Thief's Den

Diplomatic Immunity =/= Moral Authority

This sickening story in the WaPo today:

And you won't believe who's doing this. The same clique of diplomats who constantly harangue the U.S. over our "human rights record."

Alexandra Santacruz pressed up to the kitchen window on a recent spring night and peered anxiously down the street. She had done everything she could to get ready, tying her belongings neatly into four plastic bags and hiding them in the trash bin outside the Falls Church townhouse.

Just past 8 p.m., two hours after Santacruz began her vigil, a maroon van eased to a stop in front. Its passengers stepped out to begin their work: They were there to rescue her. The 24-year-old was desperate to leave her job as a live-in nanny, but her employers had threatened to call police if she did.

Two lawyers from CASA of Maryland, a workers' rights group, knocked on the door and confronted her stunned employer. They had become practiced at this exchange, now a common part of their jobs, and they were prepared for the accusations and denials that followed.

In minutes, Santacruz bounded out of the house, an enormous stuffed dog in her arms. "Estoy feliz!" she shouted. "I'm so happy."

For nearly two years, she had worked 80-hour weeks cooking, cleaning and baby-sitting for an Ecuadoran official of the Organization of American States. For that, her attorneys said, she was paid little more than $2 an hour. She had worked for the same family in Ecuador, but since arriving, she said, her employer had taken her passport, she had no money and she was afraid that if she left, she would lose her visa and police would come for her...

In cases like Santacruz's, the workers suffer years of exploitation. In others, they are victims of trafficking, forced to become modern-day slaves...

Santacruz's employer, Efrain Baus, first secretary at the same mission to the OAS, refused to comment. His attorney, Samuel G. McTyre, in a recent letter to Glasberg, said Baus and his wife would be "very likely" to settle the dispute if it could remain private. He noted that the couple was surprised by Santacruz's claim and that "she knew the terms and conditions of her employment . . . and agreed to them without any complaint for nearly two years." He specifically denied that they have her passport.

Because the stakes are so high, advocates say, domestic workers are often pressured not to seek redress. The letter from Baus's attorney, for example, mentions that Santacruz's claim "may or may not" affect her relatives' jobs with Baus's family and friends in Ecuador.

Slaves. Here. In the U.S. of A. Owned by the very same diplomats who make their bread pissing and moaning over the way we treat a bunch of psycho jihadis at Guantanamo Bay.

Hey! Pop Quiz, Jackasses! Identify the source of this quote:

"No person shall be held in slavery or involuntary servitude. Slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? OK...it's Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What's that, I hear? It's a non-self-executing treaty? OK, then, how about this one:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Yup. It's the 13th Amendment...and if you ask me, it needs to be self-executed all over your sorry asses. I'm talking PERSONA. NON. GRATA. Why? Oh, I dunno...sh*t like this, perhaps?

It was a good Samaritan who brought Kurinah Muka to Zarembka and Break the Chain.

Muka had been a live-in maid at an Alexandria high-rise, her days at once tedious and cruel. She was kicked by the woman who employed her, forced to work 19-hour days and allowed to eat only the food that others rejected, she said. For nearly two months of work, she said, she was never paid. Muka described her ordeal in a written statement to immigration officials, who later investigated and said witnesses corroborated her account.

She came from a poor farming village in Indonesia. Her husband's monthly income as a truck driver was about $75. She earned 70 cents a day working on a rice farm.

When a recruiter from an employment agency showed up in September 1999 looking for maids for foreigners, Muka signed up, leaving behind her two young children.

For three months, she said, she and about 300 other women were held in a camp, with guards at the door to prevent them from leaving. They slept in rooms of 20 women, were taught Arabic vocabulary for cooking and cleaning and told to obey employers. She said she was forced to sign a contract promising her $800 a month, although she was told her real earnings would be $200 to $300.

When she arrived at Dulles International Airport in 2000, she was met by her employer, a diplomat at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington. He told Muka she would be working for a woman who called herself Princess Halla, who later told Muka that the diplomat was the father of her 5-year-old boy and 8-month-old daughter, Muka said.

"My life was misery working for Halla," wrote Muka, who worked from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day.

Halla forbade Muka from bathing because "she did not want my germs in the shower," Muka wrote. Halla often slapped her and kicked her while wearing boots and shoes.

Once, Halla noticed a scratch on the baby's nose. "She pulled a knife out of the drawer and demonstrated pulling the knife across her throat as if to slice it," Muka wrote. "While she was doing this, she looked at me and said that if a scratch occurred again, she would kill me."

Halla confiscated her passport and told her "bad people" would hurt her if she ever left, according to Muka's statement. Muka said she imagined government officials tracking her down.

"I cried every night," said Muka, her face wet with tears as she recounted her story in self-taught English. "I'm praying five times a day."

The breaking point came when Halla "pull my hair, and that's when she scratch my arms and dig with her fingernails," drawing blood, Muka said.

A few days later, Muka fled to a nearby apartment building, where she sat in the lobby until a sympathetic tenant took her in. His daughter downloaded an Indonesian dictionary from the Internet so they could communicate. Break the Chain helped her obtain special immigration status as a victim of trafficking.

Department of Homeland Security immigration officials were able to track the diplomat, but he had returned to the United Arab Emirates, according to an investigator who said he was not authorized to be quoted by name. They could not locate Halla, who used several aliases, the investigator said. Abdulla Alsaboosi, a spokesman for the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington, said that the diplomat retired and that the embassy was unable to locate him. The Post was also unable to locate Halla or the diplomat.

Muka eventually found a one-bedroom apartment to share with three other Indonesian women and a job as a nanny for an American family. Under the terms of her visa, she is not allowed to leave the United States for another two years, so she calls her children every Saturday night.

Yeesh. And the world calls us barbarians.

Oh, yeah, before any internationalist dope raise the recent torture case in Iraq, make a note. The difference between us and them is that WE SEND PEOPLE WHO DO SH*T LIKE THIS TO OTHER HUMAN BEINGS TO PRISON, INSTEAD OF GIVING THEM DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY. Case in point, from the same article, of what happens when a U.S. citizen, who does not have diplomatic immunity, tries it:

One couple, Louisa Satia and her husband, Kevin Nanji, were each sentenced by a federal judge in Greenbelt to nine years in prison for enslaving a 14-year-old Cameroonian girl in Silver Spring. The couple smuggled the girl into the United States in January 1997, according to court documents and interviews. They promised to send her to school in exchange for domestic work. Instead, she was forced to cook, care for the children and clean. For three years, she was never paid and never sent to school.

Contrast this with Iraq, where Saddam made his psycho older son Uday assistant to the Iraqi ambassador to Switzerland, only to have to take him back after the Swiss caught him threating to stab someone in a restaurant.

This angers me to no end. I'll let the Man provide the closing commentary:

"Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the splinter from your eye,' while the beam is still in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your own eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye." -- Matthew 7:3-5 (NAB)

Posted by Thief at May 3, 2004 05:03 PM