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FERENC ÍRK
of the present capitalist economy are the people who are exploited and the indirect
losers are all the others except for the short-term winners. Their method is extra¬
profit oriented exploitation, their instruments are underpaid workers who produce
raw material and turn it into finished products at the peril of their health and
their target group are the consumers who are “purchased” through advertisements.
The “engines” of the networks formed by companies are power centres that focus
their intellectual and material resources on short-term goals only, assert only their
interests and ignore the damage they cause to society and nature through the
activities aimed at achieving their goals. They make use of the legal environments in
the individual countries that are unable to secure the priority of the public interest.
The direct consequences of this economy include hazards and often serious damage
to the body and physical health on a large scale as well as the degrading of the
natural environment. The indirect consequences are the unpunishable sins that are
materialised in the metamorphosis of the exploitation of the natural environment
at an increasing speed in a process starting from production continuing with
consumption and ending in the destruction of the products.
ON THE SILENT VICTIMS OF EXPLOITATION
Both forced labour and slave labour can be closely related to human trafficking.’
The goal of human trafficking is always exploitation, which can mean prostitution
or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or similar
practices, oppression of others and the illegal removal of the organs of the
human body. “Human trafficking may involve exploitation through forced labour,
including the following areas: agriculture, building industry, textile industry,
catering (restaurants, bars, hotels), horticulture, care work, fishing.” In spite of
these realizations, experience shows that while criminologists consider human
trafficking and prostitution a central issue, the literature of the field pays much
less attention to the exploitation of human labour. This difference may be due
to the fact the profit from the exploitation of labour concerns a much wider
7 See further: UN. General Assembly A/RES/55/25 8 January 2001: 55/25 United Nations
Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. Specifically Article 3 (a) https://
www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/
globalcompact/A_RES_55_25.pdf.
Windt, Szandra (ed.): Guiding and assisting the European victims of human trafficking,
[Az emberkereskedelem európai áldozatainak irányítása és segítésel — RAVOT-EUR
HOME/2012/ISEC/AG/4000004405. Informative manual on the Transnational Guiding
Mechanism operating between Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary, assisting the victims
of human trafficking, Budapest, The Interior Ministry of Hungary, 2015, 10-12.
+ 288 *