What the Media Won't Tell You About Child Prostitution
Published November 16, 2009 @ 11:35AM PT
Update: Sadly, Shaniya's body was discovered a few hours after this story first posted.
Police in Fayetteville, North Carolina, are desperately looking for five-year-old Shaniya Davis, the little girl whose mother allegedly sold her into prostitution.
At first, this story might seem to be about one criminal woman low enough to exploit her own child sexually for profit. However, it tells the tale of something far more insidious that the mainstream media won't touch: even in a small town in North Carolina, there is a market for sex with five-year-old girls.
Antoinette Nicole Davis, Shaniya's mother, was arrested yesterday on human trafficking charges and charges related to prostitution. Authorities claim she "knowingly provide[d] Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude," and she "permit[ted] an act of prostitution." Shaniya went missing during a rare visit with her mother. Her father, Bradley Lockhart, had raised his daughter for the first several years of her life. But when her mother told him she'd been sober and employed for 6 months, he decided to let the girl spend some time with her. Shaniya was reported missing earlier this week, but has been seen being carried into a hotel room by a man since then. The man is being identified and Shaniya remains missing.
As sad and grotesque as it may be for a mother to knowingly put her child in a situatuion of sexual slavery, there is an even more disturbing element of this story that is going largely unexamined by the mainstream media.
How to Fight Slavery with Coffee and Beer
Published November 15, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Guest blogger Shelton Green, founder of What's Your Response, shares an easy way for you to raise awareness about human trafficking in your area. Through What's Your Response, you can get coasters to leave in bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and other places people in your area congregate. They tell the stories of real victims of modern-day slavery. Check out what Shelton has to say about hosting your own "coaster crawl."
Blindsided. That was how a group of us felt when we discovered that there are 27 million people in slavery in the world today. That those slaves aren't just living in places whose names we can't pronounce, but right here in the United States. It was a fact so shocking that we found ourselves initially paralyzed. It was a fact so shocking that those we told about it hesitated to believe it. It was a fact so shocking that we set out to discover what we could do. What might our response be? It was coffee and beer.
We knew that people wouldn't be willing to fight the problem until they began to realize the gravity of the problem. We formed a group called What's Your Response? and began brainstorming possibilities for bringing attention to the issue of modern day slavery. On August 8, 2009 What's Your Response? took to the streets for our first "coaster crawl" to bring awareness to the issue of human trafficking in Texas. A turnout of nearly 50 individuals gathered, organized into groups, and went around town distributing free stacks of coasters to various bars, coffee shops, and restaurants. In a very short time we have seen the word spread and people want to know more about what they can do to end slavery.
Business Groups Oppose Ban on Child and Slave-Made Products
Published November 14, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Rachel Maddow's choice of "you child labor-endorsing, pro-slavery freaks" to describe business groups' opposition to a bill that would ban the import of goods made by child labor or slave labor was pretty apt. However, I personally would describe the move as the most stunning display of corporate douchebaggery since Walmart's "dead peasant's insurance" fiasco. According to a recent report from Inside U.S. Trade, business interest groups are "worried" that a legislative ban on goods made by children and slaves could prompt the government to more actively seek out and identify consumer goods made by exploited people. And if we started doing that, well then businesses might have to start giving workers their rights, paying them a living wage, not abusing children, and freeing their indentured slaves. And then where would we be?
Here's Maddow's analysis (the relevant part of the video starts about 3:30 in):
My colleague (and frequent guest poster) Tim Newman also has a great analysis of the history of legislative attempt to ban goods made with child and slave labor here. Last year, the International Labor Rights Forum took Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland to task for trying to block a voluntary child labor free certification initiative in the Farm Bill. The initiative passed, despite the lobbying of interest groups. History shows that despite the powerful corporate lobby, grassroots activists can be just as powerful a voice for children and workers as high ticket lobbyists can be for corporations.
Freedom for the Weekend: The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
Published November 13, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Well, it's Friday afternoon, and that means the weekend is almost here! W00t! Perhaps you're reading this blog because you're bored at work or school and you're thinking about what you want to do this weekend. How about spending part of your weekend fighting slavery? Each week I'll profile a different anti-trafficking nonprofit who you can connect with to help free slaves and prevent slavery around the world. So, spend a couple hours this weekend getting to know this nonprofit through their website, and then get involved!
This Week's Profile: The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
The Bottom Line: The Center reveals stories about freedom's heroes from the era of the Underground Railroad to contemporary times and challenges everyone to take courageous steps for freedom today. They connect 19th century slavery with modern slavery.
What They Do: Through both a physical center in Cincinatti, OH and an information-packed website, the center aims to educate people about the realities of both the role of the underground railroad in ending historical slavery and modern abolition of human trafficking. Maintaining their focus on personal stories as an important lens for history, they also allow families to research their genealogy and discover their ancestors.
What Can I Do?: You can support the center either by becoming a member or by making a donation. If you live in the Cincinnati area, you can also volunteer. You can also tap into their amazing resources for educators to teach yourself or others about slavery.
Why They Rock: The center connects 19th century and modern slavery together in one seamless understanding of this antediluvian human rights violation. Slavery has been in societies as long as we have had societies; we must learn from our past in order to look to a better future.
So now that you've got some basic information on the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, visit their website this weekend and get involved. And on Monday morning when everyone else is talking about sleeping in and watching tv over the weekend, you can say, "What did I do this weekend? Oh, just the usual- abolition of slavery."
Do you have a favorite nonprofit you'd like to see featured here? If so, let me know.
Superstition and Modern-Day Slavery
Published November 13, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Friday the 13th is the most superstitious day of the year -- supposedly a jinxed day which brings bad luck and misfortune. In Western cultures, superstition is usually laughed off as silly old wives tales about cats, ladders, and unfortunate mirror accidents. But for many people around the world, superstitions are ingrained parts of faith, culture, and society which have the power to make them more vulnerable to human trafficking or help them survive the trauma of modern-day slavery.
Recently, Spanish authorities apprehended a human trafficking ring based in Nigeria which was enslaving women in the commercial sex industry in Europe. To keep the women from trying to escape, the traffickers took their victims' hair and fingernails and performed voodoo rituals to bind their victims spiritually and physically. They told the women the curse would drive them mad or destroy their souls if they tried to disobey the traffickers. This ceremony and the religious and superstitious implications it had prevented the women from trying to leave their trafficking situations.
But it's not just voodoo that comes with cultural superstitions; traffickers have used superstitious and religious ceremonies as part of other faiths to scare and manipulate victims as well.
Somali Judge Who Sentenced Pirates, Traffickers Is Assassinated
Published November 12, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Today is a sad day for human rights and a victory for pirates. And not the funny, grog-swilling eye-patch wearing pirates, the real kind of pirates who kill people. Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aware, a Somali judge who took a stand for justice by sentencing pirates, human traffickers, and Islamist insurgents was assassinated today outside a mosque in Bosasso, Somalia. The region where Judge Aware was shot is only partially controlled by the Somali government, and it is on a well-traveled human trafficking route that smuggles Somali and other East African people into Yemen to be exploited in forced labor or prostitution. His story is a reminder of the dear price some human rights champions pay.
Throughout his career as a judge, Aware sentenced hundreds of human traffickers and smugglers to jail in Somalia. He also sentenced pirates and other organized criminals to long prison sentences. In a country where corruption and bribery are not uncommon, standing up to powerful criminal gangs in this way was both rare and a true act of courage. Corruption of officials like judges, police officers, and local leaders is one of the largest facilitators of human trafficking world-wide. Aware was a man who existed outside that corruption.
Friends and family of Aware think he was killed by gangs of pirates or human traffickers. He was in fact shot in a region of Somalia where human trafficking flourishes, and where traffickers and their networks control much of the infrastructure. Bosasso is on the tip of Somalia which juts out into the Persian Gulf, a short boat ride from Yemen. This corridor is often used to traffic African workers to the Middle East.
Perhaps one of the saddest parts of this ordeal is that Aware's case is far from unique in the world.
Report Exposes Egyptian Christian Women Forced Into Muslim Marriages
Published November 12, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
A new report released by Egyptian women right's activist Nadia Ghaly and anti-trafficking specialist (and guest blogger here) Michele Clark has uncovered an insidious system of the kidnapping of Christian (known as Coptic in Egypt) women. These women are forced to marry Muslim men and in many cases convert to Islam. It's a practice which meets the international definition of human trafficking, but is also a serious issue of violence against women.
Exemplary of this phenomenon is the story of a woman identified as “R.” At 17, she received a phone call from a polite young man who said his name was Amir and that he admired her. He asked her to meet him at a local church. When she arrived, however, she was drugged and kidnapped. When she woke up “Amir” told her she would have to marry a stranger, a Muslim man named Mahmoud. When she refused to have sex with Mahmoud, his family held her down while he raped her. As a result of the rape, she is now unable to have children.
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Amanda Kloer
Shelton Green
ECPAT-USA
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW)
