Stop Child Slavery

There’s a major difference between today’s modern slaves and the slaves we read about in our American history books.

As I was relating to a friend that there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history, it hit me… one thing about modern slavery is fundamentally different. Slavery is sinister at best, but this brand of slavery is even worse than previous brands of slavery. Slaves today have almost no value to their owners. They are cheap and disposable.

As I began to research this, it was clear, this is not a unique thought. In 1999, Paul Stickley said this:

There are “more slaves alive today than all the people stolen from Africa in the time of the transatlantic slave trade,” writes Kevin Bales. He estimates there are more than 27 million people “enslaved by violence and held against their wills for purposes of exploitation” and the number is increasing. A feature of the new slavery is that slaves become disposable once the slaveholder has used them.

In the last century in the American South a slave owner might pay the equivalent of up to $100,000 for a slave. This was an incentive to keep a slave alive. Today a slaveholder can enslave a worker for as little as a $20 debt. It is not profitable to keep them if they are not immediately useful or become ill.

The truth of this is sickening.

Read More about Slavery In The Modern Era .

Thailand’s anti-slavery law has been enforced for the first time in over 50 years.

“Despite slavery being a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison, the law has never been applied. According to reports, this is largely due to there being no legal precedent to follow and police reluctance to recognise cases where people are in slave-like conditions without being chained as slavery.” (Anti-Slavery.com)

The woman sentenced, Wipaporn Songmeesap, received 7 years for slavery and 3.5 years for inflicting sever physical harm. A 13-year-old girl was held captive by her and forced to work from 4:00 AM until Midnight, seven days a week without time off. She received no pay, was fed rice and leftovers twice daily, was not allowed to leave the house and was regularly beaten.

This is indeed a positive step forward. Perhaps this is a signal of more to come. I hope so.

~for the young ones in Thailand

(The glass room that the women sit behind in these brothels is sometimes called the ‘fish bowl’, where the men can sit and look at them and choose the one he wants to buy)

Through the thick clouds, tainted smoke
Pink vinyl on the seats
On the left sat Mama San
With ladies at her feet

Mr. X leaned in to hear her deal,
“4000 baht,” she crooned.
“Which girl you like?” she asked the man,
“You take in short-time room”.

And so the man withdrew his line,
he threw a heaving cast-
to grab a hold of some young thing,
to get him off real fast.

Her hair was thick, as black as night;
her frame a wee bit small.
Her face was turned towards the set;
her back against the wall.

He cast his net and reeled her in,
a toy with which he would play.
It mattered not her circumstance,
It mattered not her day.

He did not think on how she’d knelt
one hundred times already,
if she were tired, or she were sore,
as long as she was pretty.

Down the hall he followed her,
the girl with Mr. X.
He asked her for the soapie,
which meant he want the sex.

He’d paid her for the hour long,
and not a minute more.
Later on he’d a wife to meet,
and she was just a whore.

A good one though he would admit,
Mama San said she was her best-
better than the last one for sure
even if she’d had small breasts.

Nonetheless, this fisherman,
more skilled now at his game.
never gave another thought
to even ask her name.

Out the door and on his way,
his life feigned normalcy;
and from that day he never thought
of the girl who was Sumalee.

©07 KR

I’m unable to sleep.

It is 4:30 AM and I’ve been lying in bed since 3:45 AM trying to shake the images of a girl being stoned to death for dating a man from another religion.

I spend some time each day Stumbling on the Internet. The habit leads to amazing discoveries. Most of those discoveries I’m enthusiastic to share. Last night it lead to one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen. And I considered NOT talking about it. It was just too graphic and disturbing.

But after my one day of silence to honor victims of senseless violence, it’s time to SHOUT.

The video was captured on a cell phone camera, grainy and pixelated in most parts. It began playing the moment I landed on the page, so my eyes were distracted from the poorly placed warning and the headline about the content was small and obscured. The scene was a crowded street in the Middle East. Men are shouting and the camera is moving wildly. A few seconds into the video, I realized I was watching something barbaric and hit the pause button.

I didn’t ask to be on this page. So, I scrolled through the video using the scrub bar, silencing the chants, trying to dull the visual. Then I thought, “force yourself to watch this. Don’t turn away because you are uncomfortable. You’ve been doing that for 45 years.” So I watched it in full.

I WILL NOT link to the video. The images in this post were captured a few moments ago. They are all I can show without feeling like I am glorifying the crowd’s actions. They are all I can show without sensationalizing a women’s brutal death. Words elude me. And yet I’m compelled to write.

How can I hope for an end to child slavery when entire cultures still treat women this way. It’s all related. It’s all connected. We can’t end one without ending the other. The video was a harsh awakening to just how vast our cultural differences are. How sheltered I am here in the United States. How much I don’t understand. How badly I need to do more than talk.