Students with One Voice
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exposing slavery student to studentAcross the country students are standing as One Voice against slavery. These students are creating opportunities to bring awareness and mobilize other students about issues of the modern day slave trade. You will find information compiled by students, papers, events, and other efforts that help educate their peers. If you would like share your research, ideas, campus events, and any other abolition effort, please send it to us so we can add to the VOICE..
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Classroom Efforts
Kyra:
10th grader
Typically students are taught in-depth about the slave trade during some point in their education. They learn about the abolitionists and the long fight to end slavery. What is not taught in school is that slavery is still very prevalent today. According to the U.S. State department around 27 million people are currently slaves. That number is greater than the amount of slaves taken from Africa throughout three-hundred years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (Hendricks 20). Schools may choose not to teach this because they deem it irrelevant or maybe the schools themselves are unaware of these statistics. People like DJ, in India, and Thaldee, in Thailand, cannot just pretend it is nonexistent, because they have lived through the torture and have to face remembering their past everyday. DJ and Thaldee were both only fourteen when sold into slavery (Hendricks 19; Stearman 38). DJ said she “witnessed horrible things, from people being tortured and murdered to seeing children locked in boxes, all in an effort to keep the slaves in line” (19).The two girls were both forced prostitutes and Thaldee may still be one (19; 38). She has said she could probably escape from her position but wants to go back to her family (who gave her to her brothel in the beginning) with money, so she does not leave. At the same time though, she is not being paid for her agonizing work while staying (38). These are only two examples of real people who have experienced the realities of human trafficking. In truth there are still millions more trapped and bonded all over the world. It is mind boggling that these terrible things can happen to people even with all of the laws banning these awful practices. They still continue to take place nonetheless, and there are many explanations as to why. To name the main reasons why human trafficking is not being ended, there are the many advantages people find from being involved in it and the perspectives different cultures have on the issue.
A major reason people can benefit from human trafficking is financial. The practice brings in an enormous amount of cash for dealers and typically anyone in charge. Thaldee thinks her family may have known she was going to be forced into a brothel. Families put their children in the traffic regardless of what the Thai government and campaigning groups warn about the industry of sex trading and trafficking because of the high financial rewards (Stearman 39). They do not necessarily support human enslavement but they may find it to be their only means of obtaining income. When jobs are low and people are starving it seems to them as being the only option. There are people in the market always ready to prey off of families with this problem. It can be inferred that “As long as families are poor and girls are less valued than boys, greedy and unscrupulous people will be prepared to continue the traffic” (37). Thaldee’s owner even went as far as telling her that she could leave if she could pay off her debt to him, which meant repaying any money that he had ever spent on her clothes and food. It is ridiculous that the owners of slaves are even creating rules to get money from their own bonded workers who do not get paid by anyone (39).
Along with the inflow of money coming from trafficking, people may find it useful for the drugs. DJ’s slave master found out she was a U.S. citizen so he immediately used her to smuggle drugs into America. He had her swallow eighty-six drug-filled balloons. Another slave came with her and a balloon burst inside of her on the flight. She became very sick and at any time it could have happened to DJ as well (Hendricks 19). Slave masters see their workers as owned property. They use them for whatever they want to fill their selfish desires. In this instance it was DJ’s life put at jeopardy, but she is not the only one being maltreated.
An entire country maltreated its people because of the benefits the government received, by doing this. To understand what that means try to imagine a world where when a person is treated like a slave they cannot run to the authorities for help. That world is real and is called Burma. It is ruled by a military dictatorship which used its own people as slaves to improve tourism (Stearman 48). The army, called Tatmadaw, forced its people to work on transportation and communications. The people had to build airports, dams, roads, railroad lines, and power plants without receiving any kind of pay. Tatmadaw made its forced laborers provide their own food as well (49-50). The army treats them terribly by beating, raping, and torturing them and if the people try to escape they are killed. Burma’s government benefits heavily from this human trafficking because the country itself is practically bankrupt and by using their people they get free labor (49). This country would not want human trafficking to end let alone try to stop it.
Beyond a world where people cannot go to the authorities for help there is also a world where people cannot expect to be saved by hospitals because, alas, they are working for their own good as well. As punishment for not obeying her master, DJ had her ovaries harvested in a surgery with no anesthesia. DJ knows that if surgeries like hers are being performed, “‘doctors are involved, surgeons are involved, hospitals are involved’ in assisting with human trafficking” (Hendricks 19). This girl could not even find help from people who are trained to help others. According to the article “A Modern-Day Slave”, “Slave masters even benefit from the insubordinate slaves they kill. Organs from those slaves can be harvested and sold on the black market” (20). Hospitals are receiving cheep organs without worries about damaging a patient, because they are either slaves (considered nothing) or dead workers, which they are taking transplants from. One man that would be involved in doing organ operations is Dr. Zaki Shapira. Even when this man got in trouble by the Cotev Commission for working as an outlaw transplant surgeon, he continued practicing but overseas instead, in places like Turkey and Eastern Europe (Scheper-Hughes).
Surgeons and doctors work with human trafficking for the organs, body parts, and money, but in Thailand their reasons are spurred on by a completely different perspective of illegal trafficking. For most people in America, shame is a reason to not hurt others. In Thailand this accepted idea from America does not work. It does not work because this idea is not executed at all. In Thai culture “owning a brothel that holds young girls in bondage is simply a business matter” (Bales 50). People in Thailand say of brothel owners that “In spite of the character of their work they are well respected. Seen as job providers and sources of large cash payments to parents, they are well known in their communities” (49). The policy in Thai culture is called “Yaa Suek”, meaning they are to mind their own business. Neighbors stay out of personal affairs of others and respect brothel owners and dealers for being successful businessmen and ignore the particulars of their practices (50). Other brokers, short-term slaveholders, are not being stopped because they are trusted by the public. They deal girls along with their jobs as government bureaucrats, police officers, or schoolteachers, so communities are unaware of their second lives. The dealers can even be women or former prostitutes who earn money by continuing the process (49). When government, police, and local authorities, have the power to end crimes of sexual slavery, they may be the people who choose to do the opposite by instead helping it to grow (48).
In Thailand besides the acceptance of brothel owners, there is also an acceptance of prostitution keeping human trafficking alive (Bales 46). Men accept prostitutes for a number of reasons. If they are out drinking someone could take the tab to impress the others in the group. Then the group may go on to a brothel and the host may pay for a girl for himself and one for his company as well. Because it costs the host money, the friends will accept the girl so they will not be wasting the host’s money. Men may also provide or accept prostitutes in business for negotiations in part of a bargaining scheme. To most Thais, using women in business is an essential to continue and prosper in a job (47). Using commercial sex can also be accepted as part of conflict avoidance. Instead of disagreement or embarrassment, prostitution is just accepted because of Thai culture (48). Even the women may accept their husbands going to prostitutes because they would rather that than their husbands having a second wife. If a husband uses a prostitute it means there will not be a commitment and the wives generally accept men’s desire to want to be with more than one woman (46). In this way women in Thailand are nonchalantly supporting human trafficking.
Abdel Nasser Ould Yessa grew up as a slave owner and had another new point of view on slaves when he was young. In his own words in “Amazing Grace” he said, “It might sound appalling but as a young boy I considered ownership of another human being not only my right, but an obligation to the slave. After all, I saw the slaves as stupid and helpless. What could they do besides serve” (Yessa 179)? In the camp he lived in, the people thought slaves were necessary to keep everything functioning (182). They thought that was a slave’s purpose and because of the generations of their caste system, the slaves accepted this idea as well (180). Abdel also said that, because of his role of master over the workers, he saw he was protecting the slaves from themselves. If he let them go they would likely go in the desert and die (179). He never thought during his childhood that he belonged to an unjust society, at least until he started reading The Anthology of French Constitutions and realized all men should be free including the slaves (179, 200-205). Abdel’s camp in Mauritania thought he was crazy for thinking the slaves should be free and even the slaves themselves agreed (202-205). The slavery in his camp was not being stopped because people thought God’s purpose for the slaves was for them to be nothing more than slaves (203).
There are so many stories of people all over the world who have been beaten and battered wondering if they’ll live another day or even hour. Sometimes they are never given a chance to speak out, and sometimes they are just never heard, but other times they are not even aware that they are living in a situation they can change, such as in the case of Abdel’s slaves who thought they were meant to be nothing other than servants (Yessa 203). As long as people are gaining so much from human trafficking though, it will continue by self-centered people who have put aside their concerns for the slaves. The benefits are so high the people view the benefits as outweighing any risks involved. Especially in cases where the police are the people doing the dirty work, dealers do not have much to fear pertaining to consequences. They have mastered the art at hiding their businesses, but in places like Thailand they don’t even have to hide because it is so accepted (Bales 47). Human trafficking will definitely not be ended when it is not even recognized as existing.