Exodus Cry - The Prayer Movement to End Slavery

There is more than one way to try to understand the Horn of Africa. You can get only so far looking at the political boundaries of the nations. Crisp geometric lines divide the countries in some areas, whereas in others a meandering border clearly follows a river or a mountain. More telling, perhaps, is the geography of the region: the arid span of desert begins in northern Kenya and then widens east until it swallows almost all of Somalia and is stopped only by the Indian Ocean. Overlay that with a third and perhaps most important schema of population density. You will immediately see first an artery of densely populated towns streaming south from Addis Ababa through Ethiopia’s rift valley, and then another dense conglomerate huddled around Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi.

But a dynamic that cannot be mapped is political stability. On the Horn, rife with internecine conflict that adds insult to the injury of natural disasters, and turns the crises of famine into crises of mass migration, political stability is a relative idea, often as rare and unpredictable as the rains. But these days, Kenya has more than most. So when the largest drought in 60 years hit the Horn of Africa, slashing at the southern part of Ethiopia and threatening the lives of millions in South Somalia, Nairobi is where the people went.

Eastleigh Estates, a Nairobi community with a high Somali population, is known as “Little Mogadishu.” Once an unassuming suburb, it has become an international business hub. Over the last few years, a steady influx of Somali refugees has completely changed the landscape, and then began investing when the Kenyan government gave the district its increased parliamentary authority. Now littered with money transfer organizations and travel agencies, Eastleigh Estates has become a metaphor for the globalized economy, powered by technological breakthroughs.

But that also makes Nairobi one of the most reliable and stable markets in a region that is in many places descending into chaos. The contrast makes for a predictable osmosis of crime that sweeps vulnerable women and children out of the pastoral hinterlands, into the hope of food and work that major, developed metropolitan areas provide, and often into slavery. Eastleigh Estates holds the promise of a job and a life to many such vagrants, and is the perfect context for fraudulent employment agencies.

In addition to the usual trends of brothels, that front as massage parlors and strip clubs, there are growing trends in prostitution even among Nairobi’s wealthiest. The Nairobi Chronicle reported that a growing number of young women in Nairobi are resorting to professional escort services to provide their means. Women post their profiles on dating sites in hopes of attracting a wealthy, Western, “romantic” interest. In the same article, the Chronicle reports, “scenes of octogenarian Caucasians walking arm in arm with young Kenyan girls are quite common in our streets. Maternity hospitals in Kenya are also recording an increase in inter-racial babies born to unmarried mothers.” Even men, according to the article, are selling sexual services to an upscale female clientele who either, in the pursuit of career have not made time for meaningful relationships, or who are traveling to Kenya’s resort and tourist areas.

Nairobi underscores a trend that will likely be repeated and amplified in many regions in the earth in the days ahead. Globalization is not an equal opportunity employer: some areas thrive, but usually at the expense of others. As impoverished and vulnerable masses are drawn into modern-day slavery and, more specifically, into sex trafficking, the effete, wealthy classes engage in prostitution, but by the more civilized monikers of “escorts” and “dating services.” When a region or community suffers the practice of prostitution at the highest levels, it will always rationalize the slavery of prostitution at the lowest. Sex should not be included in the practices acceptable for making a living, or we will turn a jaded eye to those who are, under compulsion, sold by madams, pimps, and bar owners night after night.

This City in Focus comes from The Horn of Africa Region. To read an overview of this region click here.

The last thing Somalia needs is military unrest. With droughts wreaking havoc on the entire southern half of Somalia, and neighboring countries willing to invade to “help” (the last time Ethiopia invaded Somalia, the casualties ranged in the millions), this is the exact wrong time for a militant Muslim faction to arise and assert tribal dominance. But arise one did: al-Shabaab.

Drought and famine alone do not cause people to flee, the Guardian points out. While Kenya has seen refugees from all of the Horn countries in decades past, recently only one population of farmers is fleeing across international borders: Somalia’s. The reason is that for the last 20 years Somalia has lacked a stable government, and al-Shabaab currently has control of much of southern Somalia.

Seeking shelter from the famine and military transcription by roaming al-Shabaab militias, refugees have gone generally to one of two places: Mogadishu, the bombed out shell-of-a-capital-city that has never really recovered from American-led war maneuvers in the mid 1990’s, and DaDaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. While DaDaab technically sits in Kenya, the border is nothing more than an imaginary line through the desert, one boldly crossed first by al-Shabaab militants when they raided DaDaab and abducted several aid workers, then crossed later by the Kenyan military in an effort to route insurgents allegedly hiding in 10 Somali towns.

To the West, DaDaab, a refugee resettlement camp that has swollen in population and, were it officially a city, would be Kenya’s third largest. Built to house 90,000 refugees, it quickly filled to five times its capacity when, at one point, 1,300 Somalis a day were streaming across the Kenya border.

Nighttime is a dangerous time to be a woman in DaDaab. With no shelter to speak of, and a scant military presence that cannot possibly patrol the farthest outskirts, rape and abuse is common.

But an even greater threat in this migration pattern, to Mogadishu or DaDaab, is the rise in human smuggling and trafficking. In the midst of the chaos, it is far too easy for criminal enterprises to deceive young women and girls into traveling to Kenya under the auspices of safety and protection, as was the case with the young women interviewed by the Guardian.

To understand the utter lack of protection, one must only look to Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu. Mogadishu is populated by the huddled masses that have streamed there (instead of Kenya) from the hinterlands to find any meager ration of food or medicine, perhaps the last in all of southern Somalia’s drought stricken regions.

Throughout the long months of the drought in the Horn of Africa that started last spring, al-Shabaab has seized what little control it can grasp, kidnapping and murdering westerners, raiding the offices of aid organizations, and even infiltrating refugee camps to “recruit” new members. Al-Shabaab has turned a natural disaster into a crisis as hundreds of thousands of people have fled from their homes in the pastoral, arid prairies. Now, there are no aid groups even in Mogadishu: last autumn, al-Shabaab scared off all of the aid groups when they abducted and killed several workers in the city.

Though al-Shabaab has largely lost its hold in Mogadishu, peace and victory seldom last long there. Somalia has lacked any unified government to speak of since conflict broke out in 1991. It would be inaccurate to say that Mogadishu is the nexus of the struggle against al-Shabaab; the terrorist group that has been tormenting aid groups and western visitors all along the border of Kenya and the coast.

But the battle for Mogadishu is the battle for a stable government, a rule of law that will extend protection to the hundreds of thousands of women and children sent fleeing from their homes and into the machination of highly sophisticated human trafficking networks.

This City in Focus comes from The Horn of Africa Region. To read an overview of this region click here.

We have selected the Horn of Africa as our first regional focus in 2012. The typical list of devastations that plague many parts of Africa ravage this region, and make people particularly vulnerable: poverty, poor education, unemployment, and HIV/AIDS. In addition, these countries cannot effectively control or track the flow of people across borders and suffer from a massive immigration crisis, generally into Kenya and out of the surrounding countries. Imagine a stretch of border 250 miles long that is so porous that roughly 200 people a week can simply walk from one nation to another undetected and you have the beginning of an understanding of the problem Kenya is facing with its African neighbors. And where there are people on the move, there is an opportunity for human trafficking.

But it gets worse. Currently the Horn is facing a food and water crisis due in part to the largest drought the region has experienced in 60 years. The famine of 1984-85 claimed the lives of 1 million people in Ethiopia and Sudan. The current crisis is not yet classifiably a famine, says the Guardian, but between Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Somalia, 10 million people are in danger. The regular droughts that in the past have come once every 10 years are getting closer together, recently spaced only 1 year apart. DaDaab, a refugee camp engineered to house 90,000 people, sits just across the Kenyan-Somali border. Because of the drought and threat of Islamic radicals, DaDaab has swollen far beyond its capacity to 450,000 people. At the height of the crisis last summer, Christian Aid reported that between 1,300 and 1,500 people were daily streaming into DaDaab’s three camps. Nick Guttman, head of Christian Aid’s emergency programs, reported that Ethiopia’s Kobe camp for refugees, engineered to house 25,000 people, was maxed to capacity just a month after opening last June.

al-Shaabab

A big part of the problem is that the radical Somali Muslim organization al-Shabaab is looking to institute a strict application of Muslim shari’a law, a state-wide implementation of the rules and values of the Koran. In keeping with this agenda, al-Shabaab has rejected outright any influence from western powers, including intervention by aid organizations. In November, al-Shabaab raided the offices of many prominent aid organizations (including World Vision) in southern Somalia and cut off all aid including food and medical supplies critical to the survival of 160,000 children.

All of this amounts to a heightened vulnerability for women and children throughout the region. With dire and desperate circumstances comes a migration of people that otherwise would not be happening, and with so many people on the move it is nearly impossible to track who is where—or who is missing. Thousands heading to refugee camps to Arab nations provides an easy cover for smugglers and traffickers moving victims to major city centers. Displaced peoples rarely have the appropriate papers to begin with, and traffickers can easily inveigle trusting and desperate people with even the flimsiest promise of protection and hope.

Predator and Prey

When UNICEF conducted an investigation into human trafficking in Africa, they found that almost half of the women interviewed regularly experienced physical abuse. The climate and culture of gender inequality has subjugated women to a de facto second hand status which provides the basis for all manner of abuses and human trafficking. This continent-wide trend is only magnified within the sprawling refugee communities in DaDaab, where young girls face molestation and abuse each night on the outskirts of the camp, far from the protection of the scant police presence.

But if this seems at all ad hoc, think again. One Kenyan human trafficking expert told the Guardian that human trafficking in the Horn of Africa is a very developed network of professionals. The network includes representatives and allies in every agency and aspect of transportation, including “politicians, senior police officers, NGOs, senior immigration officials, airline officers and resettlement officials in various countries. The general flow of people in this region is from surrounding countries, into Kenya and more specifically Nairobi, where human trafficking victims are then either dispersed to tourism destinations or countries abroad.

Children for Sale

Places like Mombassa, Kenya, a coastal resort city just a few hundred miles south of Mogadishu, has become  a sex-tourism hot spot. The awful thing about human trafficking globally is that it can be a bit like the game whack-a-mole. As one area of the world gains notoriety as a “hot spot,” governing officials crack down through a rash of new legislation. Sex-buyers, particularly those in search for child prostitution markets, get the point. Before you know it, another region sprouts up as the new “it” spot. In the last 20 years or so, Thailand, Costa Rica, and the Philippines have all at one point or another ebbed and flowed. Now, Kenya is in the limelight.

A study conducted by the African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), indicates that there is an increase in the numbers of women and children trafficked not only within the Horn countries, but also out to other nations such as Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, and even Arab countries like Yemen and Saudi Arabia which are just a short trip across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from the Horn.  The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that many refugees seeking asylum in nearby Yemen travel the frequented Ethiopia-Djibouti trucking corridor only to be swept up into the sex trade by organized criminal activity.

All of this amounts to a familiar story: when war, poverty, disease, and drought send hundreds of thousands fleeing from their homes in desperation, there are always those criminal enterprises who look to capitalize on their vulnerability. For the first part of this year we will take a deeper look into a few key cities in the Horn of Africa and learn how we can intercede on behalf of the poor and vulnerable.

It was only after the Taliban, the reigning clan of Islamic warlords that had terrorized Afghanistan since 1996, fell in 2001 that the stories of their most brutal oppression came to light. While the Taliban had tasked the terrorist organization al-Qaeda with developing its military defense, the real war it was waging had been concealed: a war on women.

In one sense, sex trafficking everywhere is classifiably a “war on women.” To the uninitiated, the UN’s definition of human trafficking may seem cumbersome, a laundry list of qualifications and contingencies. Why not just say “slavery”? A global survey of the many faces of human trafficking, and sex trafficking in particular, demonstrates that the modern face of slavery is anything but monolithic, and a wide net must be cast in order to rightly include every possible victimization, every front of this war of abuse and degradation. One prominent haven of such degradation, the Afghan capital of Kabul, demonstrates a nuance not found in any other region of the earth.

Since Afghanistan is largely broken up into Islamic fiefdoms, the control of the capital has major influence on the culture of the country. Ousting the Taliban and driving them into Pakistan meant that room could finally be made for a top-down democracy that upheld the rights of the poor and oppressed. Part of the reason the conflict has lasted more than ten years (and counting) is that a premature withdrawal of allied forces would leave a vacuum of power that could easily be filled again by Taliban violence. Most of the world might not care or even notice, but the world never has been quick to heed the abuse of its most vulnerable people groups. If women are to find refuge anywhere in Afghanistan, Kabul must maintain a democratic concern for the weak and marginalized; in short, for women and children.

Human trafficking in Afghanistan, a traditional Islamic culture, is not the egregious deception of false job offers in Chisinau; nor is it the generational poverty of Mumbai; nor the chronic fatherlessness of New York City or the outright collapse of a country at war, as was the case in Juba, Sudan. Though Afghanistan may share similarities with any or all of those, its chief problem is a comprehensive cultural subjugation of women to the rule of men, an abuse in and of itself, but one that leads to even greater abuses.

One of the most striking features of human trafficking in Afghanistan is the overwhelming number of child brides. According to a study by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), over 80 percent of trafficking victims were underage brides, and half of that group were married off by the age of 15 or younger.

Poverty plays a key role in the giving of child brides. Wealthy older men may offer a handsome “bride-sum” for a young girl, and her father, once he has “married her off,” then has one less mouth to feed. In 2005, a video was released to the AIHRC that showed a thirteen-year-old bride, who had escaped from her forced marriage after refusing to consummate it with her new husband, receiving forty lashes upon being returned to the man by the authorities. Both underage marriages and beatings are illegal in Afghanistan, but that made little difference in a country governed largely by provincial warlords.

Unfortunately, Western forces that are supposedly trying to liberate the country often become part of the problem. If there is a sad but common refrain of military personnel taking advantage of those they profess to protect, that trend has only been further accentuated by the advent of privatized military security forces. These “mercenaries” are even more out of sight and out of mind of government scrutiny and, as a result, have been making headline news for nearly ten years for abuses and alleged war crimes. One of the more flagrant violations in Kabul came from a non-government paramilitary group contracted out by the US State Department to provide security for the US Embassy in Kabul, ArmorGroup North America.

In 2009, a suit was filed against ArmorGroup related to the frequenting of brothels known to house victims of human trafficking by members of ArmorGroup. Buying sex from women known to have been trafficked is a clear violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. At one point during the development of corrective actions, a process that unfolded over several years, an ArmorGroup trainee was alleged to have been reported for bragging about the human trafficking operations there, and boasting of the “opportunity” to actually purchase a woman for $20,000 and begin making a profit himself. No serious repercussions were faced by any member of ArmorGroup, even though copious evidence was produced; but make no mistake, deviant sexual practices are not new to the warlord culture of Afghanistan.

One of the more disturbing trends of effete Afghani warlords is actually making a resurgence—the practice of Bacha Bazi. Bacha Bazi, literally “playing with children,” is the practice of dressing underage boys in women’s clothing to dance for private parties of wealthy and influential Afghani men. While the practice is thought to be dead, outlawed by Islamic law, and publicly decried by authorities, it nonetheless persists. At the end of the night of dancing, the boy is generally sold for sex to the highest bidder. If this concept presses the credulity of the reader, videos of the scene—a roomful of men utterly transfixed by a twelve-year-old boy, dressed in flowing silk and jewelry, leaping and twirling—do nothing to aid comprehension.

The only thing more devastating is the allegations that another privatized military group, DynCorp, has been involved in the selling and transporting of Bacha Bazi. This only serves to underscore that while a democratic government is needed to protect liberties, even those forces that are being used to establish such freedoms are as sinful as the culture they look to replace. Submission to Christ is the only path to liberation.

Prayer Points:

Pray for the establishment of a righteous government in Kabul that will champion the case of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed (women and children).

Pray for privatized military groups to be exposed if they are truly taking advantage of the people they seek to serve.

Pray for a revival in Kabul that will usher Afghanistan into an age of freedom: political freedom, gender freedom, and spiritual freedom—from sin and all of its consequences.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ06Df03.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112728404

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,4565c22544,4565c25f551,4e301baa2,0.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/world/asia/31flogging.html?pagewanted=all

http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Full_report_156.pdf

http://www.humanrights.asia/opinions/columns/AHRC-ETC-035-2011

When did Bombay change its name? In 1995, actually––it was a change meant to reflect India’s roots in Hinduism, and shed one of the last vestiges of British imperial reign. Mumbai is in many important ways a modern city, though with centuries of heritage. Mumbai is a city that forces you to bring into focus a different version of India, to realize that India can no longer be relegated to a place of pity. This is no longer the India of Rudyard Kipling. This isn’t even the India of Mother Theresa any more. And it was arguably never the India of Slumdog Millionaire. India is home to more than a few billionaires, not surprising for a country that jumped 51% in the number of millionaires in 2008 when the rest of the world was in a recession. It is a land of giants, and Mumbai is one of its capitals.

Mumbai is the fourth largest city in the world, a major industrial hub in one of the worlds fastest developing BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China). In these rapidly expanding economies, business––commerce, industry, technology, education––is booming. With each new high rise that cuts into the Mumbai skyline, labors by the drones are drawn to this city. Migrant workers provide a steady stream of labor––and sex buyers

Forming the western edge of the bay at the mouth of the Ulhas River is Kamathipura, a district whose name means “work” and which is famous for a particular kind of work: Kamathipura, Mumbai’s redlight district, happens to be the largest red-light district in the world. Kamathipura, a unified cluster of islands on the southern tip of Mumbai has been called India’s “HIV timebomb.” Since prostitution is illegal in India, brothels are owned and run by mobsters. HIV screening is nonexistent, and mixed with a largely uneducated clientele who do not make the connection between condoms and transmission of STDs, Kamathipura is an epidemic waiting to happen.

Poverty is the problem here, generations deep. Women raise their daughters in the brothels, owned by madams and pimps before they even come of age to be sold (somewhere between 11 and 13). Other girls were abducted outright, or sold for a pittance by their parents. What they don’t know is that, if their lives turn out like the thousands of others whose lives began as theirs, they will one day get used to servicing a long list of clients that will gradually get shorter as theirs lives get longer; they will get used to the beatings, the pregnancies, the abortions, the births, and (eventually) getting very, very sick. They will likely become so complicit with their own condition that they will one day lure, seduce, and coerce other girls into this horrendous lifestyle.

But none of that makes this a choice. When a women is reduced to a sexual object against her will day in and day out thousands of times over, when she one day ceases to hope that she will ever be anything more, and when every one of her dreams is effaced beyond recognition and she becomes only a fixture in the tableau of the “largest red light district in the world,” this is by no means free will. Slavery breaks the slave.

There is no such thing as a rescue for a problem of this magnitude. What is called for here is a massive, sustained, and prolonged labor on behalf of the church to shift the entire tide of a culture.

Jesus said, “Lift up your eyes and see; the fields are already white for the harvest.” What we learn in Kamathipura is that a ripe harvest looks like broken humanity. Laws may change, and democratic freedoms may come, but it is not likely that either of those enacted would bring to bear any real change for the impoverished thousands of woman and girls being sold for sex here.

This is how you an pray for Mumbai, India:

1. Pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest of broken souls living in Karathipura, and being sold daily.

2. Pray for the church to be emboldened with light and truth to serve the least of these.

3. Pray for righteousness to be exalted in Mumbai through just laws and police forces.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a point of concern for many world leaders. Genocide, civil war, disease, and rampant poverty have overwhelmed many of these countries. Even by the measure of these problem-stricken states, Zimbabwestands out as a grave case.

A “paint-by-numbers” portrait of Zimbabwe is grim. According to the CIA World Factbook, Zimbabwe ranks 159 out of 220 countries in terms of their gross domestic product. At a paltry $500 per person per year, it ranks nearly last in GDP per capita. Conversely, Zimbabwe ranks first among world nations for public debt, with a 234 percent deficit of their GDP, and an unemployment rate of 95 percent. Consequently, in a population of nearly 12 million people, almost nobody can find work. This is not a picture of a country falling down, but a picture of a country lying dead in the street.

At the street level, it’s impossible to miss the one alternative that always presents itself when a collapsed economy limits job opportunities: prostitution. Women of all ages (including scores only 12 or 13 years old) from all social strata, including professionals and college students, find themselves succumbing to the sex trade. For many teen girls growing up in poverty-stricken townships around the nation’s capital, coming of age includes a “haj” to Harare, the major metropolitan center. While they tell themselves and one another that they will find jobs in the service industry as maids or waitresses, too many end up dancing in dilapidated night clubs, competing for an anemic male patronage which comes to buy ten-dollar sex.

The fate of women swept into the sex trade in Harare serves to underscore a reoccurring theme: when men fall, women fall prey. In one instance, a homeless teenage girl resorted to prostitution after her father’s livelihood disappeared in the chaotic land-redistribution of 2000 and he died of malaria. Another found no recourse but to sell her body after she was left homeless, along with 700,000 others, from the 2005 urban rationalization program, ironically named Operation Restore Order. A mother of two can find no other way to pay bills when her husband leaves for Herbert Chitepo Avenue, a prostitution hub for upscale buyers,includinggovernment officials and celebrities. A married mother of four might resort to selling her body to put food on the table—sometimes without her husband’s knowledge, and sometimes with.

Hardly any woman in Harare is immune from the steep slide of poverty into a lifestyle of prostitution. Recent crackdowns on curfews—women are not permitted on the streets of Harare after 8:00pm—aimed at reducing the number of females out at night and hence eliminating prostitution, have terrorized even non-prostituted women. However, a growing trend finds its way around even the curfews: many road-side lodges harbor an underground prostitution industry. The opportunity is obvious: widespread poverty means many roadside lodges sit vacant, and prostituted women are always in need of temporary lodging to conduct “business.”  Prostitution becomes a win-win enterprise—not only for the lodge owners, but for a network of ailing industries.Thus, they enjoy shelter from violent crackdowns, a makeshift security system of police and security guards, and profit from a steady stream of sex-buyers whose taxis clog the parking lots. In difficult financial times, everyone looks for a kick-back: from landlords, corrupt cops, and security guards, to drivers. What emerges is a complicated symbiosis of industries, all profiting from the sale of a woman’s body, and all demanding a cut of her meager wages—adding insult to injury, and heaping humiliation upon exploitation.

When economies collapse, the unavoidable byproduct is that the girls and women of a nation resort to the world’s “oldest profession.” This trend is only possible when men, who are meant to be pillars of communities and whose strength is never needed more than in such dire times, decide instead to demand en masse that their desire for sex be fulfilled. When men fall, women fall prey. But to what? Poverty? Temptation? Victimization? No—to men.

Prayer Points

1. Pray for a revival in Herbert Chitepo Avenue that would dry up the demand for paid sex.
2. Pray for light and truth to wash over Harare, and that government leaders would arrive at wise solutions to the complicated sources and chains of poverty.
3. Pray for the leaders of Zimababwe, that they would be empowered to restore rule of law and sound financial practices, and that “righteousness would exalt” the entire nation.
4. Pray for a revival in the church in Harare. As in most places, prostituted women report that their clientele includes Christian ministers and musicians.
5. Pray that the church in Harare would take its rightful place as a prophetic community of holiness and justice that boldly proclaims Jesus.

Modern-day Seoul is no different than many other thriving cities in developing nations across Southeast Asia. Peppered throughout the city’s seedier areas are a conspicuously large number of barber shops, nondescript cafes, and massage parlors, all of which are fronts for prostitution. These are the typical work arounds seen in every nation where the flesh trade is prohibited by law, yet permitted by lawmakers and authorities. After all, the sex trade in Korea is estimated at 14 trillion South Korean Won, a whopping 1.6% of the total GDP of the nation. But a prostitution industry of this magnitude doesn’t just spring up overnight. Or does it?

In 1950, Communist North Korea invaded it’s democratic southern neighbor. When an armistice was finally reached, all that separated South Korea from a future invasion was a demilitarized zone spanning the width of the Korean peninsula and a formidable western military presence. Springing up around military bases, “camptowns” became centers of R & R for allied soldiers as well as an opportunity for impoverished Koreans to improve their economic standing. But this turned to be an opportunity for slave traders to gain at the expense of the daughters of an entire nation.

South Korea had a vested interest in keeping an American military presence in the country, both for protection, but also because GI’s were an economic boon. They were indigenous tourists, a revenue stream that after a day staring down hostile forces across a barbed wire fence just wanted to blow off some steam. Behind the closed doors in the meetings of diplomats, Korean officials promised US officials that Korean women would be encouraged to meet the “natural needs” of american GI’s. Part of international relations between South Korea and America became ensuring that GI’s stationed in cities like Seoul had a steady stream of prostituted women who were regularly screened for venereal diseases and then licensed to sell their bodies. Never mind that the women were often lured and deceived by brothel owners into the trade, and sexually brutalized as an initiation. Or forget that they were forced to continue to prostitute themselves through debt-bondage, a system of exaggerated and often fictitious costs for room, board, and loans for medicine that prostituted women had to pay back to their pimps by having sex with customers. These “working women” were the true patriots of a nation, ensuring the continued good will of a nation far superior economically than they.

Whereas in the 60’s and 70’s, prostitution was an accepted part of the military life, by the 90’s, a growing consciousness of the plight of the women in camptowns began to emerge as an injustice that contradicted the very effort to secure freedom and liberty in Korea. “If U.S. soldiers are patrolling or frequenting these establishments, the military is in effect helping to line the pockets of human traffickers,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was told explicitly from his aids in 2002. Not long after, in 2004, Korea cracked down on prostitution, outlawing the practice and shutting down all brothels.

Despite the major reforms, though, not much is different today from the 60’s except perhaps the color of the women: Philippine women, along with Russian and Japanese, fill the barber shops and massage parlors all offering “special services,” which are in this day and age glaring evidences of international human trafficking.

In Spring of 2011, the most recent shut-down of the red light districts occurred in Seoul. This close held fast for a few weeks, yet soon the businesses were again in full-swing. Despite government efforts to stem the tide of illicit activity by placing police officers and squad cars in these districts, the trade continues. Although unwittingly tolerant of this matter, it seems that Seoul’s government is just waiting for the permission to move further with the criminalization of purchasing a woman for sex. These illegal institutes are the very grounds where foreign women are trafficked and enslaved, and unless prostitution and trafficking begin to be seen as intrinsic of one another, progress to end trafficking in Seoul seems far fetched.

We live in a world where prostitution is a glue that helps to hold alliances together, and where women’s bodies are the insinuated bargaining chips of international relations. Developing countries in a very literal sense must promise stronger nations in exchange for their help and protection, “our daughters will put out for your sons if your sons will fight for our homeland.”

But the daughters themselves have never made such an agreement. And that’s why this is slavery.

• Pray for the South Korean government to criminalize prostitution and take a stand for the sanctity of human life.

• Pray for another crack down on prostitution venues that shelter human trafficking victims.

• Pray that the church in South Korea would not ignore this issue, but begin to pray for these women and stand for true justice.

Sources:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501020812-333899,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_South_Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/world/asia/08korea.html?_r=1

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20101001000786

Picture a noose and you have a picture of Odessa.

Perhaps that is not a fitting image for many aspects of this Ukrainian city, but for the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable women throughout Europe, the Balkans and developing soviet countries, you cannot find a more perfect description. This port city is a bridge between Europe and everything east, in more ways than one. Odessa’s mass ports are strategically located between the source and destination countries of Romania and Moldova fixing a deadly recipe for this city to be a hot-bed for human trafficking.

The most recent Trafficking in Persons report lists such a dense grouping of countries that send or receive sex slaves to and from Ukraine that you cannot help but get the impression that Odessa might rightly be deemed the Slave Capitol of the World. Indeed, with Moldova––the greatest source country for trafficked women in Europe––along with many other high-risk countries as Ukraine’s neighbors, that title almost seems plausible.

In the same vein, it’s easy to answer the question of how women end up in slavery here: every way imaginable. From being lured in with false job offers, to being sold into slavery by an orphanage, from recruiters sent to rural villages, to outright abduction in major metropolitan areas, thousands are deceived. What is true about trafficking nearly everywhere in the world is magnified and exacerbated in Ukraine. The booming summer tourism industry in Odessa comes with a spike in demand for sex from foreign visitors and a heightened chaos of travel that makes exporting women with illegal passports much easier.

The result of such extreme marketing of women for sex is that Ukraine’s HIV epidemic is the fastest growing worldwide and the highest in Eastern Europe. Despite such obvious risk, the trade continues to grow and the traffickers are unchallenged. This is proven as in 2009, almost all convicted traffickers received no jail sentences but minor probation charges.

From within this sex-trade hub emerges all manners of stories that hold in tension the bizarre contradictions only made possible in a globalized economy that suffers an “acceptable” margin of expendable human beings. For example, most people will never learn that if they are deprived of natural light long enough, their skin turns blue. But this is exactly what a young woman found when she was trafficked out of Odessa and kept in a subterranean dungeon for God knows how long before being rescued.

The inter-connectedness of cultures, economies and countries represents to millions of people the realization of dreams and possibilities. That is precisely the promise held out to many young women who find themselves drawn into a life of sex slavery. The hopes and dreams for a beautiful and productive life that each of us have are the bait that traffickers use to ensnare women. It is not until the noose closes that many realize they have made a grave mistake.

In Odessa, this crossroads of cultures, ferries bring women from their exotic locations––Istanbul, perhaps?––when they are pregnant or sick. In other words, no longer useful for sex. Their fate, from there, is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they will end up like the two young girls depicted in bas-relief on a few buildings in Odessa: after being drawn into the white-slave trade, they hanged themselves. The bas-relief reminds everyone that the aftermath of slavery, devoid of God, is not freedom.

Prayer Points:

• Cry out for breakthrough in the Spirit and the realization of the worth of God’s women and children.
• Ask that God will raise up righteous police forces and turn this hub of trafficking into a hub for the Gospel.
• Ask that God would convert johns, traffickers, and victims and raise up a witness of reconciliation among them.

Sources:

“People Trafficking in Ukraine: Sea of Tears.” (The Economist, 2006)
“Sex Trafficking Trade Forces Women from Odessa to Massage Parlours in Britain.” (the Guardian, 2011)”
“Odessa Resorts Serve Scenery, Sex, and Slavery.” (Change.org, 2010)

Kara Kopetsky, of Belton, MO, is described by her friends and family as an average 17-year-old teenage girl: a full-time high school student, with a part-time job, who loved to shop and had an on-again-off-again boyfriend. But Kara also shares a grim similarity with thousands of other children under 18 across the United states; no one has seen her for years.

May 4th, 2007, Kara Kopetsky vanished. The last time she was seen was in a video, from a surveillance camera, in her high school hallway.

By the sound of it, Kara was having a bad day. She called her mother, asking for a text book and work uniform she’d forgotten at home. Her mother brought them, but Kara never picked them up from the school office.

Sometime around 10:30 AM, after an argument with one of her teachers, Kara decided to leave school. Captured on video, her nonchalant walk out of school can be replayed over and over, the last time Kara Kopetsky has been seen by anyone. The police have few leads of her whereabouts and it has long been classified a cold case.

Missing children are an epidemic in America. Nearly 800,000 children, under 18, go missing every year; an average of 2,185 children are being reported missing each day. Many of these children are found again within 48 hours of being reported, however a large percentage are picked up by pimps. Studies show that 1 in 3 children who are runaways are snatched into prostitution by a pimp typically self-trained in the precarious skill of preying upon the vulnerable. One statistic states that out of every 10,000 reports filed, at least 1 child is never seen again.

In addition, there is a grisly connection between child abduction and child abuse. Research indicates that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood.

Noted “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey, after publishing his widely acclaimed volumes on human sexuality, travelled around the country to testify on behalf of pedophiles, according to his findings.

Kinsey’s testimony that pedophilia was natural and more common than anyone thought helped shape the case law for sex offenders during the 1950′s. The result was lenient sentencing, even though the recidivism rate among sex offenders is nearly 100%.

This led to a torrent of missing children and sex crimes committed against children, followed by emergency measures such as the Amber Alert, named after those who would not have been victims. While the Amber Alert has recovered hundreds of children, thousands more are still missing. The unknown torments their loved ones who struggle to keep hope alive.

While the numbers are overwhelming, each represents a precious child. God, in His infinite heart, doesn’t see statistics. He groans, in a personal way, for every missing girl and boy. As intercessors we must enter into the groan of God, one by one, face by face.

Kara Kopetsky’s face has been posted on the door of Exodus Cry headquarters ever since we moved in. Since the moment we heard her story, we have felt a burden to intercede for her safe return.

This month, instead of praying for a particular city for the City-In-Focus, we are shifting our attention to missing children in the U.S., specifically Kara Kopetsky. If you are missing a loved one, now is the time to cry out as we stand together in prayer. At Exodus Cry, we are convinced that God wants to redeem these children and restore them to their friends and family, in response to the cries of the saints.

If you have any information about missing or exploited children please call 1–800–THE–LOST (1–800–843–5678).

The Starfish Thrower

A man was walking along the beach one evening and saw a little boy throwing starfish into the sea, that had washed ashore, by the tide. He thought the boy was silly in trying to save the starfish, as he knew it was impossible to throw every single one of them back, with the tides washing them up.

The man walked up to the boy and asked him why he was trying to save the starfish.

“You see, sir, the starfish would die if they are left on the shore. They need to be in the sea in order to live,” answered the boy.

“But son, how are you going to save all of them? Every time you put one back, another will wash up. It doesn’t matter to them, son.”

The boy picked up a starfish, looked at the man and said, “But sir, it matters to this one.” Then he threw the starfish back into the sea.

Prostitution is illegal in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but you might not know it from a visit to Plaza de Miserere, more commonly referred to as “Plaza Once” after the Once de Septiembre train station which sits in the center of the Plaza. In fact, so many women are prostituted in Plaza Once that it has gained a third moniker: Prostitute Plaza. Girls openly sell themselves, albeit discreetly, without any indicators that the police pose a threat to their activities.

An economic collapse in 2001 left nearly 40-percent of Argentina’s population unemployed. In the wake of the recession, Argentina witnessed a spike in prostitution as women with no options began to sell themselves in order to survive. The climate was so dire that even women over the age of 60 turned to prostitution, and while some of them had sold themselves in the past, others came out of retirement to sell their bodies with no prior history in the sex trade.

As witnessed the world over, the rise in poverty in Argentina was matched by a rise in the exploitation of women and children in rural areas who were lured, deceived, or coerced into the sex trade by organized trafficking rings. Traffickers will often kidnap girls outright, and this frightening trend is so familiar that the country even has a soap opera that endeavors to generate awareness of the issue. Titled “Stolen Lives,” the soap opera routinely has audiences of two million people out of a nation with a population of only 40 million.

In the last ten years, the problem has only gotten worse. While the number of women reported missing is rising, the age of the women is declining. That means that the ever-present demand for sex is now turning its insatiable gaze towards young girls and boys. And while 70-percent of trafficking victims in cities like Buenos Aires are Argentine, there has been an influx of victims from other countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, and Peru. To visit “Prostitute Plaza” and see the muli-national representation is to see human trafficking hidden in the plain sight of all who visit the restaurants and shops there.

While the laws are on the books, the government in Buenos Aires are largely complicit.  Stories abound of policemen who either threaten to arrest prostitutes unless they receive money or sex, or shakedown clients with threats to tell their families unless they pay them instead of the woman. The fact of the matter is that, for a developing country like Argentina, there is just too much money to be made. Even though the Dominican Republic has a growing number of girls that are trafficked to Argentina, officials are reluctant to respond since they send money home to their families, which boosts the economy. And Buenos Aires is gaining a reputation as a world class sex-tourism destination, another boon to another ailing economy that governments are happy to ignore.

In a globalized world where the indomitable forces of international trade, organized crime, and grinding poverty form a perfect storm for exploitation, there are few solutions. If the women and children being sold in Buenos Aires have any hope of escape from their desperate plight, it will be found on the battle front of prayer.

Prayer Points

• Pray the an effective rule of law will be established in Buenos Aires so that sex-laws will be enforced, and women will be freed
• Pray that the Lord will devastate the economic and sexual greed that is complicit with the sale of women’s bodies.
• Ask that God would incite a public outcry, that no longer would human trafficking be openly tolerated in Plaza Once, or any where else in Buenos Aires.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/sex-traffi cking-spikes-in-argentina/story-e6frfku0-1225964892914#ixzz1L3HfjSIB