Mar 11 2008

An evil that we don’t hear about

Posted by Neocon in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Immigration, Republicans, Terrorism, human trafficking

(via Powerline) I remain convinced that one of the most powerful underreported evils out there is the continued trafficking of human beings across the globe. This is a constant evil that is given its proper name in the new book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-face with Modern-Day Slavery. Here is a short synopsis from the author:

There are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history, and A Crime So Monstrous is their story, in full color. For four years, I traveled in over a dozen countries, talking to slaves, traffickers and liberators, going undercover when necessary in order to infiltrate slave trading networks.

The book is a record of evil. I witnessed the sale of human beings on four continents, once being offered a suicidal, mentally handicapped young woman as a sex slave in exchange for a used car.

But it is also a story of survival. A young man in Sudan escapes slavery in the Muslim north, finds Christ, and frees his mother and sisters. A Haitian girl is freed when two Americans of sterling conscience discover her domestic bondage in a suburban Miami home.

And it is a living history of quiet heroism. John Miller, a former Republican congressman appointed to be America’s antislavery czar, zealously cajoled foreign governments—friends and foes alike—to bear their responsibility and free their slaves. At the same time, he battled State Department elites in an attempt to convince them that abolition mattered. Thanks to his efforts, the Bush Administration can boast of the most aggressive antislavery record since Lincoln.

The research quickly shattered many of my internationalist preconceptions. Global abolition is part of the UN mandate. But the UN Human Rights Commission cottoned to genocidal regimes like Khartoum that demanded it expunge the word “slavery” from its lexicon, and certain UN peacekeepers actually participated in the slave trade in countries like Eritrea and Cambodia.

My research also reinforced a belief: the pillars of America—faith, the free market, and the inherent nature of human liberty—are also universal ideals, and they are the keys to ending slavery worldwide.

We Americans go about our daily lives not understanding just how amazing this country is or how impressive our freedoms truly are. Usually there’s nothing really wrong with that because it is the great depth of our freedoms that allows for indifference on the part of our public. We become complacent on so many things because we have it so good. While I am a political junkie who gets riled up all too often over such issues as border enforcement, lowering entitlements, free trade and the like, there are more base issues out there that Americans should be aware of and willing to fight despite any other political affiliations that we have.

Human slavery must be eradicated in the same way that Islamic extremism must be demolished. In some cases the two evils go hand in hand. Unfortunately, despite all the progress made in the last century, the trafficking of women for forced sexual servitude is something we haven’t even eliminated here in America, let alone the rest of the civilized world. Our country remains a pitstop and final destination for subjugated people who couldn’t even dream of the freedom regular Americans exercise when they stop to get a bagel on the way to work. This is a fight we should be bringing under the umbrella of our large national security resources and one that we should be engaging in much more aggresively. It’s a win-win for both parties and for the beliefs that our country is founded on. Fighting this scourge everywhere from Asia to Arizona is the right thing to do.

Do your part by pressuring your representatives. Beyond that, the first step to tackling anything is expanding your knowledge so that you can better educate yourself and others, so be sure to give books like Benjamin Skinner’s A Crime So Monstrous a chance.

Update 12:55PM CST:

The Jawa Report illustrates another example of human slavery. 3,000 plus Asian children abducted for forced marriages in England.

The true number of Asian children vanishing from school and being forced into arranged marriages overseas could be as high as 3,000, two reports have indicated today.

The figures were compiled in an official Government report to highlight how many children have disappeared from school registers in England – but it is feared many are forced into unhappy marriages against their will.

Information gathered from a separate report today suggests that the number of illegal forced marriages each year – most in Asian families – runs into several thousand [...]

MPs fear that young girls, and sometimes young boys, are being taken out of the education system and forced to marry against their will.

They believe that this is happening because the youngsters are deemed to be too Westernised.

One teenage Pakistani girl told how she was pulled out of school when she was just 13-years-old, taken to Pakistan and forced to marry a man who assaulted and raped her.

The story is a double whammy for this post, as it relates to Islamic subjugation as well. That aspect is downplayed and disputed (poorly) in the article, but no one reading it here will be fooled.