary
conditions, as well as routine negligence and malpractice. He
furthermore called for an investigation into deaths that he suspected
resulted from medical malpractice. Mayberry is not aware of any
follow-up on his allegations.

Owen says that State Department officials supervising the US Embassy
project are aware of abuse, but apparently do nothing. He recalls, Once
when seventeen workers climbed the wall of the construction site to
escape, a State Department official helped round them up and put them in
virtual lockdown. 

Phinney says that more FKTC employees are stepping forward to say that
Owen s and Mayberry s testimonies only begin to scratch the surface of
the conditions workers are forced to endure in building this monument to
US liberation and democracy in Iraq.

Citation:
1. Associated Press, MSNBC, April 14, 2006.
New US Embassy in Iraq Cloaked in Mystery, 


UPDATE BY DAVID PHINNEY

When I first heard that Project Censored would recognize this story on
the low-wage migrant laborers from South Asia building the US embassy in
Baghdad, I admit I felt the story was a failure. Allegations of forced
labor, lousy treatment of workers and beatings struck me as something
that should rise to the level of torture at Abu Ghraib. Despite what
appears to be a whitewash review of the embassy project by the State
Department Inspector General that exonerated the contractor "even though
more than a dozen sources on the site say conditions were abysmal "I am
now encouraged by a recent effort at the US Justice Department to
investigate allegations of labor trafficking and other matters. But the
problem of labor abuse has been found to be widespread among
contractors in the theater of war in Iraq. Unfortunately, not one
contractor has been penalized "in fact, many are being rewarded with new
US-funded contracts. That is a crime to humanity that may haunt the
United States for years to come.


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