The Trafficking Blog

The US State Department’s Trafficking In Persons Report for 2008 is out.

For those of you who don’t know, the TIP report is an annual report that the State Department has been releasing since 2000, under an Act of Congress then passed.

This legal and actual history of trafficking is of course far older than some of the recent legislative activity, such as the UN’s anti-trafficking protocol and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (which began the TIP reports) might lead us to think. The Mann Act, for example, was passed in 1910 as “The White-Slave Traffic Act” to fight slavery, although its vague language was used to criminalize a far broader range of activity.

But the TIP Report is hugely influential in the realm of anti-trafficking policy, and its numbers for people who are enslaved each year are among the most widely-quoted in the world. Those numbers are unchanged this year, as it cites the 800,000 people–80% women and up to 50% underage–taken across international lines every year as slaves, and the range of estimates from 4 to 27 million people enslaved worldwide at any given time.

What strikes me first about the report is not the numbers, and not the introductory statements or the grading of countries into tiers according to their response to trafficking: it is the human element. Next to the numbers, there’s a story, a true story, that’s one of those 800,000 people. There’s nothing extraordinary about it, really; it could have been any of millions of stories in the world today not very different from it. Here is this one: (Skip to the end if you can’t keep reading.)

Thirty-two year old “Sandro,” from the interior of Mexico, found himself in a migrant shelter in Tijuana. A recruiter approached him in the shelter and urged him to come to the U.S.-Mexico border to “take a look.” As they neared the border, the recruiter (knowledgeable of the shift change in the border patrol), pushed him over the border and instructed him to “run.” Sandro was guided by Mexican traffickers to a “safe house” where he was tied to a bed and raped about 20 times. He was then transported, at gun point, to another “safe” house in San Diego and forced into domestic servitude. Eventually, he was taken to a construction site during the day. His pay check was confiscated by his traffickers. He felt he had no recourse since he lacked even basic identification papers. His abuse continued when one of his traffickers forced him at gunpoint to perform sexual acts. He was later rescued and has since received temporary residency in the United States.

This is normal; this is what we have to change.

The elements are often different, here and there. But every life, every single one of those numbers, is a real person.

New York State is generally divided into two areas: New York City at the southernmost tip, and everyplace else. Upstate New York has some absolutely spectacular wildlife, wonderful forests, nice rivers, farms of all sizes–many of them traditional in different regards–small towns and cities, etc… New York City is the kind of city that makes most other cities seem like they aren’t cities at all–the “downtown” area of most cities is nothing next to Manhattan.

Obviously the difference between NYC and the rest of the state has all kinds of political and socioeconomic dimensions–where do taxes go, what kind of diversity are you likely to run into in New York City vs. Upstate, what corruption do you have to deal with, what’s Republican and what’s Democrat, what’s the Gini Coefficient, etc…

But while New York City is someplace we’re likely to think of when we think of Human Trafficking in the US, upstate New York is not.

Slavery isn’t confined to our biggest cities. It may not be happening within fifty miles of us–but it may also be around the corner, no matter where we live. Eleven women were found held as sex slaves in the quiet suburbs of Western New York last December, and consider: (1) those are only the ones we know about, (2) slavery isn’t confined to suburbia, and (3) sex slavery isn’t the only kind. From a WBFO article:

“LEWISTON, NY (2008-05-15) Western New Yorkers were shocked in December when a police sting closed down several massage parlors operating a sex slavery business. But members of the local human trafficking task force say no one should be surprised. Members of the task force and others gathered Wednesday to begin educating the public on who is being victimized and what is being done to stop it.”

“Amy Fleischauer is coordinator for Trafficking Victims’ Services at the International Institute in Buffalo. She said the community can not pretend it is not happening here.”

She goes on to identify the Buffalo Niagra region as a significant spot for human trafficking. It’s “a pass through and training ground for Toronto and New York city,” she says, and she points to local demand aside from that, not only for sex slaves but also slaves kept for agricultural and domestic labor. And she adds, because people do not know, that “some are United States citizens, and include women, girls, men and boys.”

It’s important to say that it happens to our citizens, because it does, and that fact helps to drive the problem home. Yet I dislike emphasizing that part, because we shouldn’t care who it’s happening to: we should care that it’s happening. If the slave next door is a Tibetan girl, I should care no less than if she’s an American. It shouldn’t matter what labels we put on her; she is real.

Still, it drives the terrible realities of slavery home, and we often care a little more, when we realize it could happen to our friends. It could happen to us. It could happen to our children.

I am pleased to announce the release of River of Innocents.

One of the worst crimes in the history of man is human slavery. Unfortunately, it didn’t end in the American Civil War; it was only outlawed. Today there are thousands of slaves in the U.S. and millions more overseas. They’re real people, just like you and me, but they’ve been sold or tricked or kidnapped into slavery.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought a tremendous fuel to the abolitionist movement in the time leading up to the Civil War. It helped to free the slaves, by making the slave human to the world.

River of Innocents is an Uncle Tom’s Cabin for today’s world, where slavery is still very much alive. Today’s slaves are real people, flesh and blood and beating hearts, and more of them are sold each decade than were sold in the entire 400-year-history of the African slave trade.

River of Innocents: In a world of stolen children and broken dreams, the seventeen-year-old Majlinda struggles to hold on to her humanity. She has no control over her life or even over her own body, yet where people are disposable, where rape is part of the normal day, and where guards watch her every move, Majlinda strives to create a family out of the stolen children around her and to give them hope when all they know is fear.

River is a novel about that hope and that terrible fear, about ideals in the face of despair, about the strength we find in ourselves when others need us, and about slavery as it is. If we are to end today’s slavery, we must first know of it; here is the story of Majlinda’s long struggle to be free.

www.riverofinnocents.com

River is what I’ve been working on lately–you can confirm what I’ve said about slavery via the “Slavery in the Media” link off of the web site, or by doing a web search for “New York Times Magazine The Girls Next Door” or “Human Trafficking.”

I wrote River because I learned about people not very far from me who were kept locked up and were rented out ten and twenty times a day and more. “Rented out” in the sense of “raped by men who paid to have sex with them.” On their best days, they might only be raped a few times.

When you learn about something this bad, one of the first things you do–after you can feel anything through the rage, the sadness, and the disbelief–is you ask “What can I do about it?”

River of Innocents was the answer. Uncle Tom’s Cabin worked 150 years ago: it made a difference and helped to free thousands of slaves. River of Innocents is Uncle Tom’s Cabin for slavery today. It is a part of what I can do–of what we all can do–to free the slaves.

Please read it, and talk about it, and spread the word: Slavery is real. Slaves are real. They’re in the world today, and we can help to set them free.

~ Terry Lee Wright

Please post this all on your blog–here’s a link to the html–or write your own message about it. Promotion code ttb7q530 gives a 10% discount at the publisher’s website through the end of May.

Remember, every day thousands of people are enslaved for the first time. Every day counts. We can make a difference–but we need to start now. Every day counts.

Welcome to traffickingblog.com

My name is Terry Lee Wright, and I created this site convinced of the necessity to combat slavery.

Today there are thousands of women on our shores, and millions more overseas, who live as slaves. They are real people, flesh and blood and beating hearts. Some are kept slaves by physical barriers, by locked doors and guards and surveillance cameras. Others are held hostage by threats made against them or their family or their friends, by drug dependencies their captors have forced on them, by debt-bondage where the debt is largely or entirely ficticious, or simply by being isolated in a foreign place where they know neither the culture nor the language, where the only person they can understand is their pimp.

This story is not a fiction; it is played out every day. Every day, thousands become slaves for the first time.