Tag Archives: Cambodia

Trafficking, and Obfuscation

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Posted by on in children, distraction issues, Personal goals, Personal Values

March 24, 2016, Prescott- I watched an episode of a network television show, on my laptop, this evening.  It dealt with the abuse of teenaged girls by a sex-trafficking ring.  The piece was outlandish, on the surface, having, as its antagonists, two powerful members of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in New York. The piece was fictitious, yet showed how diligent police work, and an appeal to the humanity of a low-level operative in the ring, gave up the culprits.

It was no surprise, though, that during the early stages of the investigation, the ringleaders turned to obfuscation, to role reversal, and smoke-screening, in their attempts to get out from under the encroaching detectives. This is a common modus operandi  of wrongdoers with means.

This stays in my mind, because yesterday I read an article in the Global Post, an online news magazine I have trusted for several years.  The article takes issue with widespread concern over sex trafficking, specifically in the country of Cambodia. The author quotes an “expert”, who has “lived with the sex workers” in that country, as saying that a Cambodian woman who enlisted the aid of U.S. journalist Nicholas Kristoff, in shining a light on the problem of sex trafficking in her country, was exaggerating, had falsified and embellished her reports, and that making human trafficking a cause celebre was, in the case of Cambodia at least, a misrepresentation of the facts.

This is what the powerful do, when their activities, and the income they derive from those, are threatened:  Obfuscate, discredit and go back to business as usual. Maybe there are plenty of women who choose a life of compensated sexual promiscuity, whether out of economic despair or the sense that this is the only way that they will ever know physical intimacy with a man.  They, however despondent their lot, are not the primary focus of those who have taken up the cause of bringing an end to human trafficking.

The shameful attempt by Global Post to becloud this whole matter will never stop those of us who are committed to ending the imprisonment and torture, to which  thousands of women and children are subjected, world-wide, day by excruciating day.  I urge each person reading this to stand up to those beguiled by their own perceived power and authority, and work to free those, in every nation on Earth, who are held in virtual slavery.

The Road to 65, Mile 45: Baga

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Posted by on in Social

January 12, 2015, Prescott- I have not been to Africa.  Many who have, are more interested in wildlife than in the teeming multitudes.  I do find myself thinking a great deal about those suffering millions, of late, especially in the continuing mystery of over 300 young women, just taken from their families- and supposedly having been “assigned” new ones.

As much of the world is focused on the victims of last week’s massacre in Paris, and rightly so, a brief notice appeared in our newspaper, with somewhat more commentary on BBC, regarding the small city of Baga, in northeast Nigeria.  There, 2,000 Muslims-men, women and children, were mowed down by operatives of Boko Haram.

Nigeria is starting to look like Cambodia, Rwanda and Syria.  It’s a big country, which prides itself on advancement.  So, maybe this is why the government has not raised a cry for help.  The people, though, sorely need the world to care.  Nigeria, as an entity, has needed for people to care, for a long time.  The oil-soaked Niger Delta makes the northwestern Gulf of Mexico look like the sweetest of paradises.

Baga is just the latest in a series of massacres, with the crazed head of Boko Haram making it clear he has no intention of treating anyone but the most loyal of his sycophants with even a smidgen of decency and respect.  Complicating matters is the collective behaviour of the Nigerian Army.  It is very hard for the average villager, or resident of a small city, especially in the north, to discern who, in a position of strength, can be trusted.  in the tradition of the worst elements of the British Colonials, This is the classic notion of “only by beating down everyone in sight, can we defend the realm.”

We are moving beyond that, as a species, and Nigerians deserve a place at the table of solace.  The narrow confines of tribalism, nationalism and the misinterpretation of Scripture to suit the fancies of unbalanced individuals are each going to fall away- either by those involved coming to their senses, or by forces which we can only vaguely imagine right now.  There can, in essence, no longer be a hierarchy of Those Who Matter, and Those Who Don’t.  I see a better day coming, and soon.