Is It A Crime to Sell Women? An Indebited Status

Is it a crime to sell women? This was a question asked facetiously (flippant) by a trafficker of women. Therein lies the problem. He sees nothing wrong with the practice, as he makes money, she is nothing, just a commodity, property or a chattel (dehumanised). This is clearly lack of empathy or indeed no empathy. So why does the trafficker not have empathy for women? He has probably been taught all his life that women are for his own gratification, they are weak, they have no value, he may have witnessed it through his own father and other male attitudes subtly reinforcing this belief. He is in business, it is just a commodity, can’t get emotional or won’t make any money.

We in business teach people that emotions, feelings are divorced from trade. It is unprofessional. Indeed the decoupling of human rights from trade as was announced during the Clinton years, raises the question of why are they separate? Do we step back and not take responsibility for the abuse of other humans, saying trade is separate from human rights. Moreover, we are benefitting from cheaper prices, products made and profiteering yet within the above attitude there is no responsbility. Again, I’ve mentioned Gareth Evans in previous blogs, the notion of the Responsibility to Protect is absent not only in war zones, but in business, albeit illegal trade. In the case of human trafficking, indeed it is abuse. In the case of sweat shops often women are abused some enslaved in extremely poor conditions, cheap labour or slave labour in poor conditions, overworking people and the list goes on. So indeed human rights are central to healthy societies where trade is a means to support society not the other way around.

Often this disregard of others is masked by notions of professionalism, business as rational and the promotion of business behaviour that has been regarded by some psychologists as pathological. I see the issue of human trafficking as illegal and pathological and deeply unconscious. So how to tackle the issue of this inhumanity? Here are a few thoughts: what is generating the demand for women? what type of males/females orchestrate the trafficking? what is the socio-economic situation? what societal values allow this behaviour or cast a blind eye?, what are the gender attitudes and socialisation? e.g. masculine not feeling as strength, feminine feeling as weak, what are the ways to build a community of shared concern? (reporting activities), how to empower societal monitoring to ensure there is integrity in the police and authorities? how to invest and increasing community education to empower equality, universal values, positive behaviours? From a religious perspective how to integrate virtues of oneness such as love your neighbour, god is love, you are your brothers and sisters keeper, and cultivating spiritual practice that is virtuous rather than righteous or exhibiting power over others etc. So from the government to the street promoting healthy, self reliant and balanced communal and spiritual norms that serve best interests of safe and harmonious societies over selfish self interest, profiteering and criminality.

I feel to take this to a deeper level and will reflect on Eckhart Tolle here. The spiritual awakening occuring today would look at the ego. The masculine over identification with the mind (thought) divorced from the deeper spiritual flow of loving positive feelings that is natural to humankind. The separation mentality is evident where you and I are separate, what I do to you doesn’t affect me or visa versa, as distinct from an awareness of oneness and love. Awareness is a key word here. All violence comes from unconscious behaviour, if you were conscious (empathetic, feeling, evolved) you wouldn’t do it, as you see the other as yourself. Those who don’t feel connection, twist in their thinking that they are right, there is nothing wrong and intimidate any opposition to frighten them from challenging their negative thinking, they find ways to demonise and put down or destroy opposition. They are deeply unconscious. Where thoughts have not been questioned and people are operating from ego, self gratification and group think, they continue on with crime. The ego is also the pain body so when they inflict pain they enjoy it, they enjoy the dominance, a false sense of superiority and self gratification, it is all about them, the other doesn’t exist just as an object in their mind. The ego/pain body wishes to feed this illusionary thought process as they identify with the mind and outside of themselves with others. The spirituality arising today is to go within, to become aware and notice when thoughts are negative, violent, to indeed notice thoughts. It is in the awareness that the higher self is realised, the person becomes aware of the thoughts but doesn’t identify the ego with them, they notice them and let them go or as Byron Katie states the thoughts let go of them (www.thework.com). The awareness itself dissolves the negativity. The more this occurs the more an unconscious person awakens. Not all unconscious people will awaken, but some will. If they don’t, they are unconscious. The ego/painbody is controlling them and they succumb to it. Think of the trafficker as a child, the innocence that was once there is covered by negative, cruel behaviours and hardened attitudes learned overtime within a social setting that doesn’t make the child aware of higher virtues and deep love. The child becomes lost in the dysfunctional man. Indeed the feminine aspect of the man is suppressed (all men and women have both masculine and feminine within), he rejects what is feeling. He no longer sees life as gentle and loving. It is a hard world and he has to make his way, the world is dog eat dog or some other justification to appease himself.

The people who are trying to raise awareness are questioning the distorted beliefs and ethics such as ‘is it a crime to sell women?’ and bringing the reality of inhumanity to society to raise their awareness and hence evoke change. As we change the world changes.

I am posting a true story of a trafficker and the journey of a girl who found herself abused and used over many years. Imagine she is you, imagine you are the trafficker, how do you feel? If you were the authorities what would you do to solve it? In your own personal life where do you abuse? (cause hurt repeatedly). Perhaps reflect deeply on this, look inwardly. Share with others your realisations and wisdom.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature1/

21st Century Slaves

There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.

Sherwood Castle, headquarters to Milorad Milakovic, the former railway official who rose to become a notorious slave trafficker in Bosnia, looms beside the main road just outside the northwest Bosnian town of Prijedor. Under stucco battlements, the entrance is guarded by well-muscled, heavily tattooed young men, while off to one side Milakovic’s trio of pet Siberian tigers prowl their caged compound.

I arrived there alone one gray spring morning—alone because no local guide or translator dared accompany me—and found my burly 54-year-old host waiting for me at a table set for lunch beside a glassed-in aquamarine swimming pool.

The master of Sherwood has never been shy about his business. He once asked a dauntless human rights activist who has publicly detailed his record of buying women for his brothels in Prijedor: “Is it a crime to sell women? They sell footballers, don’t they?”

Milakovic threatened to kill the activist for her outspokenness, but to me he sang a softer tune. Over a poolside luncheon of seafood salad and steak, we discussed the stream of young women fleeing the shattered economies of their home countries in the former Soviet bloc. Milakovic said he was eager to promote his scheme to legalize prostitution in Bosnia—”to stop the selling of people, because each of those girls is someone’s child.”

One such child is a nearsighted, chain-smoking blonde named Victoria, at 20 a veteran of the international slave trade. For three years of her life she was among the estimated 27 million men, women, and children in the world who are enslaved—physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence, or in some way treated as property.

Victoria’s odyssey began when she was 17, fresh out of school in Chisinau, the decayed capital of the former Soviet republic of Moldova. “There was no work, no money,” she explained simply. So when a friend—”at least I thought he was a friend”—suggested he could help her get a job in a factory in Turkey, she jumped at the idea and took up his offer to drive her there, through Romania. “But when I realized we had driven west, to the border with Serbia, I knew something was wrong.”

It was too late. At the border she was handed over to a group of Serb men, who produced a new passport saying she was 18. They led her on foot into Serbia and raped her, telling her that she would be killed if she resisted. Then they sent her under guard to Bosnia, the Balkan republic being rebuilt under a torrent of international aid after its years of genocidal civil war.

Victoria was now a piece of property and, as such, was bought and sold by different brothel owners ten times over the next two years for an average price of $1,500. Finally, four months pregnant and fearful of a forced abortion, she escaped. I found her hiding in the Bosnian city of Mostar, sheltered by a group of Bosnian women.

In a soft monotone she recited the names of clubs and bars in various towns where she had to dance seminaked, look cheerful, and have sex with any customer who wanted her for the price of a few packs of cigarettes. “The clubs were all awful, although the Artemdia, in Banja Luka, was the worst—all the customers were cops,” she recalled.

Victoria was a debt slave. Payment for her services went straight to her owner of the moment to cover her “debt”—the amount he had paid to buy her from her previous owner. She was held in servitude unless or until the money she owed to whomever controlled her had been recovered, at which point she would be sold again and would begin to work off the purchase price paid by her new owner. Although slavery in its traditional form survives in many parts of the world, debt slavery of this kind, with variations, is the most common form of servitude today.

Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine.