An eye-opener on human trafficking

I viewed a film on human trafficking called Call & Response. The viewing was made available by Willow Creek Community Church DuPage. Human trafficking is a big problem that is not given enough attention.

There are 27 million slaves in the world today. It's a problem even in the U.S., with Chicago being the third-largest hub. Primarily women and children are used. Human trafficking is used for prostitution, as laborers etc. but even those used as laborers are quite often also used for sex.

A reporter who went overseas to get more info on this, visited a brothel and interviewed two girls, ages 14 and 15. He ended up buying the girls for $150-$200 each and taking them back to their homes. Their families were, of course, ecstatic to see them; they thought they were long dead. One of the girls ran away and went back to the brothel. In order for the traffickers to help keep the girls there, they frequently get them addicted to meth., which is what drove this girl to go back.

What can we do? We can raise awareness. We can contact our elected officials about it. We can also insist as consumers that the companies we buy products from make sure that they as well as their suppliers do not use slaves anywhere in their manufacturing processes. Many raw materials used in the production of for example automobiles, such as iron, rubber, silver, tin, and petroleum, are often mined by forced labor. That means that if you own a car, odds are you are using a product tainted by slavery. Without a company knowing where their raw materials originate, they can't be sure that it's not inadvertently selling products produced, at least in part, by slaves.

Bobbie Klimkowski

Winfield