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From Gurmeet Singh
Stop the Miserable Menace of Sex Trafficking
Khadur Sahib, India, May 24, 2011
Dr Raghbir Singh Bains
Prostitution and sex trafficking is the world's oldest social evil. It is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world. Trafficking involves the voluntary or involuntary transport of people, primarily women and girls into the sex markets where their virginity is sold for sexual exploitation. The victims of sexual trafficking lose their dignity and their bodies to fuel the demand for commercial sex. It is a miserable pity. After all these women are someone’s mother, daughter or sister---hidden behind locked doors and pulled curtains, forced against their ‘will’ to engage in sex acts with dozens of customers a day. When such women are trafficked into prostitution, there is a possibility that their kith and kin will never see these women again living a family life.
Sex Trafficking is:
A crime where men, women, and young children are taken into control by means of force, fraud, or coercion and are put into prostitution, sex trafficking ring, and many other forms of unfair treatment. It is inevitably a human rights violation that is growing more and more each year in the world.
According to Canadian Encyclopedia, “Heterosexual prostitution (men as buyers and women as sellers) is most common; homosexual prostitution between men exists on a smaller scale; Lesbian prostitution between women may exist but there is little evidence of it in the research literature”.
Annual Intake Into Sex Business
Sex trafficking has been the most profitable but illegal and hidden business in the world. It's a huge industry, it can be very difficult to detect intake and diminish it. Mostly women or children are allured or forcibly abducted and used as sex slaves. Because sex trafficking is so far underground, the number of worldwide victims and their yearly intake is not known, thus the reported statistics vary wildly.
It is estimated by different agencies that each year, between 600,000 and 800,000 women and girls are forcibly transported into the global commercial sex industry. The number will always be an estimate, because trafficking victims don't stand in line and raise their hands to be counted, but it's the best estimate community activists have from different sources.
Trafficking is a Multi-Billion Dollar Business
Once limited to infamous locales such as Cambodia, Bombay in India and Bangkok in Thailand, sex trafficking is now multi-billion internationally organised business being run in San Francisco (USA) also. “Girls as young as 12 to 14 years old are being forced into prostitution, a state Senate Committee was told this morning on May 4, 2011”. Jill Morris, international constituency director of the ‘Not For Sale Campaign’ said in a statement, “traffickers take advantage of the legal sex industry in Nevada. Las Vegas has been identified as one of the top ‘hot spots’ for prostitution in the world”. This global industry is offshoot of the human trafficking which is estimated to have a market value of 32 billion dollars every year. It involves mega brothels, top-notch hotels, motels, massage parlours and slave houses. The pimps solicit and even use top notch social networking sites that facilitate online web camera use for customers to select the girls of choice.
According to the ShoeRevolt website and other studies as many as 50,000 to 100,000 American-born girls are sex trafficked each year and it involves raking up of multi-billion dollars a year in the U.S. This 32 billion dollar industry of human and sexing slavery takes young children from more than 127 countries to be exploited in 137 different countries, reports the UN. Astonishingly, the majority of their stories are never heard or brought to light.
Prostitution Runs at Posh Places with Changed Profiles
Prostitution is no longer about dingy rooms in narrow lanes of the globalised world. Oftenly introductions are made and deals struck through cyber space or at posh places. The profiles of those involved in the trade have also changed. "The prostitutes are no more minor or poor girls from rural areas. It is a shame that today we find college girls, high status family girls, call girls and even house wives who voluntarily sign up for the business," says a senior police officer.
Evil Effects
In countries like India, where prostitution is illegal and punishable, forcing of young, innocent and poor girls into the business is common. Once an innocent girl is pushed into a brothel, she is practically a prisoner there, as the brothel is securely watched over by criminals and hooligans who would go to any extent to prevent her from escaping. The prostitution dens result in dishonour, stigma, suicides, moral bankruptcy, shocking physical, psychological and sexual abuse, exposure to sexually transmitted diseases like HIV-AIDS and untimely deaths.
Rise Up Against the Menace
Unfortunately the crime is not getting adequate attention in our society. Not enough is being done to stop or decrease the acts and crimes that occur every day. The victims are too afraid to get help for fear of being criminalised, stigmatised or their families being harmed by the mafia groups. So we need to create an environment that allows these people to feel safe and secure in getting help for rehabilitation.
Because it is difficult to expose trafficking and to discuss it more openly in the society by using electronic or print media, it is not easily stoppable and the perpetrators cannot be appropriately punished. However we need to fight this problem much more than we are fighting it now.
It is required that the woman should be empowered to control her body, mind, soul and life. Simultaneously, it is responsibility of woman folk also to respect her womanhood and revere honour of the religio-social and familial values of the society she lives in. Let she be not manoeuvred through illusionary glamour and mirage to this industry but bring honour to the family name.
It's about time to join together in the fight to end this crime! Public in general must rise up against the injustice. Let us break the shackles of abuse by creating awareness and educating public by using media, holding seminars and arranging interactive workshops. Respective governments, politicians, justice system, social activists, role models, mentors, religious bodies and youth in general must play a positive role in uplifting the society so that humans live gracefully in peace over this earth.
(Dr Raghbir Singh Bains is an eminent community activist who is crusader against the menace of social evils raking up in the society.
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