Futbol fever has gripped the world and for 16 teams and their respective countries, the dream of being the #1 team is still alive. Face painted, flag draped fans with vuvuzelas have created such a cacophony that Fifa has considered banning the plastic horns. It is Mardi Gras meets the Super Bowl in South Africa and it's fun! Fun! FUN!!!
But not for everybody. In the lead up to the contest 42 million condoms were sent from Great Britain alone, (out of an estimated 1 billion that may be needed) and an estimated 40 thousand women were trafficked into the country from many other nations. South African Officials have attempted to distance themselves somewhat from these numbers saying that an increased police presence surrounding the World Cup has offset any raised rate of trafficking. While actual numbers are unclear, what is clear is demand always dictates supply. And when that many males are in one small area for any length of time, the criminal element is glad to give them what they want. Several campaigns in the lead up to the contest seem to have helped to some degree. NotForSale.org is running what they are calling the Red Card Campaign to fight human trafficking during this year's World Cup. Here is video from that campaign.
Today is World Day Against Child Labor. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 215 million children engaged in illegal labor, with half being in the worst forms of slave labor. This includes, but is of course not limited to, the sex trade, child soldiering, bonded labor and the illegal drug trade.
Like most forms of child exploitation, illegal child labor is born from the womb of poverty. Many children are forced to work solely for their family or for themselves to survive. Many children will not eat if they don't work. And of course this type of desperation gives greed and evil ample opportunity for the most egregious forms exploitation.
Please let your voice be heard today and everyday for the innocent victims of illegal labor. Please make sure the products you consume are slave labor free. Ask your congressmen to support the Child Protection Compact Act. Please live simply and give whatever you can to legitimate organizations that fight poverty. Inform yourself. There are also many informative and inspiring videos on the ILO's YouTube page. From all of us at COH, thank you for defending the defenseless. Thank you for being a voice for the voiceless. Thank you for fighting for justice for the oppressed and exploited.
It's a tragedy played out on similar stages across the theaters of human trafficking. A girl or woman, having been robbed of the best years of her life due to systematic exploitation and brutal rape, gets AIDS and is thrown out of the brothel to die. They are disposable, as Free The Slaves founder Kevin Bales has so poignantly described them, because they are no longer viable commodities. And so their pimps turn them out, leaving them to the ravages of starvation and cultural stigmatization. Often they are spit on and completely denied reintegration into their societies as governments and fellow citizens fear they will spread the disease.
Aids is a perpetual fear and daily reality of so many of the girls in brothels. They are servicing up to 40 men a day, many of whom refuse to use condoms. Often when the girls insist they are beaten for their insolence and lack of submission. In some countries, like Thailand, Aids has reached pandemic proportions, with the number of infected nationally estimated at 1 million of a 65 million population. This is fueled by the commercial sex industry which makes up the largest part of Thailand's GDP. The government can't afford for sex tourism to be adversely affected so they have often repressed statistics and further endangered the lives of brothel workers.
There is also a fair amount of ignorance and superstition surrounding the AIDS virus. One such predominantly Asian and African folklore, is that men can be cured of the disease by sleeping with a virgin. This fuels the trafficking of younger and younger girls who can be medically verified as virgins, and who then can have there virginity sold at enormous profit for brothel owners. Also these girls then are potentially infected the very first time they are raped.
There are other potential innocent victims of the AIDS virus. Wives of the men who contract it at brothels. Although this may not seem to have a direct link of to the trafficking of women it ultimately can. When parents die of AIDS their children become vulnerable. Orphans are one of the easiest groups to traffick and sexually exploit. According to a UNAIDS study there are eleven million AIDS orphans in the sub-Saharan region of Africa alone. With little or no supervision, these orphans are continually more susceptible to the lies and coercions of human traffickers. The tiny country of Lesotho (completely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa), has a population of 2.2 million, of which 31% of the adults have AIDS. This produces an inordinate number of orphans along with an unimaginable host of other societal crises. A 2005 UNICEF study reported women there running child brothels in exchange for food and shelter.A similar tragedy is playing out in Swaziland prompting social researcher and Pastor Jabaluni Dlamini to offer this dark prediction that succinctly sums up the dire AIDS orphan situation there and the child trafficking situation everywhere. "Human vultures will descend to prey on these children. Unless there is accounting for every child, they may be swooped up by child traffickers, never to be seen again."
Please consider adoption. Please fund orphanages, especially those in areas where children are most likely to be trafficked. Please do not leave these children to the vultures.
Another hideous facet of human trafficking is the use of child soldiers. According to UNICEF there are 300,000 children serving as soldiers, guerrillas, spies, sex slaves (for their superiors), and suicide commandos in conflicts in 50 different nations. Children as young as five are stolen from their villages, forced to kill their families, robbed of all innocence, and psychologically brutalized. The following are their words. Their names have been abbreviated to protect them and their families.
L-., age 7
The rebels told me to join them, but I said no. Then they killed my smaller brother. I changed my mind. (source: Radio Netherlands)
A-., age 12
I was very scared. It was an attack on the paramilitaries. We killed about seven of them. We had to drink their blood to conquer our fear. Only the scared ones had to. I was the most scared of all, because I was the youngest. (source: Human Rights Watch)
D-., age 16
I was attending primary school. The rebels came and attacked us. They killed my mother and father in front of my eyes. I was ten years old. They took me with them...taught us to fight. The first time I killed someone, I got so sick, I thought I was going to die. (source: Radio Netherlands)
A-., age 16
I was forced to do amputations. We had a cutlass, an ax, and a big log. We called the villagers out and let them stand in line. You ask whether they want a long hand or a short hand [amputation at the wrist or the elbow]. The long hand you put in a different bag from the short hand. If you have a large number of amputated hands in the bag, the promotion will be automatic, to various ranks. (source: Newsweek)
D-., age 16
When we attacked a town, we would rape people. When we saw a lot of girls, we'd rape. Even I had a woman. I was twelve at the time. She was about 15. Our commanders said all of us had to have a woman. If we didn't they'd kill us. (source: Radio Netherlands)
Warning. The next quote is extremely graphic and disturbing. I really anguished about including it. But we need to know what these children go through on a daily basis. Just be warned. It's that brutal.
K-., girl, age 13
We were taken to a mosque in Kissy [Sierra Leone]. They killed everyone in there..... They were snatching babies from their mother's arms and tossing them in the air. The babies would free-fall to their deaths. At other times they would also chop them from the back of their heads to kill them, you know like you do when you slaughter chickens....One girl with us tried to escape. They made her take off her slippers and give them to me and then killed her. One time we came across two pregnant women. They tied the women down with their legs eagle-spread and took a sharpened stick and jabbed them inside of their wombs until the babies came out on the stick. (source: Physicians For Human Rights)
Also, P.W. Singer's book Children At War is a rather exhaustive volume on child soldiers if you would like to study this aspect of human trafficking in more depth. The previous quotes were collected there, along with many others.
Stalin has been credited with saying, "One death is tragedy, a million is a statistic." If he in fact uttered that statement it would certainly be a hollow admission (or perverse prophecy) by one of the single most evil men that ever ruled. Unfortunately for the victims of any humanitarian crisis, whoever it was that said it, might just be right.
In Richard Stearns' book The Hole In Our Gospel he expounds on this sentiment citing a 2007 University of Oregon study to make his point. Three test groups were given 3 different sets of information. The first was told the tragic story of young Rokia, an African girl who was an innocent victim of poverty. The second group was given this statistic: That across four African countries there were some 17 million hungry, and another 4 million homeless. The third group was given both Rokia's story and the statistics. According to the study's findings, the first group when asked for donations was much more generous than either of the other groups. Blame it on compassion fatigue or lack of imagination, the story of one suffering child trumped the numbers. I find personally this often holds true.
So, in their own excruciating but immensely powerful words, I wanted to let the child victims of sex trafficking speak for themselves. And though children should never say such things, (because they should never have to), their voices must be heard.
Hanna, age 13
"I was moved around by these people, to different places. In Romania, I had eight clients a day; in Turkey four or five a day; in Spain, ten. In the United Kingdom, probably twelve. Of course some of the clients beat you. This is how they treat you. They don't care if you live or die. They just do not want to get caught. So, I took an overdose, I tried to hang myself, I tried to jump off a balcony. If I died they get another girl to replace what I am doing. It is easy for them. There are so many girls. So many." (source: UNICEF)
Tiola, age 13
"A few hours later a group of men entered the room and began to yell and beat me. Each one took their turn with me. One would hold me down while the others raped me." The leader then told her her husband had sold her for $250. "He said I had to obey him or else I would be killed." Tiola was then repeatedly raped and beaten for seven days and then resold. "He beat my head so badly I couldn't see out of my eyes for two days." She was told if she didn't work as a prostitute her mother and sister in Albania would be killed. (source: UNICEF)
Chong Ok Sun, age 13
"I had to prepare lunch for my parents who were working in the field and so I went to the village well to fetch water. A Japanese garrison soldier surprised me there and took me away, so my parents never knew what happened to their daughter. I was taken to the police station in a truck, where I was raped by several policemen. When I shouted they put socks in my mouth and continued to rape me. The head of the police station hit me in my left eye because I was crying. That day I lost my eyesight in my left eye. After ten days or so, I was taken to the Japanese army garrison barracks in Heysan City. There were around 400 other Korean young girls with me and we had to serve over 5,000 Japanese soldiers as sex slaves everyday-- up to forty men per day. Each time I protested, they hit me or stuffed rags in my mouth. One held a matchstick to my private parts until I obeyed him. My private parts were oozing with blood." (UN Distr. General report)
It is said that narratives such as Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and The Narrative of the Life if Fredrick Douglass helped change the way average Americans viewed slavery, and may have ultimately shaped the political environment that led to abolition. Maybe the stories of these three 13 year olds (the average age a child is exploited) and the countless others like them will do the same. Maybe those stories will wake average people from ignorance or apathy and bring freedom for the estimated two million children consigned to the fate of sexual slavery every year.
People ask us at Conspiracy Of Hope how they can know whether the goods they consume are free from slave labor. Here are a few web resources to mollify those concerns.
Another organization called Rugmark International has a site called GoodWeave that is a certification program that works to eradicate child slave labor from the carpet industry.
Of course coffee drinkers of any discriminating taste have encountered the Fair Trade name and logo. Their certification process involves many consumables, most of whose industries are known for the most egregious forms of slave labor.
Another organization that is proactively seeking to eradicate slave labor is called SLAVEFREE. Their site has an easy and inventive way for the average person to easily let their voice be heard by the world's corporations, a grassroots photo petition demanding those companies be slave labor free.
If you'd like to post a comment with any other resources that offer assurances to consumers about the products they buy we'd welcome the help.
As if the poor and destitute don't already have enough daily oppression from all sides there is another facet to the evils of human trafficking that is slowly coming to light. Organ harvesting. Although this topic has been the subject of urban legends and inflammatory internet campaigns the practice is not new nor is it one of isolated occurrences.
According to most estimates upwards of 20 thousand dollars can be made off of a kidney, nearly twice that for a healthy heart. This is the most instantaneously profitable of all the heinous crimes perpetrated on victims of human trafficking, a fact that is not lost on the major organized crime syndicates. And of course children are in relatively better health than adults, being younger and having not abused or had their bodies abused for many years. So as with all facets of the evil of trafficking, children bear the brunt of the exploitation.
A high profile organ trafficking case in the year 2000 involved a Russian woman selling her grandson to "westerners" for 90 thousand dollars. The child was rescued but the amount of money to be gained only hints at the sheer number of criminals involved in this horrific practice. In India in 2007 19 women were found dead in an Indian slum apparently the victims of the organ trade. Three Ukrainian women were arrested recently in Italy as they attempted to sell a baby to undercover agents for the sum of 500 thousand dollars. The women were suspected of having completed several transactions previously.Annually, thousands of political prisoners in China are harvested of their organs moments before their executions.
Statistics are hard to come by, but it is estimated that there are 10 thousand victims of organ theft in China alone each year. The sheer number of women and children that go unaccounted for globally every year suggest that the numbers could be staggering. The fact that the victim is killed and therefore truly voiceless adds to the difficulty of putting this horror to numbers. Whereas in other types of exploitation many people come into contact with the victim at regular intervals and information can be acquired. What is clear is that current trends are alarming and that we must be vigilant on yet another front when it come to the war against human trafficking.
