Slavery in the Capitol's Shadow
Protecting rights abroad, ignoring them here
The couple, Sonja and Vidoje Brajovic, deny the charges. "[Petrovic] is not an unintelligent person," says their lawyer, Gary Howard Simpson. "I would imagine that she could have walked out the door anytime she wanted." He said Petrovic was "discharged over performance issues" and added that the Brajovics even bought her an airplane ticket so she could return to Belgrade. World Bank spokesman John Donaldson declined to comment on this or similar cases the bank's ethics office reviews each year. But, he said, "we have a policy of zero tolerance for abuse."
World Bank employees are not the only foreigners accused of exploiting the visa program. In a lawsuit settled last April, Shamela Begum of Bangladesh claims she was "essentially enslaved" by a high-ranking official of the Bahraini Mission to the United Nations and his wife. Begum says the wife, Khatun Saleh, hit her on the head with a glass and, in another incident, caused her to burn her arm on the stove. She says she was paid $800 for 10 months, during which time she left the Salehs' Manhattan apartment exactly twice. The Salehs have denied the charges.
Such allegations raise questions about the responsibility of the U.S. government to prevent labor abuse. The FBI is investigating the Saleh case as a criminal matter, U.S. News has learned. Yet the State Department argued during the civil trial that the case should be dismissed. The department said the Salehs enjoyed diplomatic immunity, meaning they could not be prosecuted for acts committed on American soil unless their own country waived immunity.
Sharing the blame. Closer monitoring by the government, critics say, might have prevented the case of Mary Chumo and Alice Benjo, two Kenyan women who recently filed a federal lawsuit claiming they were falsely imprisoned by Elizabeth Belsoi, a secretary at the Kenyan Embassy. Caring for three young children in the secretary's suburban Maryland home, the women say they were often on duty from 6 a.m. to midnight. Benjo says Belsoi once made her vacuum the house at 1 a.m. "We suffered a lot," says Benjo, who left the home in August.
Through her attorney, Belsoi denies the charges and says she abided by the terms of the employment contract. But Benjo's lawyer, Edward Leavy, says the government must share blame for a contract he says was flawed to begin with. "What imbecile at the State Department would allow [a secretary] to bring in [these] workers and think that she could pay them?" asks Leavy, who has represented dozens of exploited workers over the past decade. In fact, says Steven Smitson of CASA of Maryland, an advocacy group for domestic workers, the State Department often grants visas that have laid out illegal wage rates--sometimes two or three times less than an illegal immigrant could make. The State Department has implemented new regulations to help ensure that domestic workers receive a "fair and living" wage.
Under pressure from activists, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also instituted reforms of the domestic-worker program, including orientation sessions, audits, and better procedures to investigate complaints. The IMF has brought in a former military judge and deputy inspector general of the CIA to run its ethics office. But advocates also want independent monitors like those who protect child-care workers known as au pairs. The au pair program is not without flaws, but William Gustafson, director of an au pair monitoring group, says many problems are prevented because families see the monitors frequently. "They know we are watching them," he says. The domestic-worker program, Zarembka says, could use a close eye, too.
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