Slavery

Brazilian prosecutors said Tuesday they are suing Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD and two of its contractors over allegations of using workers in slave-like labour conditions and engaging in international human trafficking. The labour prosecutors' office in Bahia state said in a statement that they are seeking 257 million Brazilian reais (USD 50 million) in damages from BYD, China JinJiang Construction Brazil and Tecmonta Equipamentos Inteligentes. The lawsuit stems from an investigation that last year led to the rescue of 220 Chinese workers from the construction site of BYD's new factory in the city of Camaari. Prosecutors said the workers were brought to Brazil under false pretenses and with visas that did not match their jobs. Working conditions were extremely degrading. Five settlements were kept by BYD, JinJiang and Tecmonta. Some workers slept on beds without mattresses and had their personal belongings alongside with their food, the prosecutors' office said. There were f

A United Nations judge studying at Oxford has been sentenced in the UK for keeping a Ugandan woman as an unpaid domestic worker in her home

Donald Trump criticised the current US immigration policy, stating that unqualified individuals and their children were benefiting from a system that was never meant for them

King Charles III told a summit of Commonwealth countries in Samoa Friday that the past could not be changed as he indirectly acknowledged calls from some of Britain's former colonies for a reckoning over its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The British royal understood the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate," he told leaders in Apia. But Charles stopped short of mentioning financial reparations that some leaders at the event have urged and instead exhorted them to find the right language and an understanding of history to guide us towards making the right choices in future where inequality exists." None of us can change the past but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to write the inequalities that endure," said Charles, who is attending his first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM, as Britain's head of state. His remarks at the summit's official opening ceremony echoed comments a day earlie

Island leaders are expected to issue a declaration on ocean protection at the summit, with climate change being a central topic of discussion

California will formally apologise for slavery and its lingering effects on Black Americans in the state under a new law Governor Gavin Newsom has signed. The legislation was part of a package of reparations bills introduced this year that seek to offer repair for decades of policies that drove racial disparities for African Americans. Newsom also approved on Thursday laws to improve protections against hair discrimination for athletes and increase oversight over the banning of books in state prisons. The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and permitting the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of persistent racial disparities, the Democratic governor said in a statement. Building on decades of work, California is now taking another important step forward in recognising the grave injustices of the past - and making amends for the harms caused. Newsom signed the bills after vetoing a proposal Wednesday that

Madhya Pradesh Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his promise to remove all signs of slavery

The man, only known as Victim A, was beaten, given scraps of leftover food and forced to live in filthy conditions in a caravan

Hazardous, forced work conditions sometimes akin to slavery have been detected on nearly 500 industrial fishing vessels around the world, but identifying those responsible for abuses at sea is hampered by a lack of transparency and regulatory oversight, a new report concluded. The research by the Financial Transparency Coalition, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organisation that tracks illicit money flows, is the most comprehensive attempt to date to identify the companies operating vessels where tens of thousands of workers every year are estimated to be trapped in unsafe conditions. The report, published Wednesday, found that a quarter of vessels suspected of abusing workers are flagged to China, whose distant water fleet dominates fishing on the high seas, traditionally lawless areas beyond the jurisdiction of any single country. Vessels from Russia, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea were also accused of mistreatment of fishers. Forced labour in the seafood industry is a .

Ten countries, including India, account for nearly two in every three people living in modern slavery and over half the world's population; India has 11 million people in modern slavery

Several hundred documents and items revealing the names and other details of victims of slavery in France's colonial empire is being added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register. This latest addition, which the UN cultural agency approved last week, marks the first time that France has pushed for the inscription of documents on the UNESCO register that were previously archived in France's present-day overseas territories. The Memory of the World program and register was set up in 1992 to safeguard the documentary heritage of humanity against collective amnesia, neglect, decay over time, according to UNESCO. The documents date from between the 17th and 19th centuries, from places including the modern-day nations of Haiti, Mauritius and Senegal and the French overseas territories of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Mayotte, Martinique and Reunion. They represent just a fraction of some 4 million people "enslaved in the French colonial empire, whether victims of trafficking or born locall

Noting the goals and resolutions of the future are extremely important for the country, the Prime Minister said that equal emphasis has to be laid on key priority areas of the present2

In its latest report, the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO) said that 50 million people were living in modern slavery in 2021

How does one calculate reparations? Who decides how the money will be spent? If it is to be distributed, who will get how much - and as cash, or in some other form - wonders T N Ninan

California's first-in-the-nation task force on reparations is at a crossroads, with members divided on which Black Americans should be eligible for compensation as atonement for a slave system

Eleven US mayors from Los Angeles to tiny Tullahassee Oklahoma have pledged to pay reparations for slavery to a small group of Black residents in their cities

Book review of THE CROOKED PATH TO ABOLITION: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

It is such detailed work on forced labour that could have been significant

The slave trade pioneered a new kind of finance, secured on the bodies of the powerless

Trump's appeal to remember history came as his own relationship with the military is under strain