Human trafficking. Sex slaves. Child slavery.

It’s something Americans associate with a few European or third world countries. But the U.S. State Department’s 2009 “Trafficking in Humans” Report documents problems in 175 nations.

Girls, women, children and even teen boys are being deceived, kidnapped, trapped and shipped everywhere from America to Africa.

And it could be happening at our neighborhood mini-market.

The wholesale trafficking of humans

From California to New England, the problem is spreading within the United States. It’s becoming as uncontrollable as the drug war that has raged for decades, despite the government’s best efforts.

The estimated FBI numbers from sources as varied as ABC Primetime in 2006 to Christianity Today in 2010 show 100,000-300,000 teens and children under the age of 18 have been trafficked within the states per year.

It is harder to obtain statistics for adult victims, because of a finer line between “voluntary” and forced prostitution or sexual slavery.

In April 2010, the U.S. Attorney’s office brought sex trafficking charges against the Gambino family, notoriously reputed to be part of the elusive “mob” in America.

With the arrest of 14 people, the charges include trapping girls to sell for sex at high stakes poker games in the middle of busy Manhattan.

Engaging in human trafficking is a new low even for the mob, U.S. Attorney’s office representatives stated in a press conference covered by MSNBC.

Also in April, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported that human trafficking has become the biggest “invisible” crime in the state. Florida House Bill 633 and Senate Bill 966 are currently being proposed to help law enforcement push back against the sex slavery trade.

How can this happen in America?
The massive amounts of money to be made through human trafficking is a powerful aphrodisiac that has enticed more people, even women, to deal in such crimes. In the Gambino case, one of the people arrested was a woman known to be involved in luring the victims.

The process of obtaining victims for human trafficking:
For most teen girls and women, if they are not outright kidnapped, they’re being enticed by the possibility of modeling or acting jobs. The Hollywood dream of obtaining fame and fortune at a young age through television and movies has become an obsession.

When they get to their destination, they are thrown into vehicles or locked in back bedrooms and sold to countless customers for sex acts, sexual abuse, and to appear in pornographic movies against their will.

They may be starved, drugged, verbally abused to the point of having no self-esteem, and threatened with death if they attempt to escape.

For girls and boys who do run away from home, criminals recognize their vulnerability, hunger and brokenness and are able to entice them into prostitution and porn films with the promise of money. The victim may receive tiny payments to keep them involved.

For children, it often starts with simple nabbing from neighborhoods.

A U.S. Government grant helped reveal the child trafficking problem:
In 2008, an organization called Shared Hope International (SHI) applied for and received a government grant to study the suspected nationwide crisis of child trafficking between states. Their resulting survey revealed that many of the children were often being misidentified as delinquents, and  punished for crimes when they were actually victims.

Since then, the FBI and agencies such as the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families have started training personnel to recognize when a person is a human trafficking victim instead of a runaway or criminal themselves (HHS Fact Sheet here).

See the Underground’s previous report, “Sex + Money,” about the ongoing production of a new movie aimed at exposing the U.S. sex slave industry.

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An Associated Press report said recently that Facebook is now being used to help recruit priests in France.

According to the report, this is part of an overall euro 250,000 campaign to encourage more males to become men of the cloth.  The April 20-May 5 campaign also includes 75,000 postcards showing a priest’s vestments with a button reading, “Jesus is my Boss” and the slogan, “Why not?”  It will be distributed throughout France, in restaurants, bars and movie theaters, among other places.

But the use of Facebook indicates the ever enlarging role the social network is playing in today’s world.  On its first week the page got over 1,200 fans.

Roman Catholicism is the main religion in France, comprising 64 percent of the population, or 41.6 million people out of a total 65 million.  However, only some 2 million attend church regularly, the report said.

There has also been a steady decline in the number of priests with only 24,000 today, compared to 42,000 in 1975.  Even the number of those who were ordained in 2009 (89) is a steep fall from a decade before at 116 in 1999.

Although the declining trend of ordainments is common in Europe and the United States, globally ordainments have actually increased, with the largest number of new priests coming from Asia and Africa.

The AP report noted, for example, that it is common for a church service in Italy to be conducted by priests from Brazil, Mozambique, the Philippines and other countries.

For Europeans and the United States, the most difficult obstacle towards becoming a priest is the vow of celibacy.  However, another difficult consideration is that the priesthood is a lifetime career choice whereas many people undergo many career changes in a lifetime.  Also, priests don’t make much money.  In Asia and Africa however joining the priesthood is a valued profession.  It also enables one to get an advanced education and earn a respectable living.

Even the average age of the European priests is indicative of a shortage of young Caucasian men entering the priesthood.  On the average, an Italian priest in 2003 was 60 years old, with one of every eight priests 80 years or over.

The decline is not related to the recent sex abuse scandals, the AP said.  The ad campaign however hopes to interest a younger age group of French men to become part of the Catholic priesthood.

The Telegraph UK for example described a half page ad of a 41-year-old man with the caption, “I am a man among others.  I’ve heard and responded to Christ’s call.  I love life.  I am a priest!”

The use of Facebook is also seen as a way to attract their target market and to reinvent the image of priests into something more young, new and contemporary.  The Telegraph UK report quoted French advertising guru Jacques Seguela who commented on the ad campaign and the sex abuse church scandals by saying, “The Church couldn’t call off the publicity campaign.  In any case, the ad is also a good counterattack in a crisis period.  This is a real grassroots reaction of the Church showing its modernization, in contrast with the image of a Pope mired in his own conservatism.”

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A bishop in Sudan raised doubts recently as to the fairness of the country’s recently concluded presidential elections.

Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok Kur of Khartoum said, “The reports of irregularities make one wonder whether in the end these elections will qualify to be called ‘free and fair.’”

The election is viewed as a trial run for next year’s referendum which could spell independence for the largely Christian and animist southern Sudan.  Northern Sudan is primarily Muslim.

Sudanese President President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir

The two had been at war for some 22 years until 2005, causing the death of some two million.  President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir gave the south limited autonomy in a peace deal that included the current presidential elections and next year’s referendum in January for southern Sudan’s independence.

Sudan has five million Catholics.  Since 2005, Christian schools in northern Sudan are obligated to teach Islam, and converts from Islam to Christianity face criminal charges and death at the hands of their families.  The south enjoys religious freedom.

Ahead of polling, two key Bashir challengers — the Umma Party’s Sadiq al-Mahdi and Yasser Arman of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – withdrew.  This paved the way for a near-certain Bashir victory.

The polls, the first competitive elections in 24 years, were marked with distrust, said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who led a delegation from the Carter Center to monitor the elections.

Carter said “It is obvious that the elections will fall short of international standards.”  Chief EU election monitor Veronique de Keyser echoed Carter’s assessment.

Still, Carter said the vote provided the Sudanese people with “an opening to participate and present their views.” He said, “My belief is that most of the international community, as represented by their governments, will accept the result of the election.”

Some of the irregularities cited by the Carter Center and the EU were:

• The process lacked sufficient safeguards and transparency.
• Problems cited with ink, ballot box seals and voter identification.
• Unequal resourcing and treatment by the authorities.
• Problems verifying voters’ identity when registration certificates were issued.
• Reports of underage voters casting ballots.
• Some evidence of election officials deliberately misrepresenting the desires of some voters.
• Intimidation, threats and use of force in the South.
• State interference in the campaigns of opposition candidates largely in the South.
• Much of Darfur was left out of the process.
• Serious technical and procedural violations during the polling.
• The boycott by the opposition, which accused Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party of fraud.
• The election fell short of Sudan’s obligations and related international standards.

Both Carter and the EU monitors agreed nonetheless that the election process was a step in the right direction for Africa’s largest and long war torn country.

Sources:

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/sudan-041710.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100417/ts_afp/sudanvote_20100417203745;_ylt=AlevczdPF_qtGjpKnk9Oo7us0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFobWc4Y3MzBHBvcwMyOARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNzdWRhbnZvdGUzOWY-

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=6051

Bishop in Sudan voices concerns over election (Aid to the Church in Need)

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A recent Pew survey showed recently that sub-Saharan Africa is among the most religious places in the world; and its least religious nation is more religious than the United States–which is among the most religious of the advanced industrial countries.

The survey was conducted in 19 countries namely Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The countries were chosen for being the most populous and for their different colonial histories, languages and religions.

The data was collected through more than 25,000 face-to-face interviews in more than 60 languages/dialects from December 2008 to April 2009.

A recent Pew survey showed recently that sub-Saharan Africa is among the most religious places in the world; and its least religious nation is more religious than the United States--which is among the most religious of the advanced industrial countries.

The two dominant religions are Christianity and Islam, and unlike the United States and Europe (where many have no religion) the vast majority is religiously affiliated.  However, they overlap traditional African beliefs and practices with faith.

Large numbers of Africans, whether Christian or Muslim, also believe in witchcraft, evil spirits, sacrifices to ancestors, traditional religious healers and reincarnation among others.

The survey also showed that Christianity and Islam coexist together, and they often view each other as tolerant and honest.

They attribute the peaceful coexistence to their governments which treat both religions fairly.

Some 40 percent of Christians however consider Muslims to be violent, while Muslims assess Christians more positively.

Most respondents favor democracy and religious freedom.  However, Muslims and Christians would both like a government based on either the Bible or sharia law.

Many Muslims also advocate the imposition of severe punishments like stoning people who commit adultery.

The survey also showed that:

• Most respondents rank unemployment, crime and corruption as bigger problems than religious conflict–except in areas like Nigeria and Rwanda where religious conflict is a major problem.
• Many respondents are concerned about religious extremism, even in their own faith. Muslims are more concerned about Muslim extremism than about Christian extremism; and Christians in four countries say they are more concerned about Christian extremism than about Muslim extremism.
• Neither Christianity nor Islam is growing significantly in sub-Saharan Africa at the expense of the other.  There is virtually no religious switching between the two.
• At least half of all Christians in every country surveyed expect that Jesus will return to earth in their lifetime, while roughly 30 percent or more of Muslims expect to live to see the re-establishment of the caliphate, the golden age of Islamic rule.
• In most countries, more than half of Christians believe in the prosperity gospel – that God will grant wealth and good health to people who have enough faith.
• By comparison with people in many other regions of the world, sub-Saharan Africans are much more optimistic that their lives will change for the better.

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Nigerian Christians and Muslims clash yet again near Jos. This time leaving 500 dead. Vanguard Image.

Nigerian officials say more than 500 Nigerian Christians are dead after attacks by neighboring Muslims in Dogo Nahauwa, Nigeria, a town just south of Jos on Sunday.

According to CNN, the marauders, stormed the settlement at 3 a.m. Sunday (9 p.m. Saturday EST) and remained there for more than two hours, setting edifices such as churches on fire and executing people with machetes.

The attacks on the people of Dogo Nahauwa, who are primarily from the Berom tribe, are thought to be retaliation for attacks on the Fulani, a predominantly Muslim tribe, that took place in January nearby.

Though, according to AFP, the archbishop Abuja, John Onaiyekan, told Vatican Radio that the “violence was rooted not in religion but in social, economic and tribal differences,” others are not so sure.

Nigerian publication, This Day published a statement from the Christian Elders Forum, in which the group called this a religiously-motivated attack and blamed the government for not adequately protecting its citizens.

“Their dead bodies are still lying in their own pool of blood as we speak. The attack, yet another jihad and provocation of the Christians, started at about 1.30 a.m. last night. We are in touch with the survivors though many of them are still in trauma,” the statement said.

In response to the massacre, Nigerian Vice President Goodluck Jonathan put the area and nearby states on red alert and began operations to capture those responsible.

In a news release, Jonathan asked Nigerians to remain calm and not to try to retaliate.

“He calls on all Nigerians to remain peaceful and law abiding, since violence only begets further violence,” the release said.

“He also sympathizes with those who have lost relatives and friends in these attacks, asking the Almighty to grant them the fortitude to bear the loss.”

So far, according to AFP, nearly 100 of the culprits have been captured.

“We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act,” Dan Manjang, an advisor to the Plateau state government, told AFP.

The BBC reported that Jos has been under a military curfew since the January attacks.

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