Human trafficking survivor's triathlon record - CNN.com:
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
Do successful prosecutions constitute success in the fight against modern-day slavery? | Human Trafficking Search
But over the years we came to ask ourselves a very important question: Is it truly “success” to have brought those already-existing operations to justice? We helped pioneered the worker-based, victim-centered, multi-sector approaches to investigations, collaborating with law enforcement. We know the work is urgent and essential. Actual success, however, is getting to the point where the “Slavery in Fields” is history, not 21st century headline news.
Read More
Do successful prosecutions constitute success in the fight against modern-day slavery? | Human Trafficking Search:
Friday, April 10, 2015
Why Southeast Asia struggles to tackle modern-day slavery | Asia | DW.DE | 09.04.2015
In a DW interview, Annette Lyth, Regional Project Manager at the United Nations Action for Cooperation against Trafficking in Persons, explains how widespread forced labor is across Southeast Asia and why the governments in the region are struggling to put an end to the practice.
Read MORE
Why Southeast Asia struggles to tackle modern-day slavery | Asia | DW.DE | 09.04.2015:
Monday, April 6, 2015
CNN Enters New Phase in CNN Freedom Project to Expose Modern-Day Slavery – CNN Press Room - CNN.com Blogs
CNN is bringing viewers a renewed series of reporting and programming about modern slavery in the ground-breaking and award-winning editorial initiative, CNN Freedom Project.
Throughout 2015, CNN will air stories that uncover and expose modern-day slavery including human trafficking, child labour and the sex trade. There will be a focus on turning engagement with CNN Freedom Project into action, with an emphasis on education and harnessing the passion of young people to make a difference.
READ HERE
CNN Enters New Phase in CNN Freedom Project to Expose Modern-Day Slavery – CNN Press Room - CNN.com Blogs:
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Thai navy sues journalists over Rohingya trafficking report - CNN.com
Source: CNN.com
(CNN) -- The Thai navy has filed criminal charges against two journalists over a report tying military personnel to human trafficking.
Continue here:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/22/world/asia/thailand-media-defamation/
(CNN) -- The Thai navy has filed criminal charges against two journalists over a report tying military personnel to human trafficking.
Continue here:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/22/world/asia/thailand-media-defamation/
Monday, December 16, 2013
The women who sold their daughters into sex slavery - CNN.com - CNN.com
Source: CNN.com
When a poor family in Cambodia fell afoul of loan sharks, the mother asked her youngest daughter to take a job. But not just any job.
Continue:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/world/cambodia-child-sex-trade/
When a poor family in Cambodia fell afoul of loan sharks, the mother asked her youngest daughter to take a job. But not just any job.
Continue:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/world/cambodia-child-sex-trade/
Monday, July 15, 2013
Fighting forced labor helps women beat poverty – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery - CNN.com Blogs
Source: The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery - CNN.com Blogs
July 15th, 2013
By Guy Ryder, Special for CNN
Editor’s Note: Guy Ryder is the Director-General of the International Labour Organization. This week it is launching The Work in Freedom program, an initiative funded by the UK Department for International Development which aims to help 100,000 women and girls from Bangladesh, India and Nepal who are in forced labor in countries including Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and India.
July 15th, 2013
By Guy Ryder, Special for CNNEditor’s Note: Guy Ryder is the Director-General of the International Labour Organization. This week it is launching The Work in Freedom program, an initiative funded by the UK Department for International Development which aims to help 100,000 women and girls from Bangladesh, India and Nepal who are in forced labor in countries including Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and India.
Across the planet, about one in every seven of us lives in extreme poverty, having to survive on less than $1.25 a day. Every day, they and the millions more living just above the poverty line struggle to have enough to eat, and dream of a better life and of earning enough to provide for their families.
Geeta Devi was one of these people.
CONTINUE READING:
Friday, March 29, 2013
Toddlers freed from brick kiln bondage – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery - CNN.com Blogs
(CNN) – A flaring furnace blasts another wave of searing heat on the faces of workers hauling bricks under a southern Indian sun.
They work up to 22 hours a day propping heavy stacks of bricks on their heads. None expects to be paid for this labor. None knows how long they'll be kept here. Some are as young as three years old.
Manoj Singh was one of 149 people rescued this year from a brick kiln outside Hyderabad, India. Like millions of other Indians, the toddler was born into extreme poverty.
Toddlers freed from brick kiln bondage – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery - CNN.com Blogs
Monday, February 25, 2013
Afghans sell daughters to pay drug lords
Afghans sell daughters to pay drug lords:
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The mother of a little Afghan girl cannot even turn to face her daughter. She looks down in shame and explains why she must hand the girl over to drug lords.
The father of the girl has done what many Afghan farmers must do to finance their opium farms: borrow money from drug traffickers.
FULL STORY
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The mother of a little Afghan girl cannot even turn to face her daughter. She looks down in shame and explains why she must hand the girl over to drug lords.
The father of the girl has done what many Afghan farmers must do to finance their opium farms: borrow money from drug traffickers.
FULL STORY
Friday, February 22, 2013
Cotton exporters using child labor
By CNN blog producer
Cotton exporters using child labor:
Conscientious consumers are credited with driving change in forced child labor practices inside one of the world's most repressive regimes: Uzbekistan.
But while progress has been made, the fight is far from over.
"Uzbekistan has one of the most atrocious human rights records of any nation in the world," said Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia research for Human Rights Watch. "It's longstanding President (Islam Karimov) has been in power for 23 years and he crushes dissent."
Hundreds of thousands of students in Uzbekistan are pulled from their classrooms every fall and ordered into the fields to pick cotton for little or no pay.
A mother was recorded on video saying that if she didn’t send her child to pick cotton, she faced a fine equivalent to two weeks pay. Rights groups say students are also threatened with losing their seat in the classroom.
Government and private sector employees are also forced to join the harvest and meet quotas knowing that if they don't, they could lose their jobs.
Forced labor in Uzbekistan's cotton industry is a legacy of the Soviet era. It survives because Uzbekistan's government officials profit directly from the cotton harvest.
Farmers are told to plant the cotton and the government buys it up at artificially low prices. It is then sold on the global market.
"Child labor had been widely used under the Soviet regime," Uzbek rights defender Elena Urlaeva explained to CNN. "It has been around in the 20 years of independence as well. It is free after all.
"Children and their parents have been taught that cotton is the white gold and national pride of the country. They study that in school from the first grade. Those who disagree have been presented as enemies of the State."
Urlaeva and others in Uzbekistan's Human Rights Alliance have been harassed, arrested and jailed. Human Rights Watch had its offices shut down. The International Labor Organization was refused permission to monitor the cotton harvest.
Students and workers forced to pick cotton say they were ordered not to take cell phones or cameras into the fields that could be used to document working conditions.
Today, more than 130 apparel manufacturers have pledged not to knowingly include Uzbek cotton in their clothing or other goods.
The pledge is the result of years of efforts by groups like the Responsible Sourcing Network that are working to end forced labor.
Most companies are ready to sign up because they concede consumers are sympathetic to the cause. It's just good business.
"Today is an era of transparency," said Patricia Jurewicz, Director of the Responsible Sourcing Network. She says consumers choose brands which are committed to not having forced labor associated with their products.
That pressure is making a difference.
In 2012, Uzbekistan announced it was ending the use of primary school age student labor.
Activists like Elena Urlaeva found a sharp reduction in the very young but found last year's harvest still saw high school and university students forced into the fields.
Monitoring whether the government is abiding by its own pledge isn't easy.
Urlaeva said: "When human rights activists tried to approach the fields where children were working they noticed that they were guarded by the militia, prosecutor's office and by special services (referring to KGB-like structures there)."
Urlaeva said she was detained in the Tashkent region after documenting 11 to 18 year olds being used in the cotton harvest.
Uzbekistan's Embassy in Washington declined an interview, but gave CNN a written statement.
In part, it said: "The statements about arrests, beatings and detentions of those who are involved in cotton harvest do not correspond to the reality.
"Uzbek cotton has a superior quality and these statements may be the result of the efforts of our competitors to create unhealthy environment and dishonor Uzbek producers."
The statement says Uzbek farmers are paid in full for their cotton, but rights defenders insist it's a price set by the government to ensure a healthy profit for itself.
Uzbek officials concede the cotton harvest is a Soviet-era relic, and insist the government is trying to diversify and change. Activists aren't so sure.
"Without an open civil society, without international agencies able to get in and without reporters able to get in," says HRW's Swerdlow, "it's going to be extremely difficult to verify what the government is doing, as it says, to combat the problem of forced child labor and forced labor of adults."
Despite the hurdles, activists are encouraged that the number of global brands which have pledged not to "knowingly" use Uzbek cotton is up from 60 a year ago to more than 130.
Activists concede the fight against forced labor is far from over.
There is a major effort to get companies that signed the pledge to audit their supply chains.
Activists have to keep up the pressure on both countries and companies.
But the best hope for a million Uzbek students may be those informed consumers who sustain their point by not buying clothes sourced with slave labor - no matter the cost.
Cotton exporters using child labor:
Conscientious consumers are credited with driving change in forced child labor practices inside one of the world's most repressive regimes: Uzbekistan.
But while progress has been made, the fight is far from over.
"Uzbekistan has one of the most atrocious human rights records of any nation in the world," said Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia research for Human Rights Watch. "It's longstanding President (Islam Karimov) has been in power for 23 years and he crushes dissent."
Hundreds of thousands of students in Uzbekistan are pulled from their classrooms every fall and ordered into the fields to pick cotton for little or no pay.
A mother was recorded on video saying that if she didn’t send her child to pick cotton, she faced a fine equivalent to two weeks pay. Rights groups say students are also threatened with losing their seat in the classroom.
Government and private sector employees are also forced to join the harvest and meet quotas knowing that if they don't, they could lose their jobs.
Forced labor in Uzbekistan's cotton industry is a legacy of the Soviet era. It survives because Uzbekistan's government officials profit directly from the cotton harvest.
Farmers are told to plant the cotton and the government buys it up at artificially low prices. It is then sold on the global market.
"Child labor had been widely used under the Soviet regime," Uzbek rights defender Elena Urlaeva explained to CNN. "It has been around in the 20 years of independence as well. It is free after all.
"Children and their parents have been taught that cotton is the white gold and national pride of the country. They study that in school from the first grade. Those who disagree have been presented as enemies of the State."
Urlaeva and others in Uzbekistan's Human Rights Alliance have been harassed, arrested and jailed. Human Rights Watch had its offices shut down. The International Labor Organization was refused permission to monitor the cotton harvest.
Students and workers forced to pick cotton say they were ordered not to take cell phones or cameras into the fields that could be used to document working conditions.
Today, more than 130 apparel manufacturers have pledged not to knowingly include Uzbek cotton in their clothing or other goods.
The pledge is the result of years of efforts by groups like the Responsible Sourcing Network that are working to end forced labor.
Most companies are ready to sign up because they concede consumers are sympathetic to the cause. It's just good business.
"Today is an era of transparency," said Patricia Jurewicz, Director of the Responsible Sourcing Network. She says consumers choose brands which are committed to not having forced labor associated with their products.
That pressure is making a difference.
In 2012, Uzbekistan announced it was ending the use of primary school age student labor.
Activists like Elena Urlaeva found a sharp reduction in the very young but found last year's harvest still saw high school and university students forced into the fields.
Monitoring whether the government is abiding by its own pledge isn't easy.
Urlaeva said: "When human rights activists tried to approach the fields where children were working they noticed that they were guarded by the militia, prosecutor's office and by special services (referring to KGB-like structures there)."
Urlaeva said she was detained in the Tashkent region after documenting 11 to 18 year olds being used in the cotton harvest.
Uzbekistan's Embassy in Washington declined an interview, but gave CNN a written statement.
In part, it said: "The statements about arrests, beatings and detentions of those who are involved in cotton harvest do not correspond to the reality.
"Uzbek cotton has a superior quality and these statements may be the result of the efforts of our competitors to create unhealthy environment and dishonor Uzbek producers."
The statement says Uzbek farmers are paid in full for their cotton, but rights defenders insist it's a price set by the government to ensure a healthy profit for itself.
Uzbek officials concede the cotton harvest is a Soviet-era relic, and insist the government is trying to diversify and change. Activists aren't so sure.
"Without an open civil society, without international agencies able to get in and without reporters able to get in," says HRW's Swerdlow, "it's going to be extremely difficult to verify what the government is doing, as it says, to combat the problem of forced child labor and forced labor of adults."
Despite the hurdles, activists are encouraged that the number of global brands which have pledged not to "knowingly" use Uzbek cotton is up from 60 a year ago to more than 130.
Activists concede the fight against forced labor is far from over.
There is a major effort to get companies that signed the pledge to audit their supply chains.
Activists have to keep up the pressure on both countries and companies.
But the best hope for a million Uzbek students may be those informed consumers who sustain their point by not buying clothes sourced with slave labor - no matter the cost.
Germans take up Sinai trafficking – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery - CNN.com Blogs
http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/21/germans-take-up-sinai-trafficking/
Source: CNN.com Blogs:
February 21st, 2013
Source: CNN.com Blogs:
February 21st, 2013
Germany's parliament has taken on debating human trafficking in Sinai in part due to CNN reporting from the region.
German MP Annette Groth says it is time for Berlin to use its economic power to pressure Egyptian authorities.
Human rights groups estimate that thousands of African migrants have perished trying to make it to Israel via the Sinai.
In two documentaries over two years CNN's Fred Pleitgen visited the Sinai to expose the traffickers and grim evidence of organ harvesting.
'Death in The Desert' - which was first published online in November 2011 and broadcast on CNN International on November 5, showed evidence that African refugees, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, were being held captive by Bedouin human traffickers in Sinai, who try to extort massive sums of money from the refugees’ families for their release.
Shortly after the documentary aired, hundreds of African refugees were released from captivity in the Sinai Peninsula and allowed to cross from Egypt into Israel.
In 2012 'Stand in the Sinai' showed how different groups - including Bedouins, aid workers and former refugees - were fighting the traffickers.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Rescuing child sex slaves in Minn.
Rescuing child sex slaves in Minn.: Minnesota kicks off a new initiative to rescue child sex slaves. CNN's Deborah Feyerick reports.
Police bust sex slavery ring near elementary school | ksdk.com
Source: ksdk.com
Westminister, CA (CNN) -- Just across the street from an elementary school near Los Angeles was a house holding alleged sex slaves from China.
However, this is not an isolated case.
The Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force busted an international prostitution ring called "Operation China Doll".
For many Westminister Police, this was the culmination of a 7 month investigation.
Four suspects were arrested and accused of pimping and pandering as many as ten women from rural China.
Police believe they were the victims of human trafficking, based on control with immigration status. They say the women were brought here on visitor visas.
"They didn't speak any English. They were in these brothels where there was no transportation to and from. They were dropped off at these locations and left for days at a time with no clothing, very little food. A lot of times they went right from the airport directly to a brothel."
Inside the brothels, police found boxes of condoms and cash hidden in the freezer. In the suspected pimp's home, there were pregnancy test kits and thousands of dollars stuffed into marked envelopes.
"The victims are sleeping with as many as 10 men a day and they were charging 160 per person."
Watch the video in the player above to view the entire story.
http://www.ksdk.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1684318361001
http://www.ksdk.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1684318361001
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Undercover filmmaker: Trafficker priced me up – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery - CNN.com Blogs
http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/23/undercover-filmmaker-trafficker-priced-me-up/
SOURCE: CNN.com Blogs
March 23rd, 2012
By Mimi Chakarova, Special to CNN
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/international/2012/03/23/price-of-sex-film-trafficking.cnn
SOURCE: CNN.com Blogs
March 23rd, 2012
By Mimi Chakarova, Special to CNN
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/international/2012/03/23/price-of-sex-film-trafficking.cnn
For the past decade, photographer-filmmaker Mimi Chakarova has examined conflict, corruption and the sex trade. Her film "The Price of Sex," a feature-length documentary made over seven years on trafficking and corruption, premiered in 2011. She was awarded the Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York. It will air in the U.S. on The Documentary Channel on April 11 at 4.30p0.m. ET
She was wearing a polka dot skirt and her favorite pink flip-flops the day she left her village in Albania. Her mom called out her name before she got into her boyfriend's red Mitsubishi. She didn't turn to wave goodbye. She was 12 and angry.
Her stepdad has been raping her for as long as she can remember. She couldn't tell her mom. She knows she'd be sent away. She'd be the one blamed. Girls tempt grown men and bring it on themselves, they'd say. And there was also his drinking that made him do it, they'd add.
Once they were in Italy, her boyfriend changed - he told her she'll work for him as a prostitute. She thought he was playing some silly joke. She left home to be with him; to one day marry him. He is older. She's in love.
He slapped her back to reality. Told her how much money she cost him for the speedboat ride, her fake documents, the clothes and make-up he bought to make her look pretty and pass for 18.
She cried. And he cut her knee deep with a knife to make her stop. For the next seven years, the scar is a reminder she has no one but him to fear and return to.
Years later, I recorded her story at a secret shelter for women and saw court documents backing up what she told me. She pressed charges against her pimp but she says his uncle was a judge and released him on bail. The pimp left Albania until things cooled off. He is still free and has even bought a three-story house in her village in northern Albania.
Meanwhile, her family found out she was a "hooker who didn't even bring back any money, only an abortion and STDs." They disowned her. Her mom still doesn't know her husband was the first to abuse her.
That was the story of a young Albanian girl I met while filming "The Price of Sex" - sold into sex work in Italy and Belgium by a man who pretended to be her boyfriend.
The first woman I photographed had been trafficked to Turkey. She returned to Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, wearing the same pants, blouse and shoes she left in.
Relying on her contacts in the town where she was sold, I retraced her journey to Turkey and met with one of her pimps - a man notorious for the sadistic abuse of the girls he owned.
Unable to take photographs, I posed as a Bulgarian woman for sale and spoke with Tania, a girl from Ukraine who was trafficked at the age of 23 and purchased as a slave by Yusuf.
I push my camera bag under the white plastic table, slouching down to appear more relaxed. The sun set four hours ago and the outdoor cafe where I'm sitting faces the fishing boats docked by the bay.
Only now the fear slowly seeps in as I notice a middle-aged man with an off-white cotton shirt and beige trousers approach the table.
The young woman by his side looks straight ahead. Her clothes are a few sizes too small by intent. They sit down at opposite ends of one another. I introduce myself in Russian.
The pimp doesn't understand but he doesn't need to. He is here to price me. He adjusts his gold-rimmed glasses, lights a cigarette and puts his cell phone on the table.
The young woman, Tatiana, also known as Tania, is average – small, tired and looking much older than 25.
We start talking. I'm nervous: "I am coming from Istanbul. For work."
"So you know what this is about?" she asks slowly as if speaking in code and then takes another drag on her cigarette.
"Yes."
"Let's talk then," she smiles at Yusuf who is staring at my breasts without trying to be discreet. "You'll live with him. There is plenty of work," she pauses to adjust the thick strap of her orange tank top. "Sometimes 30 a day."
She tells me the clients are handsome, she denies Yusuf hits her – though in both cases I know the truth.
"Look, Yusuf likes you," she says. "You can start tomorrow."
My hand is shaking as I try to write down the digits of Tania's cell phone number.
"It's your first time, huh?" Tania smiles. "I was the same, hadn't done this before. But after a couple of days, you'll forget everything," she pauses and pulls out another cigarette.
"Home, friends, memories... " she looks down and inhales the smoke. "Nothing will matter."
Tania stares into the distance where boat lights flicker. Her next client is waiting in one of these boats. "Think about it," she stands up. "We'll be back in a bit."
She walks away with Yusuf close by her side like a father or an older uncle.
Working to expose this misery makes you want to never leave your house again. But you can't hide. You've promised too many people to carry on. You've connected the dots for a decade. You can break it down into the most basic elements: supply and demand.
The supply is steady - poor women and kids need a way out. They leave in search of jobs. They are duped, sold, used up and deported back to where they came from. Penniless, ashamed, scared.
And the demand? It's something few are willing to tackle. It's not only fishermen, construction workers and soldiers who frequent the brothels of Turkey, Russia, Kosovo, the United Arab Emirates, the U.K., Israel, Greece, Italy and many other countries where women are trafficked to. You also have cops, politicians, policy makers, U.N. personnel. Men who'd rather remain anonymous.
And after all, this human trafficking phenomenon isn't a new criminal trend. It's existed since the beginning of documented time. But what is astonishing to me is how recently we agreed to agree that sex slavery should be punished by law.
Think about it. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defined the Palermo Protocol in 2000 and implemented it in 2003. That's only nine years ago! And The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act was passed by the U.S. Department of State in 2000.
Awareness matters. People must know. We must change perceptions.
But let's not fool ourselves. As long as the huge discrepancy between poor and rich countries continues to exist, as long as access to justice is denied or corrupt, as long as stigma keeps women silent, and law enforcement agents take bribes or use the trafficked women as bargaining chips, we can make films, go to schools, speak until our voices grow weak and still only make a pitiful dent.
The first question we must answer is "Why is human trafficking only second to drugs in profitability?"
Then think of Henry Ford's words: "Show me who profits from war and I will show you how to stop the war."
Apply this to trafficking. If we, as an international community, agreed that the trafficking and selling of human beings is unacceptable and we've had nine years to reduce the numbers, then what else is standing in the way? Do the lives of poor women matter?
I am posing these questions because unless we honestly answer them, all of my work and the persistent effort and dedication of others in the field won't be enough in this lifetime.
And I don't think it is fair for the next generation should inherit one of the worst human rights abuses known to mankind. The time is now.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mimi Chakarova.
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