Human Traffickers Stealing Haiti's Orphans

[Emeline]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6999280.ece

Thousands of children unaccounted for since Haiti’s earthquake are at risk of falling prey to child traffickers, aid agencies have wearned, as fears were raised over at least 15 children who have vanished from hospitals within the past few days.

Unicef, the UN children’s agency, warned that "traffickers fish in pools of vulnerability. We know from past experience that trafficking happens in the chaos that usually follows emergencies." A Unicef adviser, Jean Luc Legrand, said he knew of at least 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals.

Save the Children, World Vision and the British Red Cross have called for an immediate halt to adoptions of Haitian children not approved before the earthquake, warning that child traffickers could exploit the lack of regulation. There has been a surge in offers from well-meaning foreigners.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that child enslavement and trafficking was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months".

(rest at link)

[yellowrocker]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6999280.ece

Thousands of children unaccounted for since Haiti’s earthquake are at risk of falling prey to child traffickers, aid agencies have wearned, as fears were raised over at least 15 children who have vanished from hospitals within the past few days.

Unicef, the UN children’s agency, warned that "traffickers fish in pools of vulnerability. We know from past experience that trafficking happens in the chaos that usually follows emergencies." A Unicef adviser, Jean Luc Legrand, said he knew of at least 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals.

Save the Children, World Vision and the British Red Cross have called for an immediate halt to adoptions of Haitian children not approved before the earthquake, warning that child traffickers could exploit the lack of regulation. There has been a surge in offers from well-meaning foreigners.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that child enslavement and trafficking was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months".

(rest at link)

I think, but cannot prove, that this was a problem before the quake as well as after the quake.

[EyesWideOpen]

True that it was a problem before the quake, one that now is made 100x worse by the chaos.

This happened after the Boxing Day tsunami, as well.

[theozarker]

There are just so many fucking sickos in the world, ready to prey on the most vulnerable children, it makes you wonder how we've survived as a species for so long.

Linda

[BlueOwl]

There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history.  Sex slaves dominate, but there are agricultural slaves, mining slaves, housekeeper slaves, construction slaves.  If you add in debt slaves (those that paid a fee to be taken to a job and then find themselves with a job that pays far less than advertised and fees that were far more than advertised) you add millions more to the rosters.

TIME magazine just did an article about sex slaves in South Africa.  Girls are bought for as little as $50 and then forced to spend the rest of their brutal and short lives as sex slaves...giving all of the money they make to their pimps/slave owners before dieing of AIDS or other disease.

For a South African victim of human trafficking, this was the endgame. On a freezing night last July, Sindiswa, 17, lay curled in a fetal position in bed No. 7 of a state-run hospice in central Bloemfontein. Well-used fly strips hung between fluorescent lights, pale blue paint flaked off the walls, and fresh blood stained her sheets, the rusty bedpost and the linoleum floor. Sindiswa had full-blown AIDS and tuberculosis, and she was three months pregnant. Sweat poured from her forehead as she whispered her story through parched lips covered with sores.

...Orphaned at 16, she had to leave school to support herself. Last February, a woman from a neighboring town offered to find work for her and her 15-year-old best friend...After driving them eight hours north to Bloemfontein, the recruiter sold them to a Nigerian drug and human-trafficking syndicate in exchange for $120 and crack cocaine. "[The recruiter] said we could find a job," Sindiswa recalled, "but as soon as we got here, she told us, 'No. You have to go into the streets and sell yourselves.'

[BlueOwl]

And from a June article:

Mohammad Salim Khan woke up in a strange house and felt an excruciating pain in his abdomen. Unsure where he was, Khan asked a man wearing a surgical mask what had happened. "We have taken your kidney," the stranger said. "If you tell anyone, we'll kill you."

This particularly gory testimony, used by the U.S. State Department to highlight the severity and widespread nature of human trafficking, is one of many alarming personal accounts included in its 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. According to the State Department, at least 12.3 million adults and children worldwide are subjected to forced labor, sexual servitude and stolen organs, with the global financial crisis heightening the problem through the increased demand for cheap labor, services — and even body parts.



http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1905330,00.html?loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.107894:b29687104&xid=Loomia#ixzz0dXg67I3k

[Phildo]

Could be seriously reduced or even stopped with Summary Executions of Pimps and Traffickers -- but for some dingbat reasons High (self) Moral folks do not like the Death Penalty. 

So on it goes. 

Such is the cost of High Morals. 

[DasFlo]

Can the sun please go Supernova already? Maybe a black hole eating us all?
Conventional doom is only going to make this worse, much worse - at least for a while.
I'm so sick of this. I can't even imagine how those responsible for these kinds of atrocities justify it before themselves.
What the hell is wrong with humans? Do we all have it in us, beneath a thin veil of moral guidelines, civilization and relative security?
Sorry, not adding anything to the discussion here, but I want to puke my guts out every time I read/hear about these things.  

[BlueOwl]

I think human trafficking/slave stories bring me down more than anything else.  It completely takes my faith and my respect for humanity away....far away.  It also scares the living hell out of me because these are the actions of pure sociopathic evil and it is, apparently, rampant.  Part of me literally dies when I read these stories.

[honeydee]

I think human trafficking/slave stories bring me down more than anything else.  It completely takes my faith and my respect for humanity away....far away.  It also scares the living hell out of me because these are the actions of pure sociopathic evil and it is, apparently, rampant.  Part of me literally dies when I read these stories.

I hear ya.  This makes me feel so much despair as I look at my own little girls playing on the floor in front of me. It is just pure evil.

I remember this was a huge issue after the tsunami as well, and of course it was Thailand of all places...ick.

[EyesWideOpen]

The only thing wrong with the State Dept report is that it left out one group of trafficers-US State Dept contractor group DynCorp; Google DynCorp and sex slave ring, but have a waste bin handy to throw up into.

American men jeep and truck into remote areas, park next to the village school playground, and point out the young girls they want. The local pimp arranges to have the girls kidnapped and taken to brothels where the DynCorp guys buy them out-until they leave the country. The girls are usually sold back to the brothels when the guy leaves.

[DasFlo]

Should there be such a thing as recorded history a hundred years from now, I am quite sure that dyncorp (along with Blackwater/Xe) is going to be compared to the SS, possibly not favorably. Just saying.

(Edit: Changed "ago" to "from now")

[Phildo]

Should there be such a thing as recorded history a hundred years ago, I am quite sure that dyncorp (along with Blackwater/Xe) is going to be compared to the SS, possibly not favorably. Just saying.

I would think even worse.

These are mercs.  Should be shot on sight and on-site.

[DasFlo]

Should there be such a thing as recorded history a hundred years ago, I am quite sure that dyncorp (along with Blackwater/Xe) is going to be compared to the SS, possibly not favorably. Just saying.

I would think even worse.

These are mercs.  Should be shot on sight and on-site.

I was thinking the same thing. People who are active in and / or affiliated with (directly profiting from) these organizations should be put out of their misery. God, I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of the stranglehold that the sociopaths seem to have on everyone else.

On a completely unrelated side-note, here's my desktop background:

[EyesWideOpen]

Sometimes I wonder, Das, I really do. The whistleblowers had to go into hiding, and it never made the US media except alter sites.

Knowing about it makes it hard to believe the State Dept really wants to do anything about human trafficking, and is part of why I left a very well paid job with a team hunting these animals.

Best thing to do? Know it's out there and could be happening in your neighbourhood. Be aware, and if you are in a country where human trafficking happens in the open, take action against it.

We have to look out for each other now because if collapse really happens, they'll be coming for our loved ones.