Partnership :: The Elpis Project and The Sold Project

Friends and Family of The Elpis Project.

I’m writing to you with exciting news! Over the last month I had been praying about the direction of Elpis, asking how we could continue to raise awareness on the issue of human trafficking and continue training people to identify victims of trafficking and get involved in the abolition of modern day slavery.

This week The Elpis Project met with The Sold Project, an organization creating a film that tells the story of children being trafficked in Thailand. Due to common dreams and goals, we have decided to merge together into one project, combining forces and strengthening the vision.

So The Elpis Project is now operating as The Sold Project! Our vision has only increased as we have gone global, are partnering with phenomenal artists as the video project continues, and are part of a team of people that are passionate about issues of justice.

As the Director of Development, I will be assisting The Sold Project in creating practical ways for people to get involved in reaction to the film. We are set to release in September, so if you would like to host a showing at your school, church, or other applicable venue, please contact us!

Please visit The Sold Project website at www.thesoldproject.org. Watch the trailer, learn about the staff, and continue to pray for this unity of people with hearts to serve as we learn how to give a voice to those who are suffering from injustice.

This is an exciting time for Elpis as we partner with the Sold Project. Together this will advance, strengthen and move forward the goal of abolishing human trafficking in our world!

With much love and hope,

Rachel

GirlsInc.org :: Self Confidence

South Africa :: SA call to legalise prostitution

SA call to legalise prostitution

Prostitutes may have to pay tax during the World Cup

South African MP George Lekgetho has called for prostitution to be legalised for the duration of the football World Cup to be held in the country in 2010. “It is one of the things that would make it a success,” the ruling African National Congress parliamentarian said.

It would help cut the incidences of rape and would bring in taxes to fight poverty, he told his colleagues.

The opposition Democratic Alliance criticised the idea but a group representing sex workers welcomed it.

“We would support any legalisation of sex work, particularly during the 2010 World Cup,” Nicola Fick from Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force told the BBC.

“Our position is that it’s going to be in the best interest of the sex workers and the government if the police no longer arrest women for this crime.”

Chuckles

Mr Lekgetho made his comments after a presentation by the Arts and Culture Department to a parliamentary committee on its plans for social cohesion for 2010.

“If sex working is legalised people would not do things in the dark. That would bring us tax and would improve the lives of those who are not working,” the South African Press Association quotes him as saying.

The BBC’s Mpho Lakaje in Johannesburg says his suggestion was met with groans of protest and chuckles from other MPs.

The idea of legalising sex work was first proposed last year by police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who has since been suspended to face corruption charges.

But Mr Lekgetho only called for its legalisation for the duration of the football tournament.

Meanwhile, our correspondent says there are growing concerns that power cuts across the country are delaying preparations for the international spectacle.

South Africa has in the last few weeks been hit by rolling black outs.

But the World Cup organising committee has expressed confidence the tournament will go ahead as planned.

STOP TRAFFIC: 2008 Anti-Human Trafficking Conference

STOP TRAFFIC: 2008 Anti-Human Trafficking Conference

Date: March 21-22, 2008
Place: University of Missouri; Columbia, Missouri
Hosts: Stop Traffic, Anti-Human Trafficking Activist Group

Synopsis: The first annual summit on human trafficking will focus on how to be involved in efforts to combat trafficking in persons. Panels and workshops will include current topics in, legislative actions against, and volunteering for anti-human trafficking efforts, as well as how to write a grant/fundraise, and how to raise awareness.

There will be a plethora of organizations in the fields of law, government, activism, media and academia to talk about being active in anti-human trafficking efforts at the conference.

The event will include three meals, including a pot luck dinner supported by ethnic groups and local restaurants. Scholarships, homestays, and discounted hotel rates are available, but space is limited so please register early! Cost is $65 if you register in advance!

FOR MORE DETAILS or to REGISTER PLEASE SEE  www.stoptrafficnow.com.

Financial support for the conference has been provided by the City of Columbia Human Rights Commission, the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences, the MU Multicultural Center, and the MU New Venture Competition. This event brought to you in part by Student Activity Fees. Support provided by the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, the MU Department of Geography, and the Service Learning Program.

UK :: Sex Trafficked Victims ‘Missing’

Sex trafficked victims ‘missing’

There are rising concerns about sex trafficking

The UK government does not know where the majority of sex trafficked women rescued as part of two national police operations are, BBC Wales has learned. Operation Pentameter, launched by the Home Office in 2006, aimed to tackle people trafficking in the UK’s sex industry.

It was also designed to catch the criminals responsible for exploitation.

But a BBC Wales Week in Week Out investigation has revealed serious concerns that it is not delivering.

Operation Pentameter One resulted in 88 victims being rescued but Vernon Coaker MP, a Home Office minister, admitted to programme-makers he does not know where the vast majority of those are.

“I don’t know where the 76 [of the 88] all actually are but what I do know is that they will have been dealt with in the appropriate way,” he said.

He said he did not know how much public money had been spent across Wales and the rest of the UK on Pentameter One or Pentameter Two – which followed on a year later.

Diana Jones admitted running four brothels

Nor could he tell the programme how many victims had been rescued in total.

The admission comes in the wake of a high-profile court case last week involving brothel boss Diana Jones, who ran a string of illegal operations in Cardiff and Swindon. She was prosecuted as part of Pentameter, but there was no evidence of trafficking and the judge said no one at her brothels had been harmed.

In the Week In Week Out programme broadcast on Monday evening, she gave an insight into the illegal operation which police say turned over nearly £3m.

The programme reveals how it was business as usual throughout the investigation.

Giles York said five people were rescued by South Wales Police

The court heard the brothels had run with at least some police officers knowing what went on behind closed doors – something the force had contested in court.

When challenged in the programme about whether South Wales Police officers had “turned a blind eye” to Diana Jones’s illegal operations, assistant chief constable Giles York said: “I do not know what is the minds of my officers, but what I can tell you is that she has been prosecuted now and it was a successful prosecution and she’s pleaded guilty to it.”

He said he believed Pentameter had been a success in his force area with five victims rescued, and nearly £500,000 recovered from offenders.

He said his officers would continue to pursue Diana Jones for the money she made from her illegal activities.

She was given a suspended prison sentence for brothel keeping and faces financial ruin.

She was investigated after taking two trafficked eastern European women to police for safety.

“I think Pentameter had all the right reasons for starting the operations off but in terms of success, and capturing traffickers, no, they got far more success from people in the sex industry, in the know, passing information on,” she told the programme.

India :: India’s booming kidney racket

India’s booming kidney racket

“When I woke up, I felt this terrible pain on my abdomen. They told me they had taken out my kidney.

“I thought I was going to die.”

Shakeel Ahmed only wanted to come to Delhi to find work.

So when two men approached him outside the railway station offering him a construction job, he readily agreed.

“They drove me to a house far away. On the way they asked me some strange questions like if I had any diseases,” he says.

Later that night he was transferred along with two other men to another house.

“There were these men in green coats they took a sample of my blood

“I was given an injection and I passed out.”

Massive racket

Shakeel and two other victims are now being kept in a solitary ward in a civic hospital in Gurgaon, an affluent suburb of Delhi, under the watchful eyes of a policeman.

The laws in India make it impossible to get a kidney legally Kamal Varma

They were brought here by the police, who found them during a raid on an illegal clinic.

It was the first hint that they had stumbled on a massive racket involving millions of dollars and reaching out to all corners of India and even some countries abroad.

“Many men, mostly poor labourers, were brought here and their kidneys removed,” says Gurgaon police commissioner Mohinder Lal.

“They were offered between $1-2000. The recipients were wealthy clients in India and other countries. Some of them were from Greece, Arab countries, United States and one or two patients from European countries.”

An international investigation is now under way. Interpol has been alerted to look out for two doctors believed to be the kingpins of the operation.

But in India a debate is now beginning on why so few people come forward to donate their organs.

An estimated 150,000 Indians need a kidney transplant every year, but only 3,500 are available.

One of the needy is Kamal Verma.

A year ago he was told that he would need a transplant or undergo dialysis for his failing kidneys.

“The laws in India are so that it makes it impossible to get a kidney legally.

“I can only get one from a blood relative.”

It’s one of the major reasons for the thriving black market.

“Every hospital has a tout. In fact, the doctors or nephrologists will often suggest a person that you can contact to get a kidney. They charge up to $10,000.

“But I don’t have the money and in any case it’s illegal so I don’t want to go down that route.”

So the once active trade exhibitor is now resigned to a life of virtual retirement.

“I can barely see, I can’t do a strenuous job, I get short of breath. My life is finished,” he says as he suns himself on the terrace of his modest flat.

Small-town India

It’s this hopeless mismatch between demand and supply that is being ruthlessly exploited by some doctors and agents.

Mr Ahmed’s parents look after him in the hospital

And fuelling it is a million-dollar black economy that has spread its tentacles across the country.

Especially in small town India.

Meerut is a little over an hour’s drive east of Delhi.

It’s central market is busy, its narrow, congested lanes choked with people, vehicles of all shapes and sizes and stray animals.

On one side is the decaying red brick town hall.

Sitting on the steps or squatting on their haunches outside are daily wage labourers.

They wait for business, pulling on bidis (country cigarettes) while some play cards. Others nap.

Many of them have already sold their kidneys.

“I needed the money,” says Om Prakash simply.

A house painter, he’s in his forties but looks a decade older.

His cheeks are hollowed, his eyes glazed and his skin is stretched tight over his bones.

‘Who can refuse?

“Three years ago some men said they’d pay me 80.000 rupees ($2,000) for my kidney.

“Who can refuse? People kill for money this isn’t that bad.”

There are many like him who need the money to buy food and support large families.

Or worse is an addiction. Rich pickings for anyone with a bit of cash.

Back in the Gurgaon hospital, Shakeel Ahmed’s aged parents look at their exhausted son.

“He was the only one earning in the family,” says his father

“I have another son who’s unemployed and a daughter who’s divorced with five children.

“What’ll we do for money?,” he says, wiping his eyes.

Update from India!

Save the Children in Mumbai, India works to provide training for girls who were rescued from sex trafficking.www.savethechildrenindia.orgI recently received an update from them – “we have been successful in placing 5 girls at the beauty parlours in Mumbai, and also have placed them at a shelter home for them to start travelling on their own.”

When I visited, it was a picture-esque moment of beautiful girls learning how to sew, make jewelry, create art, cut hair, and various other trades. What I learned was that this was their escape – they spent their nights cramped up in the government home of Mumbai with hundreds of other girls. They were personally escorted daily to this training center, where they were kept locked in the upstairs room with a security guard standing at the entry for their protection. Their traffickers had not been arrested, and their lives were still at risk. These girls hated going back to the government home and were hungry for their own freedom, their own independence. How exciting that five of them have found that!

UK :: Sex trafficking victims rescued

Sex trafficking victims rescued

Three victims of the sex trafficking trade have been rescued from brothels in Bedfordshire during a series of police raids over the last three weeks. Officers raided five houses in Luton and one in Bedford in a covert operation code-named Pentameter 2, targeting sex trafficking in the UK.

Six brothels were closed in the raids, carried out between January 16 and 30. Four women and one man were arrested.

The women rescued are from Thailand, Romania and Albania.

Sexual exploitation

Five raids were carried out in Luton, two on homes in Hightown Road, two in Dorrington Close, and one address in Wellington Street, as well as a further raid in Ashburnham Road, Bedford.

Three women were arrested in connection with being concerned with the management of a brothel.

A man was held in connection with a number of offences, including being concerned with the management of a brothel, money laundering and facilitating entry into the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation.

Another woman, thought to be Chinese, was arrested on immigration offences.

INDIA :: UN seeks end to human trafficking

A UN initiative to fight human trafficking has been launched in the Indian capital, Delhi. The global campaign is aimed at achieving a turning point in the fight against trafficking.

Millions of people around the world are victims of sexual exploitation and forced labour, many of them children.

The UN estimates the annual trade is worth $32bn. South Asia is second only to South East Asia as the region with the highest prevalence of trafficking.

Goals

Every day in South Asia children and young women are lured or taken from their homes with promises of a job, marriage or a place in the entertainment industry.

Key source and destination nations in human trafficking Enlarge Map

Instead, they end up in the sex trade or as forced labour.

India is the hub of this trade, with organised crime syndicates trafficking women and children both within the country and from across the border in Nepal or Bangladesh.

These are the findings of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which is at the centre of the new global initiative to combat trafficking.

It brings together government officials, law enforcement agencies, business leaders and representatives from the media and entertainment industry.

The idea is both to share best practices and raise funds in the hope that it can help turn a corner in the fight against trafficking.

The two-day conference is expected to draw up a timeframe and also set goals to be achieved over the next few years.

Call for Contributions: The Art of Resistance: Creative Writings on

Call for Contributions: The Art of Resistance: Creative Writings on
Prostitution

Deadline: September 15, 2008

Prostitution is an issue that impacts everyone in that its harm remains
invisible due to systemic racism, classism, sexism, and histories of
colonialism. As we make our way into the 21st century the creative writing
will be important for defining the movement against prostitution as well as
functioning as a means for survivors to educate others about their
experiences of violence.

We are looking for creative writing (prose, prose poems, poetry, creative
non-fiction, short stories, micro-fiction, memoir, diary, multi-genre) and
art works for a groundbreaking anthology that addresses the harm resulting
from prostitution.**

We invite submissions from survivors, family and friends of survivors,
advocates, and all others who have experienced or observed the impact of
prostitution on individuals, communities, and societies. Works that discuss
race, class, sexuality, disability, nationality, colonization,
globalization, and ethnicity and their relationships to systems of
prostitution are also encouraged.

Because this is a supportive place for people in prostitution, the
requirement for submissions is that they engage with prostitution in
critical ways that do not blame or reinforce stereotypes of prostituted
people.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Guidelines for Submission of Creative Writing:
- Poetry: Up to five submissions per person (not all works will be
accepted)
- Prose (creative non-fiction, short stories, micro-fiction, memoir,
diary): A suggested maximum of 5,500 words (we have some flexibility with
the word count)
- Attach your submissions as word documents

Include the following in your submission:

- Bio: No longer than 5 sentences
- Full name as you would like it to appear if your work is chosen for
publication
- Contact information: mailing address, phone number, and email

Send Submissions to:

Email: editors.artofresistance@hotmail.com

Deadline: September 15, 2008

Email: editors.artofresistance@hotmail.com if you have questions.

The co-editors are Annie Fukushima and Christine Stark. Annie Fukushima is
a doctoral student in Ethnics and a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender &
Sexuality. She is also an activist that organizes with numerous
organizations, and the founder of SAFEHS (Students & Artists Fighting to
End Human Slavery). Christine Stark is an award-winning author and visual
artist, speaker, and activist of Native American and European heritage. She
is a co-editor of Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and
Pornography.

**We define systems of prostitution to include street prostitution,
stripping, bartering sex for food and shelter, adult and child pornography,
escort and out-call prostitution, sex tourism, ritual abuse, massage
parlors, saunas, phone sex, prostitution tourism, peep shows, mail order
bride services, and international and domestic sex trafficking.