LAT: Poor Migrants Work in Iraqi Netherworld

[ellisonz]

Poor Migrants Work in Iraqi Netherworld
U.S.-hired contractors rely on laborers from impoverished countries, but no one looks out for the rights -- or lives -- of the foreigners.

By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

Ramesh Khadka began the journey to his slaughter in this valley of rivers, where green rice terraces march up the mountains like stairs toward the heavens.

After passing among a series of shadowy, indifferent middlemen, he finished it a month later in a dusty ditch in western Iraq.

There, bound and helpless, the teenager was shot three times in the back of the head by insurgents, his execution and that of 11 of his countrymen captured on videotape.

The 19-year-old and his colleagues were on their way to jobs at a U.S. military base in Al Anbar province when they were kidnapped. The killings last year remain the worst case of violence against private contractors in the Iraq war.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-nepal9oct09,0,1753562.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Kailassa]

1. Slavery thrives in Iraq.

More people should know about these other victims of our war.