“The other girls and I were arrested over and over for prostitution. Never did the police or prosecutors ask us if we were trafficked. Never did they offer us help and protection.”
Journalist and anti-trafficking activist Ruchira Gupta reports, “Trafficking in people has reached devastating dimensions worldwide. In the last 10 years the nature and scale of trafficking has undergone a dramatic change.”
Though “statistics are limited and contested, existing data highlight that the numbers of trafficked individuals have gone up and the ages of people trafficked have come down.”
Children make up about 20 percent of the trafficked victims worldwide. The majority of trafficked people are women and girls.
The number of enslaved people as a result of trafficking at any given time in the world today is estimated at 12.3 million. This is more than the number of people held in slavery in the 19th century.
“Human trafficking is a global scourge that generates billions of dollars profit at the expense of millions of victims. It is the fastest growing source of profit for organized criminal enterprises worldwide.
“Human trafficking affects every country in the world — whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims.“The International Labor Organization estimates that there are at least 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial sexual servitude at any given time.
“Trafficking involves the acquisition of people by force, fraud, deception or other coercive means with the aim of exploiting them.
“Human trafficking involves practices prohibited in every country — including slavery, debt bondage, forced labor and sexual exploitation.
“The majority of trafficked victims are women and girls.
But governments have time and dollars for a whistleblower hunt —
WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange last month published a record setting 400,000 classified U.S. documents on the Iraq war and in July posted 77,000 secret U.S. files on the Afghan conflict.
The WikiLeaks founder has suggested that subsequent allegations against him could be part of a ‘smear campaign’ aimed at discrediting his website, which is locked in a row with the Pentagon over the release of the secret U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Two days before allegations against Julian Assange were made public in August, Assange had applied for a work and residency permit in Sweden, where some of WikiLeaks’ servers are located.” On October 18, his application was denied. Today a Swedish prosecutor announced a “request for the arrest of Julian Assange, to face charges of rape and sexual molestation.”
Make what you will of this but the question raised in my mind is this —
How can powerful and affluent world governments launch a global hunt (based on questionable allegations) for someone who acts in the public interest, for democracies’ right to know, properly exposing grave human rights abuses by governments; yet they cannot launch an effort and put an end to grave human rights abuses — global trafficking in human beings, mainly women and children?
I guess law and justice, like religious righteousness, are arbitrary notions, manmade, reserved for men wielding a corrupt form of power.
Sources and notes
“We were trafficked. Hear our voices — [United Nations, New York] As the General Assembly considers international collective action to end human trafficking, four survivors explain why the voices of victims must be heard,” October 19, 2009, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=9559&LangID=E
“Who are the victims of human trafficking?” November 5, 2009, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/VictimsOfHumanTrafficking.aspx
“Sweden seeks Wikileaks boss arrest over rape claim,” November 18, 2010, (AFP – STOCKHOLM), November 18, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20101118/twl-sweden-crime-internet-wikileaks-rape-6b0205e.html
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