The more you dig, the worse things look. But one issue that's finally coming to light are the incredible abuses of human rights in the Northern Mariana Islands. Third world workers are tricked into bondage with promises of high paying labor, only to find themselves trapped in sweatshops or worse.
ABC News, The Blotter:
A 23-year-old woman sold into sexual slavery in the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States, told her story of kidnapping, rape and a lucky escape to members of Congress today, as part of an effort to expose lax laws and officials accused by reformers of tolerating rampant human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
"I was scared. I started crying. I told him, 'I don't like. I don't like.' He then started to rape me," Kayleen Entena testified today in a hearing on immigration, labor, law enforcement and economic conditions in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).
Entena was "recruited" in the Philippines to work as a waitress in Saipan, lured by the prospect of earning money to bring her family out of poverty.
Sweatshops in the Marianas, AKA Saipan, are nightmares. And they were protected by Tom DeLay, who told sweatshop slavers, "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system."...
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Tags: news | politics | free trade | human rights | civil rights | labor | slavery | Jack Abramoff | Tom DeLay | John Doolittle | republican | crime | corruption | religious right | Northern Mariana Islands | Saipan
