About 10 years ago, when Jamaica was struggling with its legal categorisation issues regarding human trafficking, I actually interviewed a victim. The victim was a male and had been living in Jamaica for about five years. He was originally from India.

Most people don’t realise it, but the opportunity to live at a higher standard of living and to live your entrepreneurial dream is often the driving force of people migrating from India to Jamaica. India, as a country, has developed significantly since World War II and could be considered wealthy. This does not mean that the standard of living for every Indian person is high. Poverty is rampant, the caste system is alive and well, and the regulatory bodies that are busy around the world focusing on easy targets like Jamaica don’t seem to be interested in tearing down this system of virtual indentureship.

When he was recruited, he was told he would be paid a salary, his papers would be sorted out, and eventually after a few years he could become a partner in a future business.

Well, he was given a work permit and his expenses in respect of travel were honoured. The problem was, he was never paid a salary. He was transported to work, given somewhere to live, and some degree of food was provided in the house. But he never ever received a salary.

He told me that this was the story of virtually every Indian worker who works in these stores across Jamaica, that this is a standard practice. Housing, transport, groceries, electricity, water, but no pay. This is sounding a lot to me like indentureship.

He was quite willing to tell me his story. But he wouldn’t participate in taking legal action against the man who, by all accounts, was enslaving him.

He spoke of implications in India to his family, concerns regarding his friends who were still indentured to this man, and a few other issues. They were all relevant, but I think that fear dominated him in a way I have seen in persons who live in inner cities.

He recorded his ‘owner’ in a conversation that they had when he didn’t turn up for work on the Monday morning of his escape, and was informed that he would not be returning to him.

The man’s voice thundered intimidation as he ordered the victim to get to work, that he could not leave him, and warned him not to make him get angry.

He wouldn’t sign the complaint to allow me to prosecute the Indian national who had been granted Jamaican citizenship and was now breaking every labour law in the book.

That, however, could not prevent me from contacting him and inviting him to let me see him angry.

I warned him to back off the man and, like most bullies, he came across as quite meek when confronted by someone who was not afraid of him and was capable to ram his teeth down his throat if he chose to attack.

I had been impacted so much by the taped conversation — the things he said that intimated that one human being was owning another in a country that had overcome chattel slavery over 200 years ago. I wanted to meet the man who was at the other end of that conversation. I wanted to understand his mindset from an academic point of view. And, because I am as flawed as most human beings are, I wanted a confrontation. I wanted a fight.

This has been something that I have often struggled with as a lawman: The human desire to fight people who disgust me and who hurt people who are weaker than themselves. I struggle with it because, as an agent of the state, you have to use the parameters within the law. It is important that if you are going to enforce the law, you follow it. It is also important to understand that violence solves very little and is a temporary release of frustration.

I was, however, very angry and informed him that he no longer owned this human being and, in fact, if he is in the practice of owning human beings then there is a dark room waiting for him that continues to deny every human rights organisation in the world called our prison.

A few questions circle in my head as to why this practice could be allowed to be taking place under our noses.

I understand law enforcement’s hands are tied without cooperation from the victims, but where are the human rights advocates? Why is the cause of Indian nationals working in Jamaica not front and centre on their agenda? Unlike law enforcement, they don’t need evidence to act.

In fact, why does Jamaican society sit back and seem so ambivalent to this practice?

I think the reason is the same which allowed slavery to last so long in the Pan-American region: That oppressed people are a different race and a different nationality from those who make up the primary population of the country. So there is a failure to identify with the victims.

This is not good enough by any standard, and it’s certainly not good enough by Jamaican standards. We are becoming far too lax as it relates to what foreigners are doing to foreigners in Jamaica.

I visited a site recently and was told by someone who should know that the Chinese workers are prisoners. How in the hell do we justify Chinese workers lifting blocks in Jamaica?

The standard for getting a work permit is that you have to have a skill that is not easily available in Jamaica. There is no job on a construction site that I see those guys in light blue pajamas doing that a Jamaican can’t do. Why are there labourers here? How much are they being paid? If they are prisoners, what crimes did they commit? These are questions that need answering.

To be a prisoner in China is not quite the same thing as being a prisoner in Jamaica. We don’t have political prisoners in Jamaica, well, not anymore at least. So, even if we were to allow this practice, we would have to know the reason for their incarceration.

How does Jamaican construction companies compete if foreign companies can use virtual slaves whilst Jamaican companies have to follow legal labour practices?

How does Jamaican workers compete for jobs in the appliance retail market if Indian workers are working for free or are indentured? We need answers, we need the Ministry of Labour to step up and enforce the rights of all workers in Jamaica, irrespective of their nationality or race.

As a people, we need to do better. Human beings not caring about other human beings. Ambivalence to the suffering of others and capitalism are a combination that allows for oppression and cruelty at levels that can drive economies.

The construction industry, the retail trade, and any other area of Jamaican industry that hires foreigners need to be compliant with our labour laws. And there needs to be no question marks, no unanswered questions about it.

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