MODERN SLAVERY IN MALAYSIA
#SlaveryHappensHere. This page was built to ensure nobody stays uninformed.
(Pictures are for illustration purposes only.)
WHAT IS MODERN SLAVERY?
It's when a person is subjected to slavery, servitude, forced labour, or human trafficking.
What distinguishes modern slavery from other forms of abuse is that the victim’s personhood is taken away. They lose the ability to determine what to do, where to go, and how to live their lives. Instead, they function for the sake of other people, including us: to build our trains, catch our fish, make our lotions, clean our kitchens. They are held as property, and we reap the benefits.
WHAT DOES MODERN SLAVERY LOOK LIKE?
Modern slavery is identified by certain indicators. All cases of abuse of labourers are bad enough, but where cases of abuse include these indicators, it is modern slavery. The victim has been stripped of their personhood and reduced to property.
PHYSICAL ABUSE
Where labourers are physically or sexually abused by their employers, they are clearly not being treated in the way that their basic human dignity requires.
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In February 2018, Adelina Lisao, an Indonesian domestic worker, died of multiple organ failure. Videos surfaced of her employer repeatedly beating and wounding her.
SQUALID HOUSING
"Squalid" means extremely run-down, dirty, and neglected. When workers are recruited and forced to live in squalid housing, they are being denied their humanity and reduced to impersonal units of labour.
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It is well-known that many of our migrant workers sleep in containers and other unacceptable conditions. Some of these may indicate states of modern slavery.
LITTLE OR NO WAGES
Victims may not be paid for their labour or at all, or may have their wages reduced without explanation. They may also be subjected to debt bondage, where they are told that they owe a debt to the employer (e.g. for transport and recruitment fees) and are threatened with harm if they do not work to pay it off.
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Victims usually do not have a formal employment contract on which they can claim wages, and they are usually not in any position to initiate such a claim.
PASSPORT RETENTION
It is illegal under section 12, Passport Act 1966 for employers to remove labourers' passports. To do so would remove their only means of formal identification on Malaysian soil, preventing them from moving around Malaysia and out of Malaysia safely as they are entitled to. So passport retention effectively robs labourers of their personal liberty.
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In 2020, Tesco reported retention of migrant labourers' passports among suppliers in Malaysia.
EXCESSIVE HOURS
This can take the form of long continuous working days, refusal of breaks, and excessive overtime demands. Where this is coupled with failure to pay proper wages (and worse, with other abuses), the labourer is being commodified as property rather than a free person.
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In 2020, Tesco reported excessive overtime as one of various indicators of modern slavery in Malaysia. The US Department of Labour also cited excessive working hours as a reason for listing rubber gloves manufactured in Malaysia as an item produced by forced labour.
UNSAFE WORK
Victims often work in dirty and dangerous jobs without appropriate training and protective equipment.
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For example, it has been alleged on the Associated Press that labourers on palm oil plantations suffer severe physical effects from handling unsafe fertilizers without protection for many hours a day.
Any of these indicators in a labourer's conditions must trigger an investigation into possible modern slavery. Where their living and working conditions include grave degrees of the indicators above, they are modern-day slaves, and they need to be rescued.
WHERE DOES MODERN SLAVERY HAPPEN?
Victims are usually held in modern slavery away from the public eye. This makes it difficult for the authorities to monitor, and easy for us to ignore. Here are some examples.
PALM OIL PLANTATIONS
Palm oil will be familiar from your shampoo labels or from driving down the North-South Highway.​
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Recently, the Associated Press published a scathing exposé of labour abuse, including sexual abuse, rampant in Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil plantations. Palm oil is highly demanded worldwide because of its chemical properties. But the work required to meet that demand is physically tough and chemically hazardous. The seclusion of palm oil plantations adds to the risk of modern slavery festering in these spaces.
RESIDENTIAL PREMISES
Basically, homes.
Domestic workers (a.k.a. maids, kakak) are physically and verbally abused, and forced to work very long hours. Because these take place in homes, it is harder for the public and for police to detect modern slavery.
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For an extremely unfortunate case, learn about the late Adelina Lisao, a 20-year-old Indonesian maid who died in Penang in 2018.
HIDDEN BROTHELS
It may look like a massage parlour or other business from outside, but in the shady back room, foreign women trafficked into Malaysia might be providing sexual services against their will.
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In 2017, the Women's Aid Organization published a case study of a foreign woman who was brought to Malaysia against her will and forced to work as a prostitute. She was not paid the wages promised, and was told she could only go back to Myanmar if she paid her traffickers RM8,000.
DO WEÂ HAVE LAWS AGAINST MODERN SLAVERY?
Yes we do, kind of.
The Federal Constitution protects personal liberty, prohibits slavery and forced labour, and protects citizens from banishment and restriction of movement. The Penal Code criminalizes kidnapping, abduction, trading in slaves, exploitation for prostitution, and unlawful compulsory labour. The Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007 prohibits human trafficking. The Child Act 2001 protects girls from prostitution. The Employment Act 1955 provides minimum protections for workers.
However, the application of these laws is not so straightforward. For example, domestic labour is often not considered formal employment, and there have been suggestions that investigators and lawyers are not familiar with the law in this area.
To explore this more, have a look at the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation profile for Malaysia and the 2020 Trafficking in Persons report by the US State Department.
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT MODERN SLAVERY?
LOOK OUT AND LEARN.
Evaluate the conditions of labourers around you.
You might not have to look for very long during your daily commute before you find dehumanising conditions of work. Workers sleeping under train platforms? A domestic worker being verbally abused in the garden? Migrants not being paid? Look out, talk to workers, do research. Uncover the instances of modern slavery that have festered under our very noses while we've been unconcerned and distracted.
SHOP RESPONSIBLY.
Your shopping isn't neutral.
It takes diligence and money for a business to completely rid its supply chain of the risk of modern slavery. Many beauty brands, for example, contain palm oil traceable to our plantations. To ensure that the suppliers of that palm oil protect labourers adequately would incur costs.
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If you continue shopping unreservedly with brands that show no concern for ending modern slavery, you're telling them that modern slavery doesn't really matter to their customers, so they needn't incur costs ensuring their supply chains are free from abuse.
If you search hard enough, you can find statements by big businesses about their efforts to ensure they are not profiting from modern slavery. You can also find websites like the Good Shopping Guide which evaluate some top brands for us. Otherwise, you can look for reports by government agencies and NGOs about specific industries, to evaluate the risk of modern slavery tainting your prospective purchase.
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SUPPORT RESCUERS.
Support can take many forms.
Many people in Malaysia don't even know that modern slavery is a thing. "You mean slavery still exists?" would not be an uncommon question. So first we must recognise the evil of it, know the facts that help us understand it, and seriously talk about it with other people. It needs to be clear that modern slavery is not tolerated here.
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Then engage with organisations that work to rescue slaves and improve law enforcement in this area. You can volunteer, give financial support, or start by keeping up-to-date with their work. (Check out Tenaganita!)
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If you were born elsewhere, trafficked against your will into Malaysia, forced to work in dehumanising jobs, and prohibited from leaving, I think the least you'd expect is for the people around you to call out the evil and support your rescue.
FURTHER READING
Do you want to find our more about modern slavery in Malaysia?
US State Department 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report on Malaysia (2020)
Women's Aid Organization, Human Trafficking in Malaysia: A Focus on Women and Children (2017)
Tenaganita, The Story of Adelina Lisao video (2020)
Antislavery in Domestic Legislation, Malaysia Profile