From the Inquirer:
By Juan Mercado
August 21, 2008
“A small number of women are occasionally trafficked from China, South Korea and Russia to the Philippines,” the report notes. “Sex tourists came from Northeast Asia, Europe and North America (seeking) minors.” But overall, the Philippines remains a “country of origin.”
Every day about 3,000-plus Filipinos migrate.
And some find themselves trapped in brothels. Many slave under forced labor conditions.
A two-stage “railroad” operates here. From indigent communities in the Visayas and Mindanao, women and children are funneled into Cebu, Manila and other cities. Some end up in whorehouses. Others become abused workers in homes or factories.
The second stage kicks in when Filipinas are peddled abroad as sex workers. They are shipped “primarily to Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and countries in the Middle East and Western Europe.”
“Traffickers used land and sea transportation to transfer victims from island provinces to major cities,” the report found. “A growing trend is the use of budget airline carriers to transport victims out of the country. Traffickers used fake travel documents, falsified permits and altered birth certificates.” Traffickers often confiscate passports, identity cards and airline tickets to control a victim. Without these documents, migrants are vulnerable to deportation. “This is legal coercion.”
US federal law now makes it illegal to seize documents to force others to work, the report notes. “Foreign governments are encouraged to criminalize withholding of travel documents.” People-trafficking and people-smuggling often overlap, says the analysis “Drawing Lines In A Dark Place.” This is “an uncomfortable but almost unavoidable part of social reality in areas that adjoin rich countries with a demand for labor.”
Burmese and Cambodians have been hoodwinked by promises of high pay on fishing boats in Thailand and the Andaman Sea. They ended up abused slaves. The bodies of some victims were “dumped as common refuse,” the US report says. “Few environments are more conducive to exploitation than the high seas.”
“A significant number of Filipinos work under conditions of involuntary servitude.” Cases cropped up in Bahrain, Canada, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Côte d’Ivoire, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Palau, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Trafficking through brokered marriages has surged. Brides from Vietnam, Cambodia or Mongolia are picked “through the Internet in the comfort of home,” the report adds. Some Indonesians were prostituted by fake “Taiwanese husbands.” Over 20,000 Vietnamese women married in Taiwan through marriage brokers. International marriages in South Korea now crest at 43,121. “An international marriage market is booming,” studies by Minda Valencia, Myra Ramos and Nimfa Ogena revealed. In 2006, there were 24,905 marriages to foreigners registered, up from 21,100 the previous year. “[Many] Filipina brides head for Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.”
Read the full article
From the BBC:
The UK's first male-only refuge for those who have been forced into marriage is being considered. One victim tells of the dramatic effect the experience had on his life - and how he has come through it.
When Imran Rehman was 10, he was taken to Pakistan and found himself in the middle of an enormous family party. He remembers being told to sit next to a little girl in a fine dress. He did not understand why, but he and the little girl were, jointly, the centre of attention. They were showered with money and presents and they had garlands cast around their necks. Imran said: "I was just paying attention to the food and the money. I didn't know what was happening. I just thought it was a party."
It was not until five years later that he was shown a photograph of that celebration - and he finally understood its significance. It had been his own engagement party. The little girl was his five-year-old first cousin. She was also to be his wife - whether he liked it or not.
"It made me feel sick, knowing that was my engagement. I went off the rails. I got into the wrong crowd, I got into fights, I got expelled from two schools," he said. To get him to behave, his parents took measures that many people might see as extreme. They sent him to Pakistan, telling him it was so he could see the area where they had been born. For a while, he says, "it was nice to be on holiday". Then, one morning, he says, he was drugged, taken to a mosque in a deserted village, and imprisoned. Once there, he had shackles locked around his feet. "I was kept in a room, locked up. I had to sleep like that. I even had to eat, go to the bath, toilet, shackled like that, for 15 days."
With the help of friends, he was eventually able to find his way back to the UK. When he got home, the only explanation he got from his family was it was his "rehabilitation". The pressure continued, perhaps to a lesser degree, for years, until something happened that finally made up his mind up that he had to get married.
He said: "I was 24. I was working at Birmingham airport. I got a phone call to say one of my close relatives was extremely ill. I was the first person there, by their bedside. I said: 'What can I do to help?'" His poorly relative told him that if anything was to happen to her, it would be his fault, for not going to Pakistan to get married. He says he was emotionally blackmailed, and he felt that he had no choice. "So I went to Pakistan. I didn't want that on my head, you know," he said.
He married his cousin. But the marriage only lasted a month before Imran told his family it was over. He was told he had just two choices: "Stay with your wife, buy a house, have kids, live your life. Or get disowned." "So I left home," he said.
It was the beginning of a seven-year severance from his family. He says he drifted from job to job, drank too much and struggled to deal with his trauma. "My family had disowned me. I just thought: 'I've got to stand on my own two feet and try and battle it out'. Which I couldn't understand how to do."
He eventually found a support organisation called Karma Nirvana. At the time, this Derby-based self-help group was only for women. But they realised, through their dealings with Imran, that men were also vulnerable to becoming victims of honour-based violence. Now, Imran works with Karma Nirvana as a support worker for men who suffer in the same way he did.
He says it is harder for men to seek help than women because men are not allowed to be open about their feelings. He said: "You're a man, you don't cry. If you cry, you're not supposed to show your tears. It really stressed me out. "I knew there was no support for me to go anywhere. Now, there is support out there for men. I encourage men to come forward. "What I tend to do is I tell my personal experiences to the men I work with, male victims. And believe me, they do open up."
Imran now supports 36 men who have been victims of forced marriage or honour-based violence. He says helping them get over their problems is a way to help himself to stay positive. "It makes me feel good, you know? I know I'm not alone any more. Before, when I was alone, I used to feel like I was the only man who was going through it," he said. Now he knows there are others who have gone through what he has been through. And he hopes they will all get the kind of support that will help keep them safe from their families.
Big Ben & the houses of Parliament
From the BBC:
UK- The government has agreed to look into funding the UK's first male-only refuge for victims of forced marriage. It has emerged that 15% of the people who seek help about being forced into wedlock are men or boys.
A man taken to Pakistan as a child and forcibly engaged to his five-year-old cousin has called for a men's refuge. Foreign Office minister Meg Munn said authorities must talk to those affected to "listen to their experiences" and "learn directly from them." She said: "Generally people expect men to be able to look after themselves, to manage situations, so men subject to domestic violence, men subject to forced marriage are likely to find it much, much more difficult." She added "there could well be" a need for a male shelter.
The British High Commission in Pakistan said that the issue of boys and men being forced is a problem that it is aware of. Spokesman Theepan Selparatnum said: "Sixty per cent of our case load is forced marriage work and between 10 to 15% of that are male. Our workload is increasing yearly and that's probably attributed to increased publicity and increased knowledge of what we can do."
'Abducted' Imran Rehman, from Derby, said his family took some extreme measures to get him back in line when he resisted the marriage, explaining that he was abducted and taken to Pakistan. He said a relative shackled his legs together and he was imprisoned for 15 days.
Mr Rehman has now urged the government to take action. "What I'm calling on the government to do would be set up a male refuge," he told BBC 5 Live. He went on: "There are no male refuges at all for Asian men. We have 165 women's refuges. What about the men? "We know it's happening, and I have a caseload of 36 men. We definitely require male refuge."
Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, told BBC Radio 5 Live a male refuge was a good idea. "We have even heard of bounty hunters chasing people," he said. "It exists, all these things, so I think people do need solid support."
