Red Light on Human Trafficking

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REUTERS/Bruno Domingos

Some people would have been better off if they had never been born. So it seems, if this life is all they have.

Take Dara (not her real name). Born in Cambodia, she became an orphan early in life. Her sister looked after her well. But one day she made a terrible mistake in marrying her off, when only 17. Thinking she was ensuring Dara a good future, she had unwittingly doomed her to a short and brutish life. For, just three months later, her ‘husband’ took her to a fishing village. He rented a room in what Dara took to be a guesthouse and disappeared. Next morning to her horror she found out that he had sold her for $300. The guesthouse was a brothel. She survived multiple rapes daily for five years. When she contracted AIDS the brothel owner threw her out. She made her way to a local shelter, and died aged 23.

Dara is just one of countless examples of selling and buying human beings. According to John Miller, director of the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, some 800,000 people cross international borders each year, victims of this vile trade. Of these 80% are women and girls and up to 50% are minors – all for the buying, as sex slaves. Sex tourism, according to Miller, is the driving force behind this ‘commerce’.
Ethnic Vietnamese sex workers wait for clients in a Phnom Penh red light district. In 2001 Cambodia's Minister of Women's Affairs, Mu Sochua, launched an anti-human trafficking campaign saying the city's booming sex industry was proof that human trafficking was thriving and that women and children were being lured by traffickers with the promise of good jobs which later turn out to be prostitution, organised begging rings and illegal labouring jobs. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Many other victims end up in forced labour on farms or in factories. Human trafficking – the world’s third biggest crime after illicit arms and drugs deals – is big business, he acknowledges, because many countries tolerate it. Generating up to $10 billion annually for criminal gangs, trafficking, in turn, fuels other criminal activities such as money laundering, drug trafficking, document forgery. However, there are millions more victims trafficked within their own national borders. This form of human trafficking is difficult to monitor. Often it involves individuals who enslave a domestic servant or factory bosses who won’t pay their forced-labour workers.

While most countries have criminalized forced labour, it is also true that they seldom prosecute offenders, partly because police lack awareness of forced labour issues.

But human trafficking is not just a matter of issues or numbers. It is about human beings – including minors – being subjected to unspeakable perversions daily. Victims of trafficking suffer physical, sexual, and psychological trauma. Frequently they contract sexually transmitted diseases, pelvic inflammatory disease, hepatitis, tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. It results in unwanted pregnancy and forced abortions. Add to this: rape, physical assault, nightmares, insomnia, and suicidal tendencies; substance abuse; even suicide and murder. But the health risks apply more widely than to immediate victims. Sex trafficking can affect the general public because those who go to brothels can become carriers of serious diseases.
Former South Korean ‘comfort woman’ Kang Il-chul, 73, who was forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II, demanding an official apology from the Japanese government. REUTERS/Cho Yong-soo
To effectively combat human trafficking authorities need constantly to improve their knowledge of just what is going on, where it’s going on and how it’s going on. Also, religious institutions, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), schools, community groups, and individuals with influence within their communities need to cooperate in any effort to eliminate trafficking. Victims and their families are important players in this struggle too.

In keeping with this approach, the Church is playing her part. Last June the first International Meeting of Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Women of the Street was held in the Vatican on June 20-21, at the initiative of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers. Officials from the Pontifical Council, and from five Vatican departments attended, as did two bishops, a number of priests, religious and laypeople. There were delegates from 19 European nations – including Ireland – and from other continents. Various international organizations were represented also.

Some of the Conference’s conclusions were as follows:

Prostitution, a form of modern-day slavery: Prostitution and trafficking of human beings are a form of violence against women and seriously violate basic human rights. However, clearly not every victim of trafficking ends up in prostitution and not all prostitutes have been trafficked. For example, estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) indicate that of the 12.3 million people trapped in forced labour about 2.4 million of them are victims of trafficking.

Migration, human rights, trafficking linked: Links between migration, human rights and trafficking are becoming clearer. Both the UN Protocol on trafficking and the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action Against Trafficking concur that trafficking is a gross violation of human rights and an offence against the dignity of the human person.

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Man-woman relationship: Men do not always relate to women as equals. Because of violence or its threat, men often assume privilege and power over women reducing them to silence and compliance. This often results in women and children forced out onto the street. Sadly, women too can oppress other women, especially when they are members of criminal gangs involved with prostitution.
IMF Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato (L) presents a check to a nun after he visited the Institute des Filles Marie Auxiliatrice in Cotonou, Benin in May 2005. The nuns provide shelter, food, education and medical aid to young children who have escaped slavery and other abuse. REUTERS/ Stephen Jaffe
Role of the Church: The Church has a responsibility to promote human dignity – including the dignity of victims of exploitation through trafficking or prostitution. The Church must also encourage people to promote human dignity by eliminating sexual exploitation.

The Conference also acknowledged the need for religious congregations, lay movements and institutions to give greater “visibility” and attention to the pastoral care of victims of prostitution.

Some of the Conference’s proposals were as follows:

Church action to liberate women of the street: Both men and women should be involved in the fight against trafficking and prostitution, with concern for human rights its driving force. They should try to educate both the traffickers and their ‘clients’ in human and moral values. The Church should be able to condemn their evil activity in such a fashion that they, the perpetrators, hear it clearly.

Episcopal conferences: Episcopal conferences in countries where prostitution is fuelled by trafficking should denounce it publicly. They should help promote respect and compassion towards women who have been caught in prostitution.

Role of religious congregations: Religious congregations should join forces in their efforts to fight trafficking and its consequences. The various projects they sponsor aimed at the repatriation of women caught in prostitution should be adequately financed. International meetings of religious groups involved in this work are to be encouraged. Local clergy should also be involved especially in the Christian formation of young men and in the rehabilitation of sex ‘clients’.

Collaboration: Both public and private agencies should collaborate to defeat sexual exploitation. The media should be involved to ensure effective and correct communication to the public about this problem.

The Conference concluded by, among other things, urging bishops to include the topics of sexual exploitation, and trafficking of human beings in their ad limina (five-yearly) visits to the Pope; by advocating education and awareness programmes in seminaries on sexual exploitation of women and minors.

As a sign of the seriousness with which the problem of trafficking in human beings is viewed, another international conference will take place in the Vatican, September 12-13, 2005, organized by Caritas Internationalis.

This same seriousness was echoed in the words of the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice on the occasion of the release of the Fifth Annual Department of State Trafficking in Persons report, on 3 June last: “To confront the abomination of human trafficking, a modern day abolitionist movement has emerged. Concerned citizens, students, faith-based organizations, feminists and other non-governmental groups are doing courageous and compassionate work to end this trade in human degradation.”

Ireland: Trafficking of Women for Sex Trade Increasing
Ruhama – a voluntary organization offering support to prostitutes in Ireland has called on the Government to shut down the country’s burgeoning trade in lap-dancing clubs.

The call follows indications that the number of foreign women trafficked into Ireland to work in the sex industry is increasing. Between 2003-4 Ruhama supported 91 women who were trafficked into Ireland. Most came from Eastern Europe – from countries such as Albania and Romania. The 91 have been described as the “tip of the iceberg”.

The criminal gangs who operate as traffickers use coercion tactics such as constantly moving the women around the country, threats of or actual physical violence or threatening them with deportation. Women trafficked into Ireland usually end up working in lap-dancing clubs or brothels.

Ruhama has contact with over 240 women involved in prostitution in Dublin alone and offers counselling, personal support as well as computer training and employment support.

A 12-year-old Bangladeshi former camel-jockey shows his companions a deep scar on his left leg after the boys were repatriated from the United Arab Emirates in Dhaka in August 2002. The Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association provided shelter to the boys, gave them legal assistance against traffickers and helped them locate their home villages. REUTERS/Mohammad Shahidullah
Child Camel Jockeys – Robbing Children of their Childhoods and their Futures
The trafficking and exploitation of South Asian and African children as camel jockeys has burgeoned in the Gulf states as part of the multi-million dollar camel racing industry.

Thousands of children, some as young as 3 or 4 years of age, are trafficked from Bangladesh, Pakistan and countries in East Africa and sold into slavery to serve as camel jockeys. These children live in unsanitary conditions, receive little food, and are deprived of sleep so that they do not gain weight and increase the load on the camels they race.

Working in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, handlers employ abusive control tactics, including threats and beatings. Some are reportedly abused sexually. Many have been seriously injured and some have been trampled to death by the camels.

Those who survive the harsh conditions are disposed of once they reach their teenage years. Having gained no productive skills or education, scarred with physical and psychological trauma that can last a lifetime, these children often end up leading destitute lives. Trafficked child camel jockeys are robbed of their childhoods – and their future.
(Courtesy: Trafficking in Persons Report 2005)