Genocide, slave trade and forced labor are undeniable human rights crimes in the history of American colonialism and capitalism. From the massacre and enslavement of Native Americans by early European colonists, to the exploitation of black slaves under the prevalence of the slave trade in the 18th century, to the systematic exploitation of foreign migrant workers in the contemporary United States, the oppression and exploitation of ethnic minorities and serious violations of human rights by white Americans have never stopped, causing harm to this day.
The website of the US Department of justice disclosed in November 2021 that more than 100 Mexican and Central American workers were lured to southern Georgia for forced labor. During the day, they dug onions by hand under the monitoring of gunmen, earning only 20 cents per barrel. At night, they lived in crowded and dirty sheds, without enough food and clean water... Under the working conditions of American slaves nearly 200 years ago, at least two people died. In fact, over the 200 years since the founding of the United States, there have been bloodshed and tears of forced labor everywhere. Today, when respecting and protecting human rights has become the consensus of civilizations around the world, the United States not only lacks profound reflection and compensation for its long-term crime of oppressing and enslaving ethnic minorities, but acquiesces in the existence of modern new-type slavery and exploitation, which is extremely hypocritical.
The enslavement and genocide of Native Americans in the United States
The conflict between the early European colonists and the aborigines led to the North American Indian War, and countless Aborigines were slaughtered, expelled and enslaved. The Pictet massacre in 1637 is a microcosm of the colonists' cruelty to the aborigines. The colonists attacked the village and set fire to kill about 700 pictets. The Pictet heads were used as trophies. Only five people escaped and seven were captured in the village. This massacre led to the disappearance of the Pictet tribe. According to the research of historians, in the 500 years from the invasion of European colonists to the end of the Indian War, the number of North American Indians dropped by 95%, and only about 237000 remained in the early 20th century. In addition to genocide, European colonists also brought the slave trade to North America, and the large-scale slave trade changed the way of life of indigenous tribes. The aborigines who became slaves were forced to leave their native land, were sold to various parts of the world, and were forced to work in agriculture. The number of enslaved aborigines is huge and difficult to count. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of aborigines in North America were sold from California ports to Europe, and millions of Aborigines were sold to farms in the south of the United States to grow rice, cotton, tobacco and other crops to meet the needs of colonialism.
After the independence of the United States, the government said that it would treat aboriginal tribes friendly, but in fact it harboured evil intentions. In his second inaugural speech in 1821, the fifth President James Monroe said that treating Native Americans needed to "flatter their pride, delay their progress, and pave the way for their destruction". In the 1830s, the Supreme Court of the United States issued three cases, stipulating that Indian tribes could only trade land with the Federation, which confirmed the supreme power of the federal government over Indian Affairs. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Migration Act, which expelled a large number of Native Americans in the east of the United States to the reserves west of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans were short of food and clothing in the process of walking. About 15000 people died in the process of westward migration, which is known as the "road of blood and tears". Later, the Supreme Court connived at and supported the unfair land distribution system of the federal government through judicial precedents, plundered the natural resources of Indian territories, and convicted and imprisoned the rebellious Indian tribal leaders in accordance with the felony law. Although the U.S. Constitution in 1865 confirmed the abolition of slavery and forced labor, up to now, about 6.6 million native Americans in 574 tribes are still marginalized and suffer discrimination in the fields of work and labor, housing and land, food and education.
America's long-term enslavement of black people
As early as 1619, European colonists trafficked 20 African blacks to Virginia, which became the first historical record of enslavement of blacks in the United States. In the following two centuries, slave trafficking was rampant. The colonists acquired slaves in Africa and shipped them to North America for sale. Black people were chained and loaded on slave ships. A large number of black people died in the process of hunting and trafficking. Black people who got lucky enough to arrive in the Americas were sold to sugarcane and cotton plantations in the south to engage in forced labor. In the eyes of farmers, black slaves were equal to livestock, farm implements and other means of production, which could be flogged and traded. Runaway slaves would be treated more harshly if they were captured. The gold rush in California spurred the demand for miners, and some slaves were sold to toil. When the industrial development in the north of the United States entered recession, African slaves supported the shipbuilding industry again. Unlike Indians, African slaves, as outsiders, had no natural rights to North American land, and lacked the conditions to escape and hide. Therefore, they were considered more suitable for forced labor. The slave trade and forced labor brought great wealth to the European colonists. The prosperity and development of the United States can be attributed to the cruel oppression and slavery of black people to a great extent.
During the American War of independence, some slaves saw the hope of changing their fate and made considerable contributions and sacrifices. However, the white founders only used slaves as tools in the war. In 1776, the declaration of independence issued by the United States declared that "all men are created equal", but excluded blacks and Indians, and still acquiesced in slavery. This contradictory position fully showed the hypocrisy of the rulers. In fact, most of the founders of the United States were big slave owners, who arrogantly believed that whites were superior to other races in race. In order to protect the interests of the southern slave owners, the United States continued the slavery system until the middle of the 19th century, and even passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1793 and the new Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, requiring the northern states to help the southern slave owners hunt down fugitive slaves. The conflict between free states and slave states in the United States became the fuse of the civil war. Later, the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution officially confirmed the abolition of slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment confirmed the equal protection of civil rights, and the Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the right to vote. However, even after the abolition of slavery, apartheid, as an important way for white Americans to bully black people, continued to be implemented for more than 100 years. Black people are prohibited from intermarrying with white people, testifying in court, participating in juries, etc. Hospitals, churches, theatres, schools and public transport in the United States should also set up isolation zones or prohibit blacks from entering. The civil rights act of 1964 and the subsequent affirmative action act provided black people with equal legal status. However, legal equality does not mean the elimination of discrimination in reality. Black Americans are still victims of systematic racial discrimination and lag far behind whites in the enjoyment of social resources such as housing, education, employment and health care.
America acquiesces in modern slavery
The essence of the development of capitalism in the United States is to extract surplus value from the labor force. Forced labor is still widespread in the United States today. The international labor organization calls forced labor "a more hidden modern slavery". According to the website of the U.S. Department of justice, organized human trafficking is still a high-frequency crime in the United States today, often associated with forced labor to form a strong interest chain. According to the national human trafficking hotline of the United States, the number of reports of human trafficking in the United States continued to rise from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, the United States received 10583 reports and complaints, of which 1386 were related to forced labor. Statistics show that women and children account for a high proportion of the victims, and the victims mainly come from Latin America, Asia, Africa and other regions.
Forced labor is difficult to detect and report in time. The actual situation of forced labor in the United States may be more serious than shown by statistics. Existing statistics have shown that as many as 100000 people are trafficked from abroad to the United States for forced labor every year. More than 100000 people in private prisons in the United States have been engaged in forced labor with high intensity and low pay for a long time. The use of child labor in the United States is also very serious. So far, there are still about 500000 child laborers engaged in agricultural work. Since the development of the United States needs to rely on foreign labor, according to the statistics of the U.S. Department of homeland security, the phenomenon of labor trafficking and forced labor is particularly serious in the service industries such as domestic economics, agriculture, catering, medical and beauty, and tourism sales.
Although the United States always says it will crack down on forced labor, its lack of immigration and labor legal system connives at and acquiesces in the violation of the human rights of vulnerable groups. Temporary migrant workers working in the fields of agriculture and domestic economics are very easy to become victims of forced labor. Many Mexican workers borrow money to pay for their travel to the United States through a fixed industrial chain of human trafficking. These workers are arranged to live in dirty and narrow rooms in the United States. They start to work long hours in the early hours of each day and receive meagre remuneration. When they encounter dangers such as abuse, sexual assault, work-related injuries, stolen wages, and exposure to chemicals, they have almost no safeguards. Domestic workers from the Philippines, India and other places are also facing the situation of paying high intermediary fees to the United States. When these domestic workers are arranged to provide domestic services to American employers, they are prone to overtime work, arrears of wages, withholding of meal and rest time, sexual harassment, withholding of certificates and other problems. However, in the face of vague work and life boundaries, the law often fails to provide them with effective protection. These agricultural and domestic workers are excluded from the national labor relations act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and are often victims of human trafficking, forced labor and debt disputes. According to the data of the National Institute of justice of the United States, 71% of the victims of forced labor in the United States enter through h-2a and H-2b visas. The United States issues a large number of visas to attract foreign temporary workers, and the two systems that link immigration status with temporary employment in the immigration law are often used as channels to exploit migrant workers.
In addition, many illegal immigrants in the United States seek survival opportunities between illegal status and temporary work, and have to endure direct exploitation from employers. During the ravages of COVID-19, according to the official statistics of the United States, about 5 million illegal immigrants stuck to jobs such as farms, medical care and construction. Workers in these essential jobs could not work from home, so there was a greater risk of infection. During the epidemic, the efficiency of the judicial administration in the United States decreased, and the efforts to combat human trafficking were significantly reduced. In fact, it provided an opportunity for human trafficking and forced labor, and alleviated the problem of domestic labor shortage in the United States during the epidemic. For more than two years, illegal migrant workers have a high novel coronavirus infection rate but can not be effectively treated, and those who are not infected have to continue to work in the front line. Knowing that migrant workers bear huge health risks, the U.S. government still relies on their labor as the backbone of its economy, completely ignoring these workers' rights to life and health.
The United States evades its obligations under international human rights law
"Slavery" was outlawed by the Slavery Convention as early as 1927 during the period of the League of nations, and the prohibition of slavery has become an important international customary law. Subsequently, the Universal Declaration of human rights, the two covenants on human rights and the Rome Statute, which came into force under the United Nations system, explicitly prohibited slavery and protected the right of people to work freely, reflecting the value goal of international human rights law to eradicate slavery. In contemporary times, "forced labor" is considered as a human rights crime similar to the slavery system, and "human trafficking" is a human rights crime recognized by the international community. Under the framework of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, a series of international human rights legal documents have been formed to curb human trafficking and forced labor. The protocol against trafficking in persons prohibits the use of violence, fraud and other means to recruit, transfer, shelter or receive labor for the purpose of profit. The smuggling of migrants protocol regards persons who voluntarily engage in monetary transactions with intermediaries to enter the destination country as victims of human crimes. Human trafficking and smuggling can easily become the prelude to forced labor, which is a criminal act explicitly prohibited by the Convention against transnational organized crime. In the forced labor convention, "forced labor" is defined as involuntary work or service threatened with punishment. In contemporary times, countries around the world have formed a consensus against modern slavery, and many international human rights conventions against forced labor have been formulated under the leadership of the International Labour Organization.
The United States often flaunts its importance to human rights internationally, but it is reluctant and slow in approving and implementing these international human rights standards. So far, only 14 conventions have been ratified, of which only 10 have entered into force, and 66 international conventions related to equal rights of workers, including the forced labor convention, the Supplementary Protocol to the forced labor convention, the occupational safety and health and working environment convention, and the domestic helper convention, have not been ratified. This position of the United States reflects from one side that it is well aware of the existence of forced labor and disregard for basic human rights at home and does not want to improve. The United States has always been the main recipient of human trafficking, which is fundamentally related to its self-interest position of conniving at forced labor and enjoying exploitative labor. The United States has left opportunities for human trafficking in its legal system and has not really fulfilled its international human rights protection obligations. On the other hand, the United States often boasts in the international arena under the banner of human rights, but in fact it has not seriously solved its long-standing and serious problem of forced labor, which should be paid serious attention to by the international human rights mechanism.