Modern-Slavery News Round-Up

All Hands on Deck: Renewing the Call to Combat Human Trafficking Spet. 25: One year ago today, President Obama announced the Administration’s commitment to lead the fight against human trafficking during a seminal speech at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. ...Over the past year, we’ve made great strides and increased our efforts in order to realize the President’s vision. However, we still have so much more to do. The President said in his remarks one year ago, “It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name – modern slavery.”

Michigan: Human trafficking: 19-bill package aims to curb 'modern day slavery' in Michigan, help victims Michigan state Sen. Judy Emmons on Thursday unveiled a 19-bill package intended to crack down on human trafficking and offer help to victims of a crime that many call a form of "modern day slavery." The bipartisan package, to be formally introduced next week, features bills that would provide safe harbor for victims, eliminate the statute of limitations for trafficking offenses, allow victims to sue their captors and enable a prosecutor to utilize wire tapping while building a criminal case.

Florida: Statewide human-trafficking initiative focuses on children A new statewide initiative championed by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi aims to end human trafficking by encouraging parents and children to discuss the dangers of talking to strangers online. The "From Instant Message to Instant Nightmare" crusade, unveiled Friday, includes billboards, mall displays and bus-shelter posters asking parents and children to educate themselves about sex traffickers who target children, tweens and teens online.

A Bold Plan to Aid Sex-Trafficking Victims As understanding of the cruel dynamics of sex-trafficking has grown in recent years, a consensus has emerged among criminal justice professionals that it makes more sense to treat people charged with prostitution as the exploited and abused victims a vast majority are, rather than as criminals. An important new initiative by New York State’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, aims to put that humane insight into practice. A handful of cities across the country, including Baltimore and Phoenix, have specialized courts that deal with sex-trafficking offenses. On Wednesday, Judge Lippman announced the creation of the nation’s first statewide system of specialized criminal courts to handle prostitution-related offenses and make services available to help sex-trafficking victims escape their abusive situations and forge new lives.

Commercial and Billboards in Texas Seek to Impact the Demand for Sex Trafficking

Earlier this year Huston, Texas based, Free the Captives, launched the “Reducing the Demand” campaign, targeting the Johns.  The campaign then went to work producing billboards and a Radio and TV commercial targeting Johns, who purchase sex, to highlight the realities of sex trafficking and debunk the myths that have continually plagued victims and advocates.  The PSA's are now up and beginning to air and; the video features, Sheriff Garcia, whose stern and strong presence makes it clear that men who purchase women and girls for sexual -or any other- purpose, will no longer be tolerated in Harris County, Texas.  Please watch the video PSA "Buyer BEWARE: You will be Arrested! (The Realities of Sex Trafficking)" Commercial and Billboards in Texas Seek to Impact the Demand for Sex Trafficking below:

These PSA's and billboards make it clear that when you buy sex you are fueling human trafficking, and we how to see more incentives like this sweeping the country.  

Texas has once again taken a great step in the state level fight to end national and global human trafficking.  More calls come from Texas to the National Human Trafficking Hotline than any other state, due to the great incentives put into place including the use of billboards and campaign efforts by Huston Rescue and Restore.  

The first step to ending human trafficking and modern slavery is to end demand!  Please share these resources to help open the eyes of others and see we put an end to the enslavement of innocent men, women and children once and for all.

Modern Slavery News Round-Up

Young girls still at risk of being child brides in South Africa

In Limpopo, the system fails a young girl of thirteen who should be at school, but is sold off as a child bride to a 57-year-old sangoma, a traditional healer, by her struggling single mother of five to pay off supposed mounting bills. Child marriage continues to plague South Africa as in this case where the young child's rights are not protected by the courts who let off the sangoma once it was learned that the family had consented to the marriage.

China's child abduction by traffickers hard to curb leading officials and parents to social media
Despite authorities cracking down over the past two decades, child abduction is tough to eliminate. Officials claim the problem has become less prolific, but given the inconsistencies of data reporting, this is hard to substantiate. But Deng Fei, a Beijing-based journalist and prominent campaigner on behalf of victims and their families, believes the number of children being abducted is decreasing. Social media may have helped to reduce the crimes as in recent years, parents and activists have been using websites and microblogs to share information about cases and draw public attention to child abduction. Their efforts put pressure on the police, who have responded such as Chen Shiqu, the police official in charge of anti-trafficking, who has an account on Sina Weibo, one of China’s most popular microblog services. His account has 3.4m followers.

Syrian Refugee Women Exploited for Marriage
Lina Al Tiby, a Syrian activist living in Cairo, runs a support network for Syrian women refugees; helps them adapt to life in Egypt; and tries to persuade them not to allow poverty to push them into sex work or unwanted marriage. Arriving in Egypt with little more than the clothes they are wearing, some Syrian women see marriage as the only means of survival. "Egyptian men tell Syrian women they will marry them to help them and their families, but… can’t these men help Syrian women without marrying them?" said Al Tiby.

Eliminating human trafficking from the global business landscape
Businesses may unknowingly be associated with the crime of human trafficking when their suppliers, subcontractors, or partners supply materials or products that have been produced by trafficked persons. “In today’s globalized world, the risks of human trafficking in supply chains are significant throughout economic sectors and affect all States,” says Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons...Ezeilo recommends that all global businesses commit themselves to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and become signatories to the UN Global Compact. Ezeilo also urges businesses to exercise due diligence and conduct a risk assessment for their entire production chain in order to eliminate risks of human trafficking in their operations.


U.S. Agents Rescue Sex Slaves Through Data Fusion
Data-mining is proving a key tool for U.S. law enforcement to free sex slaves and to convict human traffickers involved in the $32 billion industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have rescued sex slaves by using software that identifies geographic locations by syncing financial transactions, phone records and other discordant data, ICE officials said at a Symposium to address immigration-related crime to technology companies; senior federal officials; and actress Mira Sorvino, the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to combat human trafficking. Angie Salazar, an ICE section chief who investigates human smuggling and trafficking, confirmed that ICE was able to find victims of trafficking by using data to look for trends. Palantir, a data company that assists many U.S. intelligence agencies, helps ICE with investigations by flagging individuals and organizations.

Chinese Police Bust Trafficking Rings

 
On Christmas eve, the Public Security Ministry of China announced that they broke up nine child trafficking rings, rescuing 89 children and arresting 335 traffickers in an operation which covered nine provinces across the country. The investigations began last Decembers after four people were arrested in Henan province for trying to sell four babies. 

In the last decade, child-trafficking has become a major problem in China due to the strict "one-child" policy that puts a premium on baby boys and lax adoption laws. As a result, the country has a thriving black market for buying children. Majority of the children abducted across the country tend to be boys because of the traditional preference for male heirs in China. For instance, Su Qingcai, a tea farmer in China, confessed to buying a 5 year-old boy for about $3,500 in a article on child-trafficking in the New York Times. Mr. Su justified his purchase by stating that "a girl is just not as good as a son. It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you don't have a son, you are not as good as other people have one." There are many people like Mr. Sue that fuel the illegal buying and selling of boys across China. As a result, child snatchings has become the most common method of kidnapping for traffickers. In 2009, a 9-month-old baby boy was grabbed by someone in a moving vehicle while a shopkeeper lost his son after he turend away for a while to help a customer.

In addition, adoptions by foreigners has increased profits for traffickers and led to widespread kidnappings. According to the Chinese government, 10,000 children are kidnapped each year, but some experts state that the number far exceeds this estimate. According to Chen Shique, director of the anti-traffiking office in the Public Security Ministry, police have broken up 11,000 child trafficking rings and rescued 54,000 Children since 2009. The intitaive by the Chinese government to crackdown on child-traffickers is good but they must also focus on labor and sex trafficking as they are also widespread across the counrty.

Source:  The New York Times
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Another Victory: New State Joins in Vacating Convictions for Victims

Prostitution convictions for victims of forced prostitution and sexual exploitation are sadly all too often common aspects of human trafficking -modern slavery.  Recently, Hawaii joined a small group of states who have passed legislation which will vacate prostitution convictions for victims of human trafficking. Hawaii's new law -SB 2576- “allows sex trafficking victims to vacate prostitution convictions from their criminal records by proving they were sexually enslaved”. Additional states with similar legislation include New York, Illinois, and Nevada; New York was the first state to enact such a law. While this is good news for many survivors -who find it increasingly difficult to attain or retain employment due to this such unjust and misunderstood convictions- there are a few criticisms. One argument questions “how useful a bill like SB2576 would be to many victims on a practical level […saying] that many victims are too afraid of their traffickers to testify against them to prove their victim status. Therefore, a vacating conviction law has no value to victims if it requires them to prove their sex trafficking history by testifying against traffickers” (Dale). Unfortunately, it seems that similar issues will arise in many cases of “vacating convictions” laws, as they do with cases of sexual assault and rape. In rape cases, it can be very difficult to prove that the incident occurred, in addition to the psychological turmoil of reliving such a traumatic event. Victims are often accused of provoking their attackers or of lying. The few cases in which it is later revealed that the victim was not actually a victim certainly does not help. In the same instance, victims of human trafficking/modern slavery endure the same fate as victims of rape. Their lawyers must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they were trafficked and the victim has to relive that time in their life. In addition, there is the possible accusation that they are lying or that they were voluntary participants. Regardless of criticisms, many individuals and organizations view SB2576 and similar legislation, as a victory for victims. It is a new change and another chance for them to reintegrate into society with a clean slate. Dale, Youngbee. "Hawaii: New Law Allows Trafficking Victims to Vacate Prostitution Convictions." Washington Times Communities. N.p., 11 July 2012. Web. 27 July 2012.

Written by: Whitney Joseph