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trafficking

Canberra Woman Charged With Human Trafficking, Debt Bondage And Prostitution | Gov Monitor

A 42-year-old woman will face ACT Magistrates Court this morning, after being charged by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The woman has been charged with offences including possessing a slave, debt bondage and operating an illegal brothel.

It will be alleged in court that the woman brought sex workers to Australia to work in exploitative conditions in Canberra.

Officers from the AFP’s Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Teams (TSETT) executed a search warrant on 14 October 2009 in the Canberra suburb of Kambah.

The woman was arrested and charged with the following offences:

* Possessing a slave, contrary to section 270.3(1)(a) of the Criminal Code 1995 (Cth)

* Debt Bondage, contrary to section 271.8(1) of the Criminal Code 1995 (Cth)

* Attempting to pervert the course of justice, contrary to section 43 of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth)

* Two counts of allowing a non-citizen to work in breach of a visa condition, contrary to section 245AC of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

* Allowing an unlawful non-citizen to work, contrary to section 245AB of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

* Operating a brothel other than in a prescribed location, contrary to section 18 of the Prostitution Act (ACT)

The woman was granted conditional bail to appear at the ACT Magistrates Court today (18 November 2009).

A 55-year-old Preston man has also been served with a summons in connection with this matter and is due to appear in ACT Magistrates Court today.

The TSETT were established to investigate Commonwealth offences relating to trafficking in persons for sexual or labour exploitation.

Where a potential victim is identified, the AFP responds immediately to remove identified trafficking victims from harm, and to initiate victim support arrangements in line with the whole-of-government strategy to combat trafficking.

Australia is recognised as a destination country for such activities, though current data suggests the number of victims in Australia is low with 141 victims provided with support on the program since 2004.

By its very nature, this crime type involves people who are reluctant to come forward due to shame, threats or fear.

Police urge anyone with information they believe may be related to people trafficking or sexual servitude to contact the AFP on 1800 813 784 (free call).

The maximum penalty for these offences is 25 years imprisonment.

Topics: AFP, Australia, Australian Federal Police, Canberra, debt bondage, Governance, human trafficking, illegal brothel, Kambah, labour exploitation, prostitution, sex crimes, sex workers, sexual exploitation, slave, Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Teams, TSETT

Helping Islam's green shoots grow

| Nazry Bahrawi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

In battling climate change, Indonesian Muslims have led their counterparts elsewhere in promoting the idea that Islam must not be a fair-weathered faith when it comes to environmental degradation.

They did so without the prodding of a grand conservation blueprint such as that unveiled at this month's UN-funded Alliance of Religions and Conservation meeting at Windsor Castle. Among the plan's many targets is the transformation of the 10 most sacred Islamic cities into eco-friendly sites in the next five years.

Rather, Indonesian activists have acted independently to push for the greening of Islam in a movement that could be traced back some two decades when discourses about environmental conservation first appeared in the rhetoric of the Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's two largest Islamic grassroots organisations.

In recent years, both have set up branches focused on implementing environmental programmes. For instance, the NU is working closely with the ministry of forestry to battle the depletion of trees brought about primarily by illegal logging in Indonesia's national forests.

Two years back, a group of NU clerics even went as far as issuing a fatwa against the government's plan to build a nuclear power plant in central Java. They reason that nuclear fallout is plausible as Indonesia is situated along the seismically active Pacific "Ring of Fire" fault line.

Even Islamic boarding schools or pesantren – once considered a hotbed of extremism – have turned over a green leaf. For instance, the Ilmu Giri school conducts programmes for farmers to replenish trees in their vicinity. Its founder, Nasruddin Anshory, preaches that the felling of one tree must be replaced by the seeding of two.

Meanwhile, the nation's environment ministry has launched an eco-pesantren programme in about 90 schools in the Yogyakarta province to impart practical knowledge on preserving and developing the environment.

In a world suffering from an environmental deficit, Indonesia's godly green shoots are a positive sign. Yet they could also wither. If mismanaged, the positive hype generated by the surging Islamic eco-activism could quickly degrade into an eco-jihad.

This warning was issued by leading Indonesian environmental activist Fachruddin Mangunjaya. While he downplays the possibility that green causes could be hijacked by extremist groups, he cautions that a confrontation could break out between the state and lay Muslims if Indonesia's national council of religious leaders continues to protest against the government's plan to build a nuclear power plant by 2016.

Furthermore, implementation of conservation programmes has been wanting in some areas. In the past several years, the practice by Indonesian farmers of clearing farmland by burning vegetation has been widespread, bringing about the south-east Asian haze.

Such glitches suggest that Indonesia is not yet a model of religious conservationism. To this end, one of the nation's foremost tasks should surely be to translate its eco-activism into a comprehensive eco-theology.

Here, Indonesia should propound an Islamic philosophy of environmentalism that is not just flora-centric but fauna-friendly too. Yet Indonesian Muslims have only demonstrated a proclivity for the former.

Embracing such an ideal is tricky considering that meat consumption is a natural part of the Islamic way of life. While it is unrealistic to expect Muslims to stop eating meat, the burgeoning halal industry in Indonesia – and other parts of the Muslim world too – runs the risk of degenerating into a capitalistic venture that sees animals existing merely to satiate man's needs.

Averting such an unscrupulous commodification of Islam necessitates a re-interpretation of the term khalifah in the oft-quoted Surah 2:30 of the Qur'an that describes man's role on Earth. Scholars have popularly interpreted khalifah as "vicegerent", implying that man is a supreme ruler over other beings. Such an interpretation justifies the indiscriminate exploitation of animals.

If Indonesians are serious about religious environmentalism, they would be the first to heed Birmingham-based Islamic environmental activist Fazlun Khalid's proposal to reinterpret khalifah as "vice-regent". This latter term denotes that man's mandate on Earth is to not to rule but merely act in the name of another higher authority – namely, God. Muslims are thus required to treat other living beings with trepidation and humility. Such a paradigm shift would naturally give rise to efforts to treat cattle humanely.

THE average weekly wage in Australia is now $1200.60 or IDR 10,5 millions

Average Aussie wage rises by 5.2pc | Business Breaking News | News.com.au

THE average weekly wage in Australia is now $1200.60, after rising by 5.2 per cent in the year to August.

The quarterly seasonally-adjusted pace of average weekly ordinary time earnings rose 0.9 per cent in the three months to August, Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today showed.

This was a slight moderation on the 1.3 per cent quarterly growth recorded in the three months to May but still left the annual rate well above the Reserve Bank of Australia's perceived "line in the sand" at 4.5 per cent.

Still, the composition of the AWOTE series tends to make it volatile, which is why the RBA prefers to use the wage price index - released yesterday - as one of its main guides to wages growth.

That index showed a more modest pace of growth of 0.7 per cent in the three months to September with the annual rate a subdued 3.6 per cent, its slowest pace in nearly five years

hunger in the US

17m US families too poor to eat | World Breaking News | News.com.au

THE US Agriculture Department has released bleak figures on the state of hunger in the United States, showing that more American families are having difficulty feeding their members.

The annual Household Food Security report showed that in 2008, families in 17 million households - 14.6 per cent of US homes - had difficulty putting enough food on the table at some point during the year, an 11 per cent increase over 2007.

The figures "represent the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995," the USDA said.

"The fundamental cause of food insecurity and hunger in the United States is poverty - marked by a lack of adequate resources to address basic needs such as food, shelter and health care," the statement added.

President Barack Obama described as "unsettling" the report which came as some 60 heads of state and government were attending the World Summit on Food Security in Rome.

"This trend was already painfully clear in many communities across our nation, where food stamp applications are surging and food pantry shelves are emptying," Mr Obama said.

The President said he was especially troubled that there were more than 500,000 US families "in which a child experienced hunger multiple times over the course of the year".

"Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation - depends on regular access to healthy meals," he said.

The first task to reverse the trend of rising hunger "is to restore job growth, which will help relieve the economic pressures that make it difficult for parents to put a square meal on the table each day," Mr Obama said.

The President also said his administration has increased help for low-income families seeking food assistance, especially those with children.