A U.S. federal court ruled Monday (May 24) that seven Chinese workers who worked at a casino site on Saipan will receive $5.91 million in damages from their employer in a case against human trafficking and forced labor.
In a 40-page ruling, Chief Judge Ramona Manglona of the U.S. Court of the Northern Mariana Islands ordered Hong Kong-listed Imperial Pacific International to pay $2,957,797 to the seven Chinese workers under the forced labor provisions of federal and local anti-human trafficking laws. (Imperial Pacific) to pay $2,957,797.79 in damages to seven Chinese workers, as well as punitive damages in the same amount.
In the judgment, Judge Munroona said the seven Chinese workers “endured extreme, dangerous and inhumane working conditions” at the Bohol Pacific casino site on Saipan and were subjected to appalling abuse.
The verdict said that BOPC was the only developer licensed to build a casino in Saipan and hired several Chinese construction companies, including MCC and Golden Mantis, to build the casino.
The verdict says that BOCA Pacific International brought the Chinese workers to Saipan on ‘visitor’ visas rather than legal temporary work visas, seized their passports, instructed them to hide when U.S. government officials came to inspect the site or dormitories; threatened the workers with medical care if they were injured, and treated the workers for injuries suffered while working at construction sites, ranging from severe burns to finger or foot injuries, were not compensated.”
The attorneys representing the seven Chinese worker plaintiffs are Aaron Halegua of New York and Bruce Berliner of Saipan and his associate Times Wang.
We are pleased to see the court recognize the extreme egregiousness of BWI’s conduct and the severity of the suffering caused to our clients,” Halegua told Voice of America. This is an important decision because the elimination of forced labor requires that those who commit such abuses face serious consequences.”
The lawsuit took two and a half years to complete, Ho Yilun said. “It started out as a case against workplace injuries, but then we realized that all these indicators of forced labor existed in the way workers were treated.”
He Yilun said, “Chinese workers come from China to Saipan to work and pay high recruitment fees to contractors or other agents. They are promised high wages and good working conditions, but the reality is the opposite, they have to work more than 12 hours a day, sometimes they have to work 24 hours. They are paid less than minimum wage and sometimes they don’t even get paid. They get rats crawling on them when they sleep in their dormitories. And when they are injured, they are usually not allowed to be taken to the hospital, nor are they provided with any medical care.”
He Yilun said, “Employers would even threaten workers that they would be killed or suffer major injuries if they complained or disobeyed. As a result, various tactics were used to make sure the workers kept working. They all suffered physical injuries at the construction sites at the Bohol Pacific Casino, from burning their legs while working, to burning their fingers, or having their fingers crushed, or having some of their fingers cut off, etc.”
The seven plaintiff Chinese workers are Wang Tianming (phonetic), Han Dong (phonetic), Sun Liangcai (phonetic), Meng Yongjun (phonetic), Xu Qingchun (phonetic), Wang Youli (phonetic) and Du Xiangyang (phonetic).
He Yilun said that the compensation in the verdict is divided into two main parts, compensatory compensation and punitive compensation. There are four divisions in the compensatory damages, with the judge awarding the plaintiffs a total of $332,350 for emotional distress, $65,945.79 for loss of earnings, $359,502 for loss of future earnings, and $2.2 million for pain and suffering. The total amount of punitive damages was the same as the total amount of compensatory damages, $2,957,797.79.
The actual amount awarded to the plaintiff by Judge Munroona was $5,435,958 because the plaintiff and two other defendants in the same case, MCC International Saipan, a contractor for Bovada Pacific International, and Golden Mantis Construction and Decoration, had earlier settled out of court and received compensation. And the actual amount of compensation was subtracted from the total amount after they had already been compensated.
Another importance of this case is that not only the contracting company, but also Bovada Pacific as the developer of the project is responsible for what happened, Ho Yilun said. ” So not only is the direct employer responsible for the forced labor, but the project developer is also responsible. I think it’s important to note that this could have a significant impact on the construction industry as a whole, which is that developers also need to be very careful about what happens on construction sites.”
Elaine Ho explained how in U.S. human rights law, the terms “human trafficking” and “forced labor,” which are often used interchangeably, “really focus on whether the person has the freedom to stop working or whether he/she is being forced to continue working in some way. The real point is whether the person has the freedom to stop working or whether he/she is being forced to continue working in some way.”
He said, “Some people have to continue working because they need to pay off a lot of debt, or some people have no control over their passports and can’t leave their workplace to return to their country or go somewhere else, or some people are threatened with physical harm if they leave or stop working. All of these are tools that employers can use to force workers to feel like they have to keep working or they will be harmed. That’s the nature of human trafficking and forced labor.”
Bovada Pacific has not yet responded to the verdict. Last August, Bovada Pacific made an announcement that the person charged by the U.S. Department of Justice was a former employee of the group and that the employee had left in 2017. According to Chinese media reports, Cui Lijie, who runs Bovada Pacific, and her son, Ji Xiaobo, are from northeastern China and spent their early years running a gambling business in Macau.
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