“And you thought that slavery was a thing of the past…”

From the luxury of our homes and through our prestigious legal education we have been taught that protection from slavery and forced labour is not only a right that we may claim from society as human beings; it is a FUNDAMENTAL human right, that NO ONE may infringe. Some creatures, however, claiming they are “humans”, seem to believe that they have the right to trade with human flesh, for a number of appalling reasons and mainly prostitution.

Whilst the good intentions of the Human Rights Act 1998 (Article 4), the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 4), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 8), the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions Similar to Slavery*, should, by no means be doubted, the harsh truth remains that humans are still being sold, exploited and treated like objects – or worse. Funnily enough, we tend to take excellent care of our expensive belongings, adore them and worship them, as if they add to our value as humans. However, some of us tend to forget to care for suffering individuals – but that is not the worse part of our nature. Human nature is capable of committing horrific acts that the most malevolent beast in the universe would be incapable to commit.

Otherwise, WHY would one kidnap or sell a 7-year-old girl for the purposes of prostitution? WHY would one sell his 17-year-old wife to a brothel for $200? WHY would an aunt sell her 13-year-old nice – twice – to a brothel for $150? WHY would one buy a 12-year-old’s virginity for $300 because she is so desperate to pay for her mom’s mental illness, caused by her husband’s violence? WHY would you fire gunshots and threaten a teenage girl that is refusing to satisfy 17 men at the same time? Most importantly, WHY should these creatures be allowed to sleep peacefully at nights, just because they have killed their conscience? WHY?

These “people” should feel the agonising pain when someone puts off a cigarette on someone else’s skin, just like they do on children, teenagers and women, when they try to escape the humiliation they never had the choice to avoid. They should learn what it is like to be slowly dying of AIDS at the age of 24, because you have been forced to be a prostitute for the past 11 years. They should feel the pain of a parent whose baby has been abducted and forced to watch pornographic films in order to learn what to do. They should experience the rejection of a family towards their daughter when, violated and a human wreck, she escapes from a brothel and seeks protection, but she finds it nowhere. And worse… They deserve worse, because they forgot to be humans; they forgot to see the pain in those children’s eyes.

Someone has just told me that I sound brutal and I am not any better than these “people”, since I want them to experience the pain that they have caused. Perhaps he is right. I am just not sure whether I believe in the rehabilitation of someone who humiliates and violates other humans, shuttering every dream and hope, on an every day basis, for… what else? Money! Should I believe in them becoming humans again? Something has to trigger my faith, but it has not happened yet…

What I am giving to you now, is only a dot in the vast picture of what is actually happening in the world. A slightly bigger dot is the following video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7MJVQJnHcM> 

What made me realise how I forgot to be informed about this inhumanity was a documentary that I decided to watch by chance a few weeks ago on BBC iPlayer. It was unfortunately removed a few days ago, before I had the chance to urge you all to watch it. It was about sex trafficking in Cambodia, a case study of Stacey Dooley, who travelled there and investigated the situation in person. She talked to young prostitutes, how they ended up living like that and what kinds of humiliation they were forced to experience. She also attempted to close down some of the brothels, which seemed impossible, since the authorities were obviously incapable of dealing with the case or – as they appeared – unwilling, perhaps due to corruption. It made me wonder, is there some kind of exchange going on between the brothel owners and the policemen? Are the policemen using those services themselves? Is it their laziness that prevents them from acting? More likely than not, we will never know…

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this situation is only a problem in developing and least developed countries. Even worse corruption exists in the so-called developed world, the governments of which are presumed to be in better control of the happenings within their territories; Eastern Europe and Latin America are the predominant “suppliers” of sex workers into the “developed” westernised world, of Europe and America.

I wish I could apologise to you all, if you have been shocked by the images or the information that this post has given to you. But I can’t: my purpose was a wake-up call to all of us who think we know all about exploitation. Illegal trade of humans occurs every day in every single country of the world and all of us have to be shocked in order to understand its true dimensions. I will, however, apologise if you have been insulted by some of my inappropriate reference.

Take care x

*for more interesting legislation, start off by checking out <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/modern/law.shtml>