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| Review Coming Next... |
Expect to see your Facebook feed taken over by red Xs tomorrow. Members of Congress, celebrities including Ashton Kutcher, and others will change their profile photo for the End It Movement's "Shine A Light On Slavery" Day.
The day, which raises awareness about modern-day slavery and human trafficking, has taken place for the last five years. Two years ago, Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, introduced official legislation to address the issue with the End Modern Slavery Initiative Act. He cited a chilling statistic: "More than 27 million people, many of them women and children, suffer under forced labor and sexual servitude in over 165 countries around the world, including our own,” According to Corker, that figure is higher than at any other time in the world's history.
Last week, the End Modern Slavery hearing was held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and included a moving testimony from Kutcher, himself an anti-trafficking activist...Read the rest...
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By Happenstance, I just finished reading Kenneth Eade's latest book which will be out soon... I asked him to share about the research he'd done, including stats, as the background to his brilliant thriller. Human Trafficking is something that sickens me, as it should everybody! Eade's book made it so real that I wanted readers to see the background before reading my review (Comng next.) Eade creates thrillers that force you to face reality...it's not pretty...but it's something all should be constantly aware of!
Many such victims remain unseen, as sex traffickers often operate out of a variety of private and public locations, such as massage parlors, spas and strip clubs. Although kidnapping, rape, prostitution and physical abuse is illegal in nearly every country, local governments and police forces may participate in sex trafficking rings, which are very lucrative for the organized crime elements that operate them. The demand for human trafficking makes it an easy element for financing terrorism. ISIS needs money to finance its terrorism operations, house operatives, wage its guerrilla wars against the governments within the territories in which it operates, and provide social services to the residents of its conquered territories. Drug and human trafficking provide lucrative financial opportunities for the finance of such operations.
“Human trafficking serves three main purposes for terrorist organizations: generating revenue, providing fighting power and vanquishing the enemy…Trafficking and smuggling are part of the business of terrorism, and constitute one activity in the product mix of terrorist groups. Terrorists smuggle drugs, arms and people.” And this is not limited to ISIS. There are documented cases of other terrorist groups, such as Boko Haram, LTTE, the PKK and the Ansar al-Islam terrorist network, engaged in such trafficking activities. As ISIS terrorizes populations in Syria and Northern Iraq, it has kidnapped many young women and children, and sold them through the use of social media in the Middle East as sex slaves and for forced labor. They have even codified it as law, so that it is legal to buy, sell and trade sex slaves. Since sex slaves are either Shiite or non-Muslims (non-believers), they are officially considered not human, and are kept like cattle. The Islamic State has kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women whom they have sold at auction as slaves or given to their soldiers as part of their compensation.
ISIS promises each of its soldiers a job, a house, a wife (sometimes more than one as polygamy is legal), and a family. For Muslim men, this is very attractive, as premarital sex is not allowed and marriage can be expensive. Because of this, most men don’t get married until their thirties.
Jihadist recruiters are active in most western countries. Jihadist recruiters for the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Nusra use social media to connect with potential jihadists for financing and soldiering right here in the United States. What is alarming is that most of the recruits are young people, many of them teenagers. There are documented cases of teenage girls being lured through social media by the “fantasy” of providing humanitarian aid in Syria who end up as sex slaves for ISIS soldiers. But many of the human slavery victims are also “kafir,” non-Muslim women, such as Yazidis and even westerners, who are in demand because of their fair skin and hair.
“With the influence of ISIS spreading throughout western Iraq, systematic sexual violence is increasingly used as a tool of terror, coercion and control. Multiple sources report ISIS’s demand for forced marriages, coerced child sex and various forms of sex trafficking. Furthermore, as ISIS seeks to recruit girls and women online, some political analysts warn that ISIS is creating a human trafficking pipeline streaming females from the West into Syria for forced marriage to militant groups. It is important to note that most media favors reporting on sex trafficking, kidnappings, forced marriages and sexual assaults. As these egregious violations of human dignity continue, forced child begging, organ trafficking and the continuation of migrant labor exploitation are often overlooked.” Human trafficking was a problem long before the rise of ISIS, but its exploitation by terrorist groups has grown to endemic proportions. Local governments and law enforcement agencies must be taken to task to confront this problem instead of being a part of it.
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| Coming in April... |
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