Atheism And Forced Labor

In the early Stalin years, the camp populations were roughly stable, but by 1930 by most estimates the number had skyrocketed to 1,000,000 inmates. But the growth era of the camps was only beginning: by 1940 the concentration camps contained about 10,000,000 souls, while camp conditions grew ever worse. The prison population declined and living conditions improved considerably after Stalin's death, but the slave labor camps persisted into the Gorbachev years...

Collectivization comes about in a variety of ways, but its essence is the same: getting as much food as possible out of the peasantry while giving them as little as possible in return. During the "War Communism" period, Lenin officially assured peasants that they owned their land, but forced them to sell their entire surplus to the state at a pitifully small price. When peasants chose not to sell, government troops began seizing grain - first surplus grain, then the grain peasants needed to feed their families, and finally the seed grain needed to plant the next crop. The final result was a massive famine in which about 5 million people perished. Under Stalin's forced collectivization program, the peasantry was formally expropriated. Millions of disgruntled peasant families were sentenced to the Siberian slave labor camps. Stalin's collective farmers had to surrender enormous quantities of grain for next to nothing, frequently leading to the seizure of the entire crop. The result was yet another massive famine, made even worse than Lenin's by Stalin's refusal to authorize international relief efforts. The deaths by starvation from this famine were around 7 million; approximately equal numbers of scapegoated peasant families perished in the Siberian concentration camps. This pattern repeated itself in China when Mao collectivized agriculture, and appears at some point in the history of most Communist regimes.^[14]

Defectors reported to Human Rights Watch that they were required to work at an assigned workplace after completing school. The effective collapse of much of the North Korean economy means that many of these jobs are either unpaid or provide minimal substitute compensation in the form of food or other rations. Failure to report to an assigned job for those who try to earn money in other ways can result in being sent to a forced labor camp for six months to as long as two years.

“The harsh reality faced by North Korean workers and students is unpaid forced labor and exploitation,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.^[21]

The index said the figure for China includes “the forced labour of men, women and children in many parts of the economy, including domestic servitude and forced begging, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and forced marriage.”^[31]

The victims are alleged drug addicts who are held for periods of two to four years without ever receiving a hearing or a trial in a court of law.

Drug center detainees are forced to work under harsh conditions for little or no pay doing a range of repetitive tasks, like sewing t-shirts or mosquito bed nets, painting stone trinkets, and processing cashews, often for private companies. As punishment for refusing to work, violating center rules, or simply not filling a daily quota, detainees report being beaten with wooden truncheons, shocked with electrical batons, or placed in solitary confinement.

Vietnam’s use of forced labor as drug treatment clearly violates international law, including ILO Convention 29, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The detention centers are also an ineffective form of drug treatment: it is estimated that over 90 percent of former detainees return to using drugs shortly after release. In 2012, twelve UN agencies, including the ILO, World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), issued a joint public statement calling for the closure of compulsory drug detention centers, citing the use of forced labor and the lack of evidence-based drug treatment.^[37]

Some of these workers subsequently face conditions of forced labour. Through unlicensed intermediary brokers, Vietnamese workers incur some of the highest debts among Asian expatriate workers, making them highly vulnerable to forced labour, especially debt bondage. Upon arrival in destination countries, some workers find themselves compelled to work in bad conditions for little to no pay, despite large debts, and no viable legal recourse.

Some recruitment companies reportedly do not allow workers to read their contracts until the day prior to their departure, and some workers have been known to sign contracts in languages they could not read.^[38]

The outspoken atheist, who once branded the Catholic Church 'evil', is the direct descendent of Henry Dawkins who owned 1,013 slaves in Jamaica until he died in 1744.

His 400-acre family estate, Over Norton Park near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, is believed to have been bought with money made through slave ownership hundreds of years ago...

Richard's son, Henry, married into another of Jamaica's powerful slave trading families and left 1,013 slaves worth £40,736 when he died 1744.

The links with slavery continue down the family tree and in 1796 another ancestor, James Dawkins, voted against William Wilberforce's plans to abolish the slave trade^[46]

Esther Stanford-Xosei, of Lewisham, south London, the co-vice chairman of the Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe, said: "There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.

"The words of the apology need to be backed by action. The most appropriate course would be for the family to fund an educational initiative telling the history of slavery and how it impacts on communities today, in terms of racism and fractured relationships."^[47]