LatinaLista — Human trafficking is known to be a worldwide phenomenon but the trouble, at least in this country, is making people aware that it is also a local phenomenon.
Well, the people of Cincinnati, Ohio now know exactly — or as exactly as one can be — just how widespread it is in their city.
Thanks to the first-of-its-kind report authored by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (NURFC) titled Greater Cincinnati Human Trafficking Report.
Two of the more remarkable admissions found in the report is that 1. Law enforcement officials, along with the public, are clueless as to what human trafficking entails or what a likely victim would look like and 2. Ohio doesn’t have a state law that makes trafficking in humans a crime.
According to the NURFC:
Between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States. Nearly three out of every four victims are women. Half of modern-day slaves are children.
Slavery in the United States
Contemporary slavery/human trafficking remains a reality for many victims in the United States, where both American citizens and foreign nationals are trafficked into and within the United States for forced labor. Victims are men, women, and children and are from diverse nationalities, ethnicities and religions. They are found in any situation where another person is willing to exploit another for profit. Victims have included, among others:
Members of a Zambian boys choir who were forced to sing to earn their traffickers a profit and withheld from obtaining an education were promised;
Hearing-impaired Mexicans (men, women and children) who were forced to peddle items on the streets of New York to earn money for their traffickers;
South Asian women forced to work in a textile factory without pay and with constant physical and sexual violence against them
Young American girls forced to prostitute themselves on the streets of Los Angeles (and dozens of other cities) while under constant physical and sexual violence from pimps and those purchasing the sex;
Latino men forced to work on farms without pay, long hours, under armed guard, and constant violence or threat of violence against them.
It’s easy to see from these documented cases that the victims of slavery/human trafficking always include the easily intimidated and those who are considered second-class citizens.
When bad stuff happens to these people, it goes pretty much unnoticed until they either get mad enough to say something and draw attention, and risk their lives, to the problem or someone else speaks up for them.
It’s time more people took notice and spoke up.
