SLAVERY
The following is an excerpt from a 4 page in depth story about the increase of slavery around the world. It begins with a description of exactly how one can travel 500 miles from N.Y. to buy a slave for labor and or sex. the entire article, titled The World Enslaved can be found here.
There are now more slaves on the planet than at any time in human history. True abolition will elude us until we admit the massive scope of the problem, attack it in all its forms, and empower slaves to help free themselves." ... "The West’s efforts have been, from the outset, hamstrung by a warped understanding of slavery. In the United States, a hard-driving coalition of feminist and evangelical activists has forced the Bush administration to focus almost exclusively on the sex trade. The official State Department line is that voluntary prostitution does not exist, and that commercial sex is the main driver of slavery today. In Europe, though Germany and the Netherlands have decriminalized most prostitution, other nations such as Bulgaria have moved in the opposite direction, bowing to U.S. pressure and cracking down on the flesh trade. But, across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, unregulated escort services are exploding with the help of the Internet. Even when enlightened governments have offered clearheaded solutions to deal with this problem, such as granting victims temporary residence, they have had little impact. Many feel that sex slavery is particularly revolting—and it is. I saw it firsthand. In a Bucharest brothel, for instance, I was offered a mentally handicapped, suicidal girl in exchange for a used car. But for every one woman or child enslaved in commercial sex, there are at least 15 men, women, and children enslaved in other fields, such as domestic work or agricultural labor. Recent studies have shown that locking up pimps and traffickers has had a negligible effect on the aggregate rates of bondage. And though eradicating prostitution may be a just cause, Western policies based on the idea that all prostitutes are slaves and all slaves are prostitutes belittles the suffering of all victims. It’s an approach that threatens to put most governments on the wrong side of history...
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I've been wanting to read his book; I've seen some excerpts and interviews. I wonder what everyone thinks about his statement that he didn't try to help anyone out of slavery because he thought his research would be more important in the long run. He acknowledges that sometimes this still feels like "an excuse for cowardice" but he also says that he thought in the long run getting the message out to the public would be more important than saving a few individuals. What do you all think of that?
I'm not sure what I think of it. On the one hand he has a point. On the other hand, I feel like he could have "bought" some people and then, you know, helped them escape to safety in other countries, without the original slavers knowing that he did so so it wouldn't ruin his research. But maybe he's right that it would be too much of a problem. But then how do you choose who out of all the people to rescue?
I have always taken people in. I have raised children I did not birth along side the one I birthed because they needed a place to grow or they were on the run with their mothers or, etc.
I can't imagine not saving every child I could possibly save and then writing a book about the kids not saved.
Did all of the advance and the profits of the book go to the cause? Did any profits from it go to the cause, after his expenses?
Or did he exploit the already exploited?
I'm not sure you can say that he exploited anyone even if he took home every cent that he could. This problem simply exists. He didn't create any new slaves or slavers, or cause anyone any harm. He's just a reporter with no particular obligation to any of these people.
You're right, I just have a hard time understanding being impartial on this one. He is not me and I ought to employ more compassion and be thankful he took the time and energy to tell the story.
Thanks i muse, for posting this. I think I remember reading an excerpt earlier this year. It's good to keep refreshed on what is going on. The author has done exhaustive research from the looks of it.
I bet he is tormented by the fact that he couldn't help free people. But I also recognize that the level of institutional and cultural corruption is very high in some places, and that they are not forces to mess with unless you have some real power to change the system:
It's not uncommon for example for people to be freed and then wind up as slaves again, because the underlying corruption and incentives haven't changed and people are literally left with no options (they might put themselves back into debt bondage in exchange for being smuggled to another country for example). Or desperate families reunited with a freed child whom they had initially sold off, turn around and resell the kid for the second time. And I've read that some slavers "pay" slaves with things like alcohol and drugs thus creating a cycle of addiction. Now what happens if that person is randomly freed through the generosity of 1 kind individual, but with no other support system in place to treat the addiction?
On a continually depressing note it seems like slavery has woven itself deeply into the global market for everything. I'm afraid that it's possible that the computer I'm using to write this post has a mineral deep within it that was mined using slave labor. Yikes.
Thank you so much for that insight.
I saw this article a while ago. Unfortunately, this is just not the kind of problem that you can solve by addressing the slaves or the slavers. The widespread nature of the problem is created by a social and economic environment where this behavior is possible. When families produce many children, nothing of economic value, and have no access to education or basic necessities like food, selling a child is just one less mouth to feed and more money to feed the rest. When someone can operate a huge mining operation based completely on slavery and the government is so corrupt or overdrawn that it can't even stop that kind of public obvious slavery, what chance does anyone have?
Slavery is just a consequence of the larger economic and governmental problems in the 3rd world. My personal solution is just modern imperialism. Take over countries and set up functional governments one by one. Start with the most economically viable and work your way down. This would solve many other problems at the same time. Of course, this isn't very popular anymore.
I'm not trying to be contrary or belittle the horrible tragedy that is slavery, but there is a lower percentage of slaves than ever before. More in number because there are so many people on earth.
That said, I think that conflating sex trafficking with consensual sex work is harmful to sex workers and even more harmful to trafficked persons. Ending demand for sex work does not target the social and economic conditions that aggravate trafficking. And only a minority of trafficked persons are trafficked into sex slavery. How does the MANN act, for example, address those people?