In Their Own Words.

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.

Slave Free Products and How You Can Be Sure.

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.

One great resource that grades corporations with respect to their human rights practices is called Free To Work . Free To Work is a joint operation of Not For Sale Campaign and International Labor Rights Forum.

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.

Organ Harvesting of Trafficking Victims.

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.

Human Trafficking and the Mentally Handicapped

The Nazi's Action T4 was a euthanasia program that started in October of 1939 and killed up to 275,000 people.



This propaganda poster reads: 60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from a hereditary disease costs the People's community during his lifetime. Comrade this is your money too.

Last week I was in D.C. at the Holocaust museum. One exhibit chronicled the Nazi T4 program. Featured prominently were pictures of mentally handicapped children, naked and terrified, held awkwardly by Nazi physicians for the People's scrutiny. Surely the pure race need not be polluted by these defective's, the doctor's self-satisfied gaze's asked rhetorically.

And so there I was, standing in a crowd of strangers, the white noise of their conversations buzzing behind me, and the hot tears of rage and sorrow streaming down my face.

Evil may don a new mask, may be called by a new name, but in the modern slave trade as during the Nazi regime, evil still systematically exploits the weak and the defenseless. There have been a number of documented cases of the mentally handicapped being prostituted and enslaved in forced labor. No accurate statistics exist for the exact number of mentally disabled people being exploited, but because they are still viewed as unclean or cursed in many societies, they often have no one to speak out on their behalf.

So whether it's 60,000 Reichsmarks for a lifetime of institutional care or 50 dollars for forced sex, human life should never have a price tag. Every human life is sacred and priceless; those viewed as physically and economically viable and even those viewed as not.

Please be the voice of the voiceless. Please cry out for justice on behalf of the 27 million people currently enslaved in the world. When human flesh is allowed to be a currency, one day, and it may be soon, we may find that we are all for sale.

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.

Child Protection Act of 2009

Please contact your congressperson. Tell them you support The Child Protection Act of 2009, bill H.R. 2737.

IJM.org has a link to contact them. All you need to know is your zip code. It takes 30 seconds.


According to section 2 of HR2737 under findings and purpose:

158 million children between the ages of 4 and 15 are engaged in child labor (UNICEF).

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates 1.8 million children are sexually exploited every year either through prostitution or pornography.

The full bill can be read here.

Also on IJM's website you can send a letter to President Obama thanking him for his previous actions concerning child exploitation and petitioning him to make it a top priority of his administration and to sign into law The Child Protection Act of 2009 when it crosses his desk.


From all of us here at Conspiracy Of Hope. Thank you for your compassion. Thank you for getting involved. Thank you for being a voice for the voiceless.

India.

Almost a sixth of the world's population is in India. Well over one billion people in one incredibly diverse and complicated country. The opulence and riches of it's cities, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad stand intricately intertwined and in such stark contrast to the shanty towns and millions of homeless. In fact out of the 100 million homeless people in the world there are close to 80 million homeless in India alone. Over 60 percent of those are women.

There are 35 million Orphans in India and 18 million of them live on the streets. They are generally from the lower castes and are ripe for exploitation at the hands of human traffickers. Social prejudice along with extreme poverty are two of the main factors that perpetuate these staggering statistics. India is also home to 63% of all slum dwellers in South Asia. Approximately 35 percent or 260 million people (a group almost equal to the entire population of the United States) still earns $1 or less a day.

I am going to India this May. I have a dear friend whose family has an orphanage there. He is going to take me to those shanty towns and slums. I am going to put faces to those statistics. I am going to put stories to those faces. I am praying for a revelation. I have to believe there is a solution. That there is hope for the millions of bonded laborers in India. Freedom for the whole families who have been enslaved for years by false loans and broken promises mixed with some naive sense of honor and the desperation that comes with extreme poverty. Justice for the children as young as 7 forced to work 14 hours a day in firework factories until the ends of their fingers are so badly blistered and then cauterized by their evil taskmasters so they can get back to work. I have to believe there is hope, because they have ceased to believe that there is.

Please get involved. Please join the fight against poverty, against human trafficking, against injustice and exploitation. Please find an organization to join and join Conspiracy of Hope, we'd love to have you. Please, before it's too late.