Phil@Stop the Traffik

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.