Yeah, what about those women and children slaves?

From The New York Times:

Op-Ed Columnist

In Obama’s Speech, Their Voices

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: September 26, 2012     

When President Obama made a landmark speech against modern slavery on Tuesday, many of us in the news media shrugged. It didn’t fit into the political narrative. It wasn’t controversial, so — yawn — it wasn’t really news.

But women like Sina Vann noticed. She’s a friend of mine who was trafficked as a young girl from Vietnam into Cambodian brothels — where she was regularly punished by being locked inside coffins with scorpions and biting ants. Now an anti-trafficking activist with the Somaly Mam Foundation, she sent me an exuberant e-mail (in fractured English, her third language) with a message for Obama: “We are survivors here so proud of you, you are the big president in U.S. and you take action of trafficking. So you give victims from around the world have hope.”

 

Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of human trafficking who was nearly choked to death by her pimp, felt the same way. Lloyd now runs a superb program in New York City, GEMS, to help American girls escape “the life.” She told me that watching the Obama speech was “one of the most gratifying moments in my 15 years of work on the issue.”

 

If Representative Todd Akin’s remarks about “legitimate rape” provoked an uproar, shouldn’t it be incomparably more offensive that millions of human beings are still trafficked in the 21st century? Yet the world often scorns the victims and sees them as criminals: these girls are the lepers of the 21st century.

 

So bravo to the president for giving a major speech on human trafficking and, crucially, for promising greater resources to fight pimps and support those who escape the streets. Until recently, the Obama White House hasn’t shown strong leadership on human trafficking, but this could be a breakthrough. The test will be whether Obama continues to press the issue.

 

I’ve been passionate about human trafficking ever since I encountered a village in Cambodia 15 years ago where young girls were locked up, terrified, as their virginity was sold to the highest bidder. It felt just like 19th-century slavery, except that these girls would likely be dead of AIDS or something else by their 20s.

 

Granted, not all prostitution is coerced. Reasonable people can disagree about what to do in the case of adults who sell sex voluntarily. Put aside that disagreement, for we can agree to place priority on the millions of children and adults compelled to provide sex or other labor.

 

Prostituted kids are among the most voiceless of the voiceless around the world, and it will make a difference if the White House speaks up for them — and fights for them.

 

On the India/Nepal border, I once chatted with an Indian policeman who was on the lookout for terrorists and smuggled DVDs but was uninterested in the streams of Nepali girls passing through, destined for the brothels in Bombay and Kolkata. The policeman explained that America was pressuring India on movie piracy, so let’s show India and the world that we’re also concerned with enslaved children.

 

If we tell other countries to free their slaves, we also have to clean up our own act. Contrary to public opinion, the worst of America’s human trafficking arguably doesn’t involve foreign women smuggled into the United States, but homegrown girls.

 

It’s a disgrace that police officers and prosecutors routinely go after such teenage girls — often runaways fleeing abuse or other impossible situations — and treat them as criminals, while showing less interest in the pimps who exploited them.

 

Normally, if a man has sex with a young girl, he risks jail and she gets counseling. But, if she has a pimp who earns $50 from the transaction, then everything changes: The man may get a slap on the wrist and the girl may go to jail. Does that make any sense?

 

So let’s demand that police officers and prosecutors go after pimps and johns, while treating the teenagers as victims who need comprehensive social services.

 

Republicans have done superb work on this issue in the past, but now they’re balking at straightforward reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act — landmark legislation against human trafficking. What are they thinking?

 

One person on the front lines here in the United States is Alissa, who has a scar on her cheek from where her former pimp mutilated her with a potato peeler as a warning not to escape. She did get away and now works with prostituted girls in Washington whose average age, she says, is 14. Alissa is her street name; she doesn’t want her real name published because pimps still harass her.

 

Alissa watched Obama’s speech, and then replayed it four more times. She has always been treated as a “throwaway,” she said, and now she was dazzled that the president was treating the issue as a priority.

 

Some 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, let’s make sure that this isn’t just a speech, but a turning point.

Horror in Aba, Nigeria

Goddess only knows what the fate of the infants was.  How sick and warped the world has become, where it is routine to victimize the weak and the helpless.  Females and children.  Always the victims.

From Yahoo News
Nigerian 'baby factory' raided, 32 teenage girls freed
– Wed Jun 1, 10:32 am ET
LAGOS (AFP) – Nigerian police have raided a home allegedly being used to force teenage girls to have babies that were then offered for sale for trafficking or other purposes, authorities said on Wednesday.

"We stormed the premises of the Cross Foundation in Aba three days ago following a report that pregnant girls aged between 15 and 17 are being made to make babies for the proprietor," said Bala Hassan, police commissioner for Abia state in the country's southeast.

"We rescued 32 pregnant girls and arrested the proprietor who is undergoing interrogation over allegations that he normally sells the babies to people who may use them for rituals or other purposes."

Some of the girls told police they had been offered to sell their babies for between 25,000 and 30,000 naira (192 dollars) depending on the sex of the baby.

The babies would then be sold to buyers for anything from 300,000 naira to one million naira (1,920 and 6,400 dollars) each, according to a state agency fighting human trafficking in Nigeria, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

The girls were expected to be transferred to the regional NAPTIP offices in Enugu on Wednesday, the regional head Ijeoma Okoronkwo told AFP.

Hassan said the owner of the "illegal baby factory" is likely to face child abuse and human trafficking charges. Buying or selling of babies is illegal in Nigeria and can carry a 14-year jail term.

"We have so many cases going on in court right now," said Okoronkwo.

In 2008, police raids revealed an alleged network of such clinics, dubbed baby "farms" or "factories" in the local press.

Cases of child abuse and people trafficking are common in West Africa. Some children are bought from their families to for use as labour in plantations, mines, factories or as domestic help.

Others are sold into prostitution while a few are either killed or tortured in black magic rituals. NAPTIP says it has also seen a trend of illegal adoption.

"There is a problem of illict adoption and people not knowing the right way to adopt children," said Okoronkwo.

Human trafficking is ranked the third most common crime after economic fraud and drug trafficking in the country, according to UNESCO.

For Sale So Males Can Eat: Wives and Daughters

This is a copyrighted story from AFP. Drought-hit Indian farmers sell wives to pay debts By Kulsum Mustafa (AFP) – 16 hours ago LUCKNOW, India — Drought-hit farmers in northern India are resorting to selling their wives to repay debts to local loan sharks, activists say, as one of the weakest monsoons in years takes its toll. Poverty, poor administration and a lack of education means farmers in the rugged Bundelkhand region are taking extreme steps to pull through a poor rainy season, they say. "This has been happening for quite some time now, but people were hesitant to come out with all this," said Manoj Kumar, a social activist working with farmers in the area. Excluded from the formal banking sector, the poverty-stricken farmers often turn to usurious private money lenders when banks refuse them loans or even accounts. After five years of poor crop yields and steadily decreasing rainfall, the crushing weight of the high interest payments has led to a well-documented spate of suicides and increasing cases of human-trafficking. Another social worker, Shailendra Sagar, said the situation of farmers in Bundelkhand, a region that spans the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, was "pathetic." "They are living in debt. Selling off one's wife or daughters is the last resort," he said. The sale price for married women is hard to ascertain and their fate after being sold is equally difficult to follow. Local reports have suggested wives can be pawned or sold for anything between one rupee to 12,000 rupees (240 dollars). Some women are sold under the guise of a legal marriage, complete with a formal contract, but activists believe others end up being exploited by prostitution rings. In the last four to five years around 50 percent of the region's population has left Bundelkhand villages to find work in cities, and at least 500 farmers have committed suicide, according to various Indian media reports. For India's 235 million farmers, a bad monsoon can spell financial disaster because of the lack of irrigation. Low rains have ravaged India's rice, cane sugar and groundnut crops, and have disrupted the flow of water into the main reservoirs that are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation. About 40 percent of India's districts have declared a drought, and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) this week said the country faced a 20-percent annual rainfall deficiency, though that figure is expected to improve with recent patchy rains. Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi, said research had identified Bundelkhand as one of the regions most vulnerable to sex trafficking. "This region is famous for that. Even earlier such incidents have happened, it's not the first time," she said. Some farmers are aware that they are selling their wives to prostitution rings, Kumari added, but "they do it out of absolute desperation. They have absolutely no other alternative before them." A government-funded scheme in which states are obliged to guarantee 100 days of paid employment per year to villagers has yet to be fully implemented in Bundelkhand. "There are no specially dedicated schemes to develop these regions. If skill training was delivered, this whole situation would have been different in the past six decades," said Kumari. Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

The Industry of Begging

Organized criminal groups prey on your sense of compassion for children: From LivinginPeru.com 4 January, 2008 [ 16:30 ] Peru's Government Begins Program to Keep Children from Begging on Streets (LIP-ir) -- The Ministry of Women & Social Development (MIMDES) will carry out the first “raid” of parents who rent or use their children by dressing them in rags and have them beg in the streets, announced Minister Susana Pinilla. Although she did not mention where these raids would take place exactly, Pinilla explained that a ministerial group was evaluating the punishment bad parents would receive for these acts against children's rights. "Any person that uses a child for these activities will receive a serious punishment, this is to avoid the use of children for begging on the streets in different ways, for example, begging on a corner, selling on the streets or used as ‘mules’", she stated. She said the Ministry of Women would not allow children to work because this was a commitment made in the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the United States. “We are firm on this subject, it is better that Peru's society understands the consequences of their actions, because we will use all the law's power to avoid this situation”, she stressed. On previous occasions, this initiative was named “Campaign against begging”, in which Peru's National Police along with the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Women took in abandoned street kids and placed them in the care of the National Institute of Family Welfare. News source: ANDINA Want to be shocked to the roots of your hair and beyond? Click on some of the "country" reports at Human Trafficking Website 2007-2008. Country by country reports of human trafficking, modern day slavery, contemporary slavery, debt bondage, serfdom, forced labor, forced marriage, transferring of wives, inheritance of wives, and transfer of a child for purposes of exploitation. Some sound advice about how to handle encountering beggars during your travels (applies the same to domestic situations. We have beggars now in Milwaukee that I didn't see even just a few years ago, preying on people's compassion).

Child Slavery in India

From The Times of India: Hostage horror for Bengal girls in Bihar 11 Feb 2008, 0240 hrs IST,Caesar Mandal,TNN KAKDWIP: Girls from Bengal, some as young as 10, are being held hostage and auctioned off in Bihar. A TOI investigation has revealed that they are locked up, starved, beaten and forced to dance sleazy numbers in front of violent, gun-toting crowds. One such group of youngsters from Kakdwip, 100 km from Kolkata, has been rescued after three weeks of captivity in Gopalganj, Bihar. But they are the lucky ones. Every year, over 500 girls taken to Bihar from this area are never seen again. TOI had done an exposé of the horrific racket on May 5 last year, but this time, we have gone deeper into the hellish world these helpless girls are trapped in. The girls and boys rescued from Bihar's Gopalganj were first sold for Rs 1 lakh by a local tout and then resold for Rs 2 lakh to an agent in Bihar without their knowledge. They were held at gunpoint and every little slip drew a vicious assault. The Kakdwip group had nine members - five girls and four boys. The youngest was 10 and the majority aged 14-16. Their leader, Prasenjit Haldar, got a contract to perform at a show in Mathurapur on January 21. After the event, a local tout - Somnath Dandapat - lured them to Sodepur in Kolkata with the promise of a bigger show and more money. But once in Sodepur, the group was handed over to Asim Mukherjee, another middleman. The next evening, they were made to board a Tata Sumo around 7.30 pm and told their venue was a three-hour drive away. But it turned out to be a much longer one. Panic set in when Somnath and Asim forced them to hand over their mobiles. The dancers were trapped. The vehicle sped out of the state. Early next morning, they reached Gopalganj and were taken to a heavily fortified house guarded by gunmen. All nine were herded into a small room and locked up. When one of the girls tried to speak, she was severely beaten up. "We did not know where we were. We were terrified. They threatened to kill us if we refused to follow instructions," said 10-year-old Monami. On January 24, the group was packed into a car and taken to perform at a wedding. The tired and terrified youngsters were forced to dance in three sessions without food or water. "We had no choice. They were carrying guns and would slap us whenever we asked for a break," said Kaushiki. On January 25, the group was split, with six of them taken to a wedding at Mirganj. On the way back, Monami's cousin Samar jumped out of the jeep and ran to a phone booth. He managed to call his brother Panchanan at Kakdwip and tell him where they were being held hostage before the gunmen captured him. Samar was beaten till he bled, but the call saved the hapless youngsters. (Victims' names have been changed) Related story: An endless cycle of slavery 11 Feb 2008, 0244 hrs IST,Caesar Mandal,TNN