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Joanna, 15, sat in the dim restaurant weeping, her
shoulders shook, she dabbed her eyes to wipe away the flowing tears
with tissues. Were they tears of joy at being rescued from her cruel
and vicious captors or was it emotional release of pentup fear and
stress that she endured in the dark room at the back of a sex bar in
Angeles City? She sobbed out her story, it was her time and place,
late at night and no one there. They took me from my home in Samar,
gave a down payment to my mother and promised me a good job. I was
never paid as a hotel cleaner and when I went to the manager he
raped me. She cried all the louder at the terrifying memory as she
tried to fight him off but was overpowered. Then she was thrown out
to work in the sex bar, forced into cubicles to do sexual acts on
obese foreign sex tourists that queued up to get sexual
gratification from a child young enough to be their granddaughter.
That lasted until we had a tip-off and went to the rescue and paid
her bar fine, the price of freedom to get her out to safety. Joanna
is now a college graduate and working as a social worker. She
recovered but only barely and could have died of disease.
The recruitment and selling of
human persons into slave-like conditions has become the third
biggest illegal trade in the world after drugs and illegal arms
sales. According to the Council of Europe, it has an annual market
of $43 billion of women and children and most of the young women are
forced into prostitution, over a million, it is estimated, are
children. Human trafficking of children is a crime against humanity,
a form of enslavement. According to the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court which celebrates its 15th anniversary
this May, Article 7(2) (c) recognizes that children as a special
group are in grave danger of this horrific crime of trafficking
because it involves the domination and the power of ownership over
the child. Millions of children have been victims of unimaginable
atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity, the statute
declares. The purveyors of genocide and ethnic cleansing and other
unspeakable crimes must be made to understand that as surely as the
sun rises, they will be called to account—and that impunity will
not stand, Carol Bellamy of Unicef said, making clear the purpose of
the International Criminal Court.
And yet thousands of young women
and children are sold into slavery every month all over the world.
The rich developed nations are the source of demand and pay the
higher prices for the trafficked persons. In the UK there are as
many as 5,000 trafficked women in the sex-slave trade today. Private
charities put the figure much higher. Police say they are only
seeing the tip of the iceberg. Earlier this month in Southampton,
the Guild Hall was filled with an audience wanting to know more as
they watched the Preda Akbay youth theatre group from the
Philippines present its musical drama Once there was a dream telling
the awful truth of the pain and exploitation of trafficked children
.The production that played to full houses was supported by the
Medaille Trust, a Catholic charity funded by religious and other
church groups fighting to end trafficking in the UK and help the
victims.
What is so appalling is the
impunity that goes with these crimes. In Asian countries, like the
Philippines, local politicians, and foreigner criminals run the sex
industry. They are above the law and the corruption reaches to the
highest level of political and economic power. That is why the
government has only been able to get ten convictions in the last
several years. These traffickers at the highest level must be held
accountable and made to pay the price for destroying the lives for
countless women and children. They ought to be brought to justice at
the International Criminal Court.
preda@info.com.ph
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