Month: August 2019

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In June 2019, two sex workers, one of whom was pregnant, were jailed for nine months in Ireland. The two Romanian women were selling sexual services from a flat they shared for safety when they were raided by the police. Selling sex is legal in Ireland, which has implemented the so-called Swedish model of sex work regulation. But because there were two of them the police were able to charge both with brothel keeping, which isn’t legal.

This is just one example of complicated risks facing sex workers in Europe today. Those risks don’t disappear under Swedish model, a legal framework promoted as a win-win way for states to protect sex workers while punishing their clients, as has just been shown. Regardless of the model used, sex workers, especially undocumented migrant sex workers, remain at high risk of criminalisation in Europe and consequently of imprisonment and deportation.

Discriminatory policing, profiling, and surveillance by authorities affect many communities of sex workers in Europe. Sex workers who are migrants, homeless, gender non-conformist, or people of colour come into higher than average contact with the police. As a result they also face disproportionate levels of detention and imprisonment.

Constant targeting

In countries where selling sex is an administrative or criminal offense, police routinely target both street-based sex workers and their clients. Sex workers soliciting in hotspots or cruising areas are particularly vulnerable to police harassment. Evidence from Serbia shows a pattern of arbitrary arrest for activities as minor as loitering at locations where sex workers usually solicit clients, offering services to passers-by, or even possessing condoms. Non-sex work related laws, such as traffic regulations or public morality and order offenses, are also routinely used against sex workers in places where selling sex itself is not illegal.

Sex workers aren’t only targeted at their workplaces. Gender and racial profiling makes them vulnerable regardless of where they are or what they are doing. Roma women in the Balkans, for instance, report constant harassment from the police in their daily lives, while Chinese sex workers in Paris report that they are often afraid to leave their homes and workplaces. They fear the police targeting them based on their migration status.

Being chased by the police is part of the everyday reality of sex workers even in countries with the Swedish model. According to the 2018 evaluation of the client criminalisation law in France, municipal bylaws restricting sex work at the local level and regular identity checks aimed at those selling sex result in sex workers still being more often criminalised than their clients. Sex workers often report intimidation by the police, including being pressured to report clients. If they’re undocumented they are frequently threatened with deportation if they do not comply.

Anti-trafficking: an excuse for raid and surveillance

Government officials frequently justify these types of police intervention as part of the fight against trafficking. In practice, however, it’s clear the primary aim is to surveil, raid, and deport migrant sex workers. In some countries those suspected of being potential sex workers are stopped and returned at the border. In Sweden, the mere assumption that a migrant person will not support themselves by ‘honest means’ is sufficient grounds for denial of entry. As Swedish policies openly declare that victims of trafficking should not be reintegrated into society in Sweden, but rather in their country of origin, even those classified as victims of this crime are sent back. These are not caring policies. They are policies of identify, obstruct and remove.

That is not, however, how they are presented. Abolitionist feminists have long advocated for a model that primarily uses criminal justice to ‘protect’ women from prostitution. The Swedish model has its roots in these campaigns. But for sex workers, the police play a repressive rather than a protective role. It is this discrepancy between the lived realities of (migrant) sex workers and a white, middle-class hope in the police as the saviour of women that has led us to anti-trafficking policies that exacerbate the vulnerabilities of sex workers rather than supporting them.

Evidence is clear about the impact of approaching sex work as a criminal justice matter. According to new research, sex workers operating in a context of repressive policing have a three times higher chance of experiencing sexual or physical violence than those left alone to go about their work. Sex workers thus demand that policy makers and abolitionist feminists reconsider their rose-spectacled view of police intervention and instead listen to those who face the consequences of these policies every day.

Acknowledgment

This article has been developed by the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) as part of its 'RnR- Rights not Rescue’ project, aiming to empower migrant sex workers in tackling exploitation and trafficking in the sex industry. The programme, funded by OAK Foundation, brings together sex workers and allies from sex workers' rights organisations in 10 European countries for exchange, national and European advocacy and knowledge generation. For more details about the project, check the ICRSE website: www.sexworkeurope.org

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This article is part of ourEconomy's 'Decolonising the economy' series.

Fast Retailing, the Japanese company behind the clothing brand Uniqlo, is “the second-largest apparel maker by market value” behind the Spanish company Zara. In 2015, the operating profits of Uniqlo Japan alone experienced a 10.3 percent growth. In 2018, the firm’s shares “surged more than 75 percent over the past year,” and the wealth of the company’s CEO, Tadashi Yanai, had reached $25.4 billion—double the amount in 2016. All this was due to “steady expansion in overseas markets and endorsement deals with tennis star Roger Federer and golfer Adam Scott.” Uniqlo indeed has great ambitions, positioning itself as an “influential player in the fashion industry,” face to face with its established European competitors.

Within the same period, two thousand Indonesian workers that sewed Uniqlo products were laid off with unpaid wages and no severance payments. Their employer, an Indonesian supplier for Uniqlo, went bankrupt in 2015, reportedly after the multinational stopped its orders due to “quality issues.” The supplier was also reported to have engaged in labor violations, including unpaid overtime and union busting. These workers demanded that Uniqlo take responsibility and pay the $5.5 million debt of back wages and severance payments. In November 2018, Uniqlo agreed to meet with workers’ representatives only to reject any form of concrete responsibility. In contrast to the increased wealth of Yanai and deals secured by Federer and Scott, the workers got nothing. The reason for the refusal is a classic one: Uniqlo claimed that it had no legal obligation to fulfill these workers’ demands, since the fault was that of its supplier, and not its own.

Over the last few decades, since the practice of arm’s length contracts, in which multinationals subcontract their production to dependent suppliers abroad, came to characterize global commodity chains, cases like this have been all too common. After all, contemporary globalized production is designed to be highly mobile, so that it can be rapidly shifted elsewhere whenever there’s a rise in unit labor costs where production happens.

Recently, due to increased pressure from workers, unions, and organizations that support them, some of these cases, in which suppliers’ factories were closed abruptly and their workers were abandoned, have resulted in multinationals paying workers’ unpaid wages and severance payments in the form of “charitable funds,” sometimes even providing them with vocational training or different employment. But whether or not multinationals decide to compensate these workers or turn a blind eye—as they often do—in the face of such depredations is not the only issue. At their core, cases like these are not merely about whether there were violations of labor practices or of companies' codes of conduct. Rather, they reveal a deeper problem: the intricate imperialist relations that characterize the capitalist world economy.

Global labor-value chains

How do we see these relations? If we look at unit labor costs—typically presented as the average cost of labor per unit of labor output—we can get a picture of how global commodity chains, or what I call global labor-value chains, work. Combining a measurement of wages and productivity, recent unit labor costs data show that the countries with the highest participation in global labor-value chains—the top three being China, India, and Indonesia—also have very low unit labor costs. The same goes for other countries in the global South, including Mexico, which has experienced a sharp decline in unit labor costs relative to the United States within the 1995-2014 period, reflecting two decades of labor flexibilization.

This means that not only are wages low in these countries, but productivity is high. This results in much higher profit margins for multinationals—usually headquartered in the triad (United States, Western Europe, and Japan)—with the additional value generated often credited to production in the countries in which these multinationals are headquartered. The overall process is one of the amassing of wealth in these Northern countries, through a form of unequal exchange involving value capture.

But how do these seemingly abstract, macro workings of the world economy relate to the misery of Indonesian workers sewing clothes for Uniqlo? Global labor-value chains lead to mechanisms of production that benefit multinationals, which largely control these chains, mainly through the management of their labor—a process often carried out by suppliers with whom multinationals subcontract. But unlike what is commonly believed—that this misconduct is to be attributed entirely to the subcontractors for which the multinationals have no direct responsibility—these globe-spanning mega-corporations are in fact active players in the exploitation of these workers, although this involvement is often hidden beneath a series of processes seen as “business as usual,” and sometimes disguised as “fair business practices” in the form of international standardizations.

From my case studies of Indonesian suppliers that cater to multinationals that produce fast-moving consumer goods, it is clear that there are several control mechanisms that occur within global labor-value chains, and they are usually two-tier. (These suppliers are far from the sweatshop stereotype that usually deals with companies that make apparels like Uniqlo, but as we will see, they are subject to the same processes.) First, multinationals place strict conditions and often unreasonable demands upon their suppliers and, second, such conditions and demands lead to the reorganization of work in these suppliers’ factories, enhancing exploitation of their workers.

How multinationals control value chains

The result of this study can be read in my upcoming book, Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism, but the general picture is as follows. Having multinationals as clients is often regarded as highly prestigious for suppliers in the global South, partly due to decent profit margins and stable volumes, but mainly because it serves as a ticket to a “VIP” status, which promises them better business deals and large repeat orders. Therefore, a lot of suppliers are more than willing to fulfill multinationals’ demands even though they are often unreasonable and lead to continuous difficulties in their production process.

And these demands are mostly delivered not through direct threats (although these also exist), but through the imposition of systemic rationalization and flexible production—corporate strategies that began in the 1970s (some argue mid-1980s) and are continuously maintained by new information technologies, aiming at establishing production, administration, and distribution processes that are more economical and characterized by greater flexibility.

For example, due to the imposition of delivery on demand by multinationals, suppliers are pressured to implement what they call a buffering policy. Meaning, it is imperative that these suppliers get their finished goods ready and store them in their warehouses, to be sent only when their multinational customers need them. Not only do these goods have to be shipped whenever the customers demand them, but the supplier also must be ready to accommodate any sudden increase or decrease in product demands missed in the customer’s initial forecast. At one of the suppliers I studied, they created a policy to accommo­date up to twenty percent increase or decrease of their top customers’ needs. This creates a series of problems, especially in relation to high costs due to storage (both of finished goods and of raw materials) and the problem of accommodating changes in production processes, which often creates huge waste—both waste of products and waste of labor—on the suppliers’ end.

How does this benefit multinationals? Multinationals outsource their production to externalize the costs resulting from flexible produc­tion to accommodate fluctuating market demands. This way, their profit rate is not at risk. Multinationals do not want to place the totality of this burden on themselves or on their own subsidiaries, since that way they must pay the price. Thus, they transfer a large part of this burden to their suppliers. This fact alone disrupts the supplier’s productivity and efficiency, and as a result, they have to constantly face conflicts within their own management, as well as change their organization of work in ways that can offset the loss resulting from this wasteful production.

In the end, through this reorganization of work, the exploitation of workers is intensified. Such a reorganization of work usually includes strategies that can force workers to increase their productivity while stalling wages. One way to do this is by limiting overtime work. Multinationals make sure that their suppliers comply with national regulations limiting overtime, monitoring these dependent companies in this and other respects through third party organizations that audit the suppliers and issue standardization certificates. The problem is, multinationals’ demands for flexible production often force suppliers to demand workers to work longer hours. One way to get out of this problem is to force workers to work more productively, and suppliers do this through various means, including increasing strict, direct control of labor on the factory floors, as well as applying an incentive system and a specific measurement of individual or group performance that would reward “productive” workers and punish those who fail to achieve production targets.

The continual reorganization of work implemented at the point of production, with the goal of catering to the requirements demanded by multinational clients, in the end becomes a significant mechanism within labor-value chains facilitating the extreme exploitation of labor in the global South by the North. Multinational clients gain advantage from management policies and practices conducted by the bosses in the dependent companies. All these practices are enabled by the deskilling of work that has transformed workers into “mere executors” of work and thus made them vulnerable.

Balls and chains

Returning to the Uniqlo case, then, it may be true, as the company claimed, that it does not have any legal obligation to cover their suppliers’ losses or to compensate their laid-off workers. But as the actor that holds the most control and power within the chains, constituting the beginning and end of the chain, the company behind Uniqlo is directly responsible for these workers. Not merely in terms of “moral responsibilities” or “business ethics” or compliance with their codes of conduct, but in a perspective that takes into account the whole exploitative process that occurs in global labor-value chains, where multinationals can directly and indirectly control how production takes place in their suppliers’ factories, and how labor should be managed by demanding that suppliers lower their costs and increase their workers’ productivity.

This process in which capital in the global North can exercise control over global South labor shows the fallacy of the claim that these intricate global chains of value are characterized by a decentralization of power. Rather, this is a system of balls and chains in which the Northern capital is in a commanding position. Enforcing inequality, such chains are characteristic of our present world economy. This phenomenon is not an inevitable, neutral outcome of “globalization,” but a new phase of imperialism, used by capital and its state instruments to put forward, in Samir Amin’s words, a “set of demands by which they exert their control over the productive systems of the periphery of global capitalism.”

Imperialism, in other words, is alive and well. It may take new forms, but is as nefarious as ever.

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In recent weeks, tensions in Kyrgyzstan have reached their limits. Former president Almazbek Atambayev, who ruled the country between 2011 and 2017, has been arrested in a highly public special operation, though security forces were successful in detaining him at his compound only on the second attempt – and after causing mass injuries. Atambayev is now facing a number of serious charges – 14 at the current count.

Here we recount what happened at Atambayev’s residence, different opinions on the events in question and what could happen next in Kyrgyzstan.

How was Atambayev detained?

On 7 August, a Kyrgyz State Security Committee special unit attempted to storm the residence of former president Almazbek Atambayev. Several weeks prior, the Kyrgyz parliament had voted to strip Atambayev of immunity following allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the General Prosecutor’s Office. Indeed, Kyrgyz special forces appeared at Koi Tash, Atambayev’s residence, just as crowds of his supporters had gathered there – in recent weeks, people had come to his residence every evening to greet Atambayev and hear him answer questions.

By this point, Atambayev had failed to attend questioning – as a witness – at the Interior Ministry on three occasions. The case in question centres on the 2013 unlawful release of Aziz Batukayev, an organised crime figure, from prison. In any case, the security operation did not end in success, and Atambayev, just as he promised, offered active resistance. Hundreds of his supporters helped to push back the rather smaller special forces unit, taking their weapons and several of them hostage.

The crucial – and tragic – moment came in the standoff when special forces officer Usenbek Niyazbekov was shot. He later died of his injuries. It’s unclear who is responsible for Niyazbekov’s death, but Atambayev has claimed publicly that he was the only person armed in his home and fired shots at special forces during the raid.

Events at Koi Tash, 7 August. Source: Radio Azattyk

It was later revealed that the State Security Committee unit – an Alfa unit charged with counter-terrorism, no less – was carrying out the orders of an Interior Ministry investigation group.

The captured special forces officers were released the following day, but security forces decided to attempt the arrest of Atambayev a second time. This time, more than 2,000 police officers were deployed to the ex-president’s residence. Facing armoured personnel carriers, helicopters and water cannons, in the end, Atambayev admitted defeat and handed himself over to the police. More than 170 people were injured during the clashes at Koi Tash – the majority at the hands of Kyrgyz law enforcement.

The tense stand-off reminded residents of Bishkek of all-too recent history, when Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the second president of independent Kyrgyzstan, was forced out of power in the “April Revolution” in 2010. This time, as a result of the confrontation, the city’s major shopping centres closed early, as did jewellery shops and banks. By evening, Bishkek was empty aside from central Ala-Too square, where 800 people gathered in support of Atambayev.

Dispersal of protesters in central Bishkek, 8 August. Source: Kaktus.media

The angry crowd shouted slogans, while others set waste bins on fire and broke the windows of state buildings. Law enforcement reacted quickly, dispersing the crowd with tear gas – but not before two million soms ($28,672) worth of damage had been caused, according to the Mayor’s Office.

Was it lawful?

Current Kyrgyz president Sooronbay Jeenbekov was on vacation when police raided the home of his sworn enemy. Cutting short his holiday, Jeenbekov returned to Bishkek for an emergency session of parliament on 8 August. “If before yesterday Atambayev had been summoned as a witness, then he will now be treated as a suspect in a serious crime,” Jeenbekov threatened in his speech to parliament, stating that Kyrgyz security forces had acted “strictly in accordance with the law” during events at Koi Tash.

Not everyone was resigned to the arrest of the former president. MP Irina Karamushkina, from Atambayev’s Social Democratic Party (SPDK), wrote an open letter to President. “The whole world has seen and understood that the special forces burst in and started shooting to carry out someone’s ambitious order. Almazbek Atambayev has not been judged a criminal, nor a terrorist by a court,” Karamushkina wrote on Facebook.

Either way, Atambayev will remain in the State Security Committee’s investigative detention centre until 26 August. There are currently 14 serious charges against him, and the list is constantly updating: corruption offences connected to the modernisation of Bishkek Power Plant, ownership of a building via a nominee, illegal ownership of land in Koi-Tash, violence towards law enforcement authorities, murder, hostage-taking and organising mass unrest. The investigation has now frozen assets, bank accounts, automobiles, stocks and other property belonging to the former president and his family. The list includes more than 100 properties, including 22 apartments, 39 non-residential properties, 11 parcels of land, 19 workshops and eight cars.

Alongside Atambayev, Kyrgyz law enforcement has also arrested key allies of the former president: presidential adviser Farid Niyazov, Kyiaz Smaliyev, head of Atambayev’s public campaign to defend the former president, Alga Kylychev, a leading member of Atambayev’s SDPK party, and Amantur Zhamgyrchiyev. These four allies are charged with the taking of six special forces officers hostage during the standoff at Atambayev’s residence. Law enforcement are summoning other Atambayev supporters for questioning and searching their homes.

Kyrgyz security forces have also closed the April TV channel, which belongs to the former president. This channel periodically criticised the current authorities, but was also criticised for its biased coverage. In response to the closure, Kyrgyzstan’s media community called the move “a fatal mistake by the government”. OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media Harlem Desir also expressed dissatisfaction, stating that it was important to protect press freedom and pluralism even in difficult situations. Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Ministry stated that April TV has been frozen as property belonging to a suspect in several “serious crimes”.

In a session at Bishkek city court on 16 August, Sergey Slesarev, Atambayev’s lawyer, stated that “it’s impossible to agree” with the charges against his client. “There are many violations of the Criminal Procedural Code and Constitution. You cannot detain a former president on suspicion. We will be working to get Atambayev freed. We will demand that the illegal court decision is revoked,” Slesarev said.

Ideally, Atambayev should have been initially summoned as a suspect, rather than a witness. In this scenario, the investigation could have informed him of his status as a suspect in a crime prior to raiding his property, says lawyer Nurbek Toktakunov, former legal representative of ex-prime minister Sapar Isakov.

“This was wrongful because Kyrgyzstan’s Constitutional Chamber is currently examining an appeal by Atambayev regarding the removal of his status as former president,” Toktakunov says. “Law enforcement should not have conducted the special operation to forcefully summon him as a witness, not least with the level of aggression and the use of firearms.”

Moreover, after Atambayev was stripped of his immunity in a parliamentary vote, the former president did not lose his State Security Committee protection. Toktakunov believes that the lives of his official bodyguards were also subject to risk, despite the fact that they carried out their direct duties in defending the former president from Kyrgyz law enforcement.

“On the whole, the special operation was carried out poorly. At a minimum, I suspect there may have been negligent actions [by security forces], although there are also grounds to suspect a provocation. A provocation that was specially designed to cause injury and loss of life, to then strengthen their own position,” Toktakunov adds.

By contrast, State Security Committee Chairman Orozbek Opumbayev has stated that Atambayev “needed blood to be spilled in order to carry out a state coup”.

“It was bound to happen”

In 2017, the year his presidential term ended, Almazbek Atambayev was supposed to become Kyrgyzstan’s first elected president who peacefully gave up power. For a long time, Atambayev and his successor Sooronbay Jeenbekov were members of the same party and, by all accounts, friends. Indeed, Jeenbekov drew on Atambayev’s support when he put forward his presidential candidacy at Kyrgyzstan’s 2017 presidential elections. But by 2018, the relationship between the two politicians had soured.

Hostilities between Atambayev and Jeenbekov emerged over the former’s criticism of Kyrgyz law enforcement, which struck a nerve in the presidential administration. Shortly after, high-placed members of Atambayev’s team began losing their jobs and facing arrest, mostly on corruption charges – former prime minister Sapar Isakov, former Bishkek Mayor Albek Ibraimov, as well as former customs chief Kubanychbek Kulmatov.

Atambayev then announced that he would be “forced to stay in politics”, accusing his successor Jeenbekov of treachery, nepotism and “following” the course set by former president Kurmabek Bakiyev, turfed out in the 2010 April Revolution. As a result, Jeenbekov and Atambayev began a political war – one that ended in Atambayev losing his immunity and winding up in investigative detention.

Kadyr Atambayev, the former president's son, told openDemocracy that his father “did not want to make peace with the family-clan system of rule” in Kyrgyzstan. After all, he pointed out, it’s no secret that relatives of current President Jeenbekov occupy positions of power as parliamentary deputies and ambassadors abroad. “My father received hints: “You need to leave the country, we won’t touch you then.’ But he couldn’t leave his supporters who suffered for the real fight against corruption – Sapar Isakov, Kubanychbek Kulmatov.”

Yet the former president was also involved in “dirty political games”, according to political scientist Almaz Akmataliyev, rector of Kyrgyzstan’s Presidential Academy of Public Administration. “Atambayev supported an allegedly weak person [Sooronbay Jeenbekov], who was supposed to have followed his words to the letter and agreed to everything. He wanted to make a young man prime minister [Sapar Isakov] and his obedient friend – president,” says Akmataliyev. “But Jeenbekov didn’t choose him [Atambayev], but a position of justice, as an elected president should. This is where the conflict between the two men came from. It was bound to happen.”

In terms of what’s next in Kyrgyzstan, Akmataliyev believes that the former president’s guilt will be proven. “It’s a great shame. Our president started well, but ended badly. He should not be released under any circumstances. The investigation should continue its work. If he wasn’t in prison, then there could be bloodshed,” says Akmataliyev.

Political scientist Arkady Dubnov is cautious on the risks of a civil war breaking out in Kyrgyzstan. “Objectively, there are risks [of a civil war] – it’s another question of how big they are,” says Dubnov. “Kyrgyz society is, on the whole, tired of the same formula of civic and internal conflict happening over and over again. They’re tired from the two coups, in 2005 and 2010, from the many casualties, the constant upheaval, loss of property, and expecting the worst.”

Almazbek Atambayev is the first president of Kyrgyzstan to be arrested – the last two managed to flee the country before criminal cases could be opened against them. Now he’s facing a life sentence. But this outcome only provokes doubts in the future of the country. After all, no one can be sure that the country’s next president will leave his post peacefully either – as they should in a democratic country.