IN A SOUTH Dublin suburb, Mohammed Younis endured seven years of slavery. Threatened and isolated, his every movement watched and controlled, he worked 11-hour shifts, 7 days a week, in the cramped, unventilated kitchen of a takeaway. His passport was taken and his employer told him he would be arrested if he left. Mohammed spoke no English and had nowhere to turn.
Held as a slave in an Irish home for two years, Anele worked over 70 hours a week child-minding, cooking and cleaning. She was never given a day off. Even years later, there are tears in Anele’s eyes as she tells her story, though her voice is clear and strong. “Every day I cried; I wanted to die,” she says. “I saw no way out until I met a woman outside the children’s school who gave me a number for MRCI, and then I ran away, bringing only my handbag.”
Over the past two years, Mohammed and Anele have told their stories many times – to politicians, civil servants, lawyers and journalists. Along with other victims of modern-day slavery in Ireland, they have been campaigning for the criminalisation of forced labour in Ireland. This extraordinary gap in our laws has meant that the employers who exploited and abused them for so long cannot be prosecuted.
This changes today. The Dáil has passed a Bill criminalising modern-day slavery: the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Amendment Bill 2013 incorporates into Irish law a definition of forced labour – the legal term for modern-day slavery. This means perpetrators can finally be prosecuted. In fact, employers who force people to work in conditions like those Mohammed and Anele experienced could now face life imprisonment.
It’s impossible to convey just how much this means to the campaigners, who so often faced utter disbelief and denial when telling their stories: disbelief that slavery, far from being a thing of the past, is a growing reality in Ireland today; denial that our State was failing victims so completely.
Historic as this moment is, it’s not the end of the campaign. Through our work, we have seen countless victims bravely flee exploitation only to be left with nothing, facing homelessness and destitution. We’ve seen employers threaten victims’ families and refuse to relinquish their passports. Criminalising perpetrators is a huge step forward, but we need to make sure victims are protected too. Minister Shatter has committed to creating a Victim Protection Scheme; this must be brought in immediately, because if we want to stamp out modern-day slavery in Ireland, we must make it safe for people to come forward.
When it comes to modern-day slavery, as with so many other forms of labour exploitation, the most effective way of eradicating it is to empower workers; to uphold workers’ rights through legislation and enforcement.
Watching the vote in Leinster House today were campaigners who endured modern-day slavery in Ireland in domestic homes and restaurants, in embassies and on farms. They have fought for this law in the full knowledge that it is too late to make a difference to their own cases; they hope only to ensure justice for all future victims of modern-day slavery, so that slavery will one day truly be a thing of the past. Each and every one of them is a testament to the power, generosity and resilience of the human spirit.
Aoife Murphy works with Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI). MRCI works for justice, empowerment and equality for migrants and has dealt with over 180 cases of modern-day slavery in Ireland over the past 6 years.
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