Holiday Charity

[OnTheWay]

Being as this is traditionally a time when charity giving and work is on an upswing I wanted to bring up a topic that affects many Orthodox countries and is generally ignored or swept under the table in the west. That is the international problem of human trafficking. Every year somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 men, women, and children are trafficked. Men ususally into forced labor details, women into forced labor or sex slavery, and children usually into sex slavery. From the biggest source in descending order Asia, Africa (mainly Muslim Africa), easter/central Europe, and Latin America are the major producers of slaves. However, there have been no few cases of western European and American victims.
Cultural issues in Asia and northern Africa make it difficult to deal with the problem there. Generally, the selling of women and children isn't regarded as much of an issue and in some cases it's not even illegal. Men and women in eastern/central Europe and Latin America are usally plied with the promise of unreasonable level of wages/visas in western Europe and North America for various non-sexual jobs.
I would encourage everyone to get involved in some way. I am happy that the nations of central and eastern Europe have cracked down the the problem a lot, but there's still a lot to be done. There are a few NGO's like the Polaris Project that help victims of human trafficking get home and get the pyschological help them need, so finical support to such NGO's is always a good thing. Last summer I volunteered with some westerns and volunteers from a few parishes in Russia just handling out flyers warning that when newspaper ads promise things too good to be true odds are it's forced prostitution.
The big thing we can all do right here home is lobby for tougher anti-prostution laws. Sweden provides a good example in that traditionally the law has targeted the provider more than the customer. The sex industry is an industry like any other, and the best way to kill it is to take out the demand. If soliciting was made a felony offense punished with mandatory jail time and heavy fines we would go a long way to combating the problem of both prostitution and the slave trade. Last, but cerainly not least, prayer never fails to help.

It's funny in a revolting way to listen to people talk about how one day man will create our own little paradise right here and we don't need God to do it. Here we are in the 21st century and we have a slave trade that goes on which would make pagan Romans envy our efficiency.

[Annoula]

thanx for bringing up this issue.

in Greece we had a big problem with young children from former eastern countries the so called "children of the traffic lights" because they would be near the traffic lights selling handkerchies (spelling?) or cleaning the windscreen. before the Olympics last summer they dissapeared. i don't know where they went...

there are still not many children of the "traffic lights" around, but i really don't know where these children have gone.

there is child-forced prostitution in Greece, but as i have heard in a radio show some weeks ago, it is considered to be less compared to other european countries.


may God protect these slave children, women and men ... and may He guide us in acting in such ways that will limit and eliminate this disgrace.

God bless and mercy on us all.

[OnTheWay]

thanx for bringing up this issue.

in Greece we had a big problem with young children from former eastern countries the so called "children of the traffic lights" because they would be near the traffic lights selling handkerchies (spelling?) or cleaning the windscreen. before the Olympics last summer they dissapeared. i don't know where they went...

there are still not many children of the "traffic lights" around, but i really don't know where these children have gone.

there is child-forced prostitution in Greece, but as i have heard in a radio show some weeks ago, it is considered to be less compared to other european countries.


may God protect these slave children, women and men ... and may He guide us in acting in such ways that will limit and eliminate this disgrace.

God bless and mercy on us all.

They were probably just put on busses and dumped in other cities. I know it's fairly common in American cities when the games are held in the US to take the homeless population and simply move them somewhere else.
Wouldn't want anyone to see anything unslightly would we?

Really this has to bring the entire debate about legalized prostitution to the forefront. A lot of people for some reason come to the conclusion that if it is legal somehow it loses it's immoral nature. The truth is that the state just becomes a secondary pimp.
I have to say Germany has a shameful record of turning a blind eye to the international trafficking problem when it involves legal brothels because the state is making money from them. However, while the German authorities can't seem to do more to control the trafficking they have a profound ability to locate and take down illegal brothels. Of course, the state gets no taxes from those.
It's a rather shameful situation all around the world however. I guess at the very least the governments of eastern Europe have stepped up and at least put laws on the book making trafficking a serious crime.
However, in much of Asia (speifically places like Thailand) were westerns come to have sex tours with Asian women it's largely tolerated, if it's illegal at all. Across Japan, China, and southeast Asia nearly 1 million Asian woman and children are sex slaves.

[Wiffey]

This is a horrifying problem, epic in scope. We need to make this a priority within our own borders (there are women and children trafficked within the US, many of them smuggled in). We need to make soliciting prostitution a serious crime with jail time. We also need to affect the global exploitation of women & children by putting all the countries who tolerate these activities on a no-trade list. We could also make it illegal for Americans tourists to travel to countries where these things are allowed. Imagine if we could arrest some of these sex tourists as soon as they set foot back in the States? It would go a long way towards reducing the clientele...

[OnTheWay]

This is a horrifying problem, epic in scope. We need to make this a priority within our own borders (there are women and children trafficked within the US, many of them smuggled in). We need to make soliciting prostitution a serious crime with jail time. We also need to affect the global exploitation of women & children by putting all the countries who tolerate these activities on a no-trade list. We could also make it illegal for Americans tourists to travel to countries where these things are allowed. Imagine if we could arrest some of these sex tourists as soon as they set foot back in the States? It would go a long way towards reducing the clientele...

You got it, controling demand is more effective and easier than controling supply.
Another area where governments need to get involved in mail order brides. The eastern European market is still there, but it's always been limited in size. Also restrictions that we place on individuals from European getting visas act as something of fail safe in addition to the fact that most eastern/central European women know that a fiance visa is not the same thing as a tourist visa. On the other hand the Asian market has just exploded in size. Asian women are much cheaper to get and generally their cultural background appeals more to the kind of person that wants to buy a wife. This leads to traffickers using these services to attact women here thinking they're meeting a husband and in reality they're going to end up as sex slaves.