UK homeless threatened by slave masters

British police and homeless charities have warned against the increasing number of people becoming victims of “modern-day slavery” due to poverty.

Charity Thames Reach said they have tracked at least 37 people who have been forced to work, including by breaking the law for little or no pay, this year while the figure was 22 for 2011.

Mick Clarke who is in charge of the Passage Day Center in London’s Victoria, which is the city’s biggest voluntary day center for the homeless, said the situation has to do with poverty, adding that he has himself witnessed gang members approaching the homeless with fake offers of jobs.

“It’s linked to the economy. People are more and more desperate. And there is real diversity in the backgrounds of people who are doing this. There are builders, people in suits, people from all ethnicities,” Clarke said.

According to Thames Research, many victims who are trafficked into Britain face violence if they seek payment or do not cooperate with the gang masters.

The charity said an eastern European man was beaten and left on the streets with brain damage after he sought payment for his work, while a 29-year-old wheelchair user was forced to beg money for a gang.

The charity also warned that much of the exploitation appears to be organized, with the police echoing such concerns.

“There is a wide range of exploitation,” said Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, the operational head of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-trafficking unit.

“You get the seven-year-old child who is treated as a slave in Haringey… someone being trafficked through the UK to another country, and then someone else who has been brought over to supply the sex market.”

This comes as the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) said in August that most victims of smuggling into Britain have been from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Nigeria.

The organization also found that traffickers used the victims’ costs of travel as an excuse, subjecting them to “labor exploitation, sexual exploitation or criminal exploitation” until they are perceived to pay back their debt.