Chapter Scars Across Humanity Posting 10
Chapter 7 Money Sex and Violence: Trafficking and prostitution
Sexual exploitation eroticizes women’s inequality and is a vehicle for racism and ‘first world’ domination, disproportionately victimizing minority and ‘third world’ women. Women’s support project
We, the survivors of prostitution and trafficking gathered at this press conference today, declare that prostitution is violence against women. Manifesto, joint press conference for Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and the European Women’s Lobby (CATW–EWL), 2005
Former comfort women who served the Japanese Army as sexual slaves during World War II, shout a slogan in a rally before Korean Liberation Day of Aug. 15, which marks the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945, in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009. They demanded from the Japanese government an official apology and financial compensation.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
In northern Vietnam, trafficking has become so acute that communities say they are living in fear. ‘I worry so much about it, as do all the mothers in the villages, but it has happened to a lot of girls already,’ said Phan Pa May, a community elder from the Red Dao ethnic minority group. ‘. . . I’m worried about my grand- daughter. We always ask where she is going, and tell her not to talk on the phone or trust anyone.’ Activists working to combat trafficking in Vietnam said police and authorities take the problem ‘very seriously’.
Human trafficking was once called slavery. Abolitionists exposed the sheer injustice and atrocity of taking people from their own communities by coercion and force, and transporting them to distant places to work without freedom, for the benefit of others. The conditions of slavery were appalling; the ill-treatment, brutality, deprivations and harsh punishments were dehumanizing.
Today, 200 years after slavery was abolished, human trafficking is again part of the global landscape.
Read more in Scars Across Humanity. It can be ordered: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scars-Across-Humanity-Understanding-Overcoming/dp/0281075085
This will be a final posting of excerpts for now. There are 6 more chapters, but a range of speaking takes over from here!
