Slave: The Dark Spectre of the Modern Sex Trade

Slave tells the true story of “Anna”, a Romanian girl who was snatched off the streets of London in 2011 and forced into the darkest corners of Ireland to work as an unwilling prostitute for her captors. The book is a difficult, often harrowing, read that reveals some of the inner workings of a global enterprise, the international sex trade, as seen from the perspective of one of its innumerable victims. As Anna herself explains, she was the product of the trade, the victim of the crime, and – in the eyes of many of the ‘respectable’, naive public – a complicit criminal in an extremely lucrative business.

How does one become a victim of human trafficking? In Anna’s words, “they took me because I would not be missed”. Women, and men, like Anna are targeted for trafficking because they can be disappeared without drawing attention from authorities or friends or family members that might raise the alarm. A few carefully constructed Facebook status’ supposedly from the victim, a new name (or several new names), a new country, and enough beatings to break the person’s will to fight, and one more individual has simply ceased to exist. Now they can be taken anywhere, made to do anything, bought and sold on the black market and forced to work constantly until their bodies are bruised and beaten enough that they are no longer desirable to the hardworking, respectable family men – the ‘assholes’ as Anna refers to them – who frequent the underground brothels present in major cities all over the world. If, after all that, they wind up dead then nobody investigates because they never existed anyway.

The secrecy of this world allows the cogs to keep turning in a global machine. This is no small enterprise; the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in 2012 that human trafficking accounted for around $32 billion in the shadow economy every year. This is a conservative estimate, with the International Labour Organisation placing the global forced labour economy at $150 billion. Although this includes those trafficked for labour, child trafficking, and the organ trade, by far the most lucrative business for traffickers is sex. Anna tells in Slave of how she was personally valued at £30,000 when she was first taken. By the end of her captivity her traffickers, Ilie Ionut and Ancuta Schwarz, considered her their “million-pound girl”. The true numbers that traffickers and pimps make per victim will never be known, but it is clear that through systematic abuse, torture and manipulation, they are making a killing.

Following Anna’s ordeal, Northern Ireland passed the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act, Europe’s strictest anti-trafficking law, which not only tightened existing laws on traffickers but also introduced a new offence that made it illegal to pay for sexual services. Now the “assholes” would be criminals too. The Act was controversial at the time of its inception, with police arguing it would be impossible to enforce, and some sex workers arguing that it would only force the trade further underground and make things more dangerous for them. Anna supports the Act, arguing that criminalising those who pay for sex may drive them away from the trade. If the demand dries up and the business becomes less lucrative, maybe the traffickers will have to find new ways to make their money.  

Again, due to the immense secrecy of the business it is difficult to tell how successful the Act has been since it was passed in 2015. In 2017 the National Crime Agency reported that modern slavery was a “significant problem” for Northern Ireland. However, as Anna’s story demonstrates, the nature of modern slavery is international. The issue may simply be more visible in Northern Ireland due to its stricter laws. The National Crime Agency also warns that human trafficking affects every major city in the UK, and the true scale of the industry continues to elude the authorities.

The uncomfortable truth of the sex trade is that it is only as lucrative as the level of demand allows. And the level of demand is extremely high. Some estimates suggest that as many as one in ten men in the UK have paid for sex at least once. In the US, this figure rises to around 15-20% of men. In the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal and regulated, the figure also hovers between 13 and 22% of men. This would suggest that laws governing prostitution do not significantly alter the percentage of men who are willing to pay for sex. As was argued in Northern Ireland, this is perhaps because laws that make prostitution illegal criminalise the sex worker, not the customer. Arguments surrounding the legalisation of prostitution argue that a legal and regulated system can help to protect the women and men engaged in sex work, but as Anna argues, this does nothing to protect those who are trafficked. Instead, some activists are now calling for a new change to prostitution laws, where the selling of sex is legalised but buying it is illegal. Criminalise the trafficker and the buyer, not the seller. This arguably would reduce demand and therefore dismantle the shadow economy built around the trade.

Debates around the best ways to combat the modern sex trade will continue, and the nature of the industry means facts, figures, and evidence will always be hard to come by. The sex trade makes us uncomfortable, and that is why it has been able to operate in the darkness for so long. It is this darkness that allows girls like Anna to be disappeared in order to be used as a slave for people in positions of power, whose actions may never be revealed. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of men living their lives today who paid to use Anna, who contributed to her trauma, and who will never be forced to face up to that.

Modern slavery thrives because ordinary people do not want to discuss it. It is a dark and scary world, and it should be brought into the light. Only then can we begin to make a change.

He Said, She Said: Corbyn and the Media

Jeremy Corbyn has had a difficult few weeks as far as his media image is concerned. Firstly, following the emergence of evidence that he was present at a wreath-laying event in Tunisia that supposedly (if you choose to believe certain sources) commemorated the terrorists responsible for the Munich massacre (he claims that he was present to commemorate Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and to promote dialogue as a path for peace, not to memorialise the Munich attackers), he was then dogged by reporters seeking to confirm or disprove his prejudices, and a barrage of news articles were published claiming he was present, he wasn’t, he laid a wreath, he didn’t lay a wreath, the ceremony was to commemorate the Munich attackers, the memorial to the attackers just happened to be nearby, Corbyn’s stance on Israeli aggression against Palestinians is anti-Semitic, it isn’t, he should resign, he shouldn’t, and so on. Throughout it all, Corbyn flopped and floundered and seemed largely unable to cope with the media storm that had descended upon him. Then shortly afterwards, he was found apparently unable to answer a simple question put to him by Channel 4 reporters regarding whether or not he thought the UK would be better off outside the EU.

This is just the latest trauma in a long and rocky relationship between Corbyn and the media. A 2016 report by LSE asserts that “Jeremy Corbyn was represented unfairly by the British press through a process of vilification that went well beyond the normal limits of fair debate and disagreement in a democracy”. The report goes on to suggest that Corbyn was delegitimised by the media through personal attacks and systematic ridicule (p12). A report from Loughborough University showed that negative press coverage of the Labour Party far outweighed positive in the run-up to the 2017 general election (figures 3.1, 3.2, 3.3). Interestingly, the same report revealed that all newspapers, regardless of political leaning, devoted more time to attacking their opponents than to supporting those they endorsed. You could therefore perhaps forgive Corbyn for his comments made on the 23^rd August on Twitter that whilst a free press is essential for democracy, “much of [the UK’s] press is not free at all”.

His argument, that press freedom in the UK is inhibited by it’s ties to business and the state, certainly holds weight. For example, a 2015 report by the Media Reform Coalition found that just two companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp UK and the Daily Mail Group, account for nearly 60% of newspaper circulation in the UK. At the local news level, the 3 largest distributors have a 52% share of circulation. On television, Murdoch again looms large, with Sky (of which Murdoch owns 39.1%) dominating the news programming. It is undoubtable that corporate interests shape what stories make the headlines and it is certainly possible for those in power to push agendas that suit their needs. The dominance of a few news corporations in the UK has enabled outlets to be more aggressive in their campaigning than in other European countries, and the tabloid press in particular is often portrayed as amongst the most unforgiving in the world.

Corbyn’s media treatment may have been unfair, but his response has also raised eyebrows. In his speech in Edinburgh on the 23^rd August he evoked the now unanimous idea of “fake news” in his call for media reform. Whilst this was used to point towards the issues of the “billionaire domination” of the media, and the rapidly-declining trust in respected institutions like the BBC, it also, quite clearly, draws comparison to Donald Trump’s attacks on mainstream media that fails to support his agenda. Almost immediately The Independent responded to Corbyn’s speech saying effectively that. Somewhat ironically, the use of the phrase “fake news”, constructed to discredit the media, has in this instance been used by the media to discredit Corbyn’s argument.

Whether you agree with Corbyn’s stance on media freedoms or not, the case of his treatment and response raise important questions about the role and responsibility of journalists globally. Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive diatribes against the media are harmful to a free press and a threat to democracy. Globally, press freedoms are shrinking, and this is a very scary trend that threatens peace and stability everywhere. But the flipside of this is that the media should take responsibility for what they publish. Due to declining sales of newspapers, a free, corporate press is increasingly consolidating into larger entities in order to stay afloat. It is becoming the only way to survive – and turn a profit – in the media. When subject to corporate interests and/or reliant on advertising revenue, a free press isn’t always that free. Social media, far easier and cheaper to produce, comes with even less oversight than the mainstream media. It’s growing influence fuels the phenomenon of “fake news”, both imagined and real.

Corbyn is right that journalistic freedoms should be protected. He is also right that the current state of the media in the UK is poor. But this debate goes beyond him. If anything, his performance in responding to the anti-Semitism accusations and his inability to respond to questions regarding his personal opinions on Brexit simply reinforce that he, like any other politician, should not be relied upon to tell the truth. Telling the truth is the job of the journalists. It seems that somewhere along the line that sentiment has been lost. Personal attacks, unfair coverage, click-bait headlines and a lack of real, investigative journalism only make it easier for the enemies of the free press to attack it.

It is tempting to write the story you want to write, not the one that is true. This is also true of the media that we consume. We accept what we agree with and attack what we do not. But this makes political discourse almost impossible. Corbyn is not a terrorist-sympathising communist. Nor is he a benevolent saviour of the poor and disadvantaged. He is a political leader with an agenda that you may or may not support. We as the public are owed the right to make our own mind up about that by knowing his policies and his actions.

The free media should do its best to ensure it is protected against these claims that it cannot be trusted. It is too valuable to be lost.

Weathering the storm? – Disaster Mitigation and Political Instability in Bangladesh

It has now been a year since a violent military crackdown in Rakhine state displaced over 1 million Rohingya people from Myanmar and left many in perilous circumstances across the border in Bangladesh. The mass influx of refugees into Cox’s Bazar and surrounding areas left humanitarian agencies deeply concerned about the potential chaos resulting from this year’s monsoon and cyclone seasons (something I detailed in this blog post). However, at a UNHCR press briefing on the 10^th August, the disaster-mitigation efforts of the first-responders in Bangladesh were praised, with the acknowledgement that many of the camps had weathered the storms despite 2018 being one of the heaviest monsoon seasons in recent years (the average rainfall for July is 600mm, but this year has seen over 1,000mm, with 463mm falling on the 25^th of July alone).

Despite the relative success of mitigation efforts, which undoubtedly prevented a far larger humanitarian crisis, the UNHCR briefing reported that “since 11 May, an estimated 49,000 refugees [have been] affected by adverse weather – more than 25,000 by strong winds and storms, over 15,000 have been affected by landslides, another 5,400 by flooding.” And life is not easy for those still living in the camps. Kutupalong, now the world’s largest refugee camp, has suffered from landslides in the wake of the overpowering monsoon rains, and the use of kerosene to light water-damaged firewood for cooking is having adverse health effects on many families. The World Food Programme and others are providing food to many in Kutupalong, but many more are forced to go hungry. The reaction of the humanitarian responders in Bangladesh has been exemplary and many lives have been saved but needs remain dire and great uncertainty remains over the heads of the Rohingya.

A recent trip to Myanmar from Bangladeshi foreign minister Mahmood Ali, in which he visited the conflict-ravaged Rakhine state, ended without a decision on the process for repatriation of refugees. Back in November Bangladesh and Myanmar nominally agreed to Rohingya repatriation, but the process has been delayed due to international concerns that it is not yet safe for the refugees to return home. Despite the assertions of many of the Rohingya that they do want not want to remain in Bangladesh and would prefer to go home, the threat that the Myanmar government poses to them is still a largely unaddressed concern. In a rare public appearance on the 8^th of August, Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and disgraced Nobel laureate, danced around the repatriation issue and made no clear promises that steps were being made to move the process forward.

Meanwhile, the political situation in Bangladesh appears to be rapidly deteriorating. On the 29^th July 2018 two schoolchildren were killed by a bus on the notoriously dangerous streets of Dhaka, the country’s capital, sparking protests over the lack of road safety laws in the country. Police responded to these protests with teargas and rubber bullets, and a crackdown on journalists reporting on the violence followed. This stifling of press freedoms and violent response to what was an otherwise peaceful protest is the latest move to have prompted suggestions that the country’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is moving towards an authoritarian leadership.

Hasina, who has led the country since 2009, has progressively eroded press freedoms in a move that the BBC claims could threaten Bangladesh’s fragile democracy. The Rohingya crisis has widened political divisions in Bangladesh, with the pressure of the mass influx of people straining the country’s resources and threatening stability particularly in the disaster-affected regions around Cox’s Bazar. This turmoil has allowed Hasina to consolidate her power ostensibly as part of the crisis response, and the ramifications of this remain to be seen. What is sure is that Bangladesh appears to be drifting towards authoritarianism at a time of incredible uncertainty. As the international community condemns Aung San Suu Kyi for Myanmar’s military actions against the Rohingya, Hasina finds herself under pressure from India, who support Myanmar, to stay silent on the issue. Meanwhile, increasingly vocal factions in her opposition are calling for a condemnation of Myanmar and Suu Kyi, with some Islamist elements in Bangladesh threatening to wage Jihad against Myanmar if violence in Rakhine continues.

This context of rising political tension, stifling of press freedoms and the violent reaction to a peaceful protest from students all paint a very uncertain picture of the future of Bangladesh. The Rohingya influx has had a part to play in destabilising what was already a fragile democracy, and the failure of the Myanmar government and the international community to hold anybody to account for the ethnic cleansing that continues in Rakhine state means that the Rohingya remain isolated and displaced in an increasingly unstable region. The humanitarian response to prepare for the monsoon season has been a success, but the Rohingya people remain in a deeply fragile position.