May – 2008 – Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery

Archive for May, 2008

Cambodia Trip visit to Hagar

May 31, 2008 Posted by Allison Trowbridge

These girls are beautiful. Vietnamese. Cambodian. Raven hair, olive eyes. From eight years old to mid-teens. Spunky, graceful, delicate. Each one glowing from the inside out. These girls are full of life, energy, excitement, joy.

These girls are survivors of brutal sex crimes. Some were rescued from trafficking, where adults sold their tiny bodies daily to the highest bidder. Some were auctioned by their parents to locals who believe sex with a virgin can shield them from HIV. Others lived in homes where mom, desperate for extra income, allowed ravenous men to visit them and their sisters regularly.

I can’t express the rage, the heartbreak, I feel at the thought of what men could do to these beautiful girls. It wrenches me, beyond what I’ve ever experienced, to comprehend the human capacity for evil.

And in the midst of this, hope.

The shelter at Hagar, which these girls now call home, reaches out to the poorest and most destitute women and girls in Cambodia. Our visit there this week was nothing shy of riveting. This children’s shelter is only one facet of their remarkable programs and business initiatives. The girls receive holistic counseling and intensive schooling, positioning them towards a promising future. For as dark as their pasts are, these girls will end up leagues ahead of their Cambodian peers with the care they now receive. Today, they are the blessed ones.

The Kids of Myanmar

May 30, 2008 Posted by David Batstone

Myanmar The 12-year old Burmese girl was glued to the television set. Being from a rural village in Myanmar, she was spellbound by the Thai equivalent of an MTV rave broadcast. I’ve seen that absorbed fascination from a child, a TV-induced trance. In this instance, the young girl finds it a comforting escape until someone taps her on the shoulder and directs her to take an adult client into the backroom.

This scene from a child brothel in Myanmar will be etched in my memory for some time. Three of us from Not For Sale passed into Myanmar today to observe the trafficking of young children for forced labor. We visited two brothels and frankly did not see one “worker” over the age of 18 years old. A boy who looked about eight years old was dangled in the doorway of yet another brothel in a dilapidated karaoke bar strip. Most of the kids come from impoverished hill tribe villages – some sold, others abducted.

Myanmar This area of Myanmar is awash in opium – intel has it that the Myanmar generals deal directly in opium sales to fund their illegitimate government. In a cynical effort at face saving, the government has posted signs in the district for the people to stay “drug free.” I suppose they look at opium as a cash export crop not to be consumed by the general population. Unfortunately, locals do imbibe, and many of the trafficked children we encounter had served as chattel to barter for money for opium.

We pass through the border in Mae Sai and do not encounter any resistance. The cyclone-affected area of Myanmar is far to the south. Stories are awash of refugees on the move, though very few would seek to enter into Thailand from this border. They head to a more desolate stretch of mountainous border on Myanmar’s eastern flank. But the destitution we witness in this northern region confirms that the Burmese live on the edge of existence without the cyclone’s destruction. In terms of supply and demand, the Burmese peasants offer traffickers a glut of potential targets. And the demand for free labor in global markets, be it illicit or licit commerce, at this point faces few restrictions. We need to alter the supply-demand equation, even if in small increments. For each increment translates into tens of thousands of lives.

Safe House for Burmese Trafficking Survivors

May 29, 2008 Posted by David Batstone

Burmese Safe House It’s hard to use the word “fortunate” in the same sentence as Myanmar at the moment. I don’t know if you saw the picture on the front page of The New York Times this week of a seemingly endless line of Burmese sitting along the side of the road praying, hoping for any morsel of food. Though I admit to being desensitized to most media reports on suffering a world away, this image kicked me in the gut.

Nonetheless, despite my reluctance, I’d have to say we were indeed fortunate to have started the construction of a safe house for Burmese trafficking survivors nearly six weeks before the cyclone hit. Our Thai partner, Kru Nam, had asked us to help her build a facility autonomous from the Buddies Along the Roadside village for children. We did not have all the funds in hand, but like most of our Not For Sale ventures, we embarked on faith that the funds will come.

So it was a thrill to visit the safe house today and watch it near completion. Our constituency has shown extraordinary generosity not only to construct the building (a big tip of the hat to Bob Squeri and his One Child at a Time foundation) but also to raise the funds to keep it functioning. By mid-June Kru Nam hopes to begin taking in the most high-risk children and women. The safe house lies adjacent to the Golden Triangle region, near the Myanmar border town of Mae Sai. Not many families from the cyclone-afflicted region are passing through this border at the moment, above all because it is a highly guarded border crossing. Kru Nam is in touch with some of the remote hill tribes which lie along the remote, western border of Thailand. There the mountainous passes connecting to Myanmar are safer. Kru Nam has word out to her network to watch out for abandoned or obviously exploited kids.

What we know for sure is that there is now a huge vulnerable population in Myanmar. Save the Children recorded a case in Rangoon just a week or so ago that orphaned kids are being targeted by suspected traffickers. As time goes on, the people in that region without food, work, school, hope for a future will for sure be potential human trafficking victims. It is likely that many of those trafficked in the cyclone region also will pass through a southern route to Phuket or Bangkok or perhaps through Mae Sot or Kanchanaburi. Recently in the news you would have seen Burmese illegal workers that died in the back of a truck coming through this southern route.

Maybe it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the depth of the tragedy. But I’m here on the ground on the Myanmar-Thai border, and I can tell you that your prayers and gifts are an oasis of hope.

Adventure in Cambodia

May 29, 2008 Posted by Allison Trowbridge

The crew of the Westmont Cambodia Immersion Trip has safely arrived in Phnom Penh, the largest city in north-central Cambodia. The past four days in the southern city of Siem Reap were nothing short of remarkable.

Our trip has begun with such a solid base of cultural experience and integration. We are being exposed to all of the beauties and tragedies of modern Cambodian life. It has been less than a decade that the country has been free from the fear and devastation of continual war. In the 70’s, a civil war debilitated the entire country — what is called the Khmer Rouge genocide. Cambodians of the Khmer Rouge brutally killed the entire educated Cambodian class, and anyone critical of their political aims. Yesterday we visited a children’s hospital, free to all, that prides itself on being a teaching and training center. After the devastation of the genocide, 40 doctors were left in the whole country. I can’t even begin to imagine the state the of an entire country in that situation.

Lauren Salaun, in our group, describes this history so well!

Pol Pot’s regime wiped out 2 million Cambodian people—the educated were targeted, while children were used as spies, soldiers, and sex slaves. Because so many of the older generation were killed, more than 50% of the current Cambodian people are under 18 years old. The Khmer Rouge really did an excelled job crippling the nation—murdering professors, teachers, doctors, and anyone else with any education. It would be hard enough to recover from years of war, but a regime that only left children, the poor, and the uneducated? The horrors of the Khmer Rouge aren’t even really taught in school and it’s still not ok to talk openly about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, because, as our guides have told us, you don’t even know if your neighbor was former Khmer Rouge.

Today, it’s difficult for many of the people – especially in rural areas – to live beyond today. We are so focused on the future, for ourselves and our children, in the US. When the adults are only thinking of whether they’ll make it to tomorrow, the situation in debilitating.

I have been astounded by the rich culture, traditions and history here. One of the highlights our first day was visiting one of the Seven Wonders of the World — Angkor Wat (built in the 12th c). In a single day we visited four elaborate temples. The local claim-to-fame is Angelina Jolie’s stint at the temples to film “Tomb Raider.”

Here are just a few of our adventure highlights….!

Playing with wild monkeys on the roadside, eating large spindly BBQ’d crickets in the country, riding in tuk-tuks, fruit parties on the bus, seeing a floating village (all houses literally floating!) with locals that would paddle up to our boat carrying sodas for sale and humongous snakes, herds of crocodiles kept under a floating restaurant, wild marketplaces, a woman with tarantulas on her shirt (just for attention’s sake!), traditional Khmer dance performances, and the best moment of all…being caught a tropical thunderstorm and getting lost in the middle of the most beautiful, exotic temple ruins I’ve ever seen.

It’s nearing midnight here. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby in Phnom Penh, watching beautiful Asian women escort men from the elevator out to the ominous red glow of the brothel across the street. The sign outside offers room stays as cheap as $5. As we move further into our time here, the reality of the sex industry is going to become more and more of . . . a reality. Being so near to it simultaneously fills me with rage, and breaks my heart.

Rescuing Burmese Children

May 28, 2008 Posted by David Batstone

Kru Nam Kids There I am in a van with two children fast asleep on the seat, the kids sandwiched between myself and the Thai abolitionist Kru Nam. We are driving back from the border town of Mae Sai where a narrow river and a simple bridge are all that segregates Thailand from Myanmar. One boy, one girl, both Burmese, have just escaped hell. I feel privileged to be a part of the experience.

The girl, Pim, is eight years old. Her Burmese mother forces her to go to the border bridge every day to beg for money.

The mom is addicted to opium which grows widely in the Golden Triangle region. The mother tells Pim not to come home unless she comes back with 300 baht (roughly $10). With local events in Myanmar already depressing the low tourist season, finding willing donors is tough business. Kru Nam hears through the street grapevine that the mother is looking to sell Pim.

When she tracks the mom down, Kru Nam makes an offer. “I’ll give you 500 baht if you let Pim come live with me at our children’s village.” The mother agrees, and Pim now sleeps peacefully, cradled into Kru Nam’s arm in our van.

The boy next to me, Kho, is 11. Two years ago he was trafficked into Thailand for child labor. He escaped and found refuge at Buddies Along the Roadside, Kru Nam’s village. You can watch a video of the history of the village. His Burmese family made contact and demanded that Kho come back home, and Kru Nam happily complied with their request to reunite Kho with his family. Two months have passed, and we ran into Kho in the streets of Mae Sai today. He begged Kru Nam to return to Buddies. His family is forcing him to sell drugs – primarily ice and amphetamines – on each side of the border. When kids are caught selling drugs, the police treat them lightly. Adults, on the other hand, will be sentenced to long prison terms. So many adults use kids as their drug peddlers. Kho has spent two years in school and living with a community of hope. He is now on his way back home.

Two children tell the story of children for sale more powerfully than any set of statistics I could offer.
Once again, my heart is broken.

Hill Tribe Villages of Northern Thailand

May 25, 2008 Posted by David Batstone

Thai Elephant I guess it was about halfway up the mountain atop my elephant that I realized that I was no longer in Kansas. I am traveling with a group of my University of San Francisco students this week, and our goal today was to reach a tribal Acha village high in the Thai mountains. The roads are impassable, and in the extreme heat I feared we might lose half of the students (and more likely the professor!) to heat stroke. So we rode elephants. Remarkable how these enormous beasts are so adept at keeping their balance and placing their feet in the right place.

The hill tribe people are the most trafficked native population in Thailand. They live on the edge of sustenance, with agriculture and animal grazing a marginal source of family income. Our partner here in the hill tribe area is called The Mirror Foundation, founded nearly two decades ago by a group of Thai university students. We will be collaborating with them to bring education to primary schools, using theater and music to share the signs of trafficking behavior. We also will start marketing in our Freedom Stores some of the products that they make in the villages.

When our elephant caravan reached the top of the mountain, we met a village of about 200 people. The school barely has enough resources to survive, and one teacher tries to tend to 51 children of all ages. It takes only $3600 to pay the salary of a teacher for an entire year and give him/her the supplies needed for classroom teaching. Can you imagine the impact on so many children’s lives, only for $3600 year?!

Our guide from the Mirror Foundation laments that teenagers see no future in the hill tribe villages. They go to the city looking for work, and there traffickers seek the advantage. Undermining trafficking means bringing justice, economic justice as well as legal justice. Where there is no justice, the poor will be exploited. Every day, everywhere.

All Hands On Deck

May 13, 2008 Posted by Allison Trowbridge

In a recent article Nicholas Kristof the New York Times raises a point of conversation that we’ve seen in action throughout the Not for Sale network; backyard abolitionists, including students of all backgrounds, collaborating to combat modern-day slavery. This is a perfect example of the the under-pinning ideal of the Not for Sale Campaign: open-source activism.

College students used to be the activists, but increasingly they’re joined by high school pupils and even younger children. The spotlight may be on billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates, but one of the country’s healthier trends has been the rise of piggy-bank philanthropists.

-Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

Over the past year high school students from Pasadena to Atlanta have taken up the cause of freedom by wearing and displaying their orange (the color of freedom), holding freedom dances, Free to Play games, and joining Not for Sale on Facebook.

If you’re interested in learning more about what your high school can do download our High School Toolkit and Curriculum Guide

If your school has held a freedom program let us know by posting a comment below.

The Countertraffickers

May 13, 2008 Posted by Allison Trowbridge

The New Yorker reports on modern-day abolitionist

Stella Rotaru’s cell-phone number is scribbled on the wall of a women’s jail in Dubai. That’s what a former inmate told her, and Rotaru does get a lot of calls from Dubai, including some from jail.

But she gets calls from many odd places—as well as faxes, e-mails, and text messages—pretty much non-stop. “I never switch off my phone,” she said. “I cannot afford to, morally.” She looked at her battered cell phone, which has pale-gold paint peeling off it, and gave a small laugh…

Read the story of Stella, a modern-day abolitionist, in the latest edition of “The New Yorker.”

Update from Not For Sale Georgia

May 8, 2008 Posted by Allison Trowbridge

The Peach State is turning Orange!

NFS State Directors Mark & Keisha Hoerrner give us their remarkable update on the anti-trafficking movement in Gerogia.

It’s been a very busy time here at the NFS Georgia campaign. We started our mapping project with students from Kennesaw State and are working to bring in other student groups from UGA, GSU, GC&SU, Emory, Ga. Tech and other local schools.

In addition, we have been putting together a day-long summit on human trafficking.

We’ve been meeting and networking with state and federal law enforcement, state and federal government agencies, and with partners from the Georgia Rescue & Restore coalition.

We have been assisting the national campaign with finalizing many of the documents we are making available to the public at no charge. We’re working to put together a logical framework for a statewide annual report on human trafficking and slavery. We’re authoring a handbook for starting community coalitions. We’re examining international trafficking data in order to produce groundbreaking research on human trafficking statistics and the environmental effects of trafficking on a community.

This is not to brag about how tired we are but how committed we are to ensuring that the scourge of human trafficking is eliminated in our lifetime. We can’t do it alone. We need you. We’re seeing some great things happen – such as the recent arrests in China at the same time our local law enforcement is busting up forced labor rings here in Georgia. But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article also brought to light that as soon as six different illegal employment agencies were brought down, two new agencies had opened their doors to do the same business. This only underlines the need for constant vigilance and the need for organizations like NFS to exist.