CNN International is to broadcast a new documentary highlighting one of the largest forms of modern-day slavery in the form of bonded labour.
Produced by The CNN Freedom Project in collaboration with Kulczyk Foundation, Silk Slaves explores how as many as 8 million people around the world are ensnared by bonded labour and what the practice entails within the country’s booming silk industry.
Airing on Sunday 14th March in the lead up to the network’s #MyFreedomDay initiative, the half-hour documentary travels to Karnataka, India, to accompany entrepreneur and philanthropist Dominika Kulczyk. Reporting from the town of Sidlaghatta, Kulczyk meets with representatives from Jeevika, an organisation working to identify bonded labourers and help them to file applications for their release and rehabilitation.
Bonded labour often involves labourers being forced to work in terrible conditions to pay off a debt. Silk Slaves follows the story of mother and daughter Hadia and Naseeba, hearing their accounts of twelve-hour working days in factories in extreme conditions, the fear of the person they are indebted to, and witnessing how they attempt to navigate the legal route to freedom.
The CNN Freedom Project examines further details of what takes place in silk factories and why bonded labour persists in a country where the average silk worker makes less than $3 per day.
Silk Slaves and Kulczyk also travel to a village where former bonded women currently reside. The documentary hears the challenges that come with regaining their freedom but also how the victims of bonded labour have united to support each other in the region.
Silk Slaves: A CNN Freedom Project Documentary airs on CNN International at the following times:
- Saturday 13th March at 9.30 pm
- Sunday 14th March at 5:00 am and 11:00 am
- Monday 15th March at 7:00 am
