By Briana Wong
CU Columbia Spectator
“New York Times” journalist Nicholas Kristof deems human trafficking “the big emerging human rights issue for the 21st century.” He also calls it “a convoluted euphemism.” What Kristof is intimating here is that human trafficking—that is, “the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit a person for profit,” according to the U.S. State Department’s 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report—cannot rightfully be called anything other than slavery. As the global slave trade reemerges, this time tied with arms dealing as the second largest organized crime pursuit in the world, a budding abolitionist movement is scrambling to muster enough strength to combat it.
When I first heard about the human trafficking problem, I was overwhelmed by the stories of young women sold into prostitution in brothels in Cambodia, families forced into debt bondage in India, and children abducted by rebel armies and forced to fight in the ongoing Ugandan civil war. It was only recently, thanks to Justin Dillon’s new documentary “Call + Response,” that I learned that the United States, and New York City, in particular, is also plagued by this evil that has once again reared its ugly head. Approximately 15,000 to 18,000 people, according to an FBI estimate, are smuggled into the United States every year for forced labor, with John F. Kennedy Airport emerging as a major point of entry.
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