[forinti]

Its a common occurrence for families to take in poor girls to do house work in exchange for food and lodging. And with the insidious nature of Brazilian racism, they will pretend that she is part of the family. They might even take her on vacations (to work, of course). If you grow up with this mentality it might even be hard for you to see the injustice. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so, decades after its neighbours. The slaves never got compensation but their owners did.

[motbus3]

"It is" is a bit misleading.

I will say it was common up to the end of 70s and somewhat into the 80s. Common here I don't mean that every single person would have a "slave child" at home but you'd know someone or someone that knew someone who did it.

I am not saying it justify this horrible behaviour, but mostly as to say how much worse it could get. Some would just be "Cinderella" style abuse, but other would be physically and sexually abused.

Some reform of policies around de 90s cleared much of the evil practice.

I think by today standards, 99% of people knowing this would have denounced this much earlier. The fact it did not happen in this case is because this family is related to a powerful politician of the region.

Compensation they offer is too little and too disrespectful. It is basically 3 USD a week for the past half decade of forced work relationship. First, it would need to be at least 100x more than that and it would need to put this rubbish in form of people into jail for the rest of their lives.

[iammrpayments]

I was repeatedly told in school that Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, only to find out recently that places like UAE had not abolished slavery until 1967.

[tedggh]

Most people I talk to don’t know that 80% of Russians were slaves until their emancipation in 1861, as well as a significant amount of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians and Estonians. There were no reparations paid, in fact they had to continue working for free for generations to pay bankers for the same land they have been enslaved for. Then just after the former serfs finally paid their “debt” the Bolsheviks came and took it

[Quarrel]

They took the slavery / serf distinction seriously in the Slavic world. While the distinctions might have mattered in the 1800s, by any modern-slavery standard the serfs were slaves, as you rightly say.

Whatever we might now think with hindsight of the communist revolution in Russia, if ever there was a country primed for the peasants to rise up against the ruling class, it was Russia.

Russia might have been a land of art, music, dance and literature, but you were pretty fucked if you weren't in the 20%.

[tpm]

Not just Russia, the Kingdom of Hungary (which contained large parts of Central Europe) abolished serfdom only in 1848 (the Serfdom Patent of 1781 was not really respected in the hungarian part of Austrian Empire until then).

[jdiff]

They likely had the qualifier, as does GP, that it was the last country "in the Americas."

[ffsm8]

As if they stopped... The whole middle east is a shit show in that regard.

And North Korea continues to show that literally nobody cares, really. Because if they did, at least that would've been prevent- or at least stopable with some concessions to China. The North Korean people would've at least been treated as humans if they became part of China and the NK dictator along with the whole government be executed.

[olelele]

I’m sorry but the current NK regime and the Kim family consolidating power is in large part due to American aggression indochina. The Korean War was more or less genocide on the part of the Americans and history would be different without Douglas MacArthur…

[ffsm8]

That's just fake history. The US didn't start the Korean war, they helped SK stand free of the oppression of the seriously evil NK government.

China then interfered because they didn't want a US aligned country at their border.

However there have been decades since the affair settled - and I stand by my opinion that if the US and by extension NATO cares whatsoever, they'd have just told China "we won't interfere as long as you free NK citizens into free people".

It would've not been perfect at all, but at least the horrendous reality they are in would've been prevented.

[pseudohadamard]

That's also somewhat fake history. The half of Korea under Syngman Rhee was almost as bad as the other half under Kim Il Sung, it's just that Rhee was "our son of a bitch" to quote Roosevelt while Kim was Stalin's son of a bitch. Rhee was just as keen to unite Korea using American blood as Kim was using Chinese blood.

[olelele]

And the American terror bombings of the north were the heaviest in history.

[AwaAwa]

This is quite interesting, given the UAE was only formed in 1971, and their precursor states only agreed to form the UAE in 1968.

[jauco]

https://www.nytimes.com/1967/03/28/archives/saudi-arabian-sl...

[za3faran]

> Slavery in the Arab world is a benign institution. Slaves are rarely used for industrial or agricultural labor. They are often treated as members of the family. Bright young slaves are educated and given positions of trust and are eventually freed. Mohammed Surur, the former Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, was born a slave. Two managers of one of Jidda's principal hotels were once slaves.

[inexcf]

"last country to abolish slavery" vs. "last country to practice slavery"

[Loughla]

Yeah, have you ever been to Dubai?

Slavery is "illegal".

I'm convinced that the absolute modernity is only a sideshow attraction for the ultra-wealthy to visit Dubai. The real show is the servants.

[robbie-c]

A family member stayed in a hotel in Dubai recently and on returning said how incredible the staff were and willing they were to help them, and my response was "no shit"

[Loughla]

I went once. It feels like Disney Land but for the wealthy. I'll never go back, and I actually regret going to be honest. It's disgusting and it's right out in the open.

[petcat]

I was shocked to read how late even several prominent European countries abolished it. Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did.

[wahern]

Serfdom wasn't legally abolished in Russia until 1861. Slavery was technically abolished in the late 1700s, but in some areas serfs were still bought and sold like chattel until the end of serfdom.

The Ottoman Empire legally abolished slavery in the 1880s, but there was still illicit yet tolerated slavery in Turkey into the 1930s.

I think in some areas of the Sahel chattel slavery may still exist as a practical matter. Mauritania didn't legally abolish chattel slavery until 1981, for example, but as in other areas it can take decades for reality to match the law, given the laws were often changed under international pressure rather than reflecting any change to the domestic social order.

[hylaride]

Serfdom continued in practice in Russia for decades and often serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them.

The fact that serfdom de-facto remained is one of the primary reasons Russia's industrialization lagged the rest of Europe for so long as factories didn't get the initial cheap labour. It was only finally fully picking up steam (pun not intended) when WW1 broke out.

[geoka9]

> serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them.

Exactly. Bolsheviks just changed the name from "serfdom" to "collective farms". Mandatory membership where members were not allowed an ID that enabled them to move inside the country and therefore were bound to the farm. The practice continued until the late 1970s.

[spwa4]

And, today, in the whole middle east everyone, from governments to individual families, keep getting "embarassed" by having it turn that that they're "holding servants". And then it happens again. And again. And again. Daesh/IS "brought back" slavery (which is one reason bringing back terror brides, some of whom exploited slaves while in the middle east, is such a judicial nightmare. What do you do with a legally Australian girl, now a mother of 4, who lived for 2 years in Iraq, bought and sold slaves, exploited some them to "run the household", and killed/worked to death one of them?)

Slavery is abolished everywhere in the middle east ("except" Daesh/islamic state), and yet this keeps happening. Example after example after example:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/12/fifas-world-cup-ignores-...

https://www.freedomunited.org/news/repression-modern-slavery...

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies...

https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2014/12/domestic-servitude-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5v077nyjo

https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/13/i-was-sold/abuse-and-e...

https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/united-arab-emirates-tra...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-withou...

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/11/libya-must-e...

Oh and the royal families keep getting caught in "even more embarrassing" incidents.

Here is Saudi Arabia having a royal murder a slave for perceived insults, then forcing UK governments to allow and forgive the murder (by taking nationals hostage then organizing a "prisoner swap")

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9674420/Saudi-...

Or Qatar:

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200619-qatar-prince-accu...

Or Iranian and Iraqi imams and mullahs selling children, girls, but apparently even including the occasional boy, into child prostitution, functioning as pimps and exploiters:

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/W...

Frankly, these days it seems to be quite normal for countries to just sign whatever treaty anyone wants signed ... and just ignore it. Vilifying anyone calling them out on it as culturally insensitive and in all cases ignoring them.

[owebmaster]

> Or Iranian and Iraqi imams and mullahs selling children, girls, but apparently even including the occasional boy, into child prostitution, functioning as pimps and exploiters

Let's not forget the same happens in the US including by the political elite

[spwa4]

Obviously the scale of the problem doesn't even compare. Oh, and it's actually illegal in the west, so the occasional perp gets punished.

[throw_m239339]

You'd be shocked how much of our "friends" in MENA still have legal slavery for non citizens. When an employer can legally confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery.

I have no idea why we in the west consider that normal and look the other way... What am I saying, I know, oil & VC money...

Some of them also bring their Filipino, India, Nepali, or African slave maids in Europe and everybody looks the other way, they have too much money to be criticized...

They are so brazen about slavery they routinely sell their slaves on Instagram or Facebook ads, with copies such as "doesn't need much food","will sleep on the floor", "will work 20 hours a day"...

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549

> "African worker, clean and smiley," said one listing. Another: "Nepalese who dares to ask for a day off."

> When speaking to the sellers, the undercover team frequently heard racist language. "Indians are the dirtiest," said one, describing a woman being advertised.

They are dehumanized at first place, but the level of racism in these places, on top of all that is shocking...

[fmbb]

> When an employer can confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery.

This happens in Europe as well.

It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.

[RetroTechie]

On a side note: be VERY suspicious if you ever come across a situation, where person identified by a passport, does not keep (more exactly: control) it themselves. This is a big red flag you've encountered some sort of exploitative (and possibly illegal) situation. Please remember!

Quoting from my own passport:

"The bearer of this passport may pass it to a third party only if there is a statutory obligation to do so".

Denying the freedom of an employee to end a work relation with their employer & leave, does not pass that bar.

[belorn]

When visiting Egypt, the hotel took control of all the guests passport and only returned them at departure date. It is not the same as work relation, obviously, but I wonder how common that practice is in other tourist destinations.

[manarth]

It's incredibly unusual – I've not encountered that in any destination I've travelled to (including Egypt).

They'll usually make a photocopy of the passport during check-in, then immediately return it.

[runsWphotons]

This is completely a figment of your imagination.

[manarth]

Passport confiscation is a common sign of modern slavery.

    "he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK"
    "The gang confiscated the passports of all their victims"

It's not legal. There are definitions of "Modern Slavery" and descriptions of the practices and warning signs because it is still an issue in contemporary times, including in Europe.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kdg84zj4wo

[regenschutz]

No, it's real. Every year, there are several news articles about berry pickers being abused, at least here in Sweden (not sure about the other Scandinavian countries). Here's [0] just ONE of the myriad of articles I could find, but there are so, so, so many more (and even worse ones) [1].

[0]: (In Swedish) Berry entrepreneurs suspected of trafficking Thai nationals, (2025). https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vasternorrland/barforetag-...

[1]: (In Swedish) Berry pickers (Topic). https://www.svt.se/nyheter/om/barplockare

Both are from SVT, the public broadcaster in Sweden.

[ronjakoi]

Similar situation in Finland. There have only recently been some consequences for the berry companies and reforms are underway. The pickers would come mainly from Thailand with tourist visas. This year a majority of the visas have been denied and the berry companies are throwing tantrums.

They've been engaging in illegal price-fixing, too.

[insane_dreamer]

The difference is that in Sweden it happens but at least it's illegal. In Dubai there's nothing illegal about it and therefore much more widespread.

[cyphar]

The abolition of slavery in the US is unfortunately a more complicated story than most people are aware.

The 13th amendment removed the legal concept of slavery (except for convicts) but it was still not a crime to do slavery. Slavery changed shape many times over the years since the civil war (usually involving convicting black people under sham crimes and then selling them as debt slaves or forcing them to sign contracts that rendered them slaves under threat of being convicted for said sham crimes) and can only reasonably be said to have actually ended in the US after Pearl Harbour when concerns that it would be used as enemy propaganda caused the Justice Department to properly prosecute slave owners (see Circular 3591[1]).

The last chattel slave in the US was Alfred Irving[2] and he was released in late 1942. He was kept in chains and was permanently disfigured due to constant physical abuse from his owners. He died in 1960.

[3] is a very comprehensive video essay about the topic.

[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA

[crote]

This isn't very surprising.

The vast majority of slaves went to the New World, so that's where most of its effects were felt. Of the 12.5M people kidnapped from Africa, only ~9000 went to the Old World. It just wasn't as obvious of a problem in Europe itself.

An interesting side-effect of this is that a lot of European countries have two relevant dates: the first being the banning of slave trade, the second being the banning of slavery. For example, the UK prohibited any involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but slavery in the UK itself was only abolished in 1833.

[_DeadFred_]

In addition muslim traders also exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523100.stm

[rightbyte]

Abducted and enslaved? Doesn't kidnapping imply kids?

[ShinyLeftPad]

It doesn't imply kids (or napping). Nancy Guthrie is 84 https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fbi-determine...

[rightbyte]

Oh. Yeah I thought it was slang language use but it seems like it is used for adults too over the board. I mainly wanted to point out that adults were victims also.

[insane_dreamer]

> Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did

Sort of. France and England abolished slavery within their own territories before the US states did, but it did not extend to their colonies until later. France banned slavery within its home territory back in the 1300s (Free Soil Principle), but continued with slavery through its "Code Noir" (Black Code) in its colonies, where slavery was not permanently abolished until 1848 (it was abolished at the time of the French Revolution but then reinstated by Napoleon). England abolished slavery at home in the mid 1700s but not in its colonies until 1834.

(Like the US North, England and France had very small populations of Africans/others, so it was relatively painless and easy to ban slavery there, while continuing to accept slavery "elsewhere". For the US North "elsewhere" was the South, for England and France it was their colonies. Same principle though.)

Along the same lines, slavery of Catholics was forbidden in Europe all the way back in the Middle Ages. So it was acknowledged to be something bad, that Christians should not do to each other. But slavery of "infidels", heathen/pagan/Muslims/etc., was OK - and not only okay but sanctioned by Romanus Pontifex in the 1400s granting Portugal the authority to enslave "pagans" (basically all non-Europeans) along the coast of Africa. (Incidentally, as some Africans converted to Christianity, this posed a problem (they were no longer pagan and couldn't be enslaved), and so eventually it shifted to being about race and skin color rather than religion.)

[_DeadFred_]

I wonder if this position was taken from the Muslim slaver behavior who had been conquering/enslaving Christians for quite a while at that point. Especially as Spain was being taken back from Muslim colonizers at that time, and you have lands that had been under Muslim practices (enslaving non-muslims) now having the roles reversed but perhaps the engrained Islamic thought (only enslave non-believers) entrenched.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqaliba

[hokkos]

Serfdom was abolished in the Kingdom of France in 1315.

[phyzome]

Correction: The US still has not abolished slavery.

It is still legal in the case of prisoners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

[froh]

yes! which is _the_ driving factor behind the US prison system with its private prison labor facilities.

there is zero financial motivation for the state for prevention or rehab or any other activities to reduce imprisonment rates

did I mention disenfranchisement of the imprisoned?

[anonymars]

Related: https://newjimcrow.com/about/excerpt-from-the-introduction

"Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy"

[sokoloff]

Are you suggesting that the state turns a net profit on prisoners, making more from their labor than the full cost of their incarceration?

That seems…unlikely.

[none2585]

Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage.

[sokoloff]

What’s the financial motivation for the state then?

[atmavatar]

For the state itself? None.

For state employees (i.e. representatives, judges, etc.)? Some get kickbacks.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

See: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dhs-contractors-told-wh...

Alas, the "kids for cash" scandal was such a big news event that it dominates the results for any search you'd do on the subject of private prison corruption, but it's hardly the only example.

[scarecrowbob]

It's possible that you're genuine in your confusion here; it is, however very hard for me to believe that there are people who genuinely don't understand that when the state spends money it -goes somewhere-.

[generj]

The state as a whole does not have a financial motivation.

The interests of the criminal justice system on the other hand is heavily financially benefited from the current state of affairs. More incarcerations means more judges, more lawyers, more job security.

Moves to correct this are labeled as “soft of crime” and surely my opponent Congresswoman Y isn’t pro crime?

[none2585]

I wasn't claiming there was a financial motivation one way or the other simply stating the actors who do turn a profit with regards to the US prison system.

The explosion of incarceration and the private prisons resulting from that largely come from "the war on drugs". The book The New Jim Crow is pretty good if you're interested in the topic.

[Brian_K_White]

Irrelevant. There doesn't need to be any.

"What's the financial motivation for the state" is way too blinkered and makes at least 2 different false assumptions. There are other motivations besides financial, and it doesn't have to be the state's own motivation for the state to end up doing something.

Countless government policies and programs exist which give no legitimate benefit to the state or the people, no legitimate motivation, financial or otherwise, yet they exist anyway because they do benefit and motivate someone, financially or otherwise, who has some mechanism of influence to cause it to happen.

This is almost like asking "Why would anyone do something bad?" Gosh golly why indeed? 517,000 reasons and 124 new ones every day.

[compsciphd]

to lose less money on the prisoners?

i.e. its not a good motivation to increase the number of prisoners (even if one looses less money per prisoner, more prisoners will mean more loss), but it does motivate investigating ways on how one can minimize the loss on individual prisoners.

[insane_dreamer]

in many cases the motivation is not financial, it's racial; modern-day Jim Crow

[froh]

I get how you could read it that way, and of course the state as the thing that is collecting taxes and paying whatever does not profit.

and the state as all citizens, including those affected by gang and drug related violence also would benefit from dong things differently.

it's those who benefit off the current prison labor system who lobby to keep it running, and they make it seem "natural" and "without alternatives"...

and "the state" (as the tax collecting entity) pays for the prisons and the inmates while the labor "providing" companies benefit off the labor.

it's a very very clever system.

enslavement without being called such.

and I agree, no, "the state" (as the totality of citizens) doesn't benefit.

only "the state" as the entity that's controlled by lobbyists and _pretends_ being by the people, for the people, that has no motivation to change this.

[elmer2]

I suppose using this logic, murder is legal, because of self defense. Theft is legal because of tax laws.

Prisoners aren't 'slaves'. They are being punished for crimes they committed. Very dofferent than being born into it and bought/sold to the highest bidder.

[voakbasda]

Read the Constitution. The 13th amendment that “abolished” slavery also explicitly reserved the right for the government to keep prisoners as slaves:

AMENDMENT XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

[crote]

> They are being punished for crimes they committed

The punishment is being locked up in a cell. Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery.

[ivell]

> Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery.

Why is it not part of the punishment?

I think it is dependent upon interpretation. Otherwise arresting and locking up can be interpreted as kidnapping and so on.

I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though.

[blooalien]

> Why is it not part of the punishment?

Indeed it is part of the punishment. As an earlier comment in this thread points out from the 13th amendment:

> "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime" (emphasis added by me)

[insane_dreamer]

> I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though.

They're not. That's why it's slavery. And slavery of prisoners is permitted by the Constitution, which is the main point here.

[tmtvl]

If someone is abducted against their will and forced to do work without (fair) compensation and without being allowed to exercise their human rights, is that person not a slave because they were neither born into it nor bought or sold?

[ShinyLeftPad]

"Abduction against their will" is something that happens when a person is arrested. If you are done for crime I don't think freedoms apply to you anymore.

[Brian_K_White]

Self denese isn't murder. It's killing but not murder. And yes, there are forms of killing that are legal and not murder.

And yes indeed you are correct that the sate does commit theft and declare it legal for itself.

Prisoners that are made to perform any useful work that anyone else benefits from are slaves, not merely prisoners.

If you want to invoke the word "logic" you should actually employ it.

[phyzome]

I did not say that all prisoners are slaves. I said that it would be legal to enslave them.

[encom]

Prisoners are not slaves, because they are not the property of the prison or any other entity. It's called involuntary servitude. I'm sure the people affected do not care about the distinction, but words matter.

It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude.

[hylaride]

> It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude.

Look, you're not entirely wrong. But you're not entirely right, either.

In some states, the prisons are privately run and the prison labour is part of the profit motive. They have no incentive to rehabilitate and the states with these "programs" have some of the highest recidivism rates in the USA.

That also ignores the fact that some people are born into situations that make it far harder to live a "legit" life than others, and I'm not even talking about historical racism as part of that equation (which certainly does contribute).

I'm also NOT saying that prisoners shouldn't be made to work, but it should be outside of a system designed to exploit them.

[amazingamazing]

> It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude.

Stupid people always say nonsense like this as if no person in prison is innocent.

[grantith]

It's also black and white thinking that carries an ego-filled, nuance-lacking, disregard for the myriad of circumstances that underpin human behavior.

[toilet]

Read more about it in Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

Stupid people also assume there are not exceptions to every rule. But you can't build your systems (or your arguments) around edge cases, because that would be ignoring the vast majority of use cases.

[amazingamazing]

Another stupid comment. What do you think about the death penalty?

If you happen to be the one dying for no reason would you consider that just a trivial unfortunate edge case?

Educate yourself:

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/innocence

Every day I am happy many here are techies and not politicians.

[none2585]

You should read The New Jim Crow

[phyzome]

I did not say that prisoners are slaves. I said that it is legal to enslave them.

[archagon]

Not Brazil — Mexico — but the movie Roma does an amazing job at dissecting this sort of dynamic.

[forinti]

If you found that movie interesting, check out The Second Mother (Que Horas ela Volta?) which is a Brazilian movie about a maid and her relationship with the middle class family that employs her.

[archagon]

Thank you! Putting it on the watchlist.

[matheusmoreira]

"Common" occurrence? I've literally never seen literal slavery like this happen before.

[beAbU]

> they will pretend that she is part of the family

Wasn't there some mild scandal a decade or so ago where wealthy white American families would adopt kids from Africa or Mexico, only to force them to do housework the whole time?

[spwa4]

https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/774166.pdf

Well, it's classed as child abuse and the perpetrators ("parents") were punished harshly. So pretty bad, but not remotely the same thing as what happens in the middle east or north Africa.

[bodash]

“The oppressors left, but their systems remain”