The Project on Government Oversight released a report that is less than flattering about the ArmorGroup, a government contractor who provides security in Afghanistan. This article is a must-read for an understanding of the history of American contractors in war zones as it relates to sex crimes.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
When families sell children into slavery, the problem is more than legal, it’s cultural.
Now focus is on human trafficking:
Much to the embarrassment of President Zardari, the State Department report said parents in Pakistan sell their daughters into domestic servitude, prostitution, or forced marriages, and women are traded between tribal groups to settle disputes or as payment for debts whereas NGOs contend that Pakistani girls are trafficked to the Middle East for sexual exploitation.
It’s sad that during the illegal immigration coverage and political debates, human trafficking hardly registers as an issue. So stories like this will continue to be told: FOXNews.com - Teen Girl Allegedly Enslaved, Sexually Assaulted in Seattle - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News:
Five immigrants from Afghanistan enslaved a teenage girl they brought to the United States, with some forcing her to do chores and one ? her 37-year-old husband ? beating and sexually assaulting her, according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.
The girl is from an impoverished single-parent home in Afghanistan, and she was informally adopted by another family there that forced her to marry at age 13 in 2005, Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said Thursday. The girl’s husband is Mohammad Atahee, a friend of the adoptive family; U.S. officials don’t recognize the marriage.
Atahee and three of the family’s members were already living in the south Seattle suburbs when the girl’s adoptive mother, Nasima Yousuf, 70, brought her to the United States in 2006, as part of what prosecutors say was a plot to enslave her. Yousuf’s husband, Mohammad, 84, had filed an immigration petition to bring the girl to the U.S., claiming his wife was her biological mother.
Once in the country, the indictment said, the girl, identified only as JV1, was forced to live with Atahee, who beat her and sexually assaulted her. She was forced to spend at least three days a week at the Auburn home of Maruf Yousufi, 42, and his wife, Nahid, 29 ? caring for their children, doing laundry, cooking and cleaning. Maruf Yousufi is Mohammad Yousuf’s son.
The UN published a report on the trafficking of children in South Asia (India). Naturally, this is more about the report than it is about actually stopping the trafficking itself. But I don’t want to take away from the report’s content, which is important:
Launching a report on Preventing and Responding to Child Trafficking in South Asia, UNICEFs Child protection specialist Lena Karlsson said, child trafficking is a neglected form of human trafficking as children risk being picked out as undocumented migrants, juvenile delinquents or unaccompanied minors.
Though the governments of South Asia have developed national plans of action and also adopted laws to criminalise trafficking, legal frameworks needs to be strengthened to further protect children from all forms of trafficking and to assist child victims with legal and psychological support, the report states.
South Asian children are being trafficked for various forms of sexual exploitation such as prostitution, sex tourism, child pornography, paedophilia and labour exploitation in agriculture and industries.
It’s easy to criticize the UN as a whole since its founding premise that all nations are equal is flawed. However, the UN publishes really well. The ability to write things up and present them to the world is a UN strength. Instead of playing “peace-keeper”, the UN can be rechartered as an international information clearinghouse, even better than the Federal Citizen Information Center in Pueblo, Colorado. As in the case of this report, the content is horrific. This is child slavery. This report is published and it goes on top of a stack of human trafficking reports. This little tidbit will ensure nothing will happen:
“The girls, mostly from Muslim families, tribal communities and scheduled castes, belonging to these south Indian districts, have become more confident and have started demanding their rights, including right to education and vocational training,” the report states. In Nepal, where children face threat of violence, abuse and exploitation, sensitisation programmes conducted by the para-legal committees with the assistance of UNICEF have raised awareness about risks, human rights and support structures among children and women, the report says.
Calling out the link between Islam and modern day slavery is more than any committee can handle diplomatically. At least we will have a record of it somewhere.
The very fact that this is going on in Saudi Arabia tells us many things about the Saudi culture. Their PR firms can peddle a lot of nonsense about how modern they are, but the Saudis are entrenched in their old ways.
Child-protection groups say children are often given away in return for hefty dowries, or as a result of old customs in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.
Depraved. Sick. Sad.
First up is a a PR falsehood nearly as big as Saudi Arabia’s claim that it’s a democracy: UAE Passes Law Against Human Trafficking.
The UAE faces a multitude of logistical and cultural problems seen by many countries trying to stop trafficking.
Among these difficulties is the training of police officers from traditional societies to see prostitutes as victims or to deal sensitively with rape or abuse. Many times victims of trafficking are often caught and punished while traffickers escape.
Gargash contends that police are now being trained to investigate for the involvement of human trafficking webs in prostitution cases, stating that “women and children are often the victims in these cases and we want the police to have victim sensitivity.”
This is the kind of public relations that looks good in the headlines but with no foundation in reality. The UAE, along with other Islamic theocracies, value human life only when when it suits them. From extreme misogyny to the insane hatred of anything Jewish to the brainwashing of children so they hate all things Western, one can have a hard time believing there will actually be a cultural movement to stop punishing victims.
