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Assignment: Modern Slavery Survivors

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slavery-151118.jpg

15/11/2018 GMT

Modern Slavery Survivors

BBC World Service - Assignment, Modern Slavery Survivors

The stories of men trafficked into forced labour in the UK

Zita Adamson hears the stories of men trafficked into forced labour in the UK.

Modern slaves are all around us and many of them are men. They work in factories and private homes, unseen and unheard. Zita Adamson tells the stories of some of these men as they arrive at one of the UK's first safe house for male victims of modern slavery.
She spent a year recording at the safe house, talking to men like Mo who ran away from a refugee camp in Bangladesh, only to be trafficked to London as a domestic servant.

"All my life I am running - running, running, running," he says.

Wahib, forced into prostitution after losing both parents in the conflict in South Sudan, warns listeners that the streets of Europe are not paved with 
gold. And Kristof from Hungary admits that, even though he's now free, it's hard to trust people again.

Life at the safe house is about trying to give back the men a sense of their value as a human being, says Kate Garbers, managing director of Unseen, one of the UK-based charities that run houses like these. Her view is that it's our addiction to cheap goods and services that is, indirectly, putting these men into slavery. And she argues that it's only by making better choices as consumers that we'll end this hideous trade.
A Whistledown Production for BBC World Service

(This outline has been updated to clarify that the house described as the first of its kind is one of a number of similar initiatives by different charities which may predate the start of the one featured)


Image: A survivor's hands (Credit: Zita Adamson)

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