Sex trafficking in America

Sex Trafficking is used by many as an attempt to make huge amounts of money and outlaw all prostitution  by saying that all women are victims even if it is by choice.  This hurts real victims because it labels all sex workers as victims.

There  are growing number of researchers and journalists that have concluded in their research that  sex trafficking is based on emotion, morals and funding.  They state that very few are kidnapped, forced against their will, physically abused, raped,  sex slave, have been found throughout the world. Their research concludes that women who enter into this type of work do so of their own free will.  Not to mention ----men who marry foreign brides who take advantage of these “helpless foreign wives” mostly from third world countries.

We have 2 main causes for sex trafficking:
1- Extreme poverty.
2- Economic Globalization.  Helped make present-day slaves easy to procure, easy to transport, and easy to exploit.

It is a very lucrative business with huge profitability, minimal risk due to corruption in law enforcement.  Maintaining sex slaves requires minimal effort who can be sold for services literally thousands of times before being replaced.

 I would say that sex slaves/workers and pimps are byproduct from all the GREED and corruption by the wealthy in America.

I'd welcome your thoughts.

What is human trafficking?

Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery. (Wikipedia) 

It is a brutal and thriving problem that generates an estimated 32 billion dollars annually according to the United Nations. Trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, sexual exploitation, debt bondage and slavery, or other forms of exploitation. Trafficking in persons is the third most profitable business for organized crime after drug and arms trafficking.

Human trafficking is a product of many factors including poverty, unemployment, political instability, war, globalization and many more.  (www.moderndayslavesmovie.com)

Many trafficking survivors are women , young girls who look for work instead of attending school to help support their families. Poverty and unemployment, among other factors, create a large population of young people desperate to enter the work force who are easily seduced by the traffickers.

This is the most obscene and evil practice, particularly when it affects innocent children.

To raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking, MDS Foundation continue to show the documentary MODERN DAY SLAVES for free ... Join us on May 1 -- Milpitas Library Milpitas, California 95035-- from 6-8pm . 

Volunteers

If you are interested in helping out by in any way like finding us sponsors , advertisers  or doing interviews to help spread awareness or something else that will help this organization run let us know.

Please take note that you will not get paid.  This is volunterism.  The work really is not that glamorous.  But you will make a difference in someone else life.  You will help raise awareness.  You will be able to connect to courageous people who are dedicated to the fight to end modern day slavery.  Interesting isnt it ? 

Please send an email to : gracie@moderndayslavesfoundation.org and let us figure out how to get you involved.

We need to pool our resources and help raise awareness of modern day slavery using our documentary Modern Day Slaves (http://www.moderndayslavesmovie.com/) as a tool to spread awareness and help fight human trafficking. 

                                                        http://www.imdsf.com/mdsf/

The Pink Room- documentary about Sex Slavery

The Pink Room follows the journey of Mien and other young girls in the turbulent world of sex slavery that at times seems unfathomable.

Mien grew up in Svay Pak, just eleven kilometers outside the capitol city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a vast and vicious epicenter of child sex slavery. This is a country notoriously renowned for its devastating genocide under the reign of Pol Pot in the 1970's. After burying over two million of their educated and religious citizens, the children of this horrific era are now the parents. At a young age, Mien enters life in a brothel, and her virginity is sold at a high price. After her innocence is brutally stolen from her, her value becomes less and less with each purchase of her body. She is held captive and raped and sexually tortured twelve hours a day. Even when help is within reach, obstacles that appear too great to conquer squelch her dream of freedom. The Pink Room shows passionate determination in attacking the complex issue of human trafficking with an even more complex and diverse response of rescue, restoration, reintegration and prevention. This is the story of redemption, ordinary people who become unlikely heroes, Cambodians rising up with compassion to take back their country and a town's process of rebuilding from the inside out. Mien gives hope in the midst of a blinding darkness. In a world where it is estimated that there are over one million children held captive and sexually abused, a flower blooms in the heart of Cambodia.

KIDS Work in filth with no pay....

Another Child Slavery i stumbled upon from fashion.lilithezine.com -

NEW DELHI – With Gap Inc. under fire for selling clothes made by children in India, activists and police raided a sweatshop in New Delhi where 14 boys were embroidering women's garments yesterday, illustrating the widespread problem of child labour in the country.

The children were as young as 10, came from a poor farming district on the other side of the country, and said they had never been given promised wages for working up to 15 hours a day embroidering sequins onto the flowing saris worn by Indian women.
The working and living conditions in the sweatshop just houses from where the Gap clothes were being made were grim – the boys were packed into a filthy room, sleeping on the same floor where they sewed all day.
"I don't want my money any more. Now I want to go home," said a thin 15-year-old boy who gave his name only as Hatiquallah.
Speaking at a nearby police station after the raid, Hatiquallah said he had been brought to New Delhi three years ago by a man who promised him work – and money. He never told his parents he was leaving.

"I was waiting for my wages," he replied when asked why he stayed. "I don't want them now.''
India's transformation in the past decade into an emerging global economic power has done little to alleviate the country's widespread poverty – and the problems that go along with it, such as child labour.
The government estimates 13 million children work here, many of them in hazardous industries, such as glass making, where such labour has long been banned. Rights activists place the number as high as 60 million – one estimate has 20 per cent of India's economy dependent on kids under the age of 14.
The scope of the problem was clear yesterday in the warren of narrow and dark alleys in New Delhi's Shahpur Jat neighbourhood, where the sari sweatshop was found just a few houses down from the now-shuttered operation that made Gap clothes.
"Every other house is like this – there are children working in small garment units," said a police officer involved in the raid, Birpal Singh.

Police said they believed the saris were for sale within India.
But the widespread use of child labour in India and the discovery that kids were making clothes for the Gap, which has 90 full-time inspectors who travel around the world, raises questions for India's garment exporting industry, a $10 billion a year business that grew by more than 20 per cent last year.
Some of the biggest names in retailing make clothes in India, from Ralph Lauren to J.C. Penney. They all say that oversight of contractors is strict, but child's rights activists disagree.
"International companies hire subcontractors and then forget about it. There is no monitoring at all," said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer who works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save Childhood Movement.
For the kids themselves, the issue is not as clear cut as many outside India would imagine – many poor children are expected to work.
Sanjeev, an 11-year-old rescued yesterday from the sweatshop, said his parents had sent him off to work in New Delhi two years ago. He had not heard from or seen them since, and was worried they would be upset with him for not sending any money home. "But I never got my wages," he said.

Yesterday's raid came a day after Britain's Observer newspaper reported that children as young as 10 were found sewing clothes for the Gap in a New Delhi factory. It quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their impoverished families and were not paid.
Vowing not to carry any products produced at the factory, Gap Inc., which operates 3,100 stores throughout the world, fired the subcontractor responsible for the abuse. It said none of the products made at the factory will be sold in its stores.
Indian officials offered no comment on the Observer report.
But child's rights activists said it was just a small part of a bigger problem, as evidenced by yesterday's raid.
"The biggest responsibility here lies with the Indian government – they don't develop a way of monitoring" factories, said Ribhu, the lawyer.
Ribhu said he would push authorities to return the children to their families in eastern India.

Child victims of human trafficking cases are rising.

Hello,

Thank you for following my blog.  I stumbled upon this article :  Child victims of human trafficking helped by IOM increased to 2,040 in 2011, up 27 per cent from 1,565 in 2008. Check the link for more information:
 “Child Trafficking and Labor Trafficking Cases Rising: IOM,” International Organization for Migration,
3 April 2012.  A must read.

A Cry for Help.....


http://youtu.be/NXn3sX78z0I

The Philippines-- a destination for men, women, and children who are subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.

In the Philippines, traffickers, in partnership with organized crime syndicates and complicit law enforcement officers, regularly operate through fraudulent recruitment agencies and practices to traffic migrants. Traffickers use local recruiters sent to urban neighborhoods to recruit family and friends.  These fraudulent recruitment practices  paying recruitment fees often leave workers vulnerable to forced labor, debt bondage, and commercial sexual exploitation (www.moderndayslavesmovie.com). The illicit recruiters increased their use of student, intern, and exchange program visas to circumvent the Philippines government and receiving countries’ regulatory frameworks for foreign workers.

Causes:  Poverty, population growth, dependency or mendicancy  lead some parents to see child labor as a means to cope with meager family incomes.

What is the relationship of Human trafficking and Remittances ?

The Philippine government, a third world country actively encourages citizens to leave their country as foreign workers. Why ? OFW's repatriated nearly $18B back to the Philippines in 2008. This helps the economy affloats and creates a huge opportunity for corruption among its politicians and legislators.

"Job creation in the Philippines is one of the many solutions the government must do" says Gary Martinez of Migrante International.  I agree, one of the many solutions.

GABRIELA, the National Alliance of Women's Organizations, is actively involved in massive awareness campaigns to prevent the trafficking of women and girls from the Philippines. They are trying so hard but need more support from NGO's and private funds to continue this advocacy.

Is there hope to end human trafficking ? maybe not in our lifetime----we at MDSFoundation would like to save one life every time we screened our film for free.

Check our webpage to learn more : http://www.imdsf.com/mdsf/ .  It is happening in our backyard.

Causes of Modern Day Slavery

There are three major root causes of modern day slavery.  First is poverty ,  second is the human tendency for greed capitalizing on conditions caused by globalization, and the third is a lack of education and awareness of modern slavery in both victims and the public at large.

Of the three, poverty stands out the major root causes of modern day slavery. Those most affected by modern day slavery are living in the third world (http://www.moderndayslavesmovie.com). They are subject to exploitation because their poverty makes them vulnerable. Conditions that affect third world countries the most such as environmental degradation, effects of globalization, government corruption and lawlessness, and natural disasters, make them excellent praying grounds for the slave trade.
Second is the feminization of poverty.  Women are affected the worst during times of economic distress because of various reasons. Like: Women often have lower social and economic status than men. (Women are frequently sold by their families into slavery because they are not valued as much as men:http://www.thepinkroommovie.com). There is a ever-present gender wage gap. Women need to play multiple roles and their lack of time limits their access to formal employment and general advancement.

Finally, there is the issue of lack of education and awareness. Those who are poor and vulnerable to becoming enslaved are easily persuaded and tricked by slave traffickers.

Anyone can report suspected trafficking cases. If the victim is under 18, U.S. professionals who work in law enforcement, healthcare, social care, mental health, and education are mandated to report such cases.

Please join us in creating /spreading public awareness campaign.  If you are in the area of San Jose and Milpitas-- a documentary movie about human slavery -- Modern Day Slaves will be screened on April 17 at Milpitas Library from 5:30 - 7:00 pm.

Modern Day Slaves in America ?

Slavery continues to exist not only in third world countries but across the United States in a number of forms. There are brothels, farms, nail salons and factories across the United States where people are working against their will, for no pay.

In third world or developing countries , a lot more stories of rape, severe physical and mental torture and beheading outlines how laws on human rights are violated and the awful consequences of human trafficking. OFW's (overseas foreign workers)  live as outsiders in their host country, among unfamiliar languages and cultural traditions. They are unprotected and unrecognized by the laws of their host countries such as Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, the U.S. and the U.K. among others.

In United States, you've heard the story before of human sex trafficking as a form of modern slavery. It is real, and it is widespread, and it is not going away.

Human trafficking may seem like an insurmountable challenge because it is a multi-billion dollar global industry, but individuals can have a huge impact on the fight against trafficking. 

Do you have any ideas for things  as an abolitionist can do to free slaves and end slavery ?