Last week, this space wrote about the fate of 72 migrant workers from Central and South America whose bodies were found in a remote farmhouse in northeastern Mexico, not far from the U.S. border.  The victims were apparently attempting to cross into the U.S. for work when they ran afoul of a drug gang that attempted to extort money from the group, and then murdered them in cold blood.

We asked the questions: who were these people, and how did they end up dead on the floor of a farmhouse far from their homes and families?

The New York Times has now provided at least some of the answers, in an admirable and detailed account that draws heavily upon the comments of the victims’ loved ones.  It is heart-wrenching reading, but a necessary reminder that there is in this world, amid splendor and plenty, a vast underclass of people who are desperately seeking out a better life, and because of their desperation, they are vulnerable to cruel exploitation — and worse.

Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights said in a report last year that 9,758 migrants were abducted from September 2008 to February 2009. Guatemala said that last year 27,222 of its citizens were deported from the United States and 28,800 from Mexico; Honduras estimates more than 500 of its people leave for the north every day. That’s a snapshot in one corner of the world, of the flow of men, women and children along a lengthy and largely invisible network that seems to exist outside the law, outside society, and outside human compassion.

The story of these migrants is now at the stage when the appropriate government agencies are vowing to address the situation, order up more law enforcement, and renew their commitment to honoring the human rights of even those who are not citizens of their countries. The Mexican government, in light of the massacre, has promised a new strategy to protect migrants, including better coordination among state and federal agencies to dismantle kidnapping gangs and disrupt their finances.

But, paraphrasing actor George Clooney at this week’s Emmy Awards, the proof of progress will be whether — or at all — in three, four or five years time, people on the move in the hopes of a better life actually can reach their destination, alive.

It’s safe to say most people think that prostitution is a woman-only activity.  But news from Spain shows that perversity — and profits to be made from trafficking — can also involve men in prostitution.

According to news accounts, 14 Brazilian men were trafficked into Spain over the past several months to work as prostitutes.  Most were located in the vacation island of Majorca, but the trafficking ring placed the men in apartments all over Spain, moving them repeatedly to stay one step ahead of the police.

The accounts of these male prostitutes contain all the elements of modern-day slavery: the use of force, violence, drugs, impossible debts and no ready means of escape.  Drugs, in fact, play an essential role in sex trafficking, both as a means of control and as a “reward” for service.

How were these men treated? Spanish police offered this vivid and repulsive description:

The sex workers were allegedly provided with Viagra, cocaine and other stimulants to help keep them available for sex 24 hours a day. Most of their customers are suspected to have been men.

Human trafficking is reaching epidemic proportions in Florida, a retired DEA agent claims. But is it?

“I can’t tell you what a major problem it is in this state,” said Tony Attanasio, a retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who created a human trafficking course for law enforcement. “It’s just an unbelievable problem.”

Attanasio, like many others in the human trafficking field, can’t cite actual numbers to prove his assertion.  Still, a spate of trafficking related cases in recent months throughout Florida certainly leaves the impression that the Sunshine State is seeing more than its share of this global crime.

And no wonder.  Geographically, Florida has long been an entry point to the United States for thousands of immigrants — most of them legal, some not — from Central and South America.  For the same reason, police say Florida is a major distribution hub in the worldwide illicit drug trade.  Smuggled aliens also have been found working the fields of the state’s huge agricultural industry.

But whether trafficking is an epidemic in Florida may be stretching things a bit — at least or until more precise data on trafficking crimes is available.  For now, observers and counter-trafficking advocates use a U.S. State Department statistic that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. annually.  In a state with 16 million people, such a number — even if every individual were trafficked into Florida (an absurd calculation),  would constitute no more than a trickle.

All of which reinforces the argument that before progress can be made in attacking human trafficking, law enforcement first needs to have a clear idea about the nature and extent of this very real — but difficult to identify — crime.

A new law in the United Kingdom intended to reduce forced prostitution by going after customers is so far producing little results.

The law prosecutes those who attempt to purchase sex from women who have been forced into prostitution, and was seen by government officials and women rights advocates as a step toward curbing demand for trafficked prostitutes.  But in its first first 15 months, only three men have been “cautioned” for arranging contact with trafficked prostitutes.

Why?

According to government and law enforcement officials quoted in an article in The Guardian newspaper, there are several reasons that have made the new law unsuccessful.  The maximum fine, only 1,000 British pounds, gives police little incentive to see out violators.  But a more fundamental flaw, sources say, is the fact that sex trafficking in the UK may not be as widespread as thought.

A recent survey by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) claimed that at least 2,600 prostitutes working in brothels in England and Wales had been trafficked from abroad. Many lived in debt bondage and were strictly controlled through threats of violence to family members.

The Acpo figures, relating only to off-street prostitution, are lower than previous estimates, the Guardian reports.  A Home Office report in 2003, based on an extrapolation of trafficking in London, estimated that there were 3,812 trafficked prostitutes in England and Wales.

Differences over statistics cause most people’s eyes to glaze over.  But crime data is critically important to human rights organizations and anti-trafficking organizations attempting to make the case that sex trafficking is a growing and widespread issue.  One could argue that few have been prosecuted for seeking sex with trafficked prostitutes because the offense is hardly more than a gentle wrist slap.  Or it could be that the number of prosecutions is so puny because there simply aren’t enough cases.

Either way, how many women are trafficked into prostitution is a question that awaits a definitive answer.

Craigslist, the online classified ad service, continues to draw the ire of woman’s and children’s rights advocates for its “Adult Services” section, which many argue is nothing more than an electronic prostitution solicitation business.

The controversial service still functions, despite a steady barrage of complaints and threatened legal action.  The latest round of criticism comes from the top legal officers of more than a dozen states, including Ohio’s Richard Cordray.  The various state Attorneys General have signed a sharply worded letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark imploring them to shut down the Adult Services section and stop accepting advertisements for sex.  The letter says in part:

“[O]nce an ad goes live on the site, it is a virtual certainty that someone will be victimized.
Yes, the perpetrators may eventually be apprehended and brought to justice, but the victim, assuming she survives, will carry the scars for life. No amount of after-the fact documentation will erase that enduring harm. Equally important, your much-touted “manual review” of Adult Services ads has failed to yield any discernible reduction in obvious solicitations.”

Craigslist executives have challenged the criticisms, claiming, for example, that no one has presented the service with documented law enforcement evidence implicating the advertisers in soliciting prostitution.

In a little over a month, on October 9, the Freedom Center will open a new, permanent exhibition on contemporary forms of slavery and its sordid companion: human trafficking.

The exhibition, entitled “Invisible: Slavery Today,” explores the extent of slavery today, which by some estimates is a global business of exploitation, abuse and oppression involving at least 12 million people trapped in situations where they are subjected to violence, paid hardly anything, and kept isolated from the world around them.

A recurring theme throughout the new exhibition is the mistreatment of women as a root cause of modern slavery.  A majority of trafficking victims are women, for example.  In some cultures, women are assigned a secondary, subservient role, which makes them vulnerable to spousal abuse, political repression and, as the world is witnessing in Afghanistan, horrific torture.  Where women (and, increasingly, girls) are treated as less than equal to their male counterparts, they are often denied basic human rights, prevented from owning property and — not infrequently — sold off by their families into forced marriages, prostitution and slave labor.

This week, the Washington Post published a guest column by Alyse Nelson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vital Voices Global Partnership.  Her column asserts that while women are increasingly driving economic, political and cultural changes around the world, they lag behind in achieving equality in the law, the workplace, and society.

With fewer protections and a pervasive lack of respect, Nelson writes, women are constantly under physical threat.

“. . . only about one third of countries around the world have laws in place to combat violence against women, and in most of these countries those laws are not enforced, well resourced or taken seriously.

Violence against women and girls, in the form of human trafficking, harmful cultural practices, rape as a tactic of war and domestic violence, is one of the single greatest barriers holding women back. A staggering statistic: one out of every three women will be a victim of violence in her lifetime. And the problem is getting worse every year.”

Violence against women is tied to trafficking in several ways.  Traffickers abuse their victims as a method of control.  Spousal or parental abuse also is a factor in driving girls and women out of the home and more vulnerable to the promises of skilled traffickers. Recent studies in Europe also reveal that women — many of them abused or trafficked earlier in their lives — often run trafficking operations for criminal gangs.

The good news, or at least the optimistic view, is that achieving equal status in society (and in the process reducing or eliminating gender-based violence) isn’t a “zero-sum” game for society, Nelson says. No one’s rights need be taken away or diminished to elevate women to equality.  What’s more, she concludes, progress for women means progress for the world.

“If we’re looking to foster shared progress, progress that’s unqualified, sustainable and global,” Nelson says, “we’ve got to invest in womens economic, social and political presence with equal consideration.”

Ohio once again is being cast in an unflattering light for what a national anti-trafficking organization says is the state’s lack of progress in getting tough on trafficking crimes.

Washington-based Polaris Project has listed Ohio as one of 12 states that are not doing enough to combat trafficking.  A major reason for the low rating is the fact that the Buckeye state has so far declined to make trafficking a distinct category of felony crime.  Efforts to enact such a law have been stymied, but Toledo State Senator Teresa Fedor — who’s consistently brought an anti-trafficking proposal to the General Assembly — is hoping that this year, lawmakers will act.

How Men and Boys Can Help Fight Sex Trafficking

Ms. Magazine has a helpful checklist of actions men and boys can take to help stop human trafficking, especially as it involves the exploitation of women and girls.

Sex trafficking of women/girls is one of the fastest growing phenomena of modern-day slavery.  Increasingly, anti-slavery and womens rights advocates are looking at reforms that would attempt to limit or end demand for sex.  Traditionally, in most nations, laws governing sex-related offenses such as prostitution and soliciting for sex fall heaviest on the women themselves.  Penalties for those who operate brothels and work as “pimps” are often less severe. Customers (“johns”) often receive — if anything — a light fine.  The unintended consequence is that demand for sex remains high, since the risk of prosecution of customers is low.

This imbalance is increasingly the focus of anti-trafficking experts.  One place they are looking for data and experience is Sweden, which enacted legislation in 2008 that prescribes harsh penalties for sex customers, while treating the prostitutes more as victims.  Results to date are encouraging; Swedish law enforcement say trafficking into the country has declined sharply as demand has dropped.  Other nations, and several states in America, are evaluating the Swedish model.

The Freedom Blog is starting a new feature, the Human Trafficking Notebook, to let our readers know that human trafficking — the business side of modern-day slavery — is an everyday occurrence somewhere around the world.

The reports are gleaned from a daily scan of newspapers, broadcast media, RSS feeds and internet blog sites that focus on contemporary slavery issues.  Links to the the referenced source will be included.

If you read or hear something about trafficking in your locale, please forward them to me at pbernish@nurfc.org.

We start with a report from the Associated Press about the rescue of 22 women and children from a trafficking ring that had operated in south China for more than two decades.  What’s most noticeable about the report is that the trafficking of the victims occurred inside China.  This is a little known fact about trafficking:  much of it occurs within a country’s borders.

A trafficking case in which the victims were transported internationally comes from Louisiana, according to USA Today.  A class action lawsuit alleges that hundreds of Filipino women recruited to teach in Louisiana schools were instead caught up in a classic example of debt servitude, in which the women were exploited through usurious loans, unsavory living conditions and the extraction of as much as 30% of their salaries.

“It was close to slavery,” said Mary Bauer, lead attorney in the lawsuit set to be filed in federal court in Los Angeles by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Federation of Teachers and the law firm Covington & Burling. “There was fraud on a number of levels here.”

Attorneys for the defendants denied all charges.

The world’s appetite for shrimp — the most popular, by far, seafood item by total sales — shows no signs of abating. Which prompts the question: with Gulf of Mexico shrimpers sidelined at least temporarily because of the BP oil spill, where does the shrimp in your supermarket come from?

For many years, retailers in the U.S. and Europe have sourced shrimp from Southeast Asia, mostly Thailand. Shrimp from Asia is inexpensive, even with transportation costs factored in, and as a result, exports to North America and Europe have been robust.

Shrimp harvesting is labor intensive, and human rights advocates have long questioned whether shrimp processors use children and pay them next to nothing.

Now, author and Harvard fellow Siddharth Kara has provided startling evidence that children are, indeed, working in the shrimp industry in the impoverished nation of Bangladesh.

According to a recent broadcast on CNN, Kara reported about meeting a 12-year-old boy named Abdul laboring away on a rickety boat harvesting baby shrimp. Abdul and other children represent the first step in the long supply chain of shrimp products from the waters of the Kholpetua River to the grocer’s frozen food case.

Children like Abdul will spend most of the day collecting shrimp, Kara reports, then return to shore to sell their catch to the shrimp farmers. “Roughly seven out of ten collectors I counted were children. They make around $0.01 for each baby shrimp they sell,” Kara said.

Kara and other anti-slavery writers assert that the entire Asian shrimp industry is thriving on the backs of men and boys, like Abdul, who work for next to nothing and difficult circumstances.

Portions of the shrimp industry in Bangladesh involve almost every aspect of contemporary forms of labor exploitation: child labor, bonded labor, forced labor, and indirectly human trafficking.

The next time you have a hankering for shrimp, Kara advises, check the package label to see where the product originates. Chances are that if it comes from Bangladesh, it was first harvested by kids.

Ohio Senators Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) and Tim Grendell (R-Chesterland) have introduced legislation that would make human trafficking in Ohio a second-degree felony.  A bi-partisan group of twenty-six senators have co-sponsored the legislation.

Fedor’s office noted that Ohio is one of only seven states lacking felony-level language for human trafficking in-line with federal standards.

“Ohio needs legislation that will attack human trafficking criminal enterprises and put them away for a very long time,”Senator Fedor said. “Children are trafficked within Ohio’s borders every year because the traffickers know our laws are weak.  It is about time Ohio joined the 43 other states with human trafficking laws on the books and let traffickers know – our children are not for sale.”

The bill comes on the heels of a report by the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission, of which Senator Fedor is vice-chairwoman. The report found that over one thousand children are trafficked in Ohio each year, while several thousand more are considered to be at risk.

“Ohio’s Criminal Justice system needs a new tool to fight the growing travesty of human trafficking in our great State. We can not sit by while hundreds of people are victimized every year by what equates to modern day slavery,” said Senator Grendell, the joint sponsor who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

Here’s a copy of the legislation.

Due to the high volume of phone calls & e-mails received concerning the “Playground” screening the NURFC asks for you to send an RSVP to FreedomCenterRSVP@gmail.com to reserve your seat. We have a 300 seat theater and expect this FREE screening to fill up quickly.

The Freedom Center will host a free screening of “Playground,” the shocking undercover documentary film on sex trafficking in America.

The 1 hour-25-minute film will be shown at 6 p.m. on March 11 in the Harriet Tubman Theater.  The screening is free and open to the public, but seating is limited to the first 300 viewers.

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