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In The News
The SAJA site doesn't keep track of major stories written
by its members, because there are numerous many scoops, exclusives and
such every year. But, occasionally, some of the work by our members puts
them in the news. Here's one such occasion.
[STOP
PRESS: Feb. 20, 2002 - Raghavan & Chatterjee win
George Polk Journalism Award for this series]
On June 24, 2001, Sudarsan Raghavan, Knight Ridder's Nairobi burueau chief, and Sumana Chatterjee, Knight Ridder Washington correspondent, published a major expose of the chocolate industry and its connections to modern-day slavery. The story ran in the 32 papers of the Knight Ridder chain and brought nation-wide attention to the work of these two journalists.
Below you will find a story about Sudarsan and Sumana's work written by fellow SAJAer Lavina Melwani, a link to the chocolate story in full and links to bios of the two reporters.
 Sudarsan Raghavan and Sumana Chatterjee at a Freedom Forum event in New York discussing their story on July 19, 2001. PHOTO: Lavina Melwani |
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BITTER CHOCOLATE
By
(this piece originally ran in India Today; reprinted with the writer's
permission)
By
"He tied me behind my back with rope and beat me with a piece of wood," Siaka said, peeling back his shirt to show the scars on his left shoulder and arm. “Then he took a small gun, and said, “I’m going to kill you and dump you in a well.”
Sounds like something out of a turn of the century novel about slavery? Well, it’s a true story – 14-year-old Siaka Traure was bought by a slave trader in Ivory Coast for just $28, made to work unending days on the cocoa plantations and imprisoned in a windowless mud hut. Only this did not happen in some long forgotten past but this very year, in the much-touted new millennium.
It is just one of scores of horror stories of child slavery in the Ivory Coast which were unearthed by Sudarsan Raghavan and Sumana Chatterjee, two Indian-American reporters with Knight Ridder, which is America’s second largest newspaper chain and publisher of 32 papers including The Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News. This major international investigative story about chocolate and its links to slavery in Ivory Coast ran in the 238 newspapers subscribing to the Knight-Ridder wire.
“The lucky slaves live on corn paste and bananas,” wrote Raghavan, who is the group’s bureau chief in Nairobi. “ The unlucky ones are whipped, beaten and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and America.”
‘A Taste of Slavery: How Your Chocolate May be Tainted’ has caused quite a stir amongst readers, the chocolate industry as well as policy makers. It does seem ironic that something as sweet and pleasure giving as chocolate should be a source of such pain. Almost all the major brands of chocolate use some cocoa from the Ivory Coast, which provides 43 percent of the cocoa that goes into the $13 billion American chocolate industry. However, since cocoa beans from different places are mixed in highly secret recipes, it is not possible to identify those tainted with slave labor.
The Republic of Ivory Coast on the southern coast of West Africa is bordered by Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Mali, and immigrant labor from these countries come to earn a living on its many farms. Child traffickers and middlemen take advantage of children, some as young as 9, to trick them into slavery. Cajoled with promises of work and money, these poverty stricken youngsters are smuggled into Ivory Coast and sold into slave labor, where they are beaten, rarely paid and kept in virtual imprisonment.
Although Ivory Coast officials insist that child slavery is practiced only on a handful of farms, Raghavan was able to find and interview six current slaves, six former slaves, three farmers who used slaves and two slave traffickers. The report cited inadequate legislation, poor law enforcement, porous borders, police corruption and a shortage of resources as some of the reasons child slavery was thriving in Ivory Coast. Falling cocoa prices worldwide also compel farmers to use the cheapest labor possible.
The United Nations Children's Fund and the International Labor Organization have long noted that child trafficking exists in West Africa, and the State Department's human rights report estimates that some 15,000 children have been sold into forced labor in Ivory Coast. Rick Marshall, the State Department spokesperson for Human Rights, while observing that the full dimensions of the problem are not known, said about the Knight Ridder report: “I think they’ve done a great job about sensitizing people to the problem and the necessity to fully understand what it is.”
Indeed, Raghavan and Chatterjee’s expose accompanied by evocative images of the child slaves by photographer Evelyn Hockstein has given a human face to the problem. Raghavan wrote about children, some barely four feet tall, carrying bags larger than themselves, of being locked in airless huts for the night, forced to urinate in tin cans.
By generating public concern, the report has goaded the powers that be to action. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group for American chocolate makers, earlier denied that child slavery existed but has now agreed to pay for a study to examine this problem and find solutions.
Raghavan visited the farms in search of child slaves and traffickers, and says, "We had to drive on bumpy narrow roads for miles and then walk several more miles in the bush to get to these remote plantations." Chatterjee, meanwhile, traced the journey of cocoa from the farms to the chocolate manufacturers and consumers, traveling to London and Chicago, meeting with industry people and activists.
She also went to Chicago to research the Candy Expo and jokes: “There was Sudarsan walking through the jungles of the Ivory coast, heading out to these really remote farms and finding these children in both Mali and Ivory Coast, and I was sent off to London and Chicago and Philadelphia – so he definitely had the more hardship posting!”
There are over 600,000 farms in the Ivory Coast, and the Knight Ridder report found slavery on just four farms. Asked about this, Chatterjee says, “We are not scientists or data gathers or researchers – we are reporters. It’s useful for the U.S. government and the chocolate industry to go through a scientific study to find out how widespread the problem is. Our role was to put a light on the problem that a lot of people were denying was going on.”
Interestingly, both Raghavan and Chatterjee had been with Knight-Ridder for just six months before breaking this major story. Raghavan, a Columbia School graduate, opened the bureau in Nairobi, Kenya last year and earlier he was based in Johannesburg, South Africa, freelancing for several publications including Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and The Sunday Times of London. He has reported from more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America.
Chatterjee joined ABC News in Washington in its producer apprentice program where she was an off-air reporter and produced packages. She then moved to CNN's New York bureau where she covered many breaking events including the TWA Flight 800 Crash. In 1996, she reported from Myanmar for the Washington Post, following the first student demonstrations since the 1988 massacres. Most recently she worked for the Congressional Quarterly’s Daily Monitor, covering the Hill, including Clinton’s impeachment trial. Last year she was awarded the Pew International Journalism Fellowship to travel to and report from Kashmir.
For both these journalists, their investigative report on child slavery has brought satisfaction. "The chocolate industry has agreed to launch a survey of 2000 cocoa farms," says Raghavan. "The Ivory Coast government is feeling more pressure to curb child trafficking and adopt international laws to protect children's rights. After the series ran, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a measure to put 'slave free' labels on chocolate bars, and the US Senate is reviewing it as well.”
While
Sudarsan Raghavan is back in the field of action in Africa, Sumana Chatterjee
is following the story as it plays out in Washington. She says, “Congress
is acting and government investigators are looking into child slavery.
The story has taken on a life of its own and at the end of the day if
even a few child slaves are saved, we would have been successful.”
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