The 2022 US mid-term elections will be held on November 8. In addition to the election of members of Congress and governors, many states will also hold referendums on important matters in their own states. In this year's mid-term elections, voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont will decide whether to completely ban slavery or involuntary servitude in their own states. It has been 2022, and many American states are still discussing the issue of the abolition of slavery, which is undoubtedly a great satire on American human rights.
Exceptions are difficult to modify
Although it is a referendum on the contents of state constitutions, what voters in these five states will decide is actually a clause involving the United States Constitution. Although the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, passed in 1865, abolished slavery, it left behind an "exception clause" allowing forced labor for prison prisoners. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said that the provision "makes it legal to punish slavery as a crime in most parts of the United States". The Associated Press said that this provision had become a loophole in the spread of different forms of slavery in the United States over the past 100 years.
These five states are the latest to promote the deletion of this provision in the Constitution. In 2018, Colorado voters approved a referendum to amend the state constitution, canceling relevant provisions in the state constitution; In 2020, Nebraska and Utah took similar actions. According to CNN, the efforts of these states may generate enough momentum to push Congress to amend the Thirteenth Amendment.
So far, there are still similar provisions in the constitutions of more than 20 states in the United States, and the remaining states are managing related matters according to the constitutional provisions. Therefore, the most effective way to solve the problem is still to promote the revision of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. However, according to the Constitution of the United States, the amendment of the Constitution requires the consent of two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate of Congress and the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures. Congress has been unable to promote relevant work for many years. Hida Murphy, who works in the non-governmental organization "Prison Group without Exceptions", told CNN that the organization "hopes that enough states will cancel the exception clauses in the Constitution, providing a solid foundation for the movement to abolish and replace the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
The chronic disease of racism cannot be eliminated
In fact, this constitutional provision has become the representative of the chronic disease of racism and racial discrimination in the United States. There are a large number of prison workers in the United States at the federal and local levels, most of whom are black and colored. The Associated Press said that for some southern states, this provision has become a "passport" for state and local governments to continue to enslave African Americans and other minorities. In several southern states, African Americans were once detained for acts such as speaking loudly in public or not giving way on the sidewalk, and thus became enslaved again.
The BBC pointed out that several years after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, many southern states had passed laws specifically aimed at suppressing black communities and forcing them to work in prisons. Until now, some imprisoned African Americans are still forced to pick cotton and other crops in the southern plantations where their ancestors were once enslaved. Take Louisiana State Prison as an example. According to the data of the non-profit organization Innocence Plan, about 75% of the prisoners in the prison are African Americans.
Robert Chase, associate professor of Stony Brook University and head of the organization of anti slavery historians, said in an interview with the Washington Post, "We must accept the fact that the amendment to emancipate slaves contains provisions for re enslaving them." "For the entire generation, it has imprisoned African men and women, sold their labor to private companies, and made them slaves again." Curtis Ray Davis, who was held in Louisiana State Prison for 25 years for misjudgment, said in an interview with the BBC that "anyone with a conscience knows that human beings should not be the property of others", and "they should not be the property of Louisiana."
Forced labor is full of bad deeds
The slavery of prisoners in American private prisons exposes the tip of the iceberg of forced labor in the United States. The phenomenon of forced labor is ubiquitous in agriculture, planting, housekeeping, catering, tourism, medical care and other industries in the United States, especially for children and women.
According to the estimation of the non-profit organization "American Farm Worker Employment Training Program", there are still about 500000 child workers engaged in agricultural work in the United States. Many children start working at the age of 8, and work up to 72 hours a week. According to the Washington Post, between 2003 and 2016, 452 children died of work-related injuries in the United States, of which 237 died in agricultural accidents. According to the November 2018 report of the Accountability Office of the United States Government, 5.5% of child workers work hard on farms, and half of the cases of dead child workers come from the agricultural field. According to the Richmond News, 240000 to 325000 women and children in the United States have been subjected to sexual slavery. The American non-governmental organization "End Slavery Now" said that a child trafficked into the sex industry "works" 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and can extract 150000 to 200000 dollars a year.
For a long time, the international community has been seriously concerned about the existence of forced labor in the United States and called on the United States government to seriously reflect and treat it. The Committee of Experts on the Implementation of Conventions and Recommendations of the International Labour Organization (CEACR) has expressed concern over a large number of serious industrial accidents involving child workers under the age of 18 in the United States for many years since 2012. During the 103rd International Labour Conference in 2014, the International Labour Standards Implementation Committee listed the violation of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention 1999 in the United States as one of the key national cases for review at the conference. Grazia, the then special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on human trafficking, issued a statement after his special visit to the United States in 2016, calling on the United States to take more effective measures to investigate human trafficking cases for the purpose of forced labor and labor exploitation.