Only two of 100 endure sweatshop simulation in human trafficking awareness campaign
NGO campaign aims to improve awareness on human trafficking and slave labour
At a "sweatshop" in North Point, dozens sit around tables, screwing together nuts and bolts in an overnight shift.
Food and water are not allowed, nor are toilet breaks.
The participants were there for Asia's first slave-labour simulation, hosted by NGOs to raise funds while allowing people to experience what it is like to toil in a sweatshop.
The conditions were clearly better than actual sweatshops. Still, the repetitive assembling action and long hours proved too hard for most.
While about 100 people dropped in and took part for varying lengths of time between 8pm on Friday and 6am yesterday, only two people completed the 10-hour challenge without any sleep, their fingers stiff and blackened by the constant twisting of screws by the end.
Asked why he endured the process, one of the two survivors of the ordeal, Kim Kennelley, said he wanted to experience what it was like "to be forgotten, and left behind [doing this] with complete hopelessness".
His son, 11-year-old Toby, managed to "work" from 8pm to 4.30am, when he was too tired to continue. "Now that I've stopped … my hands are still cramped. This is a very worthwhile endeavour and gave me time to think about the issue" of human trafficking and slavery.
Forced labour via human trafficking is an issue that should strike particular resonance in a consumer-based society like Hong Kong, said Matthew Friedman, chief executive of event co-organiser Mekong Club.
"That phone that you carry, it could have been put together by someone in forced labour, so do you still want to be part of it?" Friedman said.
Almost 21 million people are trapped in forced labour, 11.4 million of them female, according to the International Labour Organisation under the UN. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for the highest number of such labourers, at 11.7 million.
"I can't imagine what level of despair it would be to do this every day, without the hope of a possible end to it," said Friedman, who was the other person to complete the challenge.
Mekong Club, an NGO set up by Friedman to engage businesses in stopping human trafficking, co-organised the event with the International Christian Assembly as part of the 852 Freedom Campaign, a string of events to raise awareness of the problem.
"Our aim is to blanket the city with information and to educate the public," he said. "Like the abolitionist movement 150 years ago, we want to start something like that again."