Human Trafficking – Multifaith Zoom event 29 November 2025
A COAT OF MANY COLOURS
In Thomas Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) a drunk young farm labourer has a row with his wife and auctions her off to another man. The novel tells how his youthful act comes back to torment him twenty years later at the height of his successful business career. A tragic sequence of events follows, leading to his impoverishment and death. Thomas Hardy took his readers on a painful journey, as the story unfolds and they come to realise the horrific consequences of that initial act of human trafficking. Hardy wrote about what he called ‘the persistence of the unforeseen’. The trafficking of human beings, a crime as old as human civilisation itself, leads to consequences not just unforeseen but totally unseen, a dark world of hidden slavery, of injury pain and disease of hazardous forced labour, of guilt, post traumatic stress and self harm, of isolation rejection poverty and immigration insecurity. That’s why I agreed to come along this evening to join with this broad coalition of speakers.
For Jews, Christians and Muslims the story of human trafficking begins with the ancient story of Joseph. In the Bible’s account his hateful brothers said as they spotted him walking towards them: ‘Look the dreamer cometh: let us kill him… and say an evil beast has eaten him.’ (Genesis 37:19-20). But they didn’t kill him: they stripped him of the ketonet passim /coat of many colours which his father had made for him, threw him into a pit, and then sold him to passing traders. He was taken down into Egypt and sold as a slave. It wasn’t just his colourful cloak which he lost, but the colours of his life. He was a victim of sexual exploitation too. Human trafficking and slavery robs people of their dignity, their liberty, their ability to earn, their culture, often their language, their family, their relationships, and even their faith. In a sense we all wear a coat of many colours but such adversity reduces people to a monochrome colourless existence. Joseph somehow managed to maintain his high ethical standards and his faith. And that helped him to triumph over adversity. He was brought up from prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams and became the ruler of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself.
Keith Best mentioned the plight of the Uyghurs. When I first heard of what was happening to them I could scarcely believe that a million people were being held in re-education camps in the West of China, robbed of their individuality, their ancient cultural ways, and their Muslim faith. Their plight goes back to the 1950s, with communist indoctrination under Chairman Mao, and many were held in labour camps even back in the 1960s. But it is much worse now as their distinctive way of life has been systematically destroyed. The re-education camps were legalised by China in 2018. Not even the US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021 has been effective. I know, because I’ve tried, that it is all but impossible not to buy Chinese goods. For many items, there are no alternatives and even where there are, retailers often fail to state where an item is made. Twice I have fasted for a day during Ramadan in solidarity with them, mindful that they are even prohibited from fasting. Traditionally Uyghurs wear colourful costumes, some of them involving many colours, linking them with the story of Joseph.
I first found out about their plight from the UK Human Rights organisation René Cassin, named after the French Jewish lawyer who was co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Jewish ethics and scholars have played a major role in developing and giving legal frameworks to human rights. That’s because our tradition emphasises we are all made in the image of God, who taught us impartiality in justice, fair treatment of workers, and protection of the vulnerable, and also because of our history as victims of persecution, enslaved in ancient Egypt. As Jews when we recite Birkat HaMazon/ Thanksgiving after meals we thank God for p’ditanu mibbeit avadim / redeeming us from the camp of slavery. We never forget our people’s origin as slaves.
Sadly, making rules and passing laws hasn’t worked. In 2000 the United Nations adopted the Palermo Protocol to Prevent Trafficking. On this 25th anniversary of that protocol, the Helen Bamber foundation has published a brief review: there is an overemphasis on the criminal justice and law enforcement responses to trafficking, rather than taking direct action. Governments lose sight of the causes of exploitation, including global inequality and a lack of safe and legal migration. Helen Bamber was another remarkable Jew. She worked with Holocaust Survivors in Germany and helped to establish Amnesty International and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Every where you look, Jews have been in the forefront of this work, because our beliefs, our ethical values and our history all demand it.
So legal frameworks have not done enough and enforcement too often harms the victims more than the perpetrators. Laws cannot work without factory inspectors. The care for the elderly sector, mega building projects and even digital piece work all leave workers open to exploitation.
Back in 2014, following condemnation in the UK media ten UK supermarkets began to address issues of forced labour in Thai fishing supply lines. The 2015 Modern Slavery Act encouraged these efforts. But in 2025, if you look at the tuna industry, you would think there is more concern for the welfare of the fish than the welfare of the workers.
But the role of faith communities is positive. Catholic Network Against Human Trafficking in the Philippines. Hindu charities helping Temple workers in India, Islamic scholars in Pakistan have condemned forced labour there, and Jews have worked on supply chain ethics. Faith groups have a moral authority, local trust and a long term presence. We are in the lead and we must stay in the lead: there is so much work to do. It has been a honour to speak to you this evening, and to help to shine a little light into a very dark place in our world.
Rabbi Dr Michael Hilton, 29th November 2025
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