Human Trafficking In The News: 6-27-2012

Here is the latest installment of Human Trafficking in the news where we highlight stories of sex trafficking, forced labor, child exploitation and other human rights abuses. Thank you for keeping yourself educated on this subject, for actively pursuing justice for the victims of trafficking, and for never giving up as long as one person remains a slave. Click on the bold heading of each story for the entire articles.

Jada Pinkett Smith joins the human trafficking fight: The actress talks to CNN Freedom Project about her crusade to end human trafficking and how her 11-year-old daughter spurred her into action. Watch the interview here.


Another major chocolate maker pledges to be slave free: Up to 75% of the world’s cocoa beans are grown in small farms in West Africa. In the Ivory Coast alone, there are an estimated 200,000 children working the fields. Chocolate maker Ferrero has pledged to eradicate slavery from farms where it sources its cocoa by 2020.

Young boy carrying a heavy bag of cocoa pods. Many of these boys do not know what chocolate is, nor have they ever tasted it.

FBI rescues 79 kids from sex slavery in major nationwide raid: Of the 79 minors rescued, all but two were girls, and the youngest who was 13, had been a sex slave since she was 11.


The TIP Report released this week from the State Dept.: "The Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report is the U.S. Government’s principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking. In the TIP Report, the Department of State places each country onto one of three tiers based on the extent of their governments’ efforts to comply with the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” found in Section 108 of the TVPA." Read the entire report here.

Shamir Ahmed, child rapist, who blames western  for allowing young girls to 'parade on the streets' where they could be preyed on by men like himself.

59 year old man and his sex-grooming gang convicted of 30 rapes: Shabir Ahmed, 59, was the leader of a child exploitation ring who raped vulnerable teenage girls - who he told to call him 'Daddy'. He would befriend his teenage victims and ply them with alcohol before carrying out his attacks and then hepassed them around for sex. Ahmed was one of nine Pakistani men jailed at Liverpool Crown Court for a total of 77 years last month for the horrific sex attacks. One victim said she couldn't remember how old she was the first time Ahmed raped her, but she knew she was so young she still had to stand on a chair to reach the sink.

Amadou and the Taste of Chocolate.

 In Kevin Bales's book Ending Slavery he tells the stories of young boys from Mali enslaved on cocoa farms on Africa's Ivory Coast. These boys, barely into their teens, worked dawn to dusk collecting the cocoa pods in the oppressive heat. Weak from hunger and malnutrition they would stumble under the heavy bags of pods and then be beaten viciously. If they tried to escape they were beaten for days on end or killed. One boy sent back to work before his wounds could heal was only able to survive because the maggots on his back ate the infection from the wounds. When rescuers found them the boys' eyes were hollow and their bodies skeletal. In one heartbreaking conversation a young survivor gave a shocking admonition. Bales recounts the exchange this way.

"

Kate (a film maker working with Kevin) asked a young man Amadou how he felt about his five and a half years in slavery. Amadou replied with remarkable sensitivity: "When I think of all that suffering, it hurts my heart deeply. I want to say so much, but I just can't find the words." Kate then explained to him that cocoa was used to make chocolate, a sweet food that people love, but Amadou said he never knew this and had never tasted it. When he was asked if he had anything to say to the millions of people who eat chocolate every day, Amadou replied, "If I had to say something to them, it would not be nice words. They enjoy something I suffered to make; I worked hard for them, but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh."

Chocolate is not alone in being tainted with slave labor. Almost everything we eat, drive, wear, and even our houses have components that have some amount of slave labor in their production chain. If Gerard Manley Hopkins' words may be borrowed and reapplied "...all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil."


The Tariff Act of 1930 states that "all goods...produced or manufactured wholly or in part by...forced labor...shall not be entitled to entry [into the United States] and importation is hereby prohibited."


We must demand that our politicians enforce the laws. We must demand that the companies we purchase products from eliminate all slave labor. We must, otherwise....


We are eating their flesh.