Most people think that slavery is a crime of the past. However, this notion couldn’t be any further from the tragic reality of a well organized criminal activity which victimized more than 30 millions women and children worldwide. As matter of fact, there are more people being enslaved today than at any other time in human history.

There are two distinct facets of this modern slave trade: one concerns victims who are sold, bought and used as sex slaves, the other one pertains to people exploited for labor purpose. In this article we will only try to get a grasp on the global sex trade aspect of human trafficking.

People have been exploiting each other for thousands of years. Seemingly, when they weren’t slaughtering each other in wars, they were selling each other into slavery (perhaps one would be the result of the other). Now in modern times matters haven’t improved much if at all, because throughout the world de facto forms of slavery can be found, as well as many other ways humans force their depravity upon each other. Let’s hope that education and activism help abolish this terrifying human failing or at least greatly reduce its scope.

JAPANESE FOOD ART PRESENTING NYOTA

Nyotaimori restaurant uses naked models as sushi platters sparks controversy

Nyotaimori is the use of a naked model as a sushi platter while guests eats sushi from the model’s body. There are nyotaimori restaurants around the world, including New York City. But a nyotaimori restaurant in Canada called Naked Sushi has caused controversy since its grand opening in July.

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Every year an estimated 10 million girls, some as young as seven or eight, become child brides. Child marriage is one of the least-acknowledged forms of modern slavery, yet many girls married in childhood face a life of sexual and domestic servitude, and are highly vulnerable to domestic violence, lack of access to education and health services, and have no economic opportunities or freedom of movement (theguardian.com)

Korean prostitution rings span the United States, with many of the women treated as de facto slaves by their pimp-masters.Credits: ICE/DHS

Commercial sex workers (humantrafficwatch.wordpress.com)

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The Islamic State’ has set fixed prices in order to sell Yazidi and Christian women from Iraq and Syria – who’ve been abducted into slavery by members of the US, Turkey and GCC-backed paramilitary terrorist confab. (intellihub.com)

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Seventeen-year-old prostitute Hashi embraces a Babu, her “husband”, inside her small room at Kandapara brothel in Tangail, a northeastern city of Bangladesh. Many young and inexperienced prostitutes have “lovers” or “husbands” who normally live outside the brothel, occasionally taking money and sex from them in exchange for security in this male dominated society. She earns about 800-1000 taka daily ($9.75 – $12.19) servicing around 15-20 customers every day. Hashi is one of hundreds of mostly teenage sex workers living a painful life of exploitation in the brothel. Photo: Andrew Biraj / Reuters Source: buzzfeed.com

According to the article titled “Human Trafficking” in Wikipedia, human trafficking is the largest growing criminal activity in the world. Human trafficking usually involves women and children. Human trafficking doesn’t include “human smuggling,” which involves people voluntarily paying others to smuggle them from one location to another.

A racket to smuggle humans out of the country from Kinniya in the Eastern province bound to Australia. (therepublicsquare.com)

According to the State Department of the United States, as many as 820,000 men, women and children are trafficked in the world every year. Eighty per cent are women and girls and up to 50 per cent are minors. (kosmo.hubpages.com)

“Today girls are still going missing but their bodies are never found,” Miguel Perea, a local journalist told Britain’s Channel 4. Maria described how at the age of 16 she was lured off the streets by a young man who promised the world, but delivered nothing but pain. She was raped, drugged and sold for sex. “They took a gallon of gasoline and started pouring it over a girl,” Maria said. “One of the men told me if you don’t do as I say I will do the same to you. (CNN.com)

“The victims of modern day slavery have many faces. They are men and women, adults and children. Yet, all are denied basic human dignity and freedom” –Obama (humantraffickingsgp.weebly.com)

Indonesia is one of big countries in this world. It has large regions, with high population, many religions, but low level in education, economy, and health. It is very complicated country, and it is not easy for government to manage all sections well. One of huge issue is TRAFFICKING. It is not a new issue, because it has been happening for over thirteen years. (ishlahii.wordpress.com) Indonesia is a source, transit, and destination country for women, children, and men trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. The greatest threat of trafficking facing Indonesian men and women is that posed by conditions of forced labor and debt bondage in more developed Asian countries and the Middle East.(Wikipedia).

Shandra and other trafficking victims in Connecticut.. Shandra Woworuntu, an Indonesian who falls victim to a human trafficking crime in New York. (bbc.com)

A slum building in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where drugs and prostitution are rampant. Human trafficking survivor Srey Neth was sold here, by her mother, at age 14 to a pimp who later sold Neth’s virginity for $300. (Tim Matsui) www.care2.com

A young woman in a Phnom Penh slum. Investigators later found her mother was pimping the drug-addicted girl nightly to upwards of 10 Cambodian men. (Tim Matsui) www.care2.com

Human traffickers also abduct women, who are then forced to perform labor, usually of the unskilled variety, such as working in sweatshops, and may even include begging.

An immigrant is put to work in appalling conditions, for 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and not paid a cent. Is that slavery? Criminal exploitation?

Until the communication revolution of the Internet, sex trafficking was mainly confined to brothels and street corners. But since then, the information super-highway has given criminal organizations the tool to turn sex trafficking into a multi-billions a year enterprise. It is more profitable than drug and weapon trafficking for a very simple reason: once a 100 kilos shipment of cocaine or heroin has been sold in the streets, it is gone. On the other hand, the “investment” made by human traffickers on the buying end- in women or children- will keep turning a profit over a fairly long period of time. Often large criminal organizations work together to control the recruitment of the victims, the transit and the enslavement at the destination point. (sott.net)

We suspect that the missing infants are used for begging and many others are pushed into child labor,” said M. R. Krishna, an additional director-general at the Crime Investigation Department. (ucanews.com)

In parts of Africa, particularly Ghana, in order to settle an offense, a virgin female member of the offending family may be forced to serve as a sex slave. And this is done without the woman receiving the title of “wife.” In Ghana, Togo and Benin, women are made to act as shrine sex slaves, a kind of ritual servitude. (Please keep in mind that parts of Africa are suffering an AIDS epidemic.) Also, in the Eastern European country of Moldova, as much as 10 per cent of the female population has been sold into prostitution! (kosmo.hubpages.com)