TRAFFIC STOP RAILWAY INC.
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A Brief History of Modern Day Slavery
History
Many of us view slavery and involuntary servitude to be like the depressing pictures we imagine from the past where kidnappings, shackled hands and feet, slaves on the auction blocks, and long lines of captives being whipped come to mind.
Although slavery has been outlawed in most countries (in the U.S since 1865), some of these atrocious acts still occur in today's world only with less openess. Trafficking and and the efforts to combat it pretty much remains the same since the 1800s and went unabated until sitting U.S. President Clinton issued the first U.S. Government policy against human trafficking in 1998. Yet even with that policy criminal legislation prohibiting trafficking was slow.
Two years later in 2000 the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) came into being and provided a range of protections and assistance. The TVPA mandated the Department of State to produce a trafficking in persons annual report which assesses the efforts of governments around the world to meet minimum standards to combat trafficking.
Still, two more years passed without prohibitive legislation.
In February 2002, and persuant to the TVPA, President George W. Bush established a cabinet level Intergency Task Force to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons. It included the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor, State, Homeland Security, USAID, and the Office of Management and Budget, whose jobs were to coordinate and implement the Administration's anti-trafficking activities. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons was opened at the Department of State in October 2001 to support the activities of the Task Force.
However the establishment of the Task Force was no "silver bullet" as expected in combating slavery and still did not provide cohesive national legislation that would identify and severely punish slavers as such.
In an era of improved technology it has become much easier for traffickers to move freely and undetected, to prey on the weak and most vulnerable in society: women, children, the poor, and uneducated. Slavers have become much more subtly exploitive and secretive today than at any other period in history, and whose impact to national health, economy, safety, and security is only now being realized.
But even if such quiet subterfuge is used to perpetuate slavery, one can still ask, "how can millions of enslaved people go so unoticed and unknown by the public?" and" what is being done about it?" While not all-inclusive, some of the answers are: (1) because of the perceptions of society as to what slavery is and who its victims are, (2) there's no strongly defined rule of law that emphasizes and legislates the protection of victims and the prosecution of exploiters (suppliers and customers), and (3) lack of publicity.
Perceptions:
Eighteenth and nineteenth century British and American abolitionists finally gave attention to and achieved a ban on slavery. However, that focus was mainly on the Trading and Transportation of slaves rather than being focused on the servitude of the exploitation of people. This mindset coninues to this day. When the focus is on trading and transporting, instead of exploitation (an important key element in slavery), that focus excludes many of slaveries victims who are never "bought", "sold"' or "shipped," but who were tricked, defrauded, coerced, or forced into a form of servitude where the victims suffering and the horrific crimes of perpetrators are never included when one considers slavery and the law.
Misplaced relianced on words such as "consent", "willingness", and "voluntary" to determine enslavement, or lack thereof, does not adquately capture the true definition of modern day trafficking but severly harms and abandons many of its victims. The language used to discuss trafficking should place attention on the other realities characterizing the plight of the enslaved, their lack of legal protection, and especially their definition.
A Definition
The United Nations generally defines trafficking as: "The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person, having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include at a minimum the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery of practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs."
Victims:
Of those who are aware of trafficking in society (and society is the ultimate victim of trafficking), they tend to associate modern slavery with illiterate young girls in India, Thailand, Mexico, and other poor countries. However, poor countries are not the only countries with a slave trade, neither are the enslaved always illiterate or female. In cities such as Paris, London, El Paso, Tallahasee, Chicago, Madrid, and even in a major metropolitian area such as Manhattan, New York, educated college graduates fall prey to traffickers. They can be terrorized by "handlers" for years in brothel-massage parlors, gentlman's clubs, and private homes underground, out of view. They are tricked and/or defrauded by promises of jobs as babysitters, housekeepers, waitresses, dancers, and models - jobs that traffickers quickly turn into the nightmare of commercial sex, forced labor, bondage, and other areas of servitude. Without an exit or help.
Common scenarios in the use of force, fraud, or coercion, and claiming the greatest numbers, are those involving labor. The labor can take place in factories, fields, or private homes, and the violence can be as direct as rape and physical assualt, or phychologically abusive where the victims are not only threatened with violence and death against themselves but that of their families as well. In many cases of foreign-born nationals however, some families give children to adults, often relatives who promise opportunity, but instead sell the children for money. Victims in America include U.S. citizens and legal residents who are primarily used in sexual servitude.
Nonetheless, almost all victims have a common root: they are people in search of a better life, risking much for the slim hope of a better future, made vulnerable because of unemployment, poverty, crime and corruption, political conflict, or cultural acceptance, and subsquentlty subjected to conditions of servitude. But whether their slavery was caused by fraud, coercion, or force, or whether they were initially bought or sold, whether victims are educated or illiterate, human trafficking is a dehumanizing crime that reduces people to commodities.