An SMS for help, half way across the world.

An email landed in my inbox through our campaign "Business Travellers against Human Traffiking". It was from a man in Indonesia, begging for help. His friend had been in debt, which she couldn't pay off. As she couldn't pay, she was being forced to go with traffickers, who said they were taking her to Iraq. She had managed to sms her friend that she was being taken to the plane at 5pm that day. She needed to be rescued! I looked at the email, in which the man told this story, then I looked up the time difference from Belgium to Indonesia - there was only two hours to go before this woman was lost. There was no time to lose!

I had no idea which NGOs to contact in Indonesia, so I googled around and soon found a few, and before long, I was hanging on the phone, nervously waiting for someone to pick up, but when they did there was another problem - no one spoke any English. So, it was back to the drawing board and the time was ticking away. In the end I did the only thing I could, I phoned the only people I was sure would speak English, I phoned the British embassy. They were slightly surprised to be contacted about trafficking on their doorstep by a man in Belgium, but they sprang into action and contacted the local police. Before long I received the message that the woman had been rescued and was safe for the moment, although the threat of the traffickers to whom she owed money would never completely disappear. It was a strange, but amazing story of a rescue that started with an sms and spanned half the world. It also showed yet again that by reporting what we know, we can bring help to trafficking victims.

This week www.businesstravellers.org ran another story about Indonesia, this time about a recruitment agency promising young women domestic work in Malaysia, but now acused of actually trafficking them into prostitution. The problems of poverty, debt and the hope of a better life creating vulnerability to trafficking continue. The more it can be brought to light, the more we can work together to stop it.

From the street to the classroom

Behind the Gare du Nord in Brussels, there is long street of windows with women in prostitution posing all day. They try not to look bored, but they must be. It's an odd sight, shoppers with children hurrying along a street with women in the windows, and a steady stream of men from the railway station looking for quick sex. That street is the start of the Brussels red light district and we are often in that area working to find out if there has been trafficking.

We were looking around to see if there might be a youth centre we could work with, perhaps as a space where the women could come to learn skills and be out of the pressure of work for a while, when we came across a young woman sitting on the floor, with a toddler on her lap and a four-year-old dancing about next to her. We stopped to talk, and although her French wasn't good and she spoke no English or Dutch, we learned that she was Romanian like so many of the women begging with their children in Brussels (It is curious the segregation that occurs, Bulgarians in the windows by the station, Nigerians in the windows a few streets away, Romanians on the street, using children to attract donations, all depending on who the pimps and the traffickers are that control the turf.). She had been here a few years and although she had somewhere to stay, life was hard. She insisted the children were hers and knew their names without hestitating. Someone was controlling her, and but she seemed to be genuine enough.

As we finished talking with her, and started to walk away, another woman rushed up. Her story was much more dubious and disturbing. Brandishing a piece of paper in our faces, and pointing to a young child about seven years old who stood vacantly next to her, she told us in perfect French that she was a Bosnian refugee who had only been in Belgium for one month. Her daughter, she said, was blind and needed treatment. We looked at her, and indeed her eyes were clouded over with a white film. The doctor's bill she waved in front of us for hundreds of euros was, however, clearly faked. Other questions sprang to mind; how had she learn French so quickly? If she was illegal, how did she get a bank account for this bill to be paid through? How come the bill was faked? We looked again at the girl, and a darker question troubled us. If she could not see, and she was being used to beg, how did she get blinded? It was a very disturbing thought. We tried to direct the woman to local organisations who could help, but she became angry with us.
We saw it on the streets of India, now we are seeing it on the streets of Brussels; children being exploited for money. I pray that the girl was not blinded for the purpose, but certainly she was not receiving proper medical attention. You may have seen the film Slumdog Millionaire, which accurately shows how children are sometimes injured and blinded to get more money from their begging. I hope this is not happening in Brussels, but now I have my doubts.

Another woman who regularly begs alone in the station itself, has a different story. She is very poor, and she also stays in the country illegally and begs all day, but when I enquired about her children, she replied that they were in school. Despite the precarious nature of her existence and the probably control she is under from traffickers and other mafia figures, she has managed to get her children into education. At least when they are in school, they are safe, and out of the environment which seems to trap so many. They will also have the possiblity of a different future. Education for all those children we pass on the street, another goal in the fight to stop the traffik.

Isolated, excluded and illegal, what would you do?

When we heard they had her in the detention cells, Rach and I set out to see what we could do. Jane (not her real name) was a part of the church we were leading at the time in south London. A tiny, fine boned, but wonderfully self-reliant African lady from Ghana, we couldn't imagine what the police could want to keep her locked up for. She was being kept at a police station in north London, so off we went.
For some reason, entering a police station is always a bit of a trauma, its like when you see a police car when you are driving, you always slow down (or I do!) even if you are obeying the speed limit. If that's what it's like for me, a white, middle class Brit, imagine what it's like for an African on foreign soil. The police were perfectly civil and we went through to see Jane, huddled with three others in a cell that seemed only small enough for two. It was winter and she was cold. She had no blanket, no change of clothes, no tooth brush or other toiletaries. We applied to the police to be able to be able to bring her those things and they laughed at us. "Oh, they can ask us for those things any time they like" guffawed the seargent "they obviously don't need them". "Did you tell them they could ask for those things" I shot back. He paused and looked round at the women. They had no idea of their rights in a British police station. The policeman went off to get a blanket.
Jane's story soon emerged. She was, like many in our congregation, in the UK illegally. She came in on a student visa and stayed to work. She had been working quietly in a small factory in north London for a pittance of a wage. When the factory owner wanted to get rid of them, he just called the police and declared that he had found out that the workers hadn't got the right papers. The police then came and arrested them. The factory owner had the best of both worlds, cheap labour when he wanted it, and a good relationship with the police when he had enough. Whatever you think about illegal immigrants, what is obvious is that exploitation is never very far away.
This was brought to mind recently by the story we heard from one of the women in a Thai massage parlour. She had come into the country legally, and worked in a factory, but when she couldn't get her visa renewed, she lost her job. It was then that the pimp approached her to start working in the massage parlour. Isolated, excluded and illegal, she didn't see any alternative. Now she doesn't know how to get out of that kind of work.
Jane's story ends more happily, we were able to work with her to help her regularise her stay. The fact is that illegal immigrants, sans papier or whatever they are called in your country, are people too and are vulnerable to exploitation. It is impossible to hate and exclude immigrants and to also say you are against human trafficking. It's a sensitive subject, but it's also the elephant in the room. No one should be bought and sold and we should care for the vulnerable, no matter whether they are legal or not in the eyes of the state.

Politicians who love blood chocolate

A few years ago, at the start of the Stop the Traffik chocolate campaign, we were excited to be invited to the UK parliament to discuss the fact that thousands of children were (and are) being trafficked and exploited on the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast. We were invited to a meeting of the Cross Party Committee on Chocolate and Confectionary, no less. With jobs like that, it's a wonder that MPs even need to over-claim their expenses. We were excited though, because it was the first political interest in the UK.
We spent hours preparing the case, re-reading all the research, in the knowledge that the chocolate industry would also be represented and would be arguing to the MPs that they were doing all they could to stop the exploitation of children. They had even managed to find a sympathetic charity to attack us.
I was on holiday in Wales on the day of the hearing, so I got up at 4am and caught a train from a windswept, dark station, winding my way through to Birmingham, changing trains, and finally arriving, bleary eyed in London, more than five hours later (unbeknowns to me, my boss Steve Chalke had managed to get a lift from a friend with a helicopter and arrived from the north of England in less time than it had taken me to get out of Wales. Oh to have friends with helicopters!)
We went through security into Portcullis House, and were shown into the meeting room by a friendly assistant. Slowly the industry representatives were shown in, and lastly the MPs arrived. As we predicted, the argument between us and the industry was sharp, but what struck me most was the behaviour of some of the MPs. They were not really that interested in the plight of the children of Ivory Coast, but rather their attention was fixed on the large bowls of free chocolate that Nestlé, Mars and others had provided for them. Brian Woods showed the famous and moving film he had made in the Ivory Coast of children who had been trafficked and held as slaves, showing their wounds and talking of the pain they had suffered. All through this the MPs happily munched away at their chocolate, as if it was a trip out to the local cinema.
At the end of it all, one MP went over to a side table and picked up some of the gift bags that the chocolate industry had provided "Time to take my blood chocolate" he sniggered to us, and left. We were astonished.
Well, that was almost two and a half years ago, and much has changed. Industry has started to make steps forward, although there is still a long way to go. It isn't politicians who have made this happen, it is ordinary people who have bought fairtrade, written letters, held chocolate fondue parties, protested and petitioned. I can imagine that a meeting of the Cross Party Committee on Chocolate and Confectionary would be very different today, as everyone knows that voters want to see this terrible abuse end. That's why Stop the Traffik is a grass roots movement. We know that change starts in our own communities and the politicians will catch up with what we are doing. Perhaps, on some issues, that's the way it should be.

Dubai, the city where everything's for sale.

The text came through on my phone "I'm at the Cyclone, it's like the United Nations of prostitution." It was from a journalist friend who had gone to Dubai to investigate whether women were being trafficked into sexual explotation in that most commercial of gulf states. The fact is that thousands of women are being trafficked and can be found even in the lobbies of many of the five star hotels. Back in 2006, our campaign Business Travellers against Human Trafficking ran a campaign with the European Parliament, asking Dubai, ever so politely to stop this practise. The response initially was to ban our website www.businesstravellers.org and to deny that anything like that could happen "It is against our culture", the minister for tourism said. Slowly, however, they changed the law. We thought that meant progress, but the problem was that thousands of women from Russia, Armenia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, all over the world in fact, continued to find themselves trapped in prostitution, even amongst the palms and gleaming towers of the luxury that is Dubai. A law is all very well, but it must be enforced.
Business Travellers against Human Trafficking not only lobbies for change, but gives people a place to report instances of human trafficking. We received a report from a man who had seen a woman who was clearly distressed, being offered in a hotel. He took his life in his hands, rescued her and took her to the police, who promptly imprisoned her for being an illegal immigrant. They deported her back to Moldova.
The police in Dubai do sometimes arrest traffickers now, but the situation has not changed that much over the years. A Belgian journalist working with us recently went to Dubai and reported that the women were still being trafficked and offered in the business hotels. In his article he names some the hotels implicated, which include the Hyatt and the Radisson. We contacted both chains, but only the Radisson replied and said they would do something. It remains to be seen if they have (and anyone staying there could report back to us). The Hyatt seems content to ignore the criticism.
If you read Dutch, then you can see the original article here, if not, we have translated it into English and you can read a short section of it below. It's up to us to make it clear that we will not put up with this kind of trafficking in our hotels.

Dubai by night: Business as usual
It is said that there is nothing better than the Moroccan whores. No common Asian or East European smuggled goods for poor businessman, but the pure Champions’ League for wealthy Arabs. Beautiful, Muslim and without taboo.
It's just after nine o'clock in the evening, and the luxurious shopping mall of the Radisson SAS hotel in Dubai is preparing for the daily transformation. Businessmen have changed their tailor made suits for more casual clothes and seem to walk uninterested towards the club of the hotel, Ku-Bu. 'The funkiest bar in town, with its groovy tunes and mouthwatering cocktails', as the hotel’s flyer reads. There surely is some truth in that, although one could question whether it is only the cocktails that cause the mouthwatering by the mainly male public. With the darkness of the night girls start to drop into the lobby of the hotel; dozens of girls, high heels, short skirts, leaving little to the imagination. Within one hour, Ku-Bu is crowded. Security people closely but discreetly keep an eye on the crowd. The lustful men are politely welcomed and the girls receive a kiss. New or unknown girls are asked for their papers. An hour later people start to find their way to their rooms, a big German man accompanied by a beautiful young Ethiopian girl. A local sheik with two blond Russian ladies. The Radisson has more to offer; The Pub ('An informal and cozy English Pub') or Up on the Tenth ('The finest jazz bar in Dubai'), where a man alone will not be so for more than 10 minutes. A bit more style, ideal for the man whom prefers to have a good conversation beforehand.

Getting laid in the hotel
About 24 hours later we arrive in The Premiere, the huge nightclub from the Hyatt Regency Hotel, one of the biggest and best-known business hotels in Dubai. Entrance costs are 125 dirham a person, almost 25 Euros. The club is crowded, even though it is only 11 o'clock. Hundreds of prostitutes are positioned around the dance floor, or hang around the bar. The visitors, only men, take their time to watch around while the women are becoming more intrusive with the time passing. Just after entering the club an Ethiopian beauty tries to get our attention, whilst on the other side an East European beauty gives us a view into her décolleté. Tariff for an hour of pleasure, preferably in the Hotel itself; 250 to 300 dollars. It's not a problem that I do not stay in the hotel; Hannah rents a cheap apartment nearby together with a friend. We can go there if I want to.

Why education can Stop the Traffik

We were in a building site in Mumbai, squatted down, talking with a thin, defeated looking Indian man called Balraam. It was hot and dusty and we were tired from the day at the drop-in centre we worked in as part of Oasis India. Traffic thundered past as the city headed home. Behind Balraam was his home, a make-shift shack in amongst the construction. Ajay, my colleague, an amazing, tireless worker for justice, was doing the talking. There was a lot at stake, and as usual this brought out the best in Ajay.
Balraam's son Bipin had been coming to the drop-in centre we were running. He was small and thin too, but the was no defeat in his eyes. When you looked at him you saw him almost daring the world to try to stop him. Bipin, like his family were from Orissa and spoke Oriya. Bipin also spoke some Hindi and it was in Hindi that he was learning to read and write. The centre we ran was just a gap between buildings with a tin roof rammed on top, for which we paid way to much rent to a grasping landlady. Everyday children packed into that space to learn to read and write, play, wash, get clothes and food. We also prepared them for school and tried to get them places there. As soon as Bipin started to read, you could see that he had something special. He was ravenous to learn, and he picked up everything the staff of the Asha Deep centre taught him.
Then came the bad news. The construction work at a nearby site was over. Balraam and his wife Sarojini (hers is another amazing story) had to move on. Moving job meant literally pitching tent in a new site. This was a major blow to Bipin. How could he learn to read now? Before we knew it, he had threatened his parents that if they moved, he would run away and sleep outside the Asha Deep centre. The parents were shocked and angry. We agreed to pick him up and take him to the centre where ever they were in the city, and we would also return him home.
This arrangement went on for a while, very successfully. Bipin was brilliant. He had to be in school. Eventually we managed to get a sponsor so he could go to boarding school. At that point his father said no. This was too much, the boy was needed at home. Soon, he would have to work. Bipin could see his chance for a better future slipping away.
So, it was a tense meeting, when we sat together in the rubble.
It was at that very moment that Ajay said something that I will never forget. He asked Balraam a question; "What do you do?"
A simple question. Balraam replied "You can see, I am a construction worker"
"Where do you live?"
"I live here, you can see it!" Balraam said, sweeping his hand around, looking at Ajay as if he was stupid. Ajay wasn't finished though;
"And what did your father do?", he asked.
There was a pause, "He was a construction worker"
"And did he live the same way as you?"
"Yes"
"And his father?"
There was a longer pause. "He also worker on the building sites"
"And did he live like you do in a shack?"
"Yes"
Balraam wasn't insulted as I feared he would be, he was instead beginning to see, and could guess what Ajay would say next.
"Don't you understand, brother, that if you stop Bipin from learning, he also will live and work as you do, and so will his son. Do you like living this way? Is this what you want for your son?"
Balraam looked at his feet. We waited; this was his son, and something new was difficult for the man to accept. Eventually though, he agreed, that the best thing, the only thing to break the cycle of oppresion and abuse that their family had suffered for generations, was to let the boy go to school.
Bipin went to school. The only place available (that we could afford) was in a Marathi language school, the state language of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. He took the place, learned the language and before long was top of the class. He has thrived in school and his life is revolutionized. Balraam can be proud of the decision he took that day in the fumes of traffic and the clatter of the building site.
This also has a lot to do with Stop the Traffik. Education changed Bipin's life and it also made him a lot less vulnerable to being trafficked. It is a long-term investment in a person, but if we can ensure that children from poor families are educated, given vocational training and are mentored as they try to find a job, then they are much less likely to be trafficked. What was true in the life of a boy like Bipin is doubly true for girls. Education is vital, if we really are going to Stop the Traffik.