By Jaymes Song
The Associated Press
The owner of an American Samoa garment factory had employees starved and beaten, and threatened to have them deported if they spoke out, a federal prosecutor said during opening statements in an involuntary servitude case that started on Oct. 23 in Honolulu.
“This case is about modern day slavery and this defendant’s greed,” federal prosecutor Susan French said before the jury in U.S. District Court.
îil Soo Lee, of South Korea, and two of his managers, Virginia Solia’i and Robert Atimalala, were charged in August 2001 with holding hundreds of Vietnamese and Chinese workers in involuntary servitude at the Daewoosa Samoa Ltd. factory.
The now-closed factory in the U.S. territory 2,300 miles south of Hawai’i had made clothes for J.C. Penney Co. and other retailers before the U.S. Labor Department reported worker abuses.
Seamstresses, who were required to pay thousands of dollars to secure a job at Daewoosa, were housed in a factory dormitory that was fenced in and guarded, prosecutors said. They were to be paid about $400 a month.
Trinh Thi Hao, a former Daewoosa seamstress, took the witness stand and told the court she used her home in Vietnam as collateral and borrowed money to pay the $5,000 fee required to work at the company.
The money went to Daewoosa and a Vietnamese government-owed labor export company, International Manpower Supply, she said.
Workers had aspirations of attaining the “American dream,” of a better life, earning good benefits and sending money back to their families, prosecutors said. What they discovered was the opposite.
On Nov. 28, 2000, Lee ordered a mass beating of Vietnamese workers who did not work or follow directions, French said. In the “vicious attack,” one worker had her eye gouged out, she said.
“I remember that day, I was beaten,” Hao said.
During the assault, the attackers were assured by Lee that he would take responsibility if a worker was to die, French said.
If workers complained about the conditions or about not getting paid, they would be deported back to their countries, where they would be greeted with heavy unpaid debts and dishonor, prosecutors said.
Lee’s public defender, Alexander Silvert, said that American Samoa’s immigration laws require everyone to have a sponsor, and that Daewoosa sponsored its workers, therefore, the sponsorship can be revoked by the company at any time for any reason, which would subject the worker to deportation.
Silvert said workers were upset by contractual problems, which caused several labor problems, including employees not working, imposing labor slowdowns and not eating.
“They challenged Mr. Lee,” he said.
According to Silvert here were several problems at Daewoosa, including Lee’s economic downfall and poor communication among employees because several different languages were spoken.
Lee, 52, is also charged with extortion, money laundering and attempting to bribe a bank official to influence his application for a $500,000 loan.
Solia‘i’s attorney, Pamela Tamashiro, told jurors that her client did only menial jobs at Daewoosa and was not a company official.
Atimalala’s attorney, Barry Edwards, said his client is a respected community member who served 22 years in the U.S. Army. He described Atimalala as a “peacekeeper” who would never allow any type of assaults to happen.
Although prosecutors said Atimalala was a personnel manager and later Daewoosa’s general manager, Edwards said his client was not involved in day-to-day operations.
If convicted on all 22 counts, Lee faces up to 390 years in prison, Atimalala faces up to 80 years, and Solia‘i faces up to 210 years.
Dozens of witnesses are expected to take the stand in atrial that is expected to take up to five months.
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