If only this were a rare occurrence

An interesting fact about sex trafficking is that the front-person is usually female. I don't have the statistics right here but I'll try to dig them up. (There will be a movie on Lifetime on October 24th & 25th at 8 p.m. called Human Trafficking that you might want to watch if you're interested in this.)

I guess that's one reason why this disturbs me so much. But that's only one reason. One lifetime does not contain enough minutes for me to describe every other reason this literally makes me sick to my stomach. This couple got caught, but what about all the other couples out there who aren't unknowingly involved in a police sting? What about all of the kids that aren't rescued?

How anti-abortionists support human trafficking

I wish that anti-abortionists would expand their world view in order to see what really happens to unwanted children around the globe. This type of thing not only happens in Bulgaria but all around the world. What is the main reason the parents or caretakers give for selling their children? They can't financially support them. And traffickers just love to buy and sell children because kids are cheap and expendable. They are re-usable and re-sellable and that makes them worth a lot of money, especially in the context of being able to use them over and over again.

I wish just one anti-abortionist would explain to me how in the world they are able to so effectively turn a blind eye to what actually happens to unwanted children. Guess what, this fight isn't just about giving women the right to choose what is best for them and their bodies. It is also about what is best for the children. And as rosy as it would be to believe that all babies are precious in the eyes of God and humanity, that is not the reality. If you believe that you are personally capable of saving every single child in the world from the horrors of being trafficked, then by all means, anti-abortion it up. But if you're not a complete idiot, it's time to rethink some of your beliefs. Can you honestly tell me that your god would prefer that these fetuses not be aborted in utero but would rather they be born into a life of domestic or sex slavery? Seriously? Because if so, that's a god that I want no part of.

So I guess everybody has a choice to make. Either continue spouting anti-abortion bullshit, all the while supporting by proxy the trafficking of children, or wake up and welcome yourself to the real world. If you are trying to keep birth control or access to safe abortions away from females, you support the continuance of the horrible lives of the children those females bear.

Trafficking

The U.S. State Department has released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report.

Gee, I sure am glad Chiquita employees were "protected"

This article from Newsvine goes into greater detail about the role of Chiquita in funding paramilitary and rebel operations and supplying them with assault rifles and ammunition. While I still question attaching the "terrorist" label to these groups, I am deeply concerned about the role that these groups have played in torturing and massacring who knows how many people in Columbia.

Let's go down the list of gross human rights violations that far-right paramilitary groups and leftist rebel groups have without question committed against fellow Columbians:

- Main source of cocaine for the world. People (of all ages) are kidnapped and forced to traffic the drug by acting as human "mules."

- Main source of sex slaves for the world, but mostly to Holland, Japan, and Spain. Females of all ages (including small children) and males (mostly small children) are kidnapped by various groups and sent around the world to act as sex slaves.

- Famous for using women as "trophies of war." Women from opposing groups are held hostage and raped repeatedly and are then mutilated and murdered. Those women are probably lucky if one leader takes a liking to them because at least then they will only be raped by one guy rather than being subjected to repeated gang-rapes by the "troops."

- Sweatshops mostly "employing" children. As if drug and sex slavery weren't enough, now we know that the kids are used as slaves to make the world really inexpensive t-shirts.

- Child soldiers are used to fight the various skirmishes going on at any given moment. They control the female pre-teen soldiers by raping them repeatedly. If they don't fall in line and kill when they are told to, they are raped and subjected to horrible sexual violence. If you still fail to comply or if you try to escape, you'll be murdered by firing squad - usually by other child soldiers.

According to the article, Chiquita stock is only down six cents and although I am not an expert of, or even very knowledgeable about, the stock market, that doesn't seem like too big of a deal. So I guess the next time you want to enjoy a delicious sweet Chiquita banana, just think about how much better that banana must taste because it was harvested via funding that enabled rebel groups to kidnap, rape, mutilate, torture, and murder.

Mmmmm. Tasty bananas.

Information garnered from the following sources:
CNN
CNN Money
Freedom House
Amnesty International
Newsvine
U.S. State Department
U.S. Department of Justice
Transparency International
Human Rights Watch

A quick note about human trafficking

I mentioned in my previous post that approximately 50,000 of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 thousand people that are trafficked for the purpose of sex are trafficked to the United States. What I failed to expound upon is the fact that normally the people who are trafficking those people are not Americans. They are from all over the world and they are in the United States legitimately (work visas, etc.) The reason the United States is able to accept so many trafficked persons for the purpose of sex is because of the market that the United States offers.

The people engaging in this market are normal Americans. Doctors, lawyers, school teachers, politicians, actors, pretty much anybody you can imagine, although mostly they are rich because it costs a lot to get good "virginal" ass (again, see my previous post.) As I mentioned before, as long as there are people willing to pay to have sex with trafficked people, the trade will not stop or slow. Most of the time people don't even realize they are having sex with someone who was trafficked against their will. Again, as I mentioned before, the trafficked persons are threatened with death for themselves and/or their loved ones back home but even worse than that, they are sometimes told that if they try to escape, their children will be trafficked all over the world and forced into the sex trade.

I would just like to reiterate that the only way sex slavery will stop is when people stop paying for it. I'm not trying to debate whether or not prostitution should be legalized. That is a discussion for another time. My point here is just to bring to your attention that you could be supporting sex slavery without even realizing it. Perhaps later I'll go into more detail regarding everything you could be spending your money on that could inadvertently be supporting sex slavery.

Human Trafficking

Tonight I watched a movie starring Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland entitled Human Trafficking. The movie originally aired on the Lifetime Channel in 2005 as a four hour mini-series and the dvd (that I borrowed through NetFlix) runs approximately 180 minutes (excluding the twenty minutes or so of bonus material.) This film is just as horrible and gritty as you can imagine but it is told with a sensitivity that I have yet to experience in any other film.

The film shows many different aspects of the sex slave industry and travels all over the world to do so. The main focus of the film is the Unites States but it also looks at many Eastern European countries, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Should you choose to watch this film, beware. You will see rape, beatings, terror, greed, beauty, broken people, murder, suicide, children (male and female) sold into sex slavery by their parents, children (again, male and female) and women kidnapped for the purpose of becoming sex slaves. You will learn that approximately 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked each year for the purpose of sex slavery with about 50,000 of those slaves serving clients within the United States.

Slavery has always existed but sex slavery at this scale is relatively new. Some would argue that the reason it has become so prevalent in the past ten to fifteen years is because of the Iron Curtain falling in Eastern Europe. Desperate people were seeking work and they fell into the sex slave industry quite by accident.

Many prostitutes in America and in other places across the globe are in the trade because they must sell themselves in order to pay off a debt to someone (indentured servitude.) Many women come to the United States of their own free will, thinking they will soon be working either as models or actors, or becoming domestics or nannies. But what happens when they get here is they are told they owe the person that brought them here thousands of dollars for their passage and papers, and they will be free as soon as they have worked their debt off by selling their bodies. (The slaves are also told that should they try to escape their owners, the industry network will ensure that family members left behind are murdered, tortured, or kidnapped into the sex slave trade.) Their passports and visas are taken away until they can "repay" the debt, but the majority of these women are dead within four years of arriving because they either try to escape their owners and are killed or they simply die from literally being "worked" to death.

Many clients are told their slaves are virgins and therefore protection is not used, which leads to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.

But there is another reason that sex slavery has become such an impressive and profitable trade. If you are selling drugs or weapons you can sell them at a marked-up price, but the downside is that you can only sell them once. Sex slaves can be sold over and over and over again. Some people that have been liberated from sex slavery say that they were forced to service between thirty to fifty men a day, every day.

Sex slaves are used to satisfy an appetite for sex. As long as this appetite remains, there will continue to be sex slaves. As long as people are willing to pay money to the owners of these slaves, the slave's only existence will be to provide sex. Supply and demand. Unfortunately many people don't realize that this is going on and that their actions, inadvertently or otherwise, contribute to the sex slave industry. Believe it or not, many women who dance in strip clubs are indentured slaves and many women that you see in pornographic movies are forced into it in order to "pay off their debt."

This is the world we live in today. The only way to put an end to the sex slave industry is to expose it to the general population (through media outlets and word of mouth) and then to be very careful about what we choose to spend our money on. Sex traders are in this industry to make money - they can earn a huge reward with very little effort or overhead, and the only casualties are the slaves themselves. It is very difficult to prosecute those involved with the trade because often the slaves are listed as missing, disappeared, or as run-aways. The people at the highest risk for becoming sex slaves usually start out in a very vulnerable position, which is how this trade has managed to go largely unnoticed, especially in the United States. Society at large never knew that they existed in the first place, and therefore they are not missed.

Sex Trade/Trafficking in the News

Cambodian six-year-old sold into sex slavery by her parents.

More than 2,000 people arrested in Italy for involvement in human trafficking.

Trafficking/Human Rights Violations

In response to emails I have received:

So far, the countries I've looked at are Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, and Switzerland.

My next round of countries will include China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Germany, Chile, South Africa, Uganda, Iran, Sierra Leone, Nicaragua, and Singapore, with closer looks at Kyrgyzstan and Moldova.

These are all the countries I'm looking at for human rights violations and out of the first group of 15, 10 have active trafficking going on within their borders. Those do not include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovakia, South Korea, and Switzerland. The rest partake the industry in one way or another.