Trafficking In Humanity - BleuRouge
An interactive platform for community driven content on social issues + activism.
Written by
Teprine
September 23, 2007
Hello dear thinkers, movers and shakers,
Been a long time, been a long time, been a long…. Ok enough of the clichés I have been overwhelmed by day to day life that I have not been taking care of my readers. Recent updates are needed:
There is a symposium tuesday 25th of September at the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom (4100 Sherbrooke St. West) about human trafficking in Canada and in Particular Montreal. www.templemontreal.ca and human@templemontreal.ca - Article on trafficking from the Temple (english). A great woman who is working hard on this project - Lilliane Kohl - is building the first home for trafficked women in montreal and needs support in any way that it can be given.
I think that she has some great ideas, some of which are different than mine - she thinks all forms of prostitution are forms of trafficking and abuse without exception - I have met too many sex workers to entirely agree with that.
For me this is not the real issue, what is important is that we give women access to their rights, be they sex workers rights, the right to get out of prostitution and the right to be protected from a system that does not always do this.
I think the second film is starting to brew. Let me know what you think.
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Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Teprine
November 21, 2006
Why do people turn to prostitution. How do people get trafficked?
What are the laws on prostitution in the country? Have they changed, are they going to change?
There are a variety of reasons that people turn to prostitution and sex work. One of the main reasons for alot of women is poverty and lack of options. If a woman can work for a brothel and bring in alot money to support her entire family or have the option to work at a factory making garments and barely make ends meet, well the likelyhood is that she wiil go to prostitution. In North America with more options (education and work options) there are a variety of reasons that women may choose to go into sex work. There is the money factor, the choice of enjoying sex work as well as drug addiction and trafficking. Yes trafficking of women happens here in Canada. For more information on local sex work, go to Stella in montreal, they will be able to give you alot of statistics on women and prostitution. They have an approach that supports all women who choose to do sex work and give options to the women who are not entirely empowered by sex work. It is a resource center.
However, there are other organizations and people, who believe that all prostitution is exploitation and violence against women and it is all links to the poverty and patriarchal system that exists in our political world system. One researcher Aurelie Lebrun is presently working on analyzing the violent tendencies of the users and why they are violent towards women. I have taken excerpts out of her speech to make it easier to read.
Here are some statistics from Burma that give an idea of why some women get trafficked as well as some of the laws that exist to protect women from trafficking.
What is the government doing/not doing? From what I have learnt there are many initiatives in theory but in action it is hard to stop much of what is going on. If we talk about drugs for example, there are plenty of laws that make it illegal, raids that try and stop it, but this does not deter the trafficking of drugs. I think it is the same for sex work, prostitution and trafficking. There are inititiatives i.e. beefed up security at the Chinese/Vietnamese border to prevent trafficking, but that does not mean that they can stop everyone. Even punishment for rape does not stop rape. So the issue is more of a social one. How do we get all people involved in destroying the stigmas attached to trafficking and prostitution so that we can address them in a social forum.
For information of what is happening in governments
Thailand
Thailand and poverty
Children and Cambodia
Cambodia
Vietnam
Burma
Laos
Vietnam and HIV/AIDS
Canadian decrim of prostitutes not prostitution
Canadian laws- by CSIS
Coalition for Canadian Sex Workers
Demand? who are using the prostitutes?
Who organizes the sex trade. Mafia? Business?
Well usually the biggest clientele is local. Foreign men make up a small percent of the users of sex workers and trafficked victims. There are very strict laws about pedofilia so it is very dangerous for foreign men to attempt to use children, as there are international agencies on the lookout for them. It is much easier for local men to use children and sex workers because it is much more hidden. The people who profit from the exploitation of sex workers, prostitutes and trafficked women, men and children, range from business men, family members, mafia, and mamasans (in many cases older prostitutes - not to say that all older prostitutes become traffickers, but many a trafficking victim has said that is was a woman who approached them and they felt safe because it was a woman, so they followed them and trusted them).
I hope this answers some more questions. Please feel free to address some of these issues in any way that you see fit. I want people to disagree with me as this creates a dialogue.
Comment (1)
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Teprine
November 21, 2006
statistics: how many women, girls, boys or men are estimated to be working in prostitution? To answer this question, I must address the concept of trafficking. Not all people (men, women and children) are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Many of them are trafficked for working (men, women and children), sexual exploitation (into brothels), adoption… Alot of the undocumented movement of people in Southeast Asia can also be split into formal and informal migration. Many people are moving from one country to another in search of work, but seeing as they are moving in an undocumented fashion they are considered as being trafficked. Another group of people who are considered to be trafficked are sex workers who are moving from province to province looking for work, but as they are working in illegal work, they are all considered to be trafficking victims. I say this not to take away from the fact that there are serious violations of human rights and dignity when your choice has been taken away from you. The UN estimates that roughly 800,000 people per year are trafficked. This includes for labor and for sexual exploitation.
Have there been changes? ex. more girls less
women? Changes in the numbers?
There have been charges against family members in Cambodia, as well as brothel owners. It is hard for alot of the court cases to come to fruition as many of the trafficking victims are either too afraid to confront their trafficker or somehow someone along the line is paid off. If you are interested in the more legal side of things, ADHOC in Cambodia is a good place to start, they are an organization of Lawyers who bring traffickers to court.
One more thing to say about this is that even though there is corruption in many of these situations, governments do take human trafficking seriously and do want to stop it. How is still not entirely clear to me, but it is taken seriously.
History of prostitution/trafficking in the area. Has there always been? Was it small, has it grown etc? When. Dates.
From my research, is seems that prostitution exploded during the vietnam war when soldiers would leave Vietnam to go to Thailand for Rest and Relaxation, which was more like Intercourse and Intoxication. Statistically whenever there has been a war in a region (vietnam, korea) the number of sex workers increases ten fold. After the Vietnam war, monies were put into the sex industry to maintain it as a tourist attraction. A good book to read is Sex Slaves from Louise Brown - Sociologist, who addresses the issues of history, stereotypes and Asian Society.
Incidence of aids and venereal disease. Just as with the number of trafficking victims, it is hard to estimate the number of HIV/AIDS and venerial disease cases in Southeast Asia. I am assuming that the safest place to get this information is through UN bodies or Avert which is a website that collects its information from UNAIDS.
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Written by
Teprine
November 3, 2006
This photo 1 is of the OXFAM Quebec team that worked with my sister in Hanoi.
My sister is the one on the far right. The team members that I met were front left: Ngoc Anh, Next to her: Quinn, The woman in the middle front is: Leanne, The woman in front of my sister is Kim Ahn and the older man in the back is Leonard Buckle the Regional Director of OXFAM Quebec.
This photo 2 is of the training in tailoring that women receive after they have been trafficked and receive this training as a skill that they can use
A criticism of the tailoring process is that women make so little amounts of money being tailors that the lure of the money for prostitution is strong and they make conscious decisions at that point to work in the sex industry. Also, many sex workers who are ‘rescued’ from brothels often feel forced to take the courses. This is not necessarily the case with OXFAM, but I felt it worth mentioning.
This photo 3 is a picture of the rattan production house, where women can also learn or re-learn weaving skills.
Here women are also given skills that are linked to they culture. Women here learn the skill of weaving. I really applaud the initiative, however, I feel it important to give women access to more skills such as computer technology, teaching degrees and the sort so as to give them access to better paying jobs. It is however a step in the right way, giving them a skill is very important.
This photo 4 is an example of the weaving work that some of the women can do.
For hours of work sometimes these women only make small amounts of money which are compatible locally, but do not allow women to invest capital into their own businesses. If tourists are charged more for their work, then they would be able to make more.
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Written by
Teprine
November 3, 2006
Just as an update…
Jimmy Hayes (my editor) and myself have been working hard on editing some pieces for our viewers so that they can get into the full experience of what we have been doing. We have finished our piece and are now working on a variety of small pieces to get a variety of points of view on a subject that has alot of voices in it.
I will be excited in January to officially open the dossier and show our work.
Keep me posted
Teprine
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I have never, in my entire life, been so overwhelmed by how much I didn’t know about filmmaking
I have tremendously enjoyed this process of starting, shooting and finishing a film, but I feel that for a first time out, I have made too many mistakes to have this be my work of art.
SOOOOO many important people had to be left out of the film because we didn’t have enough B-Roll or there wasn’t enough to support them on either side of the cuts. It breaks my heart because I feel that some people, such as Tive Sarayeth from the Cambodian Women Media Center need to be exposed to the world, so that the world can see the great work she is doing for the women in her country.
I feel like I am going to get my head bitten off by the people who work in human trafficking because the film does not go in depth enough and that I only skimmed something that needs great deliberation. I only had 1500$, plus the FAP grant but no money to pay an editor, producer, musicians… and therefore the end product has suffered.
That being said, I want to take what we have made, and submit it as a demo for a larger grant to continue the research and the project. I have a need to address the sex workers in these countries, to get their opinions on the subject. I have to talk to more women who have been working as prostitutes, I have to start really researching the global movement of people.
All of this requires time and money, one I have the other no.
I guess this is just a rant, the need to expose my frustration with a film that has not gone entirely the way I wanted it to.
Does anyone else feel like this? Is anyone even reading?
Thank you
Teprine
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There are people who are pro and con this new prostitution law.
I am interested in finding out what people in Montreal think about what this has done and if it is the right decision to protect women who either choose the life of sex work or are forced by means that are either physical, psychological or monetary to work in the sex trade?
I for one am not sure what the true effects of this are. Give me a shout and let me know what you all think.
Cheers
Teprine
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