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Anecdotes
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The early years of
the 21st Century gvnet.com/humantrafficking/ CAUTION: There is
always a risk in posting links to external websites. Some of the following links may possibly
lead to websites that present information that is unsubstantiated or even
false. Their authenticity has not been
verified and their content has not been validated. I was sold into sexual slavery Elizabeth Day, The Observer, 18 January
2015 www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jan/18/i-was-sold-into-sexual-slavery?CMP=fb_gu [accessed 18 January 2015] On holiday in
Greece as a 14-year-old, Megan Stephens fell in love. But her boyfriend
turned out to be a pimp who trafficked her for six
years. She tells her story to Elizabeth Day. Megan’s story is a
horrifying one. It is a story of how a vulnerable teenage girl on holiday in
Greece with her mother was trafficked into the sex industry and spent six
years as a prostitute – in brothels, on the streets, in dingy hotel rooms –
before finally making her escape from a life of relentless physical and
sexual abuse. It is horrifying not only because of the sadistic violence she
endured, but also because of how easily she seemed to slip into this spiral
of depravity and how difficult she found it to get out. Ahsania Mission monitors
40,000 families [access information unavailable] Life changed for Zarina (not a real name) when she was separated from her
family. '1 got separated from my family when a man took me to 'One day we set for
Mumbai with Siddique'. On arrival in Mumbai, the man sold us to a dance bar
owner. 'A few months later, my sister and brother-in-law escaped the 'hell,'
but I was forced to stay back to do flesh trade there against my will. Tales of sex and sadness from inside Amelia Hill, The Observer, 23 December 2007 www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/dec/23/communities.socialexclusion [accessed 20 August 2011] 'I'D BEEN DREAMING OF A FUTURE AS A WIFE AND A MOTHER' - 'I had been working
as a waitress, dreaming of a future as a wife and mother,' 'He beat me and
made me live with another girl who spied on me. She wouldn't leave me for a
second and reported to this man if I did anything that looked like trying to
escape. He forced me to work in the brothel, but the clients complained
because I just cried all the time. The manager asked me what was wrong. I didn't
have the language to express myself, but eventually I managed to explain. I
don't think she felt sorry for me, but she saw that I wasn't going to earn
her brothel any money because I would never willingly work. She helped me to
escape and I went to the police. This has damaged my life in all directions.
I have no dreams now and no hopes. I have nothing.' Owed Justice - Thai Women Trafficked into
Debt Bondage in Human Rights Watch, September 2000 -- ISBN
1-56432-252-1 Library of Congress
00-107963 www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2000/japan/4-profiles.htm [accessed 20 August 2011] IV. PROFILES - In this chapter,
Human Rights Watch profiles four women who were trafficked from POT - It was a big
room and four or five other women going to work in KAEW - Kaew explained that she had understood there would be
some debt for the airplane ticket and other expenses, but she had never been
told how high her debt would be, and she was shocked at the amount. "The
other girls said to me, 'that's a lot of debt and you're old; you'll never
pay it off.' Then I prayed that it would only take six or seven months to pay
it off, and I went with all of the clients I could. . . . The mama said to
me, 'don't let your period come, or you'll never finish paying your
debt.'" So Kaew also took contraceptive pills
daily, though she had been sterilized at age twenty-one, so that she would
not menstruate and could work every day.(7)
She got her mother to send the pills from The route to hell Louisa Waugh, The Scotsman, Aug 22, 2006 living.scotsman.com/features/The-route-to-hell.2804124.jp [accessed 20 August 2011] www.scotsman.com/news/the-route-to-hell-1-1132153 [accessed 11 July 2017] Olga, like all the
other women, was immediately sold - she was bought by a local bar owner. This
pimp instructed her to dance on a stage, and then rented her out to punters
at night. If she resisted, he beat her. Like the vast majority of trafficked
women, she learnt to become compliant in order to survive. Vigilance Needed in Fight Against Human
Trafficking New news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=7cff91dbcbc45f06a8a6d7b69538f010 [accessed 20 August 2011] The maid revealed
that despite being promised a part-time job and a work visa, her employer
paid far less than minimum wage, did not offer breaks, held her travel
documents, isolated her from calling her family, and threatened to call the
police and immigration authorities. She spoke little English and had no idea
who she could call for help. Sex trafficking
strikes closer to home than thought S.M. Berg, The www.theportlandalliance.org/2004/nov/pdxtrafficking.htm [accessed 20 August 2011] A bed, a teddy
bear, and a roll of paper towels are the only contents of a closet-sized room
where a trafficked 13-year-old girl was sold for sex by pimps to 20-30 men a
day. On Nov. 5, 2003, a
woman taken from the Traffickers forced
three dozen Mexican men and boys recruited in Arizona to work 60 hours a week
on farms near Buffalo, N.Y. for $30 a week. Scale of African slavery revealed BBC News, 23 April, 2004 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3652021.stm [accessed 20 August 2011] Complicity: Much of this
trade in children often has the tacit collaboration of the victims' own
families where it is seen not so much as criminal activity but as a way for a
large family to boost its poor income.
The story of Joseph in Online Focus - Slavery in Jeffrey Kaye, Public Broadcasting Service
PBS Online NewsHour, [accessed 12 September 2014] Transcript of a NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Putting a Stop to
the Exploitation Tom Paquette, Church of Scientology
International www.freedommag.org/english/vol36I2/page21.htm [accessed 12 September 2014] She was a teenager
from an impoverished village in Bangladesh. The American couple offered her
transport to America and a better life: a nice job as their nanny and
housekeeper, wages and opportunity. The dream offer dissolved into a
nightmare as soon as she reached sunny Southern California. The couple
informed her she owed them a huge sum for bringing her into the country and
forced her to work without wages for years in their home. There she was
repeatedly raped and beaten by the husband and abused by the wife. After
three failed attempts, and with the help of good samaritans,
she finally escaped Focus on Children [PDF] digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150&context=key_workplace [accessed 12 September 2014] This is the
testimony of Thuli, a young girl from PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS OF
CHILDREN - Impact of armed conflict on children Note by the Secretary-General, Item 108 of
the provisional agenda, A/51/150, Fifty-first session of UN General Assembly,
26 August 1996 www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/51/plenary/a51-306.htm [accessed 13 April 2019] CHILD
SOLDIER VICTIM FROM HONDURAS UNICEF REPORT Click [here]
to access the article. Its URL is not
displayed because of its length [accessed 27 January 2020] 46. A case study from Honduras illustrates one
child's experience of joining an armed group: “At the age of 13,
I joined the student movement. I had a
dream to contribute to make things change, so that
children would not be hungry ... later I joined the armed struggle. I had all the inexperience and the fears of
a little girl. I found out that girls
were obliged to have sexual relations 'to alleviate the sadness of the
combatants'. And who alleviated our
sadness after going with someone we hardly knew? At my young age I experienced
abortion. It was not my decision. There is a great pain in my being when I
recall all these things ... In spite
of my commitment, they abused me, they trampled my
human dignity. And above all, they did
not understand that I was a child and that I had rights.” Child Labor and Sweatshops Abigail Cozart,
Social Justice Project, 31 March 2011 prezi.com/jektmta7pwkn/sweatshops-and-child-labor/ [accessed 20 August 2015] When he was four
years old, Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded
servitude by his parents, a common practice of poor Pakistani families hoping
to pay off debts owed to landlords and local merchants Child Slave Caught in Glittering Traps Corinna Schuler, National Post, 4/17/2001 www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/childslaves.html#childslaves [accessed 20 August 2011] Slaves to chocolate: thousands of boys toil
on Current Events, a Weekly Reader
publication, www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-85103768.html [partially accessed 30 January 2011 -
access restricted] www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article24592888.html [accessed 11 March 2018] Aly Diabate, from the country of Mali, was 12 years old when
a slave trader promised him $150 and a bicycle for working on a cacao farm in
Ivory Coast, where 43 percent of the world's cacao is grown. Instead, Aly was
sold for about $35 to a cacao farmer, who regularly beat the boy with a
bicycle chain and branches from a cacao tree. "The beatings were part of
my life," Aly told a reporter for Knight Ridder Newspapers in 2001,
after he was freed by local authorities and returned to his Anecdotes of Workplace Abuse in Human Rights Watch, Help Wanted: Abuses against Female Migrant Domestic Workers in www.hrw.org/reports/2004/indonesia0704/6.htm [accessed 20 August 2011] I worked for a
husband, wife, two girls and a boy. Sometimes I didn’t sleep…. I would wake up at
5:00 a.m. and go to sleep at midnight, sometimes 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m…. There were three
families living together in one big house and I was the only maid If my employers went
out, they locked the door from the outside and took the key I’m just a
housemaid, I can’t ask for anything. I am not allowed to talk to the
neighbors I will go crazy
here. They don’t let me out, the employer won’t let me speak to anyone One employer
explained: I think it’s no good to let them out. If we allow them out,
especially those women from the village, they get influenced, they start to
fight back If I asked for my
salary, the employer hit me I worked for my
second employer for two years. They cut my salary 2000 ringgit
(U.S.$526) in order to renew my passport In I want to send money
home, but my employer won’t let me Every day something
made [my employers] angry. Every day the woman hit me many times with a
wooden stick. Sometimes she slapped me, sometimes she hit me with a hanger
or a comb, sometimes when I was cooking, she hit my head with tools [My employers] were
fussy and cruel. If I washed the dishes and they were still a little
dirty, she would take the glass and hit me with the glass It was hard to work
for them because there was not enough food. I got food once a
day. If I made a mistake, for example, if we ran out of rice and I
forgot to tell the employer, she wouldn’t give me food for two days The grandmother was
always angry. She never let me take a break. She always
complained about my mistakes. She also hit me When the lady went
to drop off the children to the grandmother’s house, the man would stay at
home…. He raped me many, many times The agent said I
will take care of old people. They promised me 350 ringgit [U.S.$92.10]
a month, with four months deduction Trafficking From Caucasus - IOM Case
Studies
[PDF] International Organization for Migration
IOM, "Trafficking in Women and Children from the Republic of Armenia: A
Study" (2001) www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/iom_2001__child_women_traff.pdf [accessed 27 August 2011] publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/trafficking_caucasus_eng.pdf [accessed 22 February 2018] Case study 3 (Victim – U.A.E.) -- "I met my boyfriend at my girl-friend’s house. He
had been dating me for a month already when he told me he was going to marry
me. My boyfriend told me we could earn some money for our wedding if we went to
work in We would stay for
three months there to earn enough money and come back. I was extremely happy.
I could not believe all that was happening to me. He took my passport and all
necessary papers and said that he would take care of visa and travel
arrangements. I was so happy and careless that I did not even ask to see the
tickets or documents. The day of departure came. We took the plane and
instead of He took me to a
hotel and said that he was going to see his friend and would be back soon.
Two hours later a man came to take me to another hotel saying that I was his
property. I could not understand, I kept saying that it was a
misunderstanding and that my friend would come soon. I had come to Testimony of Anita Polaris Project At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 August 2011] I felt very scared
that evening and I refused to eat anything. I soon noticed that many men were
coming in and out of the house and I realized it was a brothel. I began
howling and shouting. I said that I wanted to leave. Renu
Lama told me that I was ignorant. She said that I did not just come easily
and I could not go easily. She said that I had been bought and I would have
to work as a prostitute in order to pay them back. On the fourth day
that I was in the brothel, my first client came to me. I refused to have sex
with him. He had already paid so he grabbed me and tried to rape me. I fought
him off. He had managed to get my clothes off but he was very frustrated
because I was resisting him so much. He stormed out and asked for his money
back. A couple of the brothel owners (voluntary prostitutes) came in and beat
me. When they were done, the same man came back in. Some of my
associates overheard the owners saying that they were also planning to sell
me to a brothel in Sarat because I was too much
trouble. I decided that I could not wait until the boy returned from Testimony of Bopha Polaris Project At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 August 2011] Bopha lived in a rural
village and married at 17. Her husband immediately took her to a hotel in
another village and left her. Bopha discovered the
hotel was a brothel and tried to escape, but she was forcibly detained and
told she must pay off the price the hotel owner had paid for her. Testimony of Deng Polaris Project www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2004/34021.htm [Last access date unavailable] [scroll down to
box] Deng, in her late
20's, was recruited in her native Thailand to travel voluntarily to Australia
where she was told she could make lots of money as a prostitute. Upon arrival
in The Story of E.R. True Stories, Anti-Trafficking Educational
Curriculum, Association of Albanian Girls and Women - AAGW www.twitlonger.com/show/f8udar
[accessed 23 July 2013] "My name is
E.R. and I am from Elbasan. When I was 15, my parents married me, against my
will, to a man aged 35, whom I did not love. So started my miseries. Not too long afterwards, I abandoned him
and returned to my family. But my parents did not accept me back because I
had dishonored them by leaving my husband. I had no support and nowhere to
go. I got acquainted with a boy who was 20 who said he loved me and promised
to marry me. He convinced me to go to Victims' Stories US State Department, Office To Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons, Trafficking in Persons Report 2010 www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/142751.htm [accessed 20 August 2011] TRAFFICKING IN
PERSONS REPORT 2010
- The victims’ testimonies included in this report are meant to be
representative only and do not include all forms of existing trafficking. Any
of these stories could take place anywhere in the world. They illustrate the
many forms of trafficking and the wide variety of places in which trafficking
occurs. Many of the victims’ names have been changed in this report. Most
uncaptioned photographs are not images of confirmed trafficking victims, but
they show the myriad forms of exploitation that define trafficking and the
variety of cultures in which trafficking victims are found. |