Media Storm - Modern slavery is thriving: the media just isn’t telling you

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! There are at least 49 million enslaved people worldwide… and very little knowledge about how directly connected we are to them through supply chains (take the terrifying Slavery Footprint survey like Mathilda makes Helena do in this episode!) Over 100,000 are enslaved inside the UK, and that number is growing. This is no surprise, if we look at the data through a Media Storm lens. It correlates with government and media efforts to criminalise asylum seekers and irregular migrants, whether or not they have been trafficked here. Britain credits itself with pioneering the abolition of slavery. Yet it has a thriving underground labour market and imports billions of pounds-worth of goods every year produced with forced labour. British legislation is called “toothless” by activists. Asda, Morrisons, Tesco and Waitrose all sell tomato products that would be barred from America under anti-slavery import controls. In this deep dive, we look at modern slavery at home and in overseas supply chains, buried in mainstream media despite underpinning almost every aspect of UK life. We’re joined by trafficking survivor and podcaster Ilja Abbattista, and migrant worker rights activist Andy Hall, who has fought for years to see Dyson to pay a settlement fee to workers who say they were enslaved, beaten and tortured in a Malaysian factory producing parts for the company. Dyson says the settlement is not an admission of liability. Stay tuned to hear how the media is silenced by threats from multinational corporations, and how hysteria over immigration is helping human trafficking to thrive. This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Helena. How are you? I'm furious. Oh. I'm in shock and I'm furious. Want to know why? Yeah, I was sort of just expecting like, and I'm fine and okay, but I guess so. No, and I'm going to make you furious as well because this is also to do with the media. Okay.

Bring it on. The Hollywood reporter interviewed Harvey Weinstein. What? Yeah. They went to his. like luxury prison and interviewed him. And the topics of conversation were that he's upset because his friends don't pick up his phone calls anymore.

Oh my God. Also, he maintains his innocence throughout the whole interview. They have the audacity to interview this serial rapist in Women's History Month. They published it like the day after International Women's Day. Like, get in the bin. Bin now. Hollywood reporter, bin, now. They did this video with the journalist who interviewed Harvey Weinstein.

And like, honestly, the mental gymnastics that this man, obviously it was a man who interviewed him, the mental gymnastics that this man was doing to, like, justify why they were speaking to him. Like, you don't need to speak to this man. We don't need him to sit there and have a platform to maintain his innocence. You went to jail. Let him serve his sentence. we should not give him another second of our breath. No, we shouldn't.

And there is no mental gymnastics you can do to convince me that that was a necessary interview for the public interest. So, in conclusion, Hollywood reporter, Bin. Bin. And I think you want to put in the bin? This is a good segment. We should start this way always. What are you putting in the bin today?

Yeah, okay, X, Twitter. And yes, it's my fault. I should have put it in the bin a long time ago, and I meant to, like I sort of didn't get round to it because sometimes I'd browse it. And now my Twitter account has been stolen by hackers. Oh, damn. At Matilda Mel, the handle, is not mine on Twitter. Don't follow it.

Definitely don't click on any links that it sends you in Twitter DMs. And Twitter, yeah, X replied, there's nothing we can do to help you, but feel free to make another account. You're free to make another account that can be stolen that will never retrieve or never bought. to verify your identity for. So there's also a fake me on TikTok while I'm at it. So just, yeah, I don't know. Oh my God. Everyone just wants to be you. Don't believe anything I say online. Media storm. Don't believe anything we say. Great. Okay. Anything else for the bin? What else? Yeah. Trump, Donald Trump. But not for anything he's doing right now. Remember when he

came in and he slashed all US aid funding? Yes, I know where you're going with this. Well, as a consequence of that, our main funding group, which is an American pro-democracy fund, they basically said to us at the time, we are going to keep you going for as long as we can, but there's coming a point where we have to redirect our funding to plug all of the holes in US aid that Donald Trump has slashed, as well as research and development, which Trump has slashed. And that means that the clock is ticking on media storms remaining funding. Our Patreon is so essential right now and we have had a real like uptick in generosity

and we are so grateful for that and also we want to say do not fear we do have some options to make sure Media Storm keeps coming your way which we will share with you soon we may need to take a short break in April but we don't intend for that to last particularly long So as ever please consider supporting our Patreon

if you don't already for less than a cup of coffee a month You can support us to carry on MediaStorm forward slash if you know anybody really rich and nice, send them our way. And spread the word, spread the Media Storm word. That is also really, really helpful for finding funding. Right. On with the show.

Helena, how many slaves work for you? Okay. Don't worry about small talk, I guess. Zero, I hope. Also, shouldn't we be saying enslaved people? Thank you for the correction. Language matters. But this is the title of a survey I want to do with you right now. It's the slavery footprint survey created by Made in a Free World, designed to help consumers learn how they may be unwittingly complicit in the perpetuation of forced labour based on their lifestyle, what they buy. So let's see if your number really is zero. What city do you live in? London. Yep. Your age is... 32.

32. Wait, I think it wanted your ethnicity. How long has it got? No kids that we know of. God, no. In your apartment, you've got one bedroom, one bathroom. Correct. Do you have a home office?

No, I'm sitting on my bedroom floor recording this. What is on your plate? I'm married to a vegetarian who's in charge of the cooking, so I would say very little meat. Your medicine cabinet, right, I've seen inside your medicine cabinet, so I can confirm that you have all of these things. Makeup, floss. Yeah, daughter of a dentist, floss every day.

Am I allowed to ask you this on the podcast? Do you own any diamonds? Your engagement ring, it has ruby. Yeah. It actually says here, blood isn't limited to diamonds. Ruby's are commonly mined using forced labor. I didn't know that. Great.

That's my favorite stone. I'm sure that one's not. Okay. What about sporting? Sporting goods. Zero sporting equipment. I like staying inside and lying down. Right. What's in your closet? Oh, God. You have 13 slaves working for you, enslaved people, I should say. Wow. That's a difficult thing to learn about your life, right? Definitely. So this survey was started 10 years ago, 2016. So they say 10 years ago it was the world's consumers finding out how many slaves work for them.

Now it's those same consumers asking the same questions of their favourite brands. So I think the first action point of this episode for listeners is go and take the slavery footprint survey. But then, of course, you've got to try and work out what brands it is that you need to contact. So there are at least 49 million enslaved people worldwide. That is more than the population of Canada. Wow. So where do they come into my daily life, as this survey is trying to point out?

Well, right now, just looking at you, your laptop. It's also true for your smartphone. Yes, that's Colton, isn't it? Mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a hugely underreported humanitarian crisis. Yes, exactly. Among other minerals, Colton is an effective capacitor found in electronics. A US State Department official was interviewed about Colton mining in the DRC. He pointed to the reporter's smartphone and said, the likelihood that one of these was not touched by a slave is pretty low. Just this weekend, there was a huge story, which you probably didn't see, about a disaster in a Colton mine in the Congo. Two hundred people were killed working in the mine. 70 children. Children,

what were children doing in the mine? That is the question. Child labour is chronic in Colton mining. We should understand this as consumers, but that would be the media's job. So quickly before I continue this list, I have to highlight a pretty outrageous telegraph media storm on the subject of Colton mining in the Congo. I checked to see whether they, and other news outlets, had reported on this recent disaster. The telegraph hadn't. They had actually published, a long read earlier last year about Colton mining, it was titled Net Zero Drive casts shadow over barbaric Congo conflict. Now I read the article, which did have some really good reporting by the foreign correspondent Adrian Blumfield, but I was so confused by this Net Zero headline

because the article had nothing to do with Net Zero at all. I actually had to like Control F search the term net zero to realize it had actually occurred in the article just once. that Trump's government appears interested in pursuing a mineral deal in these mines. Quote, even if the US is more interested in cobalt, copper and lithium, minerals key to the transition to net zero and which are mostly found in the southern province of Katanga. Wait, so like net zero specifically is not driving Colter mining like the headline said. Yeah, no, no, it's happening despite net zero. There is some other dodgy mining happening, maybe in line with net zero, but

the subject at the heart of this article is literally happening despite the net zero drive. So then how the hell was the headline something about net zero driving this issue? I know. I mean, it tells you so much. The Telegraph only published it, not because it's a deeply relevant human rights issue immensely tied into our supply chain, but under a false clickbait headline that implied sustainability activists were driving the slave trade. Kids, be careful what you read. Oh my God. This is why we need media. literacy lessons. Okay, we're really derailing here. So what is next on your list of goods to ruin for us?

Hate to say it, but chocolate. No, of course. No, I know. Yeah, for decades, the cocoa industry has been plagued by massive systemic issues, particularly in West Africa, where around 70% of the world's cocoa is grown. Some two million children, as young as five, have been reported working long hours on cocoa farms under hazardous conditions. Many are trafficked or forced into labour, often unpaid, due to family poverty, lack of access to education. Take Tony's choccolonely.

No, no, wait. They market themselves as anti-slavery and paying cocoa farmers fairly. So please tell me that they're okay. Well, yes, in that they have gone above and beyond to purge exploitative labour. And that means properly investigating and publishing their own supply chain findings,

which is more. than most companies do. But no in that, while they didn't find any abject slavery in their supply chain, they did find 1,700 child labourers. Now, once identified, Tonys does work with the families of these children to find solutions, for example, arranging birth certificates so the children can actually go to school. But it shows just how hard the problem is to crack, and companies really need to prioritise it. Also, Tonys is the top scorer by a significant margin on the chocolate score. which is an initiative ranking these companies on supply chain ethics listeners you can go and check out your favorite chocolate brand on there okay what's next you mentioned makeup when we were

doing that survey so what's the problem there every day tens of thousands of indian children mine mica which is the little sparklies in your makeup but it's not just beauty companies outsourcing labor to these often under-regulated overseas labor markets labor in the UK is often just as bad and nail salons is a really big culprit here. Nail salons, car washes, cannabis farms. These are forced labour hubs inside the UK, as is the domestic worker sector. Foreign domestic workers often have passports taken off them by employers or agencies who manipulate them into servitude in the UK with false job recruitment. Oh my God, is it this bad everywhere? It's bad. But look, the UK's standing has been.

declining. Britain credits itself with being the first country to abolish the slave trade. Yet every year, billions of pounds worth of goods produced with forced labour are thought to enter Britain. British legislation is behind laws in many other Western countries. For example, Asda, Morrison's Tesco and Waitrose all sell tomato products that would be banned from America under anti-slavery import controls. Now when lawmakers passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, Britain was hailed as a trailblazer. This Act requires large firms to publish annual statements detailing their efforts to prevent forced labor in their supply chains. However, under the legislation, firms can limit themselves to very vague statements and they can even simply report no such steps are being taken. So critics argue this law is toothless.

Other countries have been bolder. In 2024, the EU adopted a law that requires large firms to identify, mitigate, prevent and bring an end to human rights abuses of along their supply chains, with fines of up to 5% of global turnover. America also bars goods like tomatoes from Qingjiang, given the risk that they have been made using Uyghur-forced labor. Britain doesn't have that ban. So as well as a lack of prevention, there's also an issue of enforcement. Multinational companies are often protected by jurisdiction,

outsourcing their supply chains. That, however, may slowly be changing. Do you have a Dyson Hoover? No, I'm not that rich. Okay, well, you might be glad when we're done with this episode. Because on February the 26th, two dozen Napoli and Bangladeshi workers settled a claim against Dyson, a British-Singaporean household electronics firm. The claim was over alleged abuses in Malaysian factories,

which supply parts for Dyson's products. The workers said that they had been trafficked, forced to surrender their passports, overworked, and in some cases, beaten and tortured. Now, there were many, many more workers in these conditions than the two dozen who just settled a claim with Dyson. But that settlement itself comes after four years of litigation over jurisdiction. And I have watched one activist fight this for years and years. Andy Hall, a British migrant worker rights defender. And we're lucky enough to say that he'll be joining us today, alongside a survivor of trafficking inside Europe.

Ilya Abatista. On with the deep dive. We will smash the guns. We will crack down on illegal working. Four in ten of them are claiming to be victims of modern slavery. Growing numbers of African migrants passing through Libya have been sold as slaves by traffickers on militia groups. Now, this bill has been marketed as a subject.

stop the boat spill. It will consign more people to slavery. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Malinson. This week's Media Storm. Modern slavery is thriving. The media just isn't telling you. Welcome to Media Storm. Our first guest was trafficked for two and a half years across Europe and forced into modern slavery and sexual exploitation. 30 years on, she uses her lived experience to speak out, raise awareness, help others and tell her story. She is now an ambassador for Causeway, a leading modern slavery and crime reduction charity. Welcome to Media Storm, Ilya, Abertista. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Our second guest is an activist,

human rights defender and migrant worker rights specialist from the UK, but based in Asia since 2005. He has become an internationally recognised human rights defender and campaigner on migrant rights, as well as empowerment and modern day slavery, specifically within international supply chains. Tuning in from Kathmandu, welcome to Media Storm, Andy Hall. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for having me also. Now, modern slavery is an umbrella term encompassing specific serious crimes such as forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking. For clarity for our listeners, we're going to define some terms. Labor exploitation is the abuse of individuals in the workplace for profit. It ranges from

severe violations like forced labor, debt bondage and modern slavery to poor working conditions, sub-minimum wages and restricted movement. Forced labor is all work or service that people are forced to do against their will, usually under threat of punishment. Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit. It is not the same as people smuggling, which we've talked about before on the podcast, that distinction, and politicians almost always conflate the two. Smugglers move people consensually across borders for a fee, though it is, of course, often violent and exploitative in its own way. And debt bondage, also referred to as

bonded labour, is when people trapped in poverty, borrow money and are forced to work to pay off the debt, losing control over both their employment conditions and the debt. Traffickers often weaponise this. Now, these definitions are not well understood, and there are key gaps in public perception of modern slavery. Causeway, the charity for which Ilya is an ambassador, told us we have rarely come across a journalist who has heard of the national referral mechanism. Now that's the main, I mean, the single government-funded identification and support system for victims of modern slavery in this country is where all the government facts and stats come from. So it's quite significant. No wonder then that there are huge myths and gaps in public understanding.

Ilya, you have been speaking openly about your experiences of sex trafficking and debt bondage for a while now. I want to go to you first. What do you think is the biggest misconception of modern slavery in the media? I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that the person being exploited is weak. Also, that there is a stereotypical person that it happens to. And you couldn't be further from the truth. I think in reality, many survivors are extremely resilient, resourceful people who were just simply play. based in extremely complex situations.

And it often happens just through manipulation, corrosion, debt, you know, or psychological control. And I think that's what a lot of people don't realise that it can just simply happen to anybody. Can we just ask you quickly, Ely, about your personal experience speaking to journalists. Have these been positive, negative? Do you have any feedback for the journalists who interviewed you? In general, overall, my experience has been quite positive. I would say, however, that sometimes my experience has been that journalists may want to try and get a little bit more of the juicier comments from me, which in turn can be quite triggering.

So I would say that, you know, we can still deliver an amazing story having part of the story, but also including some other facts with it that can actually educate the public as well. Yeah, Causeway in their media briefing to us, they said that journalists will often cling to the more sensationalist aspects of sexual exploitation and not dig into the systemic criminal labour exploitation. Exactly. You're absolutely right. And talking about systemic issues, a report by the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Center identified key gaps in public understanding. One of the public misconceptions that's been highlighted is the idea that people make calculated risks to enter modern slavery rather than are manipulated into it. Can you just explain to us why that misconception is so wrong? Well, I don't actually know why people think that, but under no circumstances did I ever contemplate going into modern slavery?

slavery. For me, it was through debt bondage. I was in a situation where I was going into debt and I needed to solve that situation and a solution came across by people who I was introduced to from somebody that I'd lived in a children's home with. And it seemed like a plausible solution to my problem. And I had absolutely no idea that it was going to lead me to being forced into sexual exploitation and working in the sex industry. Because if I'd have known that, there was absolutely no way that I would have gone down that route. Thank you for explaining that. Andy, let's bring you into the conversation here. Do you think that the legacy news media do a good job at educating the public about modern slavery?

I think that actually things are improving, but we have to understand that improving from a very low level, you know. As somebody who works on forced labour and modern slave issues in the global supply chain, it's so difficult to get the mainstream media to cover these kind of stories, you know. Even some of my good friends who are working as editors or very senior journalists in a lot of publications will, you know, honestly say to me, you know, like we're happy to get your emails. We're happy to get your messages, Andy, but you're just recycling the same stories over and over again of people in modern slavery in global supply chains. And we just can't get the space for that in our media.

and our editors are not giving us the opportunity to write about that kind of thing. And it's not seen as a story, you know, whereas in the UK, one or two people are being smuggled over the channel. No one would ever question that that's a media story in the UK, right? It's always in the news, even it's just one or two people. But when it's the global supply chain, somewhere a long way away in the developing world where, of course, things are going to be much worse. It's not seen as a media story. So generally it's very difficult. Yeah. I think though you point to

a really relevant issue here, which is the way our news agenda allocates importance. And one of the reasons forced labour is so hidden is that a lot of it does happen overseas, specifically in global South economies. And there's a really stark recent example, which is a catastrophic landslide that happened just days ago in eastern Congo. More than 200 people, including 70 children, were killed on the 4th of March after heavy rains triggered a landslide at the Rubaya Colton Mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC. Now, listen to this. if you saw this story in our news, it's because you actively follow global news pages, not because it made it onto home pages or front pages. Why should it make the main pages in a UK

press, you may ask? It's because Rebaea Mine produces roughly 15% of the words coltan, a metal ore containing tantalum and neobium. Both are considered critical raw materials by the United States, the EU, China and Japan. Suffice to say there's a good chance that inside your mobile phone is a minuscule amount of a metal that started its journey buried under the earth of Eastern DRC. So 70 children died mining materials for our smartphones. There's an argument that this should be UK news. Ilya, in your experience, do you think that most people see slavery, modern slavery, as an issue over there somewhere else? And if so, what would you say to correct them? I think you're absolutely right. I think the most people that I've

spoken to in the past. Definitely think that it's way out of reach, that it's not going to touch them over here. Of all the cases of modern slavery in the UK, 25% of them are UK nationals. It's incredibly important to talk about and to keep talking about modern slavery happening across the world, of course, because it impacts us here too. But what we're missing is what actually is happening on our doorstep. And we're not talking about how it happens and we're not teaching people how it can happen to your loved one. And I think that is absolutely key for going forward. There is a huge amount of labour exploitation and modern slavery inside the UK and very little public understanding of that. I mean, just to give listeners a sense, in 2024, the UK

recorded its highest ever number of potential modern slavery victims referred to the national referral mechanism. That was over 19,000 people, a 13% increase on the previous year. And in reality, the number is likely to be much higher. I mean, some estimates are over 130,000 people. And this is on top of the billions of pounds worth of goods that are being imported due to modern slavery in our supply chain. Looking at, as Ilya mentioned, what is happening at home, Andy, are you able to tell us just how dependent the UK economy is on enslaved labour and the exploitation of undocumented workers? Completely dependent, you know, I mean, whenever I'm in the UK, whenever I'm back from the moment I land at the airport, to the petrol stations, you know, to the shops, to everywhere,

I'm always asking people like, you know, I have a way of doing it because I work in this area. It's not necessarily rude, but I will always ask people about their nationality, you know. But everywhere I go is full of these international migrants. And that's one of my main gripes, actually, is that British people, you know, they don't understand, they don't realize how dependent their everyday lives are on exploited and documented, you know, even traffic or enslaved workers. And, you know, the seasonal worker scheme is a perfect example, right? A lot of the produce, you know, people want to buy British, right? Most of this produce is coming from migrant workers who, you know, have had to spend a lot of money to come to the country. They're working

in very difficult, you know, conditions. A lot of the healthcare system is propped up by foreign nationals who have had to pay massive, you know, amounts of money. And sometimes they have contracts that like bond them to the jobs. Every part of our life, not only in the UK, but also the products that we use that are coming from overseas, they're so entwined with the abuses and exploitation. And it translates as lower prices. It translates as quicker products, you know, this kind of thing that causes modern slavery. So it's very much linked to our everyday life and it's very much linked to the UK economy. I think another problem, specifically when it comes to that workforce you've just described to us, Andy, is that we are conditioned to view them criminally and to victim

blame. Language matters. It can either open the door to protection or push people further into exploitation. Iliad, do you ever notice the media using terms like illegal to describe people who are almost certainly victims of forced labour trafficking? And how does it make you feel? Yeah, really good question. Yeah, I do hear it. And my first response is, well, no human is illegal. And also, there is such complexity as to why somebody may need to come to the UK in ways that they do. and we don't hear that story from the media. My version is always this, you know, when I talk to people, I always say, until you've walked a mile in their shoe,

we don't have the right to judge. And as Andy says, you know, when he goes around asking people where they're from, you also, you just don't know what their journey has been and whether they are there by their own free will. And I do exactly the same as Andy does. I'm always looking around seeing if there's anything that could indicate that somebody is doing something outside of their control or will. So yes, the language we use is incredibly important.

And I think the media has a big responsibility there. It's incredibly dangerous. Yeah, yeah. And criminalisation forces many victims to stay silent, which obscures public understanding of the problem. And it compounds the already suffocating power and balances that keep people from coming forwards. Andy, you face criminalisation yourself for trying to advocate for victims.

Can you tell us what happened? and how you found the courage to just keep fighting? I think actually the way in which we've compared this to a trafficking victim being called illegal and me being prosecuted is actually something that no one has ever brought together and it's just made me think a lot actually. When I was prosecuted back in, I mean, it's almost 15 years now and I just remember how difficult it was for me to accept the concept or the understanding that I was being labelled as a.

criminal for essentially doing pretty much voluntary work to help victims of forced labor or human trafficking in Thailand. And I just couldn't get over that concept. So I mean, I did some research for a Finnish watchdog in Thailand on pineapples and tuna. And according to their custom, they always put the name of the researcher on the front of the research report, which again, in hindsight was not a good idea. But they tried to show respect to me. And because I was based in Thailand, I was the one that got the full force of the wrath of the company, a very politically linked company and I was prosecuted in civil and criminal cases, two criminal cases, two civil cases, tens of millions of dollars in, you know, criminal defamation and cyber crimes prosecutions.

And I've also been, obviously, I was arrested recently in Qatar as well and they were trying to send me to prison. And I've also faced cases in Malaysia. And I guess, you know, it's something that, you know, the things that we're doing, the activism that we're doing, I think there's two things. One is that it's misunderstood. So people believe that we're doing it because maybe we're out to destroy the company or maybe we have, we're part of some competitive business or, you know, we have ulterior motives that I don't have ulterior motives. I was just doing it out of the good of, you know, the good of my heart because it's something that I'm passionate about because of something that I want to do. And it was labelled criminal. I mean, all of the prosecutions

against me have been acquitted apart from the one that's remaining in Malaysia. But yeah, it's a very difficult process and it's really sad when now behaviour is misunderstood and labeled as criminal because at the end of the day, you know, it's not just, you know, a label, which for me it was the label. It wasn't about being, you know, shackled and being put in prison or whatever. It was just the label that was bad enough. But it comes with imprisonment. And when you bring those two together, you know, the symbolism of being labelled as a criminal and then the loss of all your freedoms. It really is one of the most draconian labels and measures that you have in a society. That is the reality when we use the term like illegal in our media, because it's not just a media

problem, it's a policy one. The UK's hostile environment criminalises victims of displacement and trafficking, often rather than tackling perpetrators. This means even if the public are educated about how to spot slavery and raise the alarm, it may lead to the victims being detained, deported and ultimately facing even greater danger. Just to rattle off some UK legislation, specifically under the Conservatives, there was the Nationality and Borders Act of 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act of 2023. This restricted modern slavery protections by raising the evidence threshold for victim identification and limiting access to support those arriving via irregular routes. Basically, anyone who entered the country illegally, including almost everyone who's been trafficked here,

could no longer access slavery protections, making them even more trapped with their traffickers. Smart policymaking. The Illegal Migration Act, 2023, also allowed for the detent. and removal of potential victims of modern slavery before their victim identification process was completed. Now, this kind of policy continues under the Labor Government. Last year, the Border Security Asylum and Immigration Act established a new border security command, on paper, to combat organized immigration crime. In practice, it pursues an agenda of large-scale deportations, raiding modern slavery hubs in order to arrest the victims for deportation.

Ilya, how much faith do you have in government authorities to protect survivors of slavery? And when you were yourself being trafficked, did you trust and feel safe with these authorities? So I was in a situation where I had regular contract with authorities. They would often come and ask to see our passports. It was never asked whether we were okay. Not once did somebody say, are you here by your own free will? There was no indication that we could approach them. We were too scared to even approach them to be fair.

And we didn't always know whether we could trust the authorities, whether they were keeping a blind eye on behalf of the perpetrators. So it felt very unsafe. So at that time, no, definitely not. What it comes to right now, right presently, I believe that amazing things are happening with authorities. There is so much training happening. I'm actually part of that.

The government is active. listening to people with lived experience and trying to learn from that. A lot of it is still, you know, ticking boxes, but real progress is being made. If we keep pushing, Andy keeps pushing, I keep pushing everybody else that's in this space, we keep pushing and making ourselves heard, somebody is going to listen and make that difference. So I'm convinced to that. Yeah, and it is important, you know, to point out the solutions that are happening in the background. So thank you for that. I recently raised something on

a previous Media Storm episode. It was a video from this new border security command's social media account called Secure Borders UK. And basically this video was bragging that the border security command in the UK are going to raid dodgy businesses, including car washes, nail bars and barbershops. Now this is extremely telling because these locations aren't dodgy because the workers are all illegals who can be rounded up for detention. They're dodgy because they're dodgy because they're dodgy because many are victims of forced labour and modern slavery. They should be trying to catch exploitative employers, not exploited workers. Andy, how effective are UK laws at eliminating forced labour?

Our labour government says it's a priority and are considering measures such as import bans and mandatory human rights, due diligence. I guess our question is, do you believe them? In my experience, working in the global supply chain with UK companies, you know, whether it be the Tesco's or the Sainsbury's or big UK-based investors or companies, I really feel hopeless, actually, because I don't have positive experiences of working with these companies in a way which brings change. And I've worked on seven or eight different US bands on forced labour on products in Malaysia.

And I've also, you know, used the systems in the US to try to tackle modern slavery very effectively in global supply chains. And that's something that I cannot do in the UK. I mean, the UK laws, they don't have teeth. It's all about reporting, you know, so you have to report what you're doing. And we know time and time again, whenever we see modern slavery in the global supply chain, we go and look at the companies and they always have modern slavery policies. They always have all these, you know, glossy sustainability brochures.

I mean, it's clearly not enough. It's not working. And people need to be punished. And of course, you know, we know that white-collar crimes are seen in a very different way to drug offenses or theft or things like that. You know, it has always been the case in our society. But I think, yeah, definitely the modern slavery laws are not strong enough. but also they don't come with a mechanism or a system that supports victims to come forward. All of the cases where I have found cases of modern slavery in global supply chains and also in the UK, we've made a calculated decision not to refer workers into these systems.

Wow, that is so telling that you wouldn't use that referral. I mean, I've used it in a couple of cases, actually, related to seasonal worker scheme, and the victim's experiences were so negative. And these were genuine victims, you know, and there was always this misconception that, you know, or they're cheating the system or they're just using the system as an excuse to get, you know, a refugee status or to get some kind of status. But these were genuine victims and there was such a suspicion over them. And of course, we have to admit, we have to acknowledge that there are people cheating the system,

but we have to accept that there are genuine victims. And the genuine victims do need the support and they can't get the support because they're seen as people cheating. They're seen as scammers. They're seen as opportunists. Yeah, there's just something I want to add to that. And I've also heard from many survivors that are going through the system, yet it does take years and it's painful, and they're stopped from working, they're stopped from living their lives.

They might not be treated as criminals, but it sure as how it feels like it. I never went through the NRM because it didn't even exist back then, but I've learned a lot about it because I need to talk about it quite frequently. Something that I think that we're missing massively is actually learning what the perpetrators are doing, how they're doing it, and get inside their heads, because they're the ones that are in control of all of this. They can dodge certain things and they're very clever people most of the time. But I fear that, you know, there's a lot of very powerful people involved.

And that's what it all comes down to because where there's money, there's power. And that's what we've got to fight against. Yeah, Ilya, you raised such an important point. We did a couple of episodes on the Epstein files recently. and one of the biggest issues with the media coverage that I wanted to bring up was that I felt that there was not enough focus on how trafficking works. Our media was failing to educate us in how trafficking, grooming and abuse work in practice and the level of mental abuse it has on its victims. And this makes it so easy to criminalise victims. Traffickers like Epstein and his associates, they used debt bondage and psychological coercion to keep people enslaved, not just physical.

force. And it's interesting because journalists are taught to answer the five Ws, right, when they're writing a news article. So that's who, what, when, why and where. But often, they forget the H, they forget the how, despite in-depth survivor testimony, he's trying to help the public understand. Without their understanding, people just blame victims. If I can just add to that as well, is a lot of the time as well, when we are being asked to disclose our stories or when I hear stories that are being reported is feelings. Everybody understands feelings. Okay, so when we can't associate with what's happening to somebody in Malaysia or Thailand or somewhere else, when we integrate a feeling into a story, people can then learn to resonate more and then they can understand more.

And then they might have more empathy, sympathy. So if we can, you know, get into people's front rooms and say, look, this is what it feels like. You know, we don't want these feelings to be happening to us or to our children or, you know, we might actually stand a chance of getting through to people. Thank you. Now, after the break, we will look at some recent stories, but first, let's just take a minute. Welcome back. Let's look at some recent headlines on the subject of modern slavery and human trafficking. Firstly, we want to look at the fact that governments involved in the war on Iran are reducing refugee restrictions at the same time. So the very same day the UK opened its airbases to the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. They announced new asylum restrictions at home, cutting refugee protection

from five years to just 30 months. They also suspended legal visa routes for Afghans, whose country is anticipating heavy economic fallout from the war and is also at war with Pakistan. Meanwhile, the U.S., under President Donald Trump, imposed a near total ban on Iranian visas and began forcibly deporting Iranian asylum seekers months before waging war. They deported a plainload of Iranian asylum seekers back to Iran weeks before the bombing began. Does anybody see the absurdity of this? I just want to get your initial reactions to hearing these pieces of information presented side by side. Andy, let's start with you. I think that, you know, one has to understand that the policies in our country, anything discussing with migration or immigration, you know, I always like to look at

things with three lenses, you know. One of them is national security. One of them is economic security and one of them is human security, right? And in our societies around the world, the primary focus is national security, right? And this is because in an era of weapons, where weapons sales, you know, where the gadgets that the people are using in the governments, the electronics, you know,

this is expensive stuff, you know. There's a market, you know. And so national security is the primary focus of governments around the world, right? And then if we take away that national security, then they'll say, okay, okay, if it's safe for our nation, is it beneficial economically for our nation? You know?

And then if it's beneficial economically, maybe you let people in, right? But actually the human security aspect is always the bottom. You know, it's the last thing to be considered. And people don't realize that in our society, if we don't have human security, then we won't have economic or national security, right? The three are interrelated. You can't separate them. And that if we neglect that issue of human security, we get done.

dangerous situations, we get unhappy people, we get civil unrest, you know, and that will have an impact on economic and national security. And I'm sorry to talk about it theoretically, but sometimes we do need to look at these concepts and say, look, you know, as a society, we focus on the borders, we focus on the economy, we don't focus on people. And that's the reality. That is actually such a helpful framework. Ilya, let's have your thoughts here. Yeah, I think when it comes to all of this, I think, again, what will happen in the background with any economic crisis in any country, there is more risk of modern slavery, human trafficking going on, and it always starts where you least expect it.

And actually, yeah, we have proof of this, because a couple of weeks ago, the BBC published this headline. UK asylum claims drop slightly in 2025 as small boat arrivals rise by 13%. The BBC's headline fails to explain this apparent contradiction. The explanation is simple. Criminalising asylum doesn't stop people coming. it forces more people underground. Why do we think modern slavery in the UK is on the rise? So the thing that really gets me is that the media doesn't make these connections.

And then the government freely continues these policies. And the reality is we should have spotted the signs years ago. The signs were there. Forgive me, I have been obsessed with this for years. And when I was looking at home office data in 2023, I noticed a strange anomaly in the latest annual data. The graph showed the outcome of asylum claims. What percentage was approved, what percentage was denied, etc. These outcomes followed usual patterns. But one outcome spiked dramatically. And this was the number of asylum claims marked as withdrawn,

which probably means the person who placed them stopped showing up for their asylum appointments. In its report, the Home Office didn't remark on this anomaly at all. So I waited for the media to notice it. No one did. It never came up. It was as if those asylum seekers simply disappeared. At the time, I tried to, you know, post about it.

I was saying if you shut down legal routes, all you do is divert the flow to illegal channels. This massively expands the trafficking markets. Traffickers don't benefit from bringing people into a country so they can claim asylum. They benefit from bringing people into a country so that they can stay here undocumented and be forced to work on the black market in eternal debt bondage. Smugglers, we've talked about this different, smugglers bring people into a country, then they climb asylum and access legal protections. So these policies, the governments tell us that they're fighting traffickers,

they are literally helping traffickers so much. I actually emailed Amnesty International at the time. My email had the subject line disappearing asylum seekers. I said, hi, I've noticed home office data indicating abnormally high numbers of asylum seeker applications being withdrawn in the past year. I wanted to see if you were looking into the causes and implications of this. My prediction is that policies such as the Rwand deal, at the time, don't so much deter people in need from coming to the UK, but rather deter them from

pursuing asylum claims, instead diverting immigration towards the undocumented, actually a legal kind. Amnesty were looking at the data, they did see the signs. But I'm pissed off that our media didn't, and our government didn't, and they don't now. The BBC published that headline about boat arrivals increasing and asylum claims decreasing, and they didn't in any way explain the very obvious reasons why that might be. Andy, why do the media appear unable to spot clear trends? Where is the government? Where is evidence-led policy when it comes to immigration and modern slavery protections? So I think that sometimes, you know, these things are just too complex. We may see them as simple because we have a very broad view of society, of life, of systems, of criminality. But your average

person doesn't have that kind of attention span and they don't have that kind of interest to understand. So I think that, you know, partly it's because of the complexity, but it's partly because I think the media don't want to tell people what they don't want to hear. And we have alternative media. We have long-form media, but what we're talking about is the mainstream media. And I think, you know, they're trying to make things simple and they're trying to, you know, pitch it to your average person who we know doesn't understand this. Sorry, I just want to jump in because right now we live in a political climate

where on the far right and on the right politicians are addressing these issues and they're telling stories that resonate with people, even when they're wildly inaccurate. Doesn't that mean that the mainstream media needs to be as good at answering those questions, at telling those stories, but in a way that is actually accurate? Definitely. And I mean, that's something that we always have to try to get, you know, to push the barriers.

But in the society that we live at, there's less and less people who are willing to do that. And I mean, just talking about my work that I do in global supply chains, people are just not willing to come out and to talk about modern slavery in global supply chains anymore, simply because they will be prosecuted, you know. They will have negative consequences to themselves, their own security, their own future, their own income.

And in the society that we live in, there's less and less incentive for people to be brave and speak out, unfortunately. Elia, do you agree? Yeah, a lot of things, Andy said, yeah, I totally agree. You just kind of hit a nerve there. And by saying, yeah, too many people are scared to come forward and actually show the real scale of what's happening because it is so dangerous and because there are so many implications surrounding it. My family were threatened. You know, they were going to kill,

you know, somebody in my family if I didn't comply to what they were saying. They took my passport. They took my address book. So they literally took everything. It's the fear that they plant inside of you. That's what makes you compliant. That's what makes you do as exactly as they ask. But if you're talking about, you know, undocumented people coming into the UK or wherever in the country, I think we're also missing something that needs to be brought out to the open. And that is, is what happens to the women that are going under the radar? We don't know that they're here. What if they have children?

What happens to those children? Where do they go? You know, that is incredibly scary. That is horrendous. Imagine what that feeds into. I spoke to somebody not long ago. They had several children when they were being exploited. Those children were taken away from her.

They weren't reported. We don't know whether those children are alive or not, or whether they are being sold to paedophile rings. it is horrendous and that is something that needs to be talked about more frequently too. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for raising that. Let's move on to our second headline. Andy, a case you have been fighting for for years was settled a few weeks ago with Dyson paying two dozen Bangladeshi and Nepali workers who said they had been trafficked, forced to surrender their passports, overworked and in some cases beaten and tortured. Your first win came

in May when the UK Supreme Court rejected Dyson's claim that Britain had no jurisdiction over the case. The factories were in Malaysia, but Dyson, a British Singaporean company, oversaw them from London. Now we should say that Dyson says this is not an admission of guilt, but this was a landmark decision. For the first time, a British court found that companies owe a duty of care to overseas workers in their supply chain if a firm exercised substantial control over the factory. A few years ago, I don't know if our OG listeners remember, Media Storm reported on a similar landmark case when Shell, an oil company, also a multinational company,

was held liable for pollution caused by its Nigerian subsidy. So both cases actually were fought and won by Lide, the same law firm, perhaps them. These are landmark examples where the courts are starting to find ways to exert control over companies that outsource operations overseas and then say, oh, you know, out of sight, out of mind. We've never seen this for supply chain production before. Using overseas labour appeared to give companies legal protection until now. So firstly, Andy, congratulations.

Secondly, do you feel like this is a game changer? Do you feel like this could help to turn the tide for forced labour in UK supply chains? I think that as an activist, having worked on this issue for two decades, you know, we have to celebrate the small successes, right, that we get. because it's better than a defeat, right? So, you know, we got this claim settled by these two dozen workers. And that is a great, you know, landmark case. It's a precedent.

But at the end of the day, you know, this company in Malaysia, we don't know actually how many workers there were, but there were at least 6 or 7,000 workers, perhaps even more. And this is a settlement for 24 people, you know, that we fought long and hard to bring about. But, you know, it's a tiny number of people. And actually, when I first bought the victims to Lide and Lidei were appointed as lawyers, I had the image that we would get Dyson in some way. Because we had such a strong case to set up a victim fund or to set up some kind of big remediation program, like I have done in many, many other cases around the world.

In the developing, you know, in Malaysia, in Thailand, you know, local companies of remediated thousands of workers. And I had this image of Dyson also doing this. And in the end, what we got was a settlement for 24 workers, which was a real. disappointment to me, you know. I can't, and I can't, you know, underestimate how, how disappointed I felt that we just got this small victory. And, and also the process which we went through to get this settlement, you know, I myself believe that I was defamed. I didn't have the resources to fight that, you know, Channel 4 spent years in the court system having to defend themselves against Dyson. This is the first time that the media has ever interviewed on me on this topic, because no media in

UK is able to publish anything at all controversial about Dyson, you know, because if you see the reporting on this case, it's very simple, you know, they're reporting the basic, basic, basic facts without any kind of analysis. Nobody talks in detail about Dyson, what it did, how it did it. There was no admission of liability. Nobody wants to go into detail because they know that as soon as they go into detail on this case, as soon as they report something that's controversial, Dyson will prosecute them, you know? and Channel 4 found that they had to go through the courts for years. So that's the challenge. Wow, that has like truly blow my mind. So, you know, essentially the media is being like held

ransom to these massive, powerful companies. There was many stories on this case that were written and never saw the light of day, I can tell you, you know, from big media companies. And we're talking about people like the Financial Times, you know, people who wrote these kind of things, but it never got published. It's very difficult. We had one article that was written, it was cancelled. And then a few days later, there was another article that came out with the title, Dyson to defend itself against claims, right? A right-wing media publishes the story as Dyson to defend. You know, it's not about the victims. It's about the legal system. It's about the liability. It's about the corporate veil. So I think that, you know, this case is very telling. And I do want to

give credit to the journalists that I work with, you know. And there are a lot of lot of them. And there's not enough of them, you know, people who did the Channel 4 documentary on Dyson, you know, and again, I'm not going to say Channel 4 for many reasons. I'm going to say journalists, right? So the journalists who did that, you know, the people who I've worked with at the Guardian at the Financial Times, you know, the people I've even worked at the Telegraph, you know, in the Times, and some of the AP journalists, you know, Associated Press journalist, the Reuters journalists, there's so many journalists out there who spend weeks and months. And sometimes years, if we look at Associated Press, you know, I tip the

them off on an Indonesian case. They won the Pulitzer Prize on it, you know. But they spent years and years investigating the links to the fishing industry. And so these kind of journalists are really, they're there. But honestly, when I speak to them all these days, they seem to be fighting against a system that's trying to, like, there's no resources, there's no time. You know, that is such a terrifying power system you point to. The media being up against that. Imagine every single victim is up against that. Ilya, how do you feel hearing all of this? What I'm seeing everywhere around all of this is there's no accountability.

Nobody's held accountable. Dyson head office may not have been even aware of it initially, but it always seems to happen further down the chain. But you are completely responsible for your actions. And that's what I'm failing to hear. When you hear all these modern slavery acts within their policies, they're just laughable because who actually enforces any of that? They're just a tick-boxing exercise.

I recently had to do a course on modern slavery for a company that I was temporarily working for. I just thought absolutely no point in reading this or learning about this because it's absolute rubbish. But, you know, where there's money, there's power and, you know, sometimes people just don't give a hoot. I want to say a huge thank you to both Andy and Ilya for joining us on this recording.

I just want to ask both of you if you have any closing thoughts, anything that you came to say that you haven't said. I'll start with you, Andy. I want to try always in my work to make people relate to the seriousness of the abuses that people suffer. Like, it's really hard for me when I see the victims of modern slavery in Asia, you know, and it's not 9 to 5, it's not Monday to Friday. It often happens on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, Easter. You know, it's happening all the time. And you just feel like you're fighting against it because in the West, you know, people have this working week. They have this system. You know, there's times of the year when everyone shuts down. And of course, that's not a

bad thing. But the lives that people live in the UK, they're so dependent. They're so linked to modern slavery. You just need to imagine if that was your children, you know, it's not just some Nigerian or some, you know, Myanmar person or some Indonesian person. It's a human being, right? They have families, they have children. Their families need education. Their parents get sick. You know, they have crisis, you know, they have natural disasters. These people are desperate and we need to relate to them on that level. So whenever we see these stories, just try to think about the people behind the stories and just try to think about how your life is linked to that. And don't turn away because you feel bad or you feel guilty or you feel like it's too much, you know. Just at least acknowledge it.

Even if you can't do anything, acknowledge it and try your best to do something in life to make the situation better. I need a second, I think. Andy, first of all, I just want to thank you. I wish I met you 30 years ago. I wish there was somebody like you. Sorry, that really touched me. And yeah, I think I want people to know that survivors are not weak. Victims are not weak.

they are just being exploited because they were vulnerable at one point in their life and perpetrators, they are experts in seeing that. And I also think that modern slavery is such a complex issue. It's not just down to, you know, what the stereotypical people are. And I think survivor voices have to be part of the solution and we have to learn more about perpetrators. Honestly, it has been such a privilege to have you both here. it's just amazing what you're doing. I know it's probably just awkward to be told that, but you really are shifting the dial. We have at Media Storm a really activated listener ship,

and they always want calls to action. So just before we let you go, will you just tell them, A, where they can follow your work, and B, if you have any calls to action or anything that you would like to plug to our listeners. Andy, let's start with you. I have a blog at wwwwandijahaw.org.

So pretty much everything is on there. I would just also ask that, you know, if you have time as a journalist to do some digging, you know, when you go down the supermarket and come to me and say, look, you know, we found something that's in our supermarket or in our medical system or whatever. And, you know, we found that it comes from this factory and we know that you work in Thailand or Malaysia or whatever. Can we do some investigations, you know, try to do a bit of legwork? And I'm always ready to try to do the on the ground analysis. And let's try to work together to expose this and to make people more aware of what's happening. Thank you. And Ilya. So I have a podcast too, but that's mainly talking about neurodivergency and trauma. And I am currently setting up a CIO, which is going to be called Rise Collaborative, where I'm actually going to be coaching survivors of modern slavery or sexual violence or people that have come from care into entrepreneurship or how to become survivor leaders. So, yeah, if anybody wants to keep in touch with what I'm doing,

give me a follow and listen to what I'm doing. Thank you for listening. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast. So please do tell your friends.

You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Waddea and follow the show at MediaStormPod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Malinson. The music is by Samfire. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Hubline. It's good to know, just in case.

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