Four of us arrived in Bangkok on November 8, 2011 to explore the issue of human trafficking in the Philippines, Thailand and Burma, meet with top human trafficking experts and government officials and to open our first Unlikely Heroes home for children who were sold for sex in the Philippines.
On Monday we arrived in Manila and spent some time walking around the red light district. I saw many children out walking the main streets in that area ad two of our male team members were propositioned for sex by a few young girls. At one point I saw two young children under the age of four sleeping in a dumpster together. The younger one was about a year old and he was reaching his hand out almost touching the other girl in the dumpster. There were multiple other children sleeping and begging on the streets.
I am learning that one of the biggest issues we will face as we move forward with rehabilitation services is reintegrating the girls after rescuing them because they are so stigmatized... It is so difficult to conceptualize the level of trauma that children who are forced to sell their bodies For sex face and how much healing and processing it will take to rehabilitate them.
So many lives lost. Destroyed. It is frightening to think about the impact that this trauma will have on a generation of young lives.
We had a meeting today with Attorney Al A. Parreno, a top human rights lawyer in the Philippines. He has prosecuted traffickers but so far they have all gotten off... The conviction rate for traffickers is abysmal and less than 1% are even prosecuted. During the meeting, Parreno said that 90% of Vietnamese families in Cambodia expect to sell at least one of their children into trafficking. And that has all developed In about 10-15 years. Apparently the US embassador to the Philippines announced like three weeks ago that 60% of the american men coming here are coming to buy sex. He got in tons of trouble for just making those numbers up and had to apologize but clearly he thinks there is a problem.
He showed us the stats - the philippines has one of the highest trafficking rates and extrajudicial killing rates in the world. According to The Report on the Philippine Extrajudicial Killings 2001-2010*', extrajudicial killings here are an epidemic, activists are being targeted and many of the murders are being done by the army.
I have such a hard time believing this is real, that it is really happening. It's almost like I still don't believe it. But Im staring it in the face and I can't walk away... I just can't turn away... But at the same time I don't even want to believe it's true. I honestly don't know how I got here, how I ended up on this path... But I know I just can't walk away. This is such a new field nobody knows what to do... It has all exploded with international travel over the past 20 years.
I honestly struggle with how real it all is...I guess i never thought i would be the one faced with a justice issue during my lifetime. Throughout all of my history classes in school, I never thought that i would be faced with atrocities similar to people were in decades past... But i have to admit that I STILL continue to wonder if the issue of international human trafficking that we are faced with today could REALLY be an injustice on par with some of history's most egregious atrocities like Nazi Germany or American slavery and civil rights issues.
The reality is that there are more slaves alive today than ever before in history. And i am staring the reality of those numbers in the face on this trip. It is starting to feel so real and at the same time i have to admit that i just have such a hard time buying in to the reality of modern day slavery. Yet here I am walking through the red light district watching girls sell their bodies and thinking... How can I just walk by and turn the other way?
Now that I have been faced with these realities I wonder if the people who hid Anne Fank or helped with the underground railroad were faced with the same questions and doubts that I have been faced with as I have begun to learn more and more about the realities of human trafficking. Maybe - just maybe - the assumption that I held that those who helped others to freedom in the past lacked the level of confidence and understanding that I always thought they had? Could it be possible that the abolitionists that we look back and commend had no more information than the rest of society who at the same time just walked by and did nothing while they watched others suffer? Maybe the only thing that separates those who did nothing from those who helped bring others into freedom is that a few people had an internal conviction that said, how can I live my life in freedom knowing others are living theirs entrapped in slavery?
But now I wonder if they were people, just like me who really don't have a lot of answers but simply feel a conviction that says, "I can't walk away."
There is never a convenient time for Justice. There is never a good time to turn aside from the busyness of our lives and to give our time, our passion, our resources and our gifts on behalf of others. But, maybe it's not a choice. Maybe Charles Finney was right when he said, "the need is the call". Maybe this is not a choice at all but rather the simple reality of the human condition that says I have to care because I was created to love. I'm not really sure that I could walk away from what I have seen. And although I don't have many answers, I know that I have a drive that says, I must DO something.
As a young child, Princess was abused by her alcoholic father. Her mother worked in Manila as a maid and was separated from the family. Princess and her sisters were left to themselves to find food to eat and safety from their father’s beatings. Often they would sleep in the barn to escape his alcoholism and abuse.
Erica
