Fight for Freedom

The latest Fight for Freedom campaign email from Anti-Slavery International suggests two ways of getting involved in tackling slavery today.

Undocumented North Korean migrants to China are being deported back to North Korea where they are held in prison camps and subjected to forced labour. Detainees are forced to carry out work such as farming, logging, and quarrying, working long hours without restdays. They are frequently beaten and subject to degrading treatment and punishment. Click here to write to the Chinese authorities to ask them to stop returning undocumented migrants to North Korea. You can read background information on forced labour in North Korea here.

Our Government has proposed changes to the domestic worker visa, in line with their immigration proposals published earlier this year. These include putting domestic workers on their employer's visa, restricting their stay to a maximum of six months, and removing their right to change employers. This amounts to a dramatic reversal of policies to give some protection to migrant domestics, which the Government introduced after coming to power, in 1998. The proposed changes would have a devastating effect on all migrant domestic workers currently in the UK and all newly arriving domestic workers to the UK. They would take away the rights of these workers, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, and effectively legalising trafficking.

Early Day Motion 860 asks for the Government to drop the proposals and retain the current provisions. An Early Day Motion (EDM) operates like a petition for MPs and will run until the current session of Parliament ends in the autumn. If you are in the UK, you can write to your MP and ask them to sign EDM 860. You can find out who your MP is and email him/her at theyworkforyou.com.