Lurid ‘slavery’ trial
gets under way

A company in American Samoa
allegedly beat and starved its workers

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By Jaymes Song
Associated Press

The owner of an American Samoan garment factory had employees starved and beaten and threatened to have them deported if they spoke out, a federal prosecutor said in opening statements yesterday in an involuntary-servitude case.

"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.

Kil Soo Lee, of South Korea, and two of his managers, Virginia Solia'i and Robert Atimalala, were charged in 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 Hawaii had made clothes for J.C. Penney Co. and other retailers before the U.S. Labor Department reported worker abuses.

Seamstresses, who paid thousands of dollars to secure jobs at Daewoosa, were housed in a 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, told the court she used her home in Vietnam as collateral and borrowed money to pay the $5,000 required to work there.

The money went to Daewoosa and a Vietnamese government-owed labor export company, International Manpower Supply, she said.

Workers had aspirations of the "American dream" for a better life, prosecutors said. Instead they found something quite different, according to prosecutors.

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. 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, prosecutors said.

Lee's public defender, Alexander Silvert, said that American Samoa's immigration laws require everyone to have a sponsor. Daewoosa sponsored its workers and therefore could revoke the sponsorship at any time for any reason, subjecting the workers to deportation, he said.

Silvert said workers were upset by contractual problems with IMS, which caused several labor problems.

"They challenged Mr. Lee," he said.

Lee, 52, also is 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.

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.

The trial is expected to take up to five months.