Taken

January is observed as National Human Trafficking Awareness month in the US. Today’s 100 words, Taken, focuses on that.

Taken

Taken. She was walking to the store, when a car stopped, the driver asking her for directions. The next minute she was lying tied at the back of the car.
Now they were on a plane. Who was this well dressed man? What would happen to her? He told her not to say a word as he slept beside her in the plane.
“Would you like to use the wash room?” asked the air hostess signing like she was writing a note.
She found a post-it stuck to the wash room mirror : ‘Write yes, I you need help”.

“YES. HELP”

(100 words)

These 100 words are based on a true incident where an alert and quick-thinking air-hostess successfully prevented a trafficker from leaving the plane with a young girl he had kidnapped.

Human Trafficking – Modern Day Slavery

Human trafficking can be broken down into three primary elements: what is done, how it’s done and why it’s done — the act, the means, and the purpose.

• The purpose of human trafficking is always exploitation.
• The methods for trafficking in persons include abuse of power, deception, coercion, and threats of or use of force.
• The actual act of trafficking is done through the recruiting, transporting, harboring, transferring and receiving of persons.

Each of the three elements is spelled out in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. This United Nations Convention, adopted in 2003, established the formal worldwide definition for human trafficking.

“Trafficking in Persons [is] the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

(Source)

Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.

Visit the website of United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime to find out how you can do your bit to prevent human trafficking.

#100Words On Saturday

Join me next Saturday as I write about racism to honour the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.