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By Lori Pederson
THE FIGHT against human trafficking has made some progress in recent weeks.
On September 30, Parliament passed a private member's bill which will allow for more punitive measures against traffickers.
MP Joy Smith's Bill C-268 is a proposal to amend the Criminal Code to provide a minimum sentence for the trafficking of anyone under the age of 18. The bill is now under review in the Senate -- where it was debated October 22.
Smith, the MP for Kildonan-St. Paul in Manitoba, is known publicly as a Christian. So is one of her allies in the cause, BC-based Senator Yonah Martin.
As sponsor of the bill, Martin delivered an opening speech which included a statement by a survivor of human trafficking.
She then stated: "I ask all honourable senators to take to heart these profound words, from someone who has suffered the effects of one of the worst crimes our society faces."
Smith stated afterward: "Law enforcement, NGOs and victims are counting on this legislation. From the letters, emails and phone calls I continue to receive, Canadians are also expecting the Senate to pass C-268 in a timely manner."
'Buying sex is not a sport' was the theme at an event held October 14 at the University of British Columbia. Co-sponsored by the UBC Faculty of Law, the presentation was aimed at the increase in sex trafficking which many anticipate will accompany the 2010 Olympics.
Michelle Miller, executive director of Vancouver's Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity (REED), which co-sponsored the event, told the audience she was speaking "as a follower of Jesus."
Christ, she said, "calls us without hesitation or fear to name injustice and work for the liberation and equality of all people -- but especially those who have been marginalized and are suffering from oppression."
Vancouver, she stated, "is already a hot spot for trafficking, and a known child-sex tourism destination. We already have a problem with the demand for paid sex fueling the exploitation of women . . .
"Now imagine what will happen when we add hundreds of thousands of visitors to this mix. In 2004, when the Summer Olympics were held in Athens, Greek police found double the number of trafficking victims. The following year -- once the Games were over -- the number dropped 24 percent . . .
"What will we say to Olympic visitors? Come on in, our women and children are for sale?"
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) also weighed in on the issue recently, with a newly released booklet, 'Not So Ancient: Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery.'
According to an EFC release, "Readers will learn to recognize the many forms of human trafficking, realize that human trafficking is encroaching across Canada, and begin to understand God's heart and desire to see his children take action in a way that 'activates' God's mission and call in our lives."
The booklet "is for those who are tired of the status quo and are ready to live out God's call for justice."
One group that has had success in fighting human trafficking is the International Justice Mission (IJM), which collaborates with local authorities in 13 developing countries worldwide, to free both adults and children from forced labour and sex trafficking.
IJM Canada, one of its affiliates, works to raise Canadians' awareness about modern-day slavery, and partners with IJM's international offices in efforts to combat the problem in Bolivia, Cambodia, Uganda and South Asia.
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Churches in North America have actively given compassionate assistance to the poor and marginalized, but IJM maintains that Christians need to be even more involved in the area of pursuing justice for oppressed victims worldwide.
"IJM's frontline professionals are nationals who are experts in their fields, highly professional and deeply dedicated to the work. But they can't do this job alone," said Ed Wilson, IJM Canada's director of development and operations.
"We have found that when Canadians learn of the great need to combat the violence suffered by the poor around the world, they are eager to join the fight."
IJM Canada's largest project is its field office in Bolivia. "We have a very intentional commitment to support the work of that office," said Wilson, "to reduce the incidence of sexual violence against children in La Paz and El Alto through the provision of financial resources . . . as well as through providing volunteer teams of professionals who can assist the staff in bringing long-term change to those communities."
Mark Wollenberg, former pastor of North Langley Vineyard, is IJM Canada's western Canada representative. "My job is to help people move toward seeing injustice," he told CC.com, adding: "God's Spirit is calling the church to wake up and see God's incredible invitation to join him in bringing justice to the world. God's heart is clearly against injustice."
Wollenberg said he would like to see churches build a justice component into their mission trips. He also suggested that individual Christians ask themselves how they could most effectively get involved.
-- additional reporting by David F. Dawes
Related stories:
Prostitution laws protect against 'moral corruption' Protecting public morals with laws that outlaw aspects of prostitution remains a legitimate objective for Parliament, argue Christian groups opposing a constitutional challenge of prostitution laws. Speaking for the Christian Legal Fellowship, Catholic Civil Rights League and REAL Women of Canada in court yesterday, lawyer Derek Bell said morality is all over the Criminal Code -- in laws punishing bestiality, voyeurism, public nudity and loitering. National Post, October 21
Prostitution may be immoral, but it shouldn't be illegal Yet even though I may oppose suicide and homosexuality on moral grounds, I would repeal any legal prohibitions against them. A person's life and sexual behaviour are his to do with as they please, even if that means permitting them to make a dumb or immoral choice. Lorne Gunter, Full Comment, National Post, October 21
Righteous nonsense I've long argued that the extent of international sex trafficking and sex slavery is grossly exaggerated, particularly as it exists in the Western world. The alleged evidence simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The statistics are blatantly bogus. The feminists and social conservatives who promote the scare are clearly motivated by ideological opposition to prostitution in any form. Politicians on the bandwagon can only gain from righteous posturing. And gullible journalists get a magnificent story full of drama and moral panic -- a story too good to question. And now this. Dan Gardner, Citizen Katzenjammer, Ottawa Citizen, October 25
Strike down prostitution laws: lawyer Flip open the pages of a big-city alternative weekly in Canada, and you're likely to find more advertisements for escort services than movies. Pornography is available on demand to anyone who pays for cable specialty channels. Realities such as these make it hard to argue that preventing the commodification of sex is a core moral value of society, Professor Alan Young told an Ontario judge, as his challenge of Canada's prostitution laws drew to a close yesterday. National Post, October 27
As Olympic flame burns, Canada's sex industry heats up While the images of foreign women in faraway countries holed up in seedy brothels seem morally reprehensible, Canadians should be just as abhorred by images of their own women and children being trafficked within the borders of their True North Strong and Free. Rikki Ratliff, Holy Post, National Post, November 3
November 5/2009
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“If media reports on sex trafficking in Nepal are to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal at this time”
A key point is that on the sidelines the prostitutes themselves are not being listened to. They oppose laws against prostitution. But no one wants to listen to the prostitutites themsleves. Only to the self appointed experts that make up numbers and stories.
This is a story that continues to give false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, aid groups, and the media.
It is not easy for crimanals to engage in this acitvity:
Sex trafficking is illegal and the pentities are very severe. It is very difficult to force someone to be a sex slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities or police. They would need to hide from the general public yet still manage to see customers from the general public. They would need to provide them with medical care, food, shelter, and have all their basic needs met. They would need to have the sex slaves put on a fake front that they enjoyed what they were doing, act flirtatious and do their job well. They would have to deal with the authorities looking for the missing women, and hide any money they may make, since it comes from illegal activity. They must do all of this while constantly trying to prevent the sex slaves from escaping and reporting them to the police. This is extremely difficult to do, which makes this activity rare.
What hard evidence does the police have that these women were forced slaves? Were all the women that the police saw in fact slaves? Did the police prove without a doubt due to hard concrete evidence that the women were victims of being slaves and forced against their will? Did they account for all the benefits they would receive if they lied? All they have to do is lie and say that someone forced them into it. When perhaps, no one did.
If they lie here are their benefits based on the new USA anti-traffic laws:
1. They don’t have to go to jail or be arrested.
2. They get to stay and live in America for an indefinite amount of time and become a citizen.
3. The U.S. Government will provide them with housing, food, education and will cater to them since they will be considered victims.
The way I see it is that this system will encourage people to lie in order to receive all the benefits listed above.
I find it very hard to believe that most women in this business are forced against their will to do it. It would just be too difficult. There may be some exceptions but, I believe this is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to fight this cause. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me.
== In the United Kingdom ==
In October, 2009 - The biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country. The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.
== World Cup 2006 ==
Politicians, religious and aid groups, still repeat the media story that 40,000 prostitutes were trafficked into Germany for the 2006 world cup – long after leaked police documents revealed there was no truth at all in the tale. A baseless claim of 25,000 trafficking victims is still being quoted, recently, for example, by the Salvation Army in written evidence to the home affairs select committee, in which they added : “Other studies done by media have suggested much higher numbers.”. Which has been proven by the German police to be completely false. Yet people still talk about these false numbers as if it were fact.
== In the USA ==
On August 5, 2008
U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine uncovered discrepancies in a program dedicated to cracking down on human trafficking, McClatchy Newspapers report. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spent millions of dollars on combating the international trafficking of indentured servants and sex slaves, including by creating task forces across the U.S. that identified and helped victims. Over four years, the department paid $50 million to the task forces and other groups. Conservative groups, who pressured the administration to go after sex trafficking more aggressively, applauded his efforts.
Critics have questioned whether the problem was being hyped. Fine found in an audit issued that the task forces and other groups set up to help were ’significantly’ overstating the number of victims they served. By examining a sampling of cases, Fine found the task forces had exaggerated by as much as 165 percent. Making matters worse, the inflated numbers were included in annual reports to Congress.
Here are some good links about this:
Washington post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaEdI3aiwg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rvA60zdkD8
Human traffic website:
http://traffickingwatch.org/node/18
http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/OJP/a0826/final.pdf
Guardian newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22/gov_proposals/print.html
http://rabble.ca/node/70514
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/10/25/after-big-hype-huge-uk-investigation-cant-find-1-person-who-forced-anybody-into-prostitution/
India newspaper:
http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3622&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=9&valid=true#
http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/Weitzer_Criminologist.pdf
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2850/
This is done by the media, aid groups, feminists, politicians and religious organizations that receive funds from the government. There are very strong groups who promote that all adult women who have sex are victims even if they are willing, enjoy it and go out of there way to get it. These groups try to get the public to believe that no adult women in their right mind would ever go into the sex business unless she was forced to do so, weather she knew it or not. They say that 100% of all sex workers are trafficking victims. They do this in order to label all men as sex offenders and wipe out all consensual prostitution. Which is what their real goal is. There is almost no one who challenges or questions them about their false beliefs. Therefore, the only voices you hear are of these extreme groups. These groups want to label all men as terrible sex offenders for seeing a willing adult sex worker.No one stands up to say this is foolish, the passive public says nothing. These groups even say that all men who marry foreign women are terrible sex predators who take advange of these "helpless foreign women wives". This is an example of feminists and other groups exploiting the suffering of a small minority of vulnerable and abused women in order to further their own collective interests. For example, getting money from the government into their organizations. Rather than wanting to find the truth.
The following links will give you more information about this especially the Washington post article and the Guardian and BBC links.
News night BBC video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaEdI3aiwg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rvA60zdkD8
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/10/30/more-on-the-great-sex-trafficking-scam-in-the-u-k/
Guardian newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22/gov_proposals/print.html
Washington post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401.html
Human traffic website:
http://traffickingwatch.org/node/18
http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/OJP/a0826/final.pdf
India newspaper:
http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3622&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=9&valid=true#
Other sources:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/10/30/more-on-the-great-sex-trafficking-scam-in-the-u-k/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227418/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-The-myth-Britains-foreign-sex-slaves.html
http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/Weitzer_Criminologist.pdf
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2850/
http://bristolnoborders.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/more-evidence-that-sex-trafficking-is-a-myth/
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/michael-duffy/much-ado-about-a-small-segment-of-the-global-sex-industry/2008/06/13/1213321616701.html
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/10/30/more-on-the-great-sex-trafficking-scam-in-the-u-k/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227418/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-The-myth-Britains-foreign-sex-slaves.html