The Embassy

Yes, we can call it THE EMBASSY, the largest in the world, representing the sole superpower in its most recent colonial dependency. Costing 300 million pounds or 445 million euros or 613 million dollars, a cluster of 21 high-rise towers occupying 104 acres on the west bank of the River Tigris, to house 3,000 staff. Still under construction, the American embassy in Baghdad is to become the biggest in the world. Incredible isn't it? Are relations with Iraq the most important of all to the U.S., requiring its biggest diplomatic mission on earth? More important than its relations with Russia, the European Union or China? What's more, the embassy is being build with slave labor. (The Times: “‘Kidnapped’ Filipinos build US embassy”)

In March 2006, 51 Filipinos boarded a flight in Kuwait, having been issued boarding cards for Dubai, contracted by First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting to build skyscrapers in the Gulf. In fact, they were smuggled past Kuwaiti security, victims of human traffickers. Ten minutes into the flight they were told they were heading to Baghdad, kidnapped to the most dangerous place on earth, incarcerated in the Green Zone, forced to help build America's biggest and most glorious embassy, kept under control on the plane by a submachine toting security guard of their employer. Conditions in the concentration camp in the Green Zone were the kidnapped workers were performing forced labor were “deplorable, beyond what any man should tolerate”, one U.S. expert testified.

The Democratic chairman of the House oversight committee, Henry Wax-man, admitted: “The project has been beset by allegations that the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti, has used forced labor to build the embassy, violating the laws against human trafficking and sending exactly the wrong message to Iraq and the rest of the world about U.S. respect for human rights.”

An inspector of the U.S. State Department has investigated the case and found nothing wrong. The U.S. government and its commander-in-chief is guilty of kidnapping, human trafficking, the organization of slave labor, conducting fake investigations, violations of human rights, and of course war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed every minute since the invasion in March 2003.