PRESS RELEASE - Trade Aid - Wednesday 18 July 2007 – for immediate release

Slave Trade Still Exists

The Abolitionist William Wilberforce appears in cinemas across the country this week in the epic drama Amazing Grace which celebrates the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade through the British Parliament. Now 200 years on, after watching Amazing Grace, we find ourselves asking what has really changed.

The shackles and chains have disappeared, the slave auctions are no longer public but people trafficking is now a close second in illegal revenue earnings after the drugs and weapons trade. In 2007 there are now more slaves than at any time in history with recent estimates putting that figure at 27 million[1].

As New Zealanders and consumers of globally produced products, we are involved. The prevalence of slavery in industries such as cocoa, textiles, brick making, fireworks, carpets, fishing, farming, footballs, rubber and many more, means that slavery plays a part in some of the products we use and consume every day. The individual products can be hard to identify but it is becoming more common to be able to point the finger and expect change to happen both within industries and within companies.

So what about New Zealand – what could you do if you knew there was slavery in your chocolate, in your coffee or in your sportswear? Currently nothing, but New Zealand fair trade organisation Trade Aid is working to change this. July and August not only brings Amazing Grace to a cinema near you, it also brings The Petition which asks for an anti slavery law based on the premise that it should be illegal to import a product into New Zealand that is made using slave labour.

As New Zealanders we have a proud history of achieving firsts in social justice but when it comes to slavery we are dragging the chain. Currently in the United States a court case is being tried against chocolate manufacturer Nestle and the cocoa suppliers of the brands M&M/Mars and Hershey’s for alleged trafficking, torture and beatings of Malian children on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast. This court case is only possible because of a 1983 law that bans the importation of products to the U.S. known to use slave labour in their supply chains. New Zealand also needs to tell the world that we are not happy to be the receivers of slave products.

Modern-day slavery comes in many forms and includes bonded labour, trafficking, child slaves, forced labour, forced marriage and even small pockets of what is now known as traditional slavery. These men, women and children are mainly involved in providing products and services for the consumption of developed countries. Researchers are beginning to reveal that whole country economies are developing based on the use of slaves. The recent rescue of 31 workers who were forced slaves in a brick factory in the Shanxi province in China, the widespread use of child slaves and bonded labour in the cocoa plantations in Western Africa and the admission of tyre companies that employees in their rubber plantations must bring their families to work in order to make their quota and get paid, highlight a growing international trade system based on the exploitation of men, women and children who are not free. The biggest difference is that now the shackles and chains have been released, modern day slavery slips under the radar.

Amazing Grace opens in New Zealand cinemas from July 19 and viewers and other concerned individuals have until The UN day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition on August 23 to take action and sign The Petition. Trade Aid is aiming for 144,000 signatures, a symbolic number representative of the 3.6% of the countries population that William Wilberforce got to sign his petition when he and other abolitionists thought they had achieved the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1807.

[1] Sourced by the UN, New York Times, Amnesty International, The Christian Science Monitor, and Free The Slaves, among others. The statistics on slavery are complex and difficult to measure - this is not an exhaustive account of existing slavery
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SLAVERY STILL EXISTS - sign the petition to stop slave made products entering NZ - www.tradeaid.org.nz

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