child trafficking

Reflections/T-Visas/Thanks in dark times

/ Preston The Nomad / Leave a comment

Be humble

Its thanksgiving in half an hour –probably will be by the time this publishes- and I am left with a swirling pool of thoughts. On the one hand this week has marked multiple school shootings, riots, and sewn racial divide in my own country. Something I don’t want to see. I believe in progress and mistakes will always be made its how we respond that matters. On the other hand it’s hard to be thankful and enjoy this holiday season knowing the toll it will take on millions of people living in slavery, poverty, and war torn refugee societies.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot to be thankful for. My life is in all reality at the best point it has been in years. Work is going exceptional and I’ve scheduled the last of the classes for degree number two to graduate this coming summer. I remind myself daily of the words of St Augustine.

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So what I am thankful for today, is my country. Problems aside, we make strides daily. Let’s talk T-visa. The T-visa is an interesting piece of legislation. One of the problems with trafficking cases is that the victims are often no longer in the country when it comes time to prosecute the traffickers. This is interestingly, a problem that occurs worldwide (and in some of the lower tier countries actively deporting victims for the sake of stopping trials does occur). The T-visa is a two pronged idea. It grants victims a visa to stay in the country. Not just the victims though, victims often have families in another countries. Many of them get sucked into trafficking by willingly immigrating thinking they can send money back home. Instead they become slaves who daily hear their families threatened. The T-visa allows for the family members to come into the countries as well. They just have to make it to a US Embassy in their home country. The other side of the T-Visa? It requires that victims take the stand against their captors and traffickers. Now, personally I would be a fan of losing the second requirement. I understand it though. Trafficking cases are hard to prosecute as it is and without victims it’s near impossible. The T-visa was sort of a first of its kind effort. A government truly taking measure to aid the people who had fallen victim within its borders.
Now it is not without its problems. The law allows for Five Thousand T-Visas to be issued yearly. In its history since it was passed through congress in 2001, it has not been issued to five thousand people in a year. In fiscal year 2012-2013 including victims and family members it was issued to less than two thousand people. In total from 2002-2012, including family members, less than 5 thousand visas have been approved. –That’s less than the amount allowed per year-
Why is this the situation? In many cases because trafficking victims are terrified of law enforcement and terrified of their traffickers. Some don’t talk out of fear the traffickers will make good on all the threats they’ve been making to the victims. Other victims don’t speak because they’re afraid police will charge them with criminal offenses (another bit of fear instilled by traffickers). Some victims are afraid the law enforcement might be working for their traffickers, which is most regrettably true in some circumstances. You also have to consider that some of them just want to leave their victimization behind. The atrocities, the torture, and the shame. Psychologically many just can’t stand to face their captors again.
All of that said, the T-Visa is a beautiful piece of legislation. It was an attempt, progress, a step forward and for the most part we seem to be on an upward trend of approvals.
If you’re interested in learning more about the T-Visa please look here and here for official gov webpages.
Stay Tuned to the blog currently planned: Organ Trafficking and a discussion on how trafficking cells actually function.

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The Tips Report/Hate Evil and Love what is good.

/ Preston The Nomad / 1 Comment

One of the things people don’t always understand about the trafficking field (and other international criminal enterprises) is how they got so out of control. A huge part of that reason is that the ability to move people from place to place exploded in the 1990s as international travel and communication exploded. The internet alone has proven to be a huge game changer in trafficking as websites operating in the “dark net” routinely sell trafficking victims. With elements of these criminal enterprises being so new, it takes time for law enforcement and governments to establish the effective protocols for dealing with the situations. In many ways, the United States has led the fight World Wide in establishing laws to fight trafficking. I’m going to use this time to talk about some of the important laws that have come about in the US as a result of trafficking. The program with the longest reach is the Trafficking in Persons Report, commonly referred to as the tips report. Though you could spend countless hours examining the tips report and its effectiveness…we’ll just go with a brief intro.

The Tips report first began in 2001 (check out the 2014 report intro here and country rankings on page 58). The report was a requirement of a congressional passed law the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of the year 2000. Tips examines key elements of trafficking in individual Countries and ranks them into three tiers (read as categories, and really there is 4 but two of them are considered as the same tier). So what are the three tiers?

Tier I: Countries are fully compliant with TVPA (Trafficking Victims Protection Act) standards.

Tier 2: Countries that are making progress to become compliant with the TVPA

Tier 2.5(tier 2 watch list): Countries that are not meeting tier 1 requirements and are failing to supply compelling evidence for increased efforts usually while also having an increase in the amount of trafficking going on in the country. This is also common if the country is making pledges for improvement. –Countries that remain on this list for two years and would be placed on it a third time are automatically dropped to tier 3.

Tier 3: Countries are not TVPA compliant and are making no significant efforts to become compliant.

The motivation for countries to become compliant is monetary. Countries in the tier 3 category are ineligible for non-humanitarian and trade related funds. This also means the United States will vote against loans from the World Bank for these countries.

So what are the TVPA minimum standards? Well essentially this:

Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, Div. A of Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 108, as amended.

(A) Minimum standards for purposes of this chapter, the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking applicable to the government of a country of origin, transit, or destination for victims of severe forms of trafficking are the following:

(1) The government of the country should prohibit severe forms of trafficking in persons and punish acts of such trafficking.

(2) For the knowing commission of any act of sex trafficking involving force, fraud, coercion, or in which the victim of sex trafficking is a child incapable of giving meaningful consent, or of trafficking which includes rape or kidnapping or which causes a death, the government of the country should prescribe punishment commensurate with that for grave crimes, such as forcible sexual assault.

(3) For the knowing commission of any act of a severe form of trafficking in persons, the government of the country should prescribe punishment that is sufficiently stringent to deter and that adequately reflects the heinous nature of the offense.

(4) The government of the country should make serious and sustained efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons.

But check out the State Dept. Page for more info on the TVPA.

Read the full TIPS report and country profiles here.

Now there is all sorts of controversy surrounding the TIPS reports. That said, can we not be satisfied that the attempt is being made and that it does promote an active fight against trafficking?

That concludes my brief info of the TIPS report, stay tuned for the T-Visa, a fantastic improvement(also part of the TVPA though)

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Baby factories. Blood Trafficking. Ritual sacrifice.

/ Preston The Nomad / 1 Comment

Today I decided to bring on some darker elements of the already dark trafficking world. Trafficking for blood & body parts for obscure religious rituals, and baby factories. I’ll be using quite a few examples from Africa, as my own knowledge of blood trafficking began reading articles written about its occurrences in Africa.

Let’s start off talking blood trafficking. What is blood trafficking? Simply put, the victims are trafficked for the sake of taking their blood and selling it on the black market. Now I read the first news article about this nearly a year ago on AllAfrica.com It was a case I believe of a man in Egypt who had been kidnapping nomads locking them in a large warehouse and draining their blood. Keeping them alive as a non-depleting year round cash crop. Now I can’t seem to find that article despite best efforts. I was able to locate another article on blood trafficking, also in Egypt interestingly enough.

“The court said in its ruling that although there is no specific law banning the trafficking of blood, human and organ trafficking is illegal in Egypt, which was the basis for its decision.

According to prosecutors, two of the accused regularly brought street youth to apartments where they would take their blood “for analysis” in exchange for LE10 and a meal. The men would then take the blood and sell it on the black market for LE 85 a bag.”

Check out the complete article here

Going to use that blood trafficking to segue into another form of blood trafficking, this one for occultic ritual.

“One boy explained how witch-doctors took his blood to be used in such rituals: “The traffickers or witch-doctors take your hair and cut your arms, legs, heads and genitals and collect the blood. They say if you speak out I can kill you.” Another victim feared for her life, saying the “witch-doctor told me that one day he would need my head…Meanwhile, a girl from Nigeria remains convinced the spell performed on her means she can never identify her traffickers, for fear her family will die…For $250 (£160) a reformed criminal introduced us to Yunus Kabul, who boasted he had been abducting children for witch-doctors in Africa and abroad, for years.

During our conversation he offered as many children as we required.

“I have enough, a hundred, no problem. I have so many communications. I have a network across whole of Uganda.”

Read the whole article here

And while we’re on the topic of trafficking for rituals..

“In 2010, ABC news reported a horrific story of a father killing his 17 month old son to sell his head for ritual sacrifice…he and his friend beheaded his infant son and sold his head to a wealthy businessman for $2000. According to the report, the businessman believed that the head of the child would bring him more wealth.

“They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business.”

In response to the rising number of ritual murders, the Ugandan government established an Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, equipped in part by the U.S. government. Since its establishment, the Ugandan authorities say that the rate of ritual murder has slowed down.”

Again check out the full article here

and then there are the baby factories..

Baby factories are essentially what they sound like. They have become an increasingly popular find in Nigeria, most of the women in the baby factories do appear to end up there on their own. Usually pregnant and unable or unwilling to care for the child, the factory owners then sell the babies at a premium and give the mothers’ small amounts. Although in most cases it seems like they begin willingly, there have been documented cases where factories were set up with forcibly trafficked women who are impregnated by traffickers to produce children for sale.

“One of the girls told us that mothers sell their babies for $160 to $190,” said Abia State police chief Bala Hassan.

Anti-trafficking agency spokesman Orakwe says that they can then be resold for up to $6,400, depending on their gender. Traditionally, boys are preferred, as they can inherit land according to the local Igbo culture.

Abortion is illegal in Nigeria, and its southeast region is mostly Catholic.

“This girl already feels that she has brought a burden onto her family and onto herself, and she wants to get it over with,” says Orakwe….The anti-trafficking agency said the problem is most pronounced in Nigeria’s southeast, where people prey on girls to provide babies for trafficking rings. The absence of paperwork for these children means anything can happen to them”

Check out the full article here and some related articles here and here

Organ trafficking would have logically been placed in this article.  There will be a post coming on organ trafficking shortly though as the crime is complex and far reaching and I want to spend a little more time on that part of the trade looking at it from start to finish.  Why the intro to the lesser known trafficking areas? I’ll let Frank Douglas explain..

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To expose it is to kill it.

“Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

Psalm 82:4