The menace of human trafficking:from child slavery to sex slavery

[HUSNAA]

 This piece was originally posted in the thread Thoughts for the Day. I gave it a religious angle because thoughts for the day is a thread for ppl to  stop and reflect on their daily lives for a minute or so. As this piece is also a profoundly social issue, I have been asked (graciously I might add) by Kam Bornoye to post it here and have everyone put in their ten cents worth. So I will cut and paste:

Mugode wa Allah da Ya Halicce mu musulmi ya sanyamu a kasar musulmi kuma ya samu ke hurda da 'yan uwa musulmi. Mu gode maSa da  Ya bamu imani iya daidai gwargwado da imanin ya kansa mu kanyi tawakkali da irin rayuwar da muke cikin ta, ba ma janyo wa kammu bala'ai.
Dalilin wa 'yannan kalaman shine jiya ne da ga karfe 11 PM zuwa 2AM, na kalli two programs dealing with the same issue. One was a dramatization and the other was a real life happening documentary which followed a man as he was going through the odyssey of trying to locate his wife. What I am talking about is human trafficking.
This is the new or rather old menace in a new skin that is creating a nightmare for many women all over the world. Human trafficking of children goes on in Africa where kids are taken from their homes at a tender age and sold into domestic slavery. Elsewhere in the world, the human trafficking is of girls sold into sex slavery. That was the type I watched last night. To say I was upset is an understatement.
The dramatization showed the nitty gritty no holds barred way that criminal gangs trap innocent girls into this  hell. As it was a serialized program, I have so far seen the first installment. It follows three female characters who were each abducted in a different way by the same network of criminals operating in different countries and different continents.

One woman was lured to Austria by her new boyfriend and there he sold her immediately. The other was a 15 or 16 yr old girl who was chosen  by a 'modelling agency' which happened to be the traffickers posing as such. The other the saddest, was a 12 or 11 yr old girl who was forcefully abducted in the Philipphines. She was befriended by a boy about her age on a bike who caught her attention as she sat with her parents somewhere in a busy thoroughfare. Her movements were being tracked apparently as sometime later, when  she was shopping in a busy market with her mother, the boy appeared again and this time, she went to speak with him as her mother tried some clothes in a shop. No sooner had she got to the boy than a van tha looked like a napep bike with a hood drove up. Two prs of hand shot out and yanked her into the motorped. She began to scream. Her mother heard her, turned round and ran after the sound of the fading scream as they sped away with little girl. Much later, the girl was shown being manhandled by this paedophile, old enough to be her grand father. She was terrified and kept begging him to let her go. He asked her if she was a virgin.. 'because I intend toe keep you so' he sai. Meaning that she would be auctioned off to the highest bidder eventually because of her virginity. As I write this, I am feeling this trepidation as if this was occurrig in front of me and I am helpless to do anything about it. La Haula wa la kuwwat illa billah! Allah Ya kare mu da zuri'ar mu da ga irin wannan masifa ameen.

The documentary couldnt show the nitty gritty of course, but the fact that it brings home the reality of it, since it was not fiction created a more powerful and unpleasant sensation with a lasting impact. It is the tale of a couple from the Ukraine or one of these east european countries, where the standard of living was very low and ppl eked out a hard life. The wife was a very beautiful 23 yr old girl, just married a yr earlier to the husband. She has a five yr old son and was 4 months gone with a second on the way. Her mother owns a shop or some such thing and she decided to go to Turkey to buy some commodities for the mother. Her husband has a male friend. When this male friend heard that she was going to Turkey, he offered to escort her there because he had some business to transact as he told them. Thus unsuspectingly, she goes to Turkey with him and when they got there, he sold her. Then he became guilt ridden after he'd heard that she'd been sold to a most notorious pimp. He phoned the husband and informed him that he'd sold his wife. Devastated, the husband somehow got a phone call from the wife who told him the situation she was in and begged him to rescue her. So the husband went on a wild goose chase to Turkey. He posed as one of the middlemen in the trafficking ring that sold the wife, in order to gain the trust of the pimp and also access to his wife. He set up a meeting but when the pimp showed up, the wife was not in tow. At anyrate, something went wrong and his cover was nearly blown. From then on he couldnt get any closer to his wife, although he tried as hard as he could to convince  her jailers that  he was only trying to protect their joint interests as the girl could be a lead to them since her case was being thoroughly investigated. His greatest fear was that if she became too much of a threat to them, they could kill her or deport her to another country and any chance of ever seeing her again would be lost forever and she would be condemned to a life of sexual slavery until the pimps got tired of her. In desperation, he began to haunt the streets at night in the hope that he might see her soliciting. Unfortunately, girls that were kidnapped and forced into prostitution are always kept under lock and key and closely monitored so there was no way that she would be out on the streets.
Eventually he gave up and went back to his country. Da yake Allah Mai Jin Kan bawansa ne, his persistence had paid off and the pimps had somehow thought to err on the side of caution and  had let the girl go. She made her way back home where he found her when he reached it. To tasu kenan.
His friend was prosecuted for trafficking. The wife agreed to testify in court against him. On the day of the hearing, the husband and wife went to court, but were barred from entering. The camera crew filming this documentary were allowed inside the courtroom however and that was how they came to know what traspired at the court. What happened inside was that a judge made an appearance at his desk moments after the defendant  was brought into the courtroom by two jailers. He had put up his jacket to hide his face. There was a cage and he was bundled into it, and the door shut. Then the judge delivered his sentence/ verdict what ever. In a case of human trafficking, criminals are given a maximum of 15 yrs in jail. Standing at his desk the judge passed a sentence of five yrs on the man and then followed up with a clause that  under article so and so section so and so, the sentence had been commuted to a five yr probation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. After that, the judge walked out of the court room. The cage door was opened and the guy..........
.................WALKED AWAY A FREE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!! I couldnt believe it!! It was so surreal! This is not I repeat NOT a movie, but a real life event that happened and was recorded in real time as it happened!!
The  husband and his wife meantime were standing outside waiting to hear the verdict. When they heard that he'd been released on probation, the husband said that this was sending a message to the trafficking world that you could do it get caught and get away with it. Afterward when he was interviewed, the convicted trafficker smugly said to the man interviewing him that he guessed that he'd hired a good lawyer  and that the judge was a good man to have given him a light sentence.
Allah Ya Kyauta.  The reason why I say that we should Praise Allah that we are born muslims and live in a muslim community is because most of these countries where the gangs 'recruit' the girls are dirt poor countries. Our countries are just as much affected by poverty, yet these tragedies hardly occur on such an organized scale. I am not saying that there is no prostitution in our societies, what I am saying is that we dont have organized crime that deals in sex slavery. I believe this is so, because the religion of Islam has come down very heavily on adultery prostitution etc, imposing such devastating penalties on the perpetrators even though it also gives stringent clauses for the use of the punishments.  All in all we as muslims have been psyched to regard sexual misdemeanours as the worst of any of the crimes that one can indulge in, so that it will be a pretty rare day, the day we have criminals selling girls into the sex industry on a massive scale as is happening now in Europe. (Its been estimated that around 500,000 girls are trafficked  every yr!)

Well anyway there is so much to say on this topic but i cant articulate my thoughts very well and I have other  things to do so I will stop here. Contributions on the subject highly sought

[Dan-Borno]

Well done, our able Iron Lady, you have now open up
the gates for us to follow.

While you have extensively discussed a particular scene
of human trafficking, i thought i should lay a little back-
ground to what human trafficking is all about.

According to experts, trafficking is "the recruitment,
transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons,
by the means of threat, or use of force or other forms
of coercion, of abduction, fraud of deception, of the
abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the
giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the
consent of a person having control over another
person, for the purposes of exploitation.

I make up the emphasis on EXPLOITATION for me to
have background to what I am going to refer as another
form of trafficking which most of us indulge in without
noticing it.

Forgeting the wider concept of trafficking, its now a
common act within the society to hire (buy) a person
in the name of "houseboy or housegirl" and in the process
deny him all what he ought to have gotten while living
a normal life.  (Mind you i am talking of a little child between
the ages of 5 - 15 years of age)

It sounds as if you are giving him a helping hand, but
NO.  While, he takes care of your house and prepare your
children to school, he spends the whole of the day doing
other things and left with no future hope - isnt this a form
of trafficking?

This becomes an eye opener and a lucrative business, thereby
trafficking children to overseas.  It is on study that 80% of
trafficked persons from Africa are young girls including minors of
between the ages of 12 and 16 years.

A woman (MAMA BALE) was recently caught between Lagos and
Ibadan Expressway with a bus full of children - Allah kadai yasan
inda za a kai su ta hanyar teku or within the Lagos Islands.

What baffles me is the Governments' lack of commitment to this
issue.  Our judicial system is so lazy that it doesnt have a strong
punishment to perpetrators of this act, while the law enforcement
have turned their eyes green on most traffickers, only few were
caught - such as MAMA BALE.

Except this issue is being tackled, more destruction and killings
will continue happening in our High Ways, houses, banks etc,
because those innocently trafficked turned robbers after a very
hard life.  Allah ya sauwake. Amin

[hafiz amin umar]

Good to hear ur response my learned gentleman!
   husnah,this is a touching topic ever posted here,human trafficking,has became so rampant that the situation portend need to be address urgently.
    Good post there,keep on with the fight,we are solely behind u.

[ummita]

Mhmm........interesting..........

Well, my dear,  I think d menace of human traffickin is not only enshrined within d roots of child or sex slavery...trust meh!.......Though d main rationale behind these two is, a "so-called legitimate" job  for a "better financial position"!!!. (Bullocks!) And 4 d luv of God, it- aint- just- girls- that- are- being- trafficked!!. To me, human tracking has no, "from & to".......but that it is absorbed in so many chains of events.

Last year, I got my hands dirty dealing with real issues concerning human exploitation: international adoption & children used for sports, yup!.........."child camel jockeys"! It doesn't stop there, then there's trafficking girls 4 early marriage (India's made their pledge on it), recruitment of child soldiers and mostly boys, preferably known as "toy soldiers",( Congo & Uganda rose to that). Human trafficking for religious cults...dead famous to our ears like d mornin cook-a-doo-doo.....(talk about Africa!!) & the (Aussies) *sign*.... seem 2 hav a very good statistical sample where a niche market was found for human traffickin. (& so help us God).

I hav seen & heard about human exploitation.........& d saga still continues..... Then there's our Govt measures.....Dan-Borno, I don't think you should be baffled cus truly they are committed but mosttimes its all "talk & no action"!!::) Subsequently, and in line is our activist, sets of precedents & pre-emptitive measures set to combat and root out the problem of human trafficking but a cause for a "table head-bang" is the situation has barely changed!!!! (Bang! Bang! Bang!), which is a cause for me to raise my white flag cus I don't think the situation is going to change, why because the shrewdy roots of the quandary have not yet been plucked out! & if the situation does change, it's a miracle from "Roma Downey"!!! The shitty causes need tackling first!!!!! (poverty, unemployment, economic disparities, social discrimination, corruption in Govt, political instability, regional imbalances & oh....perceived higher standards of life elsewhere—[beloved luxury]) *signs*........Am going 2 bed,

2 b continued 2moz....maybe

[HUSNAA]

Mhmm........interesting..........

Well, my dear,  I think d menace of human traffickin is not only enshrined within d roots of child or sex slavery...trust meh!.......Though d main rationale behind these two is, a "so-called legitimate" job  for a "better financial position"!!!. (Bullocks!) And 4 d luv of God, it- aint- just- girls- that- are- being- trafficked!!. To me, human tracking has no, "from & to".......but that it is absorbed in so many chains of events.

Last year, I got my hands dirty dealing with real issues concerning human exploitation: international adoption & children used for sports, yup!.........."child camel jockeys"! It doesn't stop there, then there's trafficking girls 4 early marriage (India's made their pledge on it), recruitment of child soldiers and mostly boys, preferably known as "toy soldiers",( Congo & Uganda rose to that). Human trafficking for religious cults...dead famous to our ears like d mornin cook-a-doo-doo.....(talk about Africa!!) & the (Aussies) *sign*.... seem 2 hav a very good statistical sample where a niche market was found for human traffickin. (& so help us God).

I hav seen & heard about human exploitation.........& d saga still continues..... Then there's our Govt measures.....Dan-Borno, I don't think you should be baffled cus truly they are committed but mosttimes its all "talk & no action"!!::) Subsequently, and in line is our activist, sets of precedents & pre-emptitive measures set to combat and root out the problem of human trafficking but a cause for a "table head-bang" is the situation has barely changed!!!! (Bang! Bang! Bang!), which is a cause for me to raise my white flag cus I don't think the situation is going to change, why because the shrewdy roots of the quandary have not yet been plucked out! & if the situation does change, it's a miracle from "Roma Downey"!!! The shitty causes need tackling first!!!!! (poverty, unemployment, economic disparities, social discrimination, corruption in Govt, political instability, regional imbalances & oh....perceived higher standards of life elsewhere—[beloved luxury]) *signs*........Am going 2 bed,

2 b continued 2moz....maybe

I've heard about these child camel jockeys- underage, undersized undernourished kids used as jockeys because they are light on the camel, so it can run faster. How on earth did u get involved in that one??

I wouldnt categorize early child marriages in India or child soldiers as child trafficking. Maybe child abuse but certainly not trafficking.

[Muhsin]

Kai Aunty! I very much like this very good and topical thread. This issue is one, if not only, of the issues always irking my heart. Further, it's one of the things I launched a preponderance attck upon in my story A Wierd Hope. By Allah's grace, when I get back I will talk at length about it. Allah ya taimaka.

To ummita, wish you are doing fine because I barely see you on board frequently.

[bakangizo]

I thought the Kano state govt had outlawed hiring girls from the rural areas as haousemaids? But the issue as always is implementation of the law.