Opinion: Fighting Modern Slavery

By Broadside Opinion Columnist Michael Gryboski

It is hard to fathom that slavery still exists. Wars have been fought to quell it, laws and amendments are on the books in several nations banning it, and yet in today’s world slavery remains. Last Monday, Oct. 20, the George Mason University chapter of Amnesty International held an event in Dewberry Hall, putting a focus on the human trafficking industry, showing a documentary entitled "Dreams Die Hard."

Following the documentary, there was a presentation by two speakers from the Polaris Project, an organization that seeks to have a world without slavery, which has been present in human civilization at least since the days of the Old Testament. Part of their presentation showcased several disturbing numbers: as many as 27 million people today are trafficked around the world, human slavery is the world’s third largest criminal industry, behind the drug trade and arms dealing, and 80 percent of those trafficked are women and children. Another topic for discussion was a law called the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Enacted in 2000, the TVPA has been renewed in 2003 and 2005, and is set for renewal this year. Maybe because of the oncoming November Election, Congress has not renewed it yet. This is something Congress should not overlook and should see to reauthorizing immediately.

The TVPA does many things to go after human trafficking, including measures against both domestic and international human trafficking, with the 2005 reauthorized version ensuring trafficking prevention along with post-conflict and humanitarian emergency assistance, efforts to monitor and combat child labor as well as forced labor, and establishing grant programs to develop, expand, and empower assistance programs for certain victims of trafficking amongst other things. As reported by Civil Rights Attorney Bharathi A. Venkatraman in Police Chief Magazine, “The TVPA works to protect victims of human trafficking from prosecution for the crimes they committed under duress, such as prostitution.”

Venkatraman continues, “Victims of human trafficking are treated as victims of violent crimes and are thus afforded special services, such as temporary legal immigration status, employment authorization, medical treatment, and even English language classes.” Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, who authored the two renewal bills, agrees that TVPA works, referring to the Act as “a sweeping, comprehensive law to protect trafficking victims—both here and abroad—while providing law enforcement with the necessary tools to successfully prosecute and incarcerate the traffickers.”

According to Smith’s congressional Web site, from 2000 to 2002 TVPA authorized $98 million to fight human trafficking, a morally reprehensible criminal industry whose activities are not only found abroad but here as well. Despite our laws, the staunch hatred of slavery instilled in us from the 13th Amendment and present-day media depictions of the antebellum South, it still exists in America.

Groups like the Polaris Project detail the nightmare scenarios that often play out in the United States, as slaves are sought for two major purposes, manual labor and sexual exploitation. “Domestic sex traffickers, commonly referred to as pimps, particularly target vulnerable youth, such as runaway and homeless youth, and reinforce the reality that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12 to 13 years old in the U.S.,” says the Project, which also states on their Web site that, “recent cases have also demonstrated that labor trafficking of U.S. citizens occurs in locations such as restaurants, the agricultural industry, traveling carnivals, peddling/begging rings, and in traveling sales crews.”

This has to stop. The TVPA will not solve every problem regarding domestic human trafficking, but it does a whole lot more to combat this horrid industry renewed than removed. We should all see to getting our elected representatives, the people whose position in society is owed to us, to act upon this endeavor and renew the TVPA.

This is one of those things that should remain on the books, so that hopefully in due time the institution so justifiably reviled by American culture is truly no more.