"You Must Not Ask for So Much"...

Says the Canadian Red Cross to hundreds of Indonesian workers hired to rebuild after the 2004 tsunami, who have yet to be paid for their work.  The Canadian Red Cross funded work in the Aceh province of Indonesia, sometimes directly, sometimes through other contractors.  Workers were brought in from hundreds of miles away, and allegations have even risen that these workers were not given adequate food, water, or shelter.  Many of them are still there, and still waiting to be paid for work they were hired to do with Canadian public funds six years ago.

The Red Cross has conducted an audit of the situation, but still appears to be in denial of the scope of the problem.  This makes me seriously wonder about the effacacy of donating money to the Red Cross.  The Canadian government has loudly denounced both slavery and human trafficking, yet if the Red Cross is using money from said government to finance operations where slavery is being utilised, how can that be anything other than a tacit acceptance of these practices?   Though the news is only coming out about this now, the organization has been aware of this issue for years.  The public outcry, too, has been slow in coming and is embarrassingly softer than it should be.  I'm trying to understand why.


Aceh is half a world away, and it's not exactly a place where homelessness and human trafficking are unknown.  I'm wondering if the powers that be have found it easier to ignore the situation because the workers there are not in any worse straights than many other people in the region.  It harkens back to the days of Abolition in Great Britain, the United States, and yes, even Canada, where slavery advocates were insisting that there was nothing wrong with slavery because slaves were used to living in poor conditions and working hard for the benefit of others, and knew no other life.  Does that make it right?  Of course not.  Is it possible to end all human trafficking and slavery in the world?  I'd like to think so, but I have my doubts.

However, the reason I believe that the government should be screaming down the Red Cross's throats on this issue is because Canadian public funds and the donations of Canadians were blatantly used in perpetuating this injustice.  The Red Cross is assigning blame to the contractors they hired within Aceh, but this does not absolve them of responsibility to ensure that the money we have given them is used in the way they had assured us it would be used... and I'm certain that slavery was not part of the bargain.

More links:
Video of Press Conference.
CBC National Story Part 1   Part 2