Soccer With a Side of Slavery - Democratic Underground

Jon8503

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Sat Jun-10-06 07:19 AM
Original message

Soccer With a Side of Slavery

Edited on Sat Jun-10-06 11:22 AM by newyawker99

By Katherine Chon and Derek Ellerman - Saturday, June 10, 2006; Page A19

"It is truly scandalous. People are talking about women, importing them to satisfy the base instincts of people associated with football. It is humiliating enough for me that football is linked with alcohol and violence. But this is worse. It is slaves that will come and be put into houses. Human beings are being talked about like cattle, and football is linked with that."

As the 2006 World Cup games get underway in Germany, tourists and soccer fans are being joined at the various competition venues by denizens of an international world of crime where human beings are bought and sold for profit.

Human trafficking is the third-largest criminal industry in the world, after arms and drugs. While soccer fans anticipate the excitement of the games, many of us in the anti-trafficking movement are deeply troubled by the expected surge of sex trafficking in Germany to meet the demand for commercial sex associated with the World Cup. It is estimated that more than 40,000 women and children will be imported to Germany during the month-long competition to provide commercial sex in the "mega-brothels," "quickie shacks," other legalized venues and vast underground networks that exist in Germany.

The traffickers and those who benefit from sex trafficking promote an image of women freely choosing to be involved in prostitution, making huge amounts of money at it and in general having a great time. It is the "Pretty Woman" myth, which many apparently like to believe in order to justify their inaction or ignorance on the issue.

But as our organization, Polaris Project, and many others like it that work every day with people in the sex industry know, this image does not reflect the reality on the streets and in the brothels for a majority of women and children.

In fact this is a world where violence and psychological abuse by the pimps, traffickers and customers are nearly ubiquitous. Research has shown that those who are prostituted face a 62 percent chance of being raped or gang-raped, a 73 percent chance of being physically assaulted, and a chance of dying that is 40 times greater than that of the average person in their age group. There is nothing "pretty" about the sex industry for the majority of people it victimizes.

More at link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR2006060901477.html

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FreakinDJ

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Sat Jun-10-06 08:10 AM
Response to Original message

1. Right wing Mythology ??

Just keep funneling that money into Christian Right wing organisations - they'll win that election yet

Michael Horowitz, a neoconservative at the Hudson Institute , a Washington, DC-based think tank, brought together the coalition of powerful evangelicals who pressed for legislation that would eventually become the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPA. This was their second step in a foray into US foreign policy that began with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which places “promoting religious freedom as a core objective of US foreign policy,” according to the State Department. Critics say it simply won evangelicals an office in the State Department, freed more cash for “faith-based” groups and gave them sanctioning power, a criticism they echo for TVPA. After such success with the religious freedom campaign, says Horowitz, “I just knew that issue number two was going to be the trafficking issue.”

The coalition—including Chuck Colson, the former Nixon aide who found Jesus while serving time for Watergate, and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention , which operates on the belief that all non-Christians “will spend eternity in hell”—linked up with the abolitionist feminists and won a sympathetic ear in Chris Smith, the antichoice New Jersey Republican.

Donna Hughes, chair of the women’s studies department at the University of Rhode Island, is the most vociferous of the abolitionist camp. She writes frequently for the National Review, is said to work very closely with Chris Smith and Horowitz

Brothel raids—the specialty of the International Justice Mission, which just received $1 million from the US—are often futile; many prostitutes will return to the brothel and go back to work.
http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/conscience/archives/c2004sum_sextrafficking.asp

Oh well - there is a sucker born every minute

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Kellanved

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Sat Jun-10-06 08:10 AM
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2. Actually the thing turned out to be overblown

There is no measurable increase in the number of prostitutes and human trafficking. The 40,000 number is "completely made up", according to the BKA (German FBI).
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,420366,00.html

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