Fr Shay Cullen: Corporations and the sex slavery of children

Fr Shay Cullen

At no other time in the history of mankind has there been so many humans enslaved throughout the world. The population explosion in the past fifty years, the great disparity of rich and poor and the vulnerability of the impoverished youth and women has made human trafficking, the modern name of the age-old slave trade, so prolific. It is a practice by which we humans dominate, control, abuse and exploit other human beings for power, pleasure and profit. We must know, think and act to change it as the 23rd International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition is upon us.

Slavery is one of these abominable violations of human persons that only humans, save one other species, practice. That exception is a species of slave-making ant. The human species, the one with the large brains, some with intelligence, with access to knowledge, compassion, conscience and free will, chooses to reject such endowments and instead imitates the ants. Human traffickers cleverly manipulate, exploit and enslave members of their own species and make them work for them as slaves as do the ants.

The purpose of this vile human practice is not survival or self-perpetuation as it may have been in very primitive societies but it is for greedy profit, power and pleasure. There is an evil satisfaction in satisfying the desire to overpower and control the lives of others and become rich because of it.

Our modern societies are in the process of morally imploding. Going fast are the days when virtue, honour, human dignity, equality and the human rights, social justice and the rule of law were the declared goals and practiced policy of many enlightened societies and nations. Now, it seems to be in reverse. These once treasured values are like stars falling from heaven, meteorites burning up in a destructive atmosphere of oppression, selfishness and corruption. In the United Kingdom, a modern democracy, the slave trade was banned in 1807 after growing very rich and campaigners and advocates won out in the end. Human slavery is with us today as never before. Thousands suffer from unjust labour practices and trading of food grown on slave-like labour. We can change that by buying Fair Trade products like Fair trade dried mangos and chocolates.

Hundreds of thousands of poor people, many of them women and children, are in slave-like conditions in developing countries such as Ghana and Sierra Leone. Their lives are spent growing and shelling 60 percent of the world's supply of coco beans for less than a slave's pittance to provide chocolate for the sweet appetites of western societies.

The chocolate lovers ignore the exploitation and instead of buying Fair Trade chocolate buy the bitter taste of injustice from the likes of Nestle, Hershey's, Cargil and many more. These companies claim to be ethical and sustainable buyers yet have refused to pay the Living Income Differential (LID) to poor farmers.

A Euronews investigation reports this standoff and that negotiations are underway between government and the exporters. Besides, in Sierra Leone, the national parks are being destroyed by dangerous chemicals used to defoliate the trees, to burn them and make way to grow the cocoa trees. It is a mono-cropping boom funded by commodity buyers that is the chocolate curse on the dying forest.

As many as 99 per cent of the 4.8 million estimated young women and teenage girls are victims of sex trafficking around the world. In the United Kingdom, the number of modern slaves is estimated at 13,000 by the UK government. It is in Asia and the Pacific region where the worst sex trafficking of women and children is happening. Here 70 percent of the 4.8 million victims are abused, enslaved and denied human dignity.

Whenever a person is forced against their will to engage in a sex act by trickery, fraud, false promises, grooming, or pressure of any kind or is a minor, that is a crime of human trafficking. If anyone engages in recruiting, engaging, transporting, by force or fraud persons for work, involuntary servitude, debt bondage, or slavery. it is a crime.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem with people locked indoors especially children unable to escape and run to the streets away from their rapists and abusers. Many of them become victims of online sexual exploitation. The nature of this crime is despicable, some victims are as young as three years old.

Depraved males in developed nations like the UK, USA, Australia, Korea, EU, Brazil, Russia, are lusting for child abuse shows for sex thrills. The paedophiles pay by courier, and crouch before their computer screens as they order up child sex acts by phone. It is a dirty evil crime of abuse using technology. Child pornography and sex abuse of this kind is hard to detect unless there is strong computer software driven by Artificial Intelligence installed on the servers of the Internet Server Providers.

In the Philippines the Anti-Child Pornography Law (RA 9775) demands that the telecommunication companies like PLDT/Smart and Globe Telecoms install such software that is easily available. They don't do it and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) seems not to have taken action for non-compliance other than give a small fine. We need a revised law that increases the penalty to a million dollars a month for non-compliance. Because of inaction, thousands of children are sexually abused as a result. Shame on them all. This evil of child pornography and live streaming of child abuse smells like a dead cat in the board room of the telecom providers. If only they would obey Philippine law, thousands of acts of human trafficking, sex slavery and abuse could be prevented, the criminals could be identified, tried and jailed.

Any leader or corporation that allows and promotes human trafficking, sex trafficking and abuse of children is like a depraved monster wallowing in the mangled bodies of its victims. It must be slain by the warriors of truth and justice. We must never give up the struggle.

LINK

www.preda.org