Interview with a journalist 2
In this episode, Fuzz Kitto continues his conversation with Matt, an Australian investigative journalist in Asia, who has interviewed and written dozens of stories on modern slavery. They continue to discuss Matt’s personal journey and growth in understanding modern slavery and the wicked problem that makes victims look like monsters.
Listen to Slavery Unravelled - Conversations about being slavery free wherever you get your podcasts!
Fuzz
G'day and welcome to Slavery Unravelled, the podcast on looking at modern slavery, why it happens and what we can do about it. My name is Fuzz Kitto. And I am the Co-Director of Be Slavery Free. And we are in a series at the moment listening to people's stories and also the insights of people who have been covering modern slavery on the ground around Southeast Asia in particular. And so we've been interviewing Matt, and he was reporting with Reuters. And so this interviewer has been looking at his insights and what he has experienced and observed. Cambodia has the highest personal debt levels in the world. Well, why do you think they go into debt to this extent?
Matt
Well, this is something that I can speak a bit more strongly to. What are they going to debt? I mean, the opportunity in Cambodia is is fairly sparse. I mean, it's a it's a, as I said, previously, Cambodia is presented as a bit of a success story as a kind of burgeoning economy. And part of that would also be driven by spending by this so-called rising middle class, which is a bit of a fallacy. A lot of this rising middle class that you'll see referred to in the media is rising on the back of micro-finance loans. And I don't know, if you've read much of it, or how much knowledge there is of it outside of kind of my headspace and the work that I do, but like you say, Cambodia has some of the heaviest personal debt in the world. And a lot of it is to these microfinance firm. And these microfinance firms, many of them began as, as NGOs, as charities, who were kind of funded by European development agencies. And the goal was to go out into the provinces and help struggling people with some skill or some idea or some ability to run business to start a small business and get them on their feet and get them rolling. But that was some years ago. And all of those all those microfinance outfits that started out as NGOs are now owned by international corporate banks. And we're seeing in the last couple of years, a massive tidal wave in Cambodia, of people revolting against these microfinance firms, because the tactics that they use are predatory would be too kind to them. I mean, they literally target communities that are known to be poor or destitute. And they go to their homes, and they basically wave $100 bills in front of them, and tell them, you know, you can have this and pay me back later. And, to be honest, a lot of the lending is kind of spurious lending, you will see people lend money, lend off these microfinance firms to buy motorbikes and, you know, new iPhones, and kind of luxury items or items that aren't, you know, aren't necessities, because I think because of the tactics that are used by the micro finance firms to give out the loans, they make it sound a lot easier than it is to pay back. And now we see I mean, I'd have any statistics on hand. But there's, if you could go out in the countryside and find a Cambodian person who doesn't have debt to a micro-finance company, I'll buy you a beer or a coffee or lemonade.
Fuzz
That's what we've observed, as well have heard so many times. And you've told us a number of these things over the years. And the thing often like to do into is the way that this affects us, it's not just the people caught but those like yourself who are reporting on it, those of you who are working and observing and trying to articulate what's going on, there's often we find what we call a definitive narrative. The time when that just the AHA hits you. And you kind of get it you talked about the person sitting with them in the gutter, outside the protests outside of the factory. Have there been other times when you've experienced that AHA where there's been just those nuggets of insights that are just precious?
Matt
I mean, one thing that will always stick with me was I was out in in Kompongcham province, just 100 kilometres or so from the Capitol here, probably back in about 2016. And it was around the, when this idea of young Cambodian women going to China to be married off, can we say, to Chinese men, and the Cambodian women thought they'll go into work in a nice job or marry a rich man. And the result was that they'd be sending money home to their family in Cambodia. And we were out in a village, it was called Village 77. And we were kinda, we'd heard of one particularly heinous case, and a woman had been sent to prison for helping I think her niece or something similar, go to China, and then that girl would end up being abused in China. So there was a few little bits around this area, we went out there to have a look. And I met this couple, their daughter was was stuck in China, their daughter was stuck in China, and they could communicate her by messaging apps, very sporadically. And so they told us this story about how these brokers had come into the village and trick them and told them, we'll take your daughter to China, and she'll have a job and she'll send him this much money and they pay a cash. Or you could call it a dowry, if you want, they pay a cash payment upfront to the family to take the girl. And so we're there for half a day kind of here in this mad story. And then another young girl shows up at the house, and it's the second daughter of this family. And the family is telling us about how they're planning to send her to China to get married, while the older daughter stuck in China, and I mean, you asked for an aha moment, this was more like a ugh moment, like a moment where where I realised like, very conflicting, you know, because the family sitting there telling me how sad they are that the daughter is lost in China, which was partially their fault. I mean, they didn't knowingly send her to into an abusive situation. But they were naive enough to allow her to go with strangers to a foreign country. And then, you know, they've watched, you know, they've won your empathy with that story. And then their younger daughter walks up, and they're talking about sending her to China as well, and you're confused and sad and a little bit angry all at the same time. So that was when I kind of realised that like, even though they had one daughter in China, who was being, you know, physically and sexually abused, such was their situation, and potentially their background, that didn't serve to them as strong enough warning to not send their second daughter. And then I guess that's when I'm going like, well, we're really dealing with, you know, the people that we're dealing with here are people whose, whose, whose context and backstory and the way that they work, we can't even really it's very, very hard to relate to. And so to be honest, it makes it quite hard to report on as well, because you don't want to have you tell this story. You know, how do you tell this story? Where these parents don't look like monsters? But I meant to some, I mean, they're not monsters, but I mean, they are, you know, how do you tell this story, Fuzz? It's really difficult. So that was, that was a moment that I'll never forget. And that was a moment that I kind of went, you know, this is this is, this is too hard to fix, basically. I mean, I'm kind of resigned to the fact that slavery, I'm in the name of your organisation, you know, it's Be Slavery Free, I'm resigned to the fact that as long as we live in a world where capitalism rules, we will have trafficking and slavery because as long as the dollar men so much, then there will always be someone willing to exploit another in order to get those dollars.
Fuzz
We often talk about slavery as what's called a technically, it's called a wicked problem. And wicked problems are so complex and so interconnected with so many other areas, that, you know, are we going to solve it? I'm not sure we are, but we're going to have to manage it in the meantime. And that becomes the big challenge. So in managing it, one of the big questions is so for someone to actually go from Cambodia or a poorer country, and particularly into the emerging economies, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. and Vietnam is now emerging in that sort of way as well, you've got the people there who are in these vulnerable situations with these mindsets and and sometimes innocence or ignorance about what actually happens in the process. But how do they actually get from that situation into the what are the intermediaries that broker their passage?
Matt
I've watched these trends of of trafficking come over Cambodia, when I first started to work here it was, Cambodian women going to work as domestic helpers in Malaysia, then it was the fishermen going to Thailand and then it was the brides to China, then it was people getting caught up in servicing racket which were also serving China, then its debt bondage in in brick factories. And then there's the COVID era ones, which was labour to and from Thailand, the online sexual exploitation of children and the scam factories that we see now. And one thing remains constant in all of these stories, is these characters, which in Khmer is called mek-cho, which means like, it translates to broker. So there's always these brokers right. So the way that these trafficking kind of syndicates work is that in the destination place, there'll be people organising of course, and then in the source, there will also be people organising. And then there's these brokers which are which are like, I mean, some Cambodians who will describe them to you as like ghosts, that just kind of float in and out of situations, and try to convince people to take up whatever the offer is, at the time, whether it's a job in a brick factory, or marriage in China.
And this is also a key part to understanding how people get swept up in it and unable to extricate themselves from it. So, these brokers will approach families that they can see are in financial trouble. And then they'll approach the families and it might go like this, I'm the broker, pretend I'm the broker, I'll come to your village in the bush and I'll approach probably the parents first and say, oh, you know, this, you know, how's how's your crop, how's things, how's the family? I've got a friend who, who lives in in Thailand will say and works on in fishing industry. And if you have any, like young, any sons who are strong enough and old enough to go, I can probably get a job over there. And we can we can help you get there. And so like family says, yes, please take my kid to earn $400 a month in Thailand. By kid, I mean, like an 18 year old or a 20 year old or whatever. So this broker’s job is to he will he will tell his family, that he will organise everything from the point that the worker leaves the village to the point he starts his work, these brokers will organise everything. They'll organise the transport, they'll organise the paperwork, they'll organise any visas or permits that need to that are required. And they basically make it totally fuss free for the for the for the family. And all you have to do is sit back and wait for the first paycheck to come. And probably not that you probably get a cash bonus up front, you know, waving these $100 notes around in front of people really, really is powerful.
So then, you know, Johnny from the village, might get in a bus, head to the Thai border. And then you'll get to the Thai border and the traffickers, which he doesn't know that they're traffickers, he still thinks he's going to work in a in a normal job in Thailand, the traffickers might have something arranged with the border police about bringing them across, or the traffickers might alternatively have a secret route across the border, if they are taking people illegally to work, which is the majority of the time that's the case, if they're sourcing them in Cambodia and bringing them themselves, they will often go around the border checkpoints. And the victim if we can call them that, at this point, has already handed over their paperwork, their passport or whatever to the broker, you know, and once someone holds your passport, and you're in another country, that's a very, very strong tool, particularly for you know, uneducated people who maybe have never been overseas before. haven't dealt much with authorities, much less international authorities. And then when they're in a foreign country, they don't speak the language. They can't read anything. They might not know exactly where they are, and they don't have their passport. So this is a point where a lot of people would say, Well, why didn't they go and tell the police? Well, they didn't go and tell the police because they're afraid that they can't explain to the police what happened and that if the police catches them and they don't have any documents or a passport that they just wind up in a prison somewhere for who knows how long. So yeah, these brokers play a very, very crucial role.
And there's there's various different levels of these brokers. And in the case of the young Cambodian women getting sent to be married in China, it gets to the point where, in in certain village, we'll take village 77, I spoke about before, for example, in a certain village and auntie, you know, let's, I'm an auntie in this village, and I've seen a cousin or a niece go to China, and maybe they had a good result, maybe they, they ended up in a good situation. And so then I speak to that person in China, and they tell me, or if you can recruit any more, you can have $100 for every every girl in the village that agrees that they will begin this process to be made in China, you get $100 or so then you get these, these aunties in these villages who have no, no source of income. And they might know, they might not know what they're sending girls into either. And in a lot of cases, they don't. And in some cases, they think they're doing a good thing, I think they're doing a service for these families by helping their girl to, to migrate to a more developed country where they where they might get a job or meet a nice man who will be able to support them. But they are in effect brokers, helping to traffic people to China. And I mean, there was a big a few years ago, there was a when I was doing a lot of reporting on this, this particular phenomenon in trafficking, there was a every, you know, week or two, there'd be a new story about traffickers getting busted. And the traffickers would be, you know, 40 / 50 year old women arrested and dressed in their pyjamas in the village, there was just a massive, a massive kind of, I mean, it had to stop, right, because they weren't addressing the actual problem.
They were just putting in prison, people who were naive. I mean, they're not blameless, you know, but they didn't stop the problem by arresting these people. So there's all these and I think, also, in these syndicates that run these, these, these trafficking kind of channels, if we can call them that, they are very careful, like traditional mafia and Yakuza business, they're very careful to kind of separate all parts of the job, you know. So from from a girl leaving the village in Cambodia to arriving in China, she might be passed through six different sets of people who are all traffickers, effectively, and some of those people might not even know that they're part of a trafficking network, you know. They might just be drivers or, you know, she might get taken to the border. And then at the border, she gets put in, in a van full of a whole bunch of other girls who have come from, you know, other areas of Cambodia. And this van driver might think he's just driving a bunch of Cambodian women on a tourist trip or something like that. So yeah, there's there's many, many different ways that they use to kind of hide behind lots of different levels of who's doing what and who's responsible for what, and also buys them the ability to plead ignorance or naivety.
Fuzz Kitto
And that can be mentioned be very powerful for those people and also trying to get any convictions. People are innocent or ignorant about what's going on.
Just to remind you, that Slavery Unravelled is brought to you by Be Slavery Free, and if you want to know more actions, you can take it that the things that you've heard, get more information and be more informed, and also to donate to the work of Be Slavery Free. And we look forward to having you back in the next podcasts and the series that we're doing.