slavery

"Gap may be one of the best-known fashion brands with a public commitment to social responsibility, but the employment of bonded child slaves as young as 10 in India's illegal sweatshops tells a different story. The reality is that most major retail firms are in the same game, cutting costs and not considering the consequences. They should know by now what outsourcing to India means.

It is an impossible task to track down all of these terrible sweatshops, particularly in the garment industry when you need little more than a basement or an attic crammed with small children to make a healthy profit. Some owners even hide the children in sacks and in carefully concealed mezzanine floors designed to dodge such raids."

Jivaj, who is from West Bengal and looks around 12, told The Observer that some of the boys in the sweatshop had been badly beaten. 'Our hours are hard and violence is used against us if we don't work hard enough. This is a big order for abroad, they keep telling us that.

'Last week, we spent four days working from dawn until about one o'clock in the morning the following day. I was so tired I felt sick,' he whispers, tears streaming down his face. 'If any of us cried we were hit with a rubber pipe. Some of the boys had oily cloths stuffed in our mouths as punishment.'

Discussion of slavery is dominated by the past, but today, according to the International Labour Organisation, at least 12.3 million people are enslaved worldwide. Human trafficking (just one form of slavery) is the most profitable black-market trade after drugs and guns, raking in an estimated $32bn each year.

Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks in Charleston. Cartagena, and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing...