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: The print media has reported as many as 85 human trafficking incidents from across the country during the last year, raising concerns that this menace earlier confined to the Far East Asia has now been surging in Pakistan. Out of the reported 85 cases of trafficking; 44 were reported in Sindh, 35 in Punjab, 3 in NWFP and 3 cases were reported in Balochistan. The research revealed that during the last year, according to newspapers, 35 women became the victim of trafficking while 23 female children and 27 male children were used in this inhuman trade. The women and children are trafficked to use them in prostitution, camel races, organ transplant, domestic work, forced labour, drug smuggling, begging, child forced marriages and other exploitative
forms of work. Two groups working against trafficking of women and children -- Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid, Karachi, and Journalists for Democracy and Human Rights, Islamabad -- believe that these cases are just
a tip of the iceberg and the extent of this crime against humanity is larger than the reported one. Both organisations recently conducted a countrywide study on human trafficking issue.
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trafficking in human
Excerpts from a review and reaction delivered during the launching yesterday of the 30-minute video, "We're So Syndicated, Ma'am," produced by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and sponsored by the House committee on women in support of efforts for the passage of a law against the sex trafficking of women and children. The IOM and the Belgian Administration for Development Cooperation (BADC) have provided funds for the reproduction of 50,000 copies of the video, translated into different regional languages, for free distribution to organizations, schools, local governments and individuals.
PERHAPS the most moving part of the play on which this video was based was when the actor portraying a Filipina caught in a web of sex trafficking "reads" a letter to her mother. In keeping with our reputation as people who love to sugarcoat bitter realities with laughter, politeness and unintended irony, she paints a rosy picture of her life abroad, reassuring her family that she is in good health and being looked after by her employer. But she says, her family shouldn't write to her as she and her employer "travel around a lot". Instead, they should just wait for her letters, no matter how infrequent they may come.
As she says this, her "employer" lays a booted foot on her back, pressing down on her until she cries out.
How many Filipinas, I wondered, find themselves in similar straits but feel they have no right to complain even to tell their families back home about the painful realities of their situation? And how many families continue to wait in expectation of regular remittances from abroad and the triumphant return of their daughters, who will come home bearing gifts of appliances and designer clothing, perhaps with a foreign spouse in tow?
The news today says that overseas Filipino workers are expected to have remitted more than P8billion this year alone. It is money that has not only kept families and communities in relative comfort and assured them of a brighter future, but also kept the national book of accounts in a relatively healthy state. But seldom do we, the families of the workers, or even the rest of citizenry who are their unintended and unwitting beneficiaries, bother to consider the "cost" of that money, the price our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors have to pay to live abroad and earn wages in a foreign currency. * * *
DESPITE of the often shocking dialogue, with the liberal use of vulgar terms for sexual organs and sexual acts; I found that the most shocking parts of the book on which this play was based, written by a Belgian investigative journalist married to a former Filipino journalist, were missing.
In "They Are So Sweet Sir," some Filipinas held in a European brothel tell of being forced to undergo an abortion in the morning, then on that same evening, even s they were still bleeding profusely, were forced to service customers. Not only can a woman not excuse herself from the work because of pregnancy, her time is deemed so valuable she cannot call in sick. Sickening indeed are the operations of this global trade in women, and increasingly, girls and boys.
In this video, though, there is no escape for the viewer. The testimonies of the three women -- Arlene, Marife and Nilda -- make sure that when the play's dialogue and images border on the outrageous and absurd, their faces and voices yank us back to reality, to the fact that the subjects portrayed as variously chickens, limp dolls and stuffed toys are real women, sisters who could have walked down the same streets as we did. Filipinas, who, but for accident of birth an upbringing, could be living our lives today. Which means that if circumstances had proven different for us, we could have shared their fate, too. ***
MY husband and I were once eating in a fast-food center when we espied to other groups of diners near us. One was a pair of public school teachers, judging from their distinctive uniforms. The other was a gaggle of young women accompanied by an older woman. The young women wore the then-trendy leggings and hanging T-shirts, with heavily made-up faces and flowing ponytails, their outfits belying their recent sojourn to Japan. "Look at them," my husband said of our dining companions. "the teachers can only effort to eat mami (cheap noodles), but the Japayukis are having a feast."
Trafficking exists because it is a profitable trade. And it flourishes because it profits most everyone involved in it, from the pimps and procurers, to the managers of the establishments, to the government officials paid to facilitate papers or look the other way, to, of course, the customers, who find a source of cheap, easy and varied sex in these young, exotic and pliant women, girls and boys.
But trafficking also exists because there is, to quote from the play, an almost endless supply of women willing to risk all, overcome their doubts, conquer their fear and loneliness to help their families. It also flourishes because families find nothing wrong in entrusting to their daughters the heavy burden of ensuring their future, so that despite the dangers lurking, they close their eyes and hope that their daughters will somehow beat the odds.
Finally, trafficking exists because as a society we have learned to place material prosperity above the welfare of our people, especially our women. It flourishes because in Philippine society daughters have traditionally been used as collateral for family debts, married off or else placed in virtual indentured slavery to pay it off. It is growing because no one finds anything wrong with the sexual exploitation of the week and less powerful, be it in foreign lands or here among our honky-tonk strips, including one just a few kilometers from here, frequented, so gossip goes, by members of this august chamber. * * *
I CANNOT say that watching this 30-minute video was an entertaining or even enjoyable experience. It was, in fact, jolting and disturbing. And there will be those, I am sure, who will choose to focus more on the graphic language, crude situations and smarmy scenes than on the bigger issue of our collective responsibility for the growth of the sex trafficking industry.
But let me say, thank you, to all involved. To the committee on women and the Office of Rep. Pat Sarenas, for organizing this launch. To the producers, the IOM, Kalayaan and the Philippine Network Against Trafficking in Women. To Teatro Walang Bakod {Theater Without Borders) and Maria Socorro Paulin Ballesteros who wrote the play and Lakan Bunyi who directed it. That both of them also played the only characters in the play is doubly amazing.
Finally, to Arlene, Marife and Nilda, who were able to come home and talk to their life in the web of the traffickers. May you continue lending your voices to the work of making sure your ordeal is not shared by any more Filipinas in the future. And in their name, we all thank you
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