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 Today it's a bit of a downer report. While travelling, particularly in Second or Third World Countries, you see them everywhere: The girls. Standing on corners. Working in the bars. The friendly Tuk Tuk driver suggests a place you may want to go to enjoy yourself. Have a beer, unwind, relax...and the girls are VERY friendly... Yes, prostitution is the world's oldest profession and it probably has never been anything but ugly, tawdry and about simple, raw survival. If you have any means at all, you wouldn't "choose" it as a way to make money. You are all in high school, eyes set on college, a career, a big life beyond the one you know of studying, playing with friends, watching TV, listening to the iPod, talking on the cell...you know, normal life. What would have had to happen to you to be forced to sell your body to survive? What extraordinary calamity would have had to befall you, your family, "civilization" all around you to be "hoping" someone, anyone, chooses you to pay to have sex with? You are all products of very good fortune that you aren't in that situation nor likely to ever be. But when you have nothing--I mean NOTHING--and the only thing of worth about you is your body (a vagina if you're a girl, muscle and bone to labor if you're a boy)--then the economics of survival is relatively simple. You will be forced to use it. What makes it all even worse are the adults who prey on people who have nothing and because of their own personal greed (THEIR survival instincts), take children who have no clue nor formal education usually, and sell them out to "work" in unspeakably bleak situations where there is NO future. The human trafficking problem is GLOBAL. It is not just here in Cambodia and Asia where it is extremely prevelent. It exists in Eastern Europe, in Central and South America and in so many of the poorest areas of the First World.     There are roughly two hundred million migrants today - migrants being defined as people living outside their homelands. The reasons for this are globalization, and wars, and new border freedoms, and, above all, disparities in economic opportunity. Along the nether edge of the huge movement of people, human trafficking thrives. Migrant smuggling is different from trafficking. Migrants pay smugglers to deliver them, illegally, to their destinations. The line into trafficking is crossed when coercion and fraud are used. (This line is not always clear, and many migrants endure varying degrees of mistreatment.) Trafficking can start with a kidnapping. More commonly, it starts with a broken agreement about a job promised, conditions of work, or one's true destination. Most victims suffer some combination of threats, violence, forced labor, and effective imprisonment. The commercial sex industry absorbs slightly less than half of all trafficked labor worldwide. Construction, agriculture, domestic service, hazardous industries, armed conflict, and begging are some of the other frequent sites of extreme, illegal exploitation.    What makes some of the sex work sickening is that one sees so many Western men use the opportunity for cheap sex. You see these guys with their young girls and it definitely makes you queasy. All over are "girlie bars" where prostitution is completely out in the open. (Prostitution is legal in Cambodia--what is supposed to be illegal is anyone making a profit on the "labor" of another, ie. a pimp or a brothel madam...but it is almost never enforced.) So you can go into one of these places and your bill will look like this: Sandwich $4. Beer $8 Girl $7 Imagine being reduced to an item on a menu? Many of these girls have been coerced or forced into prostitution. Some were "sold" by a family member thinking they were really having some opportunity to work in a factory, others are orphans and then some may actually CHOOSE to become a sex worker because you can make more money with sex than say working sewing for a day or laboring shelling shrimp.    Before I left for Cambodia, I saw a film shot here called HOLLY. It was all about an American who comes to Cambodia and meets a 15-year-old prostitute that has been sold into slavery. It is a heartbreaking film that is extremely well acted and written. There is a powerful ambiguous ending that leaves open some possibility of hope. I will show it in the Cinema Class at some point. Last semester I used the book SOLD by Patricia McCormick with my Ninth Graders. It told the tale of a young girl in rural India who is "sold" by her family into sexual slavery. It is a beautiful, lyrical tale told in first person and is quite heavy and sad. It is a marvelous book to introduce to teenagers that the world isn't always as wonderful as what it appears on High School Musical or Disney. It is very important that students NOT be shielded from the realities of the world and understand that they CAN be part of a solution.     Prostitution has nothing at all to do with sexuality...(okay, scratch that. I can't say nothing because there is certainly an element of that in why the demand exists and its relation to power and fantasy--but Christ, that's another Blurty altogether!)...and prostitution is easier to stomach or argue when it's on a First World level where one makes a conscious decision of choice and free will to enter into it. Here in the Third World where its only poverty, hunger and destitution are the factors, it seems unconscienable. I wonder how the men who pay for sex with minors here can live with themselves KNOWING the girls are people like their mothers, their sisters, their wives, their daughters...and not just a vagina. Their risk of AIDS and STD's sky rockets. Many prostitutes are deemed over-the-hill by the time they're twenty-five. I wonder how people can use young boys for work knowing that they are forever denied an education and will never have an opportunity to break the chain of poverty. It is the basest most cruel form of exploitation there is: Completely robbing someone not only of their current life but making sure there is no chance for anything better. It is a squeeze everything out of this human being now, toss "it" aside, because there is always the next one right there...in front of the next...in front of the next... Desperation and poverty need to be eliminated in order for this scourge to begin to stop. The problem is that those of us who don't have to think about this kind of existence or fear that it will happen to us or our family or kids...well, we usually don't think about it for others.   Sometimes it gets even more grotesque. Both very old women and little kids are trafficked to go into the cities and beg from tourists. Someone gets the largest percentage of their meager earnings and they must do it day in and day out. The boys and girls hustling bootleg copies of Lonely Planet to travellers are also, for the most part, trafficked. Add to it the problem of corruption in many of these country's governments, in their police forces and in the judiciary and sometimes the solution seems very daunting. Often, there seems no escape or justice for these victims that are abused by ALL parts of a system. On the brighter side, there are many organizations that work to stop human trafficking and the plight of the abused is becoming more well known. On the Carson campus, Ms. Weir and the Human Rights Group has made a point on becoming educated and trying to do bring it to the attention of others. That's what you can do now. And keep learning. Be informed. Know that everything in the world affects your life and vice versa. They don't teach you that in elementary and junior high...but now you know. The specifics on Cambodia can be found on this interesting spot with some important videos: http://traffickingproject.blogspot.com/search/label/Cambodia So, now that you know, keep it in the back of your mind. One day you may be in a position to help.  Post a comment in response: |
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