Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Forced Labor: Slavery Spreading in Thailand & Cambodia


From UPI:

Human trafficking in Cambodia and Thailand is no longer limited to women and children, a Cambodian rights activist said. 

Poor formers in Cambodia are convinced to leave home on the promise of better work in Thailand. Many are finding themselves on long-haul trawlers in the South China Sea and forced to work against their will.

"It's slavery. There's no other way to describe it," Lim Tith, national project coordinator for the U.N. Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, told the United Nations' humanitarian news agency IRIN.

Exploitation is spreading beyond Cambodia and Thailand to Malaysia and Indonesian waters, with 25 men reportedly in slave-like conditions documented regionally this year.

"It's not just women and children anymore," San Arun, chairwoman of the Cambodian Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking taskforce, told IRIN.

Read the full article

Monday, August 29, 2011

Human Trafficking in Chicago



Dozens of girls, some as young as 12, were pulled into a human trafficking ring that forced them into prostitution, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said today.

The girls and women, some of them homeless, were recruited on CTA trains, the Internet or during random meetings on the street, Alvarez said while announcing that nine people were charged under a state anti-human trafficking law passed last year.

During a yearlong investigation dubbed "Little Girl Lost," investigators armed with wiretaps listened as girls were beaten and, sometimes, thrown into a car trunk and driven around as a form of punishment, Alvarez said. Others were branded

One 13-year-old was sold from one pimp to another for $100.

Michael Anton, a commander with the Cook County sheriff's vice unit, called the case among the worst he's seen.

"There's so much of this out there," Anton said about human trafficking. "It's happening every day. It's happening in Chicago,Cook County, it's happening across the state.

Those arrested were charged with "involuntary sexual servitude of a minor" and trafficking in persons for forced labor. Four of them appeared in Cook County court today and ordered held on bail as high as $1 million.

The other five are scheduled to appear Thursday. Alvarez said the investigation is ongoing.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Thailand urged to stamp out human trafficking

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

HTP on Facebook and Twitter

HTP Followers,

We have created a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Please help us increase our impact by "liking" the HTP page on Facebook and following us on Twitter at @HumnTrafficProj.

Spread the word to stop modern day slavery.

Thank you!
HTP team

Monday, August 22, 2011

UN Urges Asia to Enforce Human Trafficking Laws



By Ron Corben

Senior United Nations officials say countries of the Greater Mekong Sub-region including Thailand, Cambodia and Laos are failing to apply existing laws aimed at combating human trafficking.  The conclusions come as a U.N. envoy on human trafficking concluded a 10-day assessment of Thailand's efforts to curb labor migration abuses.

The U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking, Joy Ezeilo, says countries need to adopt a comprehensive approach to combat trafficking and implement laws that are already on the books.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Beat Down Human Trafficking- The Definition


The first single from the album Beat Down Human Trafficking.

Click to Download: J Nice- The Definition

More to come!

Happy Friday,

The HTP Team

Thursday, August 18, 2011

ATEST/CNN Forum on Human Trafficking



ATEST and the CNN Freedom Project hosted a forum on human trafficking in Washington, D.C. on June 23, 2011. Moderated by CNN anchor Jim Clancy, participants included Mira Sorvino, Congressman Chris Smith, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, CNN International's chief Tony Maddox, survivor and advocate Rani Hong, human trafficking expert Kevin Bales, and Humanity United's David Abramowitz.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Kids Talk About Slavery



What happens when you ask a bunch of kids to define slavery? Free the Slaves visited the Agape International Spritual Center and asked the children: What is slavery? The answers were very enlightening.

She's 10 and May Be Sold to a Brothel


Nicholas Kristof has been writing articles for The New York Times regarding human trafficking for years. His most recent article highlights the personal side of the internationally lucrative business.

From The New York Times on 1 June 2011:
M. is an ebullient girl, age 10, who ranks near the top of her fourth-grade class and dreams of being a doctor. Yet she, like all of India, is at a turning point, and it looks as if her family may instead sell her to a brothel.
Her mother is a prostitute here in Kolkata, the city better known to the world as Calcutta. Ruchira Gupta, who runs an organization called Apne Aap that fights human trafficking, estimates that 90 percent of the daughters of Indian prostitutes end up in the sex trade as well. And M. has the extra burden that she belongs to a subcaste whose girls are often expected to become prostitutes.
M. seemed poised to escape this fate with the help of one of my heroes, Urmi Basu, a social worker who in 2000 started the New Light shelter program for prostitutes and their children.
M., with her winning personality and keen mind, began to bloom with the help of New Light. Both her parents are illiterate, but she learned English and earned excellent grades in an English-language school for middle-class children outside the red-light district. I’m concealing her identity to protect her from gibes from schoolmates.
Unfortunately, brains and personality aren’t always enough, and India is the center of the 21st-century slave trade. This country almost certainly has the largest number of human-trafficking victims in the world today.
To read the rest of the article, click here.