Human Trafficking

[Cypress]

A human rights crime of staggering proportions, that doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. Every year, several million people - mostly girls and young women - are trafficked across international borders into forced prostitution and slave labor.

We honestly should sometimes be ashamed for going overboard on debating flag burning, or Larry Craig bathroom stall antics:

No Fair Trade for Trafficked Women

The new documentary TRADE shows the dark world of human trafficking, a crime that exists in our own backyards.

This week marks the premiere of “TRADE” in local theaters, a powerful new film about the underworld of sex trafficking. (See trailer to the right.) The movie is inspired by a 2004 New York Times Magazine cover story by journalist Peter Landesman and shares with it the revelation that human trafficking exists right here in our own backyards. The release of the film also testifies to the success that the women’s movement has had in its sustained efforts over 10 years to bring an end to the traffic in human beings, partly by drawing much needed media attention to this hidden human rights violation.

In the film, a 13-year-old girl from Mexico City is kidnapped by sex traffickers, smuggled across the Rio Grande border and held prisoner in a “stash house” in New Jersey on a street that looks just like thousands of other streets in suburban USA. The girl represents one of an estimated 18,000 -- 20,000 people who are brought to the United States and used for forced labor or sex, according to State Department figures.

Many of them end up in my home state, California; in fact, San Francisco is one of the biggest receiving ports for human cargo shipped in from Asia. Earlier this month, six people were indicted for running a trafficking ring in Los Angeles that lured young women from Guatemala with the promise of good jobs. Once they crossed the border, the women were forced into prostitution to pay off smuggling debts.

Today, human trafficking is approximately a $31.6 billion global industry, making it the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world after illegal drugs and black-market guns. Worldwide, the United Nations estimates that one to four million people are trafficked each year, the majority from Thailand, Mexico and Russia.

Here in the U.S., 34 states have laws that specifically address human trafficking, which President Bush called “a special evil.” California led the way a few years ago by passing a comprehensive bill that makes human trafficking a felony and assists victims with social services to help rebuild their lives. Last May, New York State followed suit with similar legislation that cracks down on perpetrators.

Unfortunately, at the federal level, enforcement remains, at best, a work in progress. Federal laws aimed at prosecuting and punishing traffickers have few teeth because the Bush Administration has not committed the funds necessary to see them through. The number of trafficking investigations is also low: Between 2001 and 2006, the Department of Justice opened just 639 cases, resulting in 238 convictions. The resources allocated to address the crisis are simply not keeping pace with the rhetoric of the administration.

More importantly, as women’s rights groups know from experience, a purely punitive approach to human trafficking is unlikely to achieve long-term results. The growth of the industry in recent times is closely linked to the economic inequalities caused by globalization. The extreme poverty that persists in developing countries often forces families and young women themselves to sell their bodies to survive. War and the presence of armed militias can exacerbate the problem as women’s groups have documented in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Africa where HIV/AIDS has orphaned thousands, it is not uncommon for girls to be sold by relatives in order to pay for the care of their siblings.

Continued

http://alternet.org/rights/63791/?page=1


http://www.tradethemovie.com/#

[Battleborne]

A human rights crime of staggering proportions, that doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. Every year, several million people - mostly girls and young women - are trafficked across international borders into forced prostitution and slave labor.

We honestly should sometimes be ashamed for going overboard on debating flag burning, or Larry Craig bathroom stall antics:

However your boy Hugo of Venezuela is the biggest offender(along with Germany,Syria,Iran on and on-those whom you always fight for)...Venezuela is the Capital of the sex slave trade market!


www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/05/news/slaves.php

[FUCK THE POLICE]

A human rights crime of staggering proportions, that doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. Every year, several million people - mostly girls and young women - are trafficked across international borders into forced prostitution and slave labor.

We honestly should sometimes be ashamed for going overboard on debating flag burning, or Larry Craig bathroom stall antics:

More millionares than ever before.

[uscitizen]

No Fair Trade for Trafficked Women ?

Well I guess we need tarrifs on human trafficking then.

[cawacko]

A human rights crime of staggering proportions, that doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. Every year, several million people - mostly girls and young women - are trafficked across international borders into forced prostitution and slave labor.

We honestly should sometimes be ashamed for going overboard on debating flag burning, or Larry Craig bathroom stall antics:

San Francisco has tons of massage parlors that are basically houses of prostitution consisting of illegally trafficed (sp) women. Everyone knows about it (mayor, police etc.) yet they don't do shit.

[Cypress]

San Francisco has tons of massage parlors that are basically houses of prostitution consisting of illegally trafficed (sp) women. Everyone knows about it (mayor, police etc.) yet they don't do shit.

I'm sure you're right.

Law enforcement doesn't devote a lot of resources to it. I wonder if its because they aren't even american citizens; they are in fact undocumented illegal aliens - that's not exactly a political constituency with a lot of clout in this country.

You just know if there was evidence that that blonde american gal who went missing in Aruba had been sex trafficked somewhere, the entire FBI would be hot on the case.

[Don Quixote]

cy

women and young boys are the universal victims

sometimes blue-eyed blond haired children are abducted to be sold to or adopted by wealthy families

yeah, sexual slavery exists in almost every nation on earth including the good old us of a

[Don Quixote]

I'm sure you're right.

Law enforcement doesn't devote a lot of resources to it. I wonder if its because they aren't even american citizens; they are in fact undocumented illegal aliens - that's not exactly a political constituency with a lot of clout in this country.

You just know if there was evidence that that blonde american gal who went missing in Aruba had been sex trafficked somewhere, the entire FBI would be hot on the case.

cy

who says that she was not...a blue eyed blond kid was abducted in a major department store, however, the store had adopted a new security system of checking kids at all entrances and exits - the kid was found in a ladies room with dyed hair, a different hair cut and different clothes and shoes - WITHIN 5 MINUTES OF BEING ABDUCTED

[cawacko]

cy

who says that she was not...a blue eyed blond kid was abducted in a major department store, however, the store had adopted a new security system of checking kids at all entrances and exits - the kid was found in a ladies room with dyed hair, a different hair cut and different clothes and shoes - WITHIN 5 MINUTES OF BEING ABDUCTED

now that is truly frightening

[ib1yysguy]

I'm furious that more cheap prostitution isn't available here in the states but instead is outsourced to countries like India. This is an affront to traditional American values.

[Epicurus]

I'm furious that more cheap prostitution isn't available here in the states but instead is outsourced to countries like India. This is an affront to traditional American values.

Preach the truth.

[blackascoal]

However your boy Hugo of Venezuela is the biggest offender(along with Germany,Syria,Iran on and on-those whom you always fight for)...Venezuela is the Capital of the sex slave trade market!

www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/05/news/slaves.php

Catch up buddy ..

The State Department Human Trafficking Report: Raw Ideology Rather Than Bona Fide Research

In evaluating the standards used to assess the performance of ideological foes in such areas as human rights observance, narcotics, terrorism, respect for religious freedom, and human trafficking, the State Department’s certifications (compiled annually as mandated by U.S. Congress) are little better than fabrications to meet the political requirements of Secretary of State Rice. Depending upon whether the Secretary of State wants to complain about an ideological adversary or praise a loyal ally, the architects of the reports are prepared to spotlight phantom offenses or ignore arrant abuses. Venezuela, which received a Tier 3 (serious offender) rank on Washington’s human trafficking list, could have faired no better at the hands of the Bush administration’s operations.

The State Department’s human trafficking methodology is to rank countries on a three tier system. Tier 3 is comprised of countries that are the most egregious participants in trafficking and are thus subject to heavy sanctions. Tier 2 includes countries complicit in trafficking, but which, from the State Department’s perspective, are making significant efforts to counter the problem; finally, Tier 1 is comprised of countries not significantly engaged in the industry. The problem with this methodology is that a country’s ranking appears to be based far less on well-defined evidentiary standards than on Washington’s readiness to launch a rant against the likes of Chávez.

In its ongoing crusade to impugn the government of Chávez, the Bush administration, during both the Powell and Rice eras, has blacklisted Venezuela. These findings have become famously known in Washington as contrived, spurious, and worthless exercises. Out of all these negative ratings, the one awarded to Venezuela regarding human trafficking has generated perhaps the most moral outrage among independent scholars and may represent one of the more gross cases of faulty research developed by the State Department.

The Venezuelan Finding

Venezuela was also ranked Tier 3 in the human trafficking category, yet this classification, if anything, represents an even worse perversion of scholarship. Following the release of its latest report, the State Department was forced to admit that its claim that Caracas had failed to prosecute a single human trafficker may have been wrong, since the Chávez government asserted that it had, in fact, prosecuted 21 individuals. Nevertheless, as a result of the ranking, predicated as it was on a very narrow or nonexistent foundation, the South American nation has suffered sanctions involving the blockage of $250 million in international loans in 2005. While Caracas is cited as having a poor preventative anti-trafficking process in place, the State Department report cannot point to a single stated complaint against Venezuelan authorities.

Furthermore, this heavy-handed U.S. designation flies in the face of quality analyses done by other organizations. For example, according to a study recently issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns, there are, in fact, more reports on human trafficking incidents applying to a major U.S. ally, Colombia, than Washington’s major adversary, Venezuela; yet the former received only a Tier 1 classification from the State Department, while the book was thrown at Caracas. This discrepancy reveals how much sway political factors have in the methodology behind producing the agency’s annual report. Colombia is one of Washington’s closest regional allies; thus the country’s endemic corruption and the tempo of human trafficking are systematically overlooked or downplayed by U.S. officials. Numerous cases of Colombian women being trafficked into Japan’s sex industry have been cited by entities such as the UN, and the attribution process is cited as an area in need of major improvement.

Venezuela, one of Washington’s chief hemispheric antagonists, is subject to harsh sanctions as a result of these bogus allegations. The Bush administration’s use of a heinous crime like human trafficking as merely another weapon in its anti-Chávez crusade, is nothing more than an example of grossly self-indulgent behavior, worsened by the fact that it degrades the usefulness of the reporting process, as well as the administration’s repeated invoking of lofty rhetoric referring to the importance of building an international community to advance the public good. In fact, the question should be asked whether the entire certification process, in all of its manifestations, should be dropped, because it is obvious, that what is now being done in the name of high-minded reform, is simply shameless self-serving pandering to the White House’s reigning ideological biases.

A Distinguished Report?

In the years since the State Department’s annual report was created, it has received abundant criticism from NGOs and other governments. In 2003, Human Rights Watch observed that the report lacked adequate analysis backed by concrete data and noted that the U.S. document did not include facts about tried, prosecuted, and the conviction rate of traffickers in countries with which it has close ties. Another common complaint has been that some countries are placed in tiers that do not correspond with the relative weight of their alleged human trafficking records. For example, many officials believe Japan’s extensive human trafficking activity and weak legislation to combat it should have landed it in a Tier 3 ranking, but clearly that nation is too important an ally and trade partner to allow for such a designation. Such appellations have their foundation in the White House’s irresistible ideological propellant that leads to the hand out of negative classifications for countries such as Cuba and Venezuela — rankings which are based more on politicized prejudice then on facts.

Beyond Ideology

Unfounded allegations by the State Department are perversions which have further sullied its fast vanishing integrity under its present leadership. While Secretary of State Rice has perfected a techno-babble style of public utterance that seems to say far more than actually is the case, the fact is that if the U.S. intends to be a key player in the fight against human trafficking, its research and reports must be impeccable. Using doctored official findings as handy political weapons, as in the case of Venezuela, will only discourage international cooperation on the issue and result in global derision due to the use of tainted documents, which deserve to be considered almost worthless. If Washington is serious about confronting the problem of trafficking, and not just using it as a vehicle for anti-Chávez propaganda, it must do better than simply continue to push a self-serving political agenda on such an important issue. [/quote]
http://www.coha.org/2006/06/28/the-s...fide-research/

[Chapdog]

There are 100 plus countries in this world with human rights issues.

To get involved

To not get involved

Thats the question

Sure we are the most powerful country in the world but we cant even deal with 2 countries human rights issues at the same time without practically bankrupting ourselves. Hell the fucking Loonie is worth more then the dollar right now.