Craigslist to drop "erotic services" ads

BOSTON (Reuters) - Online classified site Craigslist will replace its "erotic services" ads with a new adult category following pressure by state authorities after the murder of a masseuse who advertised on the site.

The "erotic services" section will end within seven days and be replaced by an "adult services" category where advertisements will be individually screened by Craigslist staff, Craigslist said in a statement on Wednesday.

The measures could set a precedent for similar sites, said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who led a 40-state task-force on Craigslist and campaigned publicly for tighter controls on the San Francisco-based service.

"Closing the erotic services section, a blatant Internet brothel, should lead to other blocking and screening measures, and set a model for other sites, if Craigslist keeps its word," he said.

Craigslist's sex-service listings have faced intense scrutiny since the April 14 murder of 25-year-old masseuse Julissa Brisman, who advertised on Craigslist in Boston.

Philip Markoff, a 23-year-old Boston University medical student, was charged with killing Brisman and with attacks on two other women he met through Craigslist ads.

Craigslist, a 14-year-old online bazaar that generates more than 20 billion page views per month in 50 countries with a staff of just 28 people, is partially owned by online auctioneer eBay, which bought 25 percent in 2004.

Along with free listings for everything from apartments and furniture to jobs and cars, Craigslist.com carries one of the largest and most controversial sex-service listings. Its rapid growth and low-cost business model have hurt newspapers by siphoning away advertising revenue.

Craigslist had already made some changes to curb illegal activity on its site. Under pressure from 40 U.S. attorneys general, the site agreed in November to charge people posting erotic ads $5-$10 by credit card and require them to submit a working phone number to use the site.

'HALF BAKED'

From Wednesday, postings to the "erotic services" section will no longer be accepted, Craigslist said. Postings to the new section, which opened immediately, cost $10. Once they are approved, they will be eligible for reposting at $5.

Not every state was satisfied. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has pressed Craigslist to go further by tracking computer IP addresses of suspected prostitution rings and take other safeguards.

"Several weeks ago, we informed Craigslist of an impending criminal case that implicated its website. Rather than work with this office to prevent further abuses, in the middle of the night, Craigslist took unilateral action which we suspect will prove to be half-baked," Cuomo said in a statement.

His office declined to elaborate on the criminal case.

In April, Blumenthal asked Craigslist officials to eliminate photographs in the "erotic services" and similar sections of the site, hire staff to screen ads that violate Craigslist rules and offer incentives for people who flag and report prostitution advertisements.

Read more here.

UN surprised at female role in 'modern slavery'

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Surprisingly, the perpetrators behind human trafficking around the world are often women, the U.N. reported Thursday.

Women are the majority of traffickers in almost a third of the 155 nations the U.N. surveyed. They accounted for more than 60 percent of the human trafficking convictions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

For many, human trafficking is a world they had been pulled into themselves.

"Women commit crimes against women, and in many cases the victims become the perpetrators," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. "They become the matrons of the business and they make money. It's like a drug addiction."

Most of the world's nations reported some form of "modern slavery" last year involving mainly the sex trade or forced labor.

And the number of victims should grow as the global financial crisis deepens, Costa said.

Read more here.

And here's a CNN article that basically says the same thing.

UN: Many countries ill-equipped to deal with human trafficking

Vienna - A large number of countries around the world are still lacking tools to identify, report or prosecute human trafficking, a United Nations report made public on Thursday found. Although more countries adopted laws against human trafficking between 2003 and 2008, 61 of 155 monitored countries did not record a single conviction, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

"Either they are blind to the problem, or they are ill-equipped to deal with it," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in the report, which he was set to formally issue later Thursday in New York.

At 79 per cent, sexual exploitation is the predominant reason for human trafficking, followed by forced labour. But there were worrying instances of new types of trafficking, including trade with human organs, the report said.

Southern Africa was cited as the region with the weakest mechanisms for prosecuting and reporting abuses. Of the 11 countries in the region, only Zambia has prosecuted suspects since 2003.

Some countries, including China, Saudi Arabia and Iran, did not provide any data to the UNODC.

UN researchers were surprised to find that women account for a large share not only of victims but also traffickers in many regions. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, more 60 per cent of convicted human traffickers are women.

The UNODC said it was alarmed by reports of cases involving new forms of trafficking, including for organ trade in Europe and other regions, ritual killings in Southern Africa and forced marriages in Asia.

The report provided no data regarding the global scale of the problem, noting only that the total number of identified victims rose from 11,700 to 14,900 between 2003 and 2006 in 71 selected countries.

According to earlier UN estimates, annual profits from human trafficking are 32 billion dollars. Around 2.5 million people are estimated to be held in forced labour, including forced sex, at any given time.

Citing a lack of information, the report said: "Today, the member states lack the ability to say with any precision how many victims of human trafficking there are, where they come from or where they are going."

Source

More than a thousand women were forced into sex slavery, Justice Department reports

By Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer 1/25/09

More than 1,000 mostly young women in the United States were forced into sexual slavery last year, an alarming new Justice Department report has found.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics analyzed thousands of cases of alleged human trafficking. It found that the sex trade accounted for more than three out of every four human trafficking cases tracked by the Justice Department.

Anytime anyone is forced into prostitution, they are considered “trafficked,” according to the Justice Department. Children 17 or under who are in prostitution are considered trafficked whether they were coerced or not.

According to the report, about a quarter of the nation’s sex slaves were under 17; two-fifths were between 18 and 24.

Hispanic women and girls were most likely to be victims of the human traffickers. They made up about two-fifths of sexual slaves and more than half of trafficked laborers.

The Justice Department also found that U.S. citizens make up the majority of victims and perpetrators in human trafficking. Nearly two-thirds of sex slaves were U.S. citizens. Nearly three-quarters of suspected sex traffickers were U.S. citizens, the report found.

Andrea Powell, co-founder of FAIR Fund, a D.C.-based anti-trafficking group, said trafficking is a major regional problem.

“D.C. is a hot spot for labor trafficking as well as sex trafficking,” Powell told The Examiner. “Foreign nationals are brought into the area to work as nannies, house domestics and even on construction sites. Sex trafficking affects both foreign and national victims.”

About 40 trafficking victims are rescued in the D.C. area every month, Powell said.

Hoping to get a handle on the problem, D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, introduced a bill earlier this month that broadens the definition of trafficking and includes labor trafficking as an offense.

“Trafficking is a much more pervasive problem than most people realize,” Mendelson said. “And there’s no justification for trafficking — it’s human slavery.”

The Justice Department report is online at ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs.

Iowa Man Convicted of Human Trafficking, Sold Teens In Prostitution

DES MOINES, Iowa — The first person to be convicted under Iowa's human trafficking law was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison.

Leonard Russell was found guilty of two counts of human trafficking, two counts of pandering and a count of ongoing criminal conduct during a September trial in Crawford County.

The 37-year-old was sentenced Monday in Crawford County District Court to 25 years on the ongoing criminal conduct charge, and 10 years on each of the other four charges — with all the sentences to be served concurrently. He was also fined $5,000.

Prosecutors said Russell, who has used addresses in Sioux City and Omaha, Neb., recruited and harbored two Nebraska girls last year for commercial sexual activity, including prostitution and performing at strip clubs. They said the girls, ages 15 and 16, were runaways.

Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement that the case helped officials understand that human trafficking is a much bigger problem in Iowa than many realized.

"It can be especially perilous for young people and disadvantaged kids, and it can occur in small towns," he said. "The underground nature of human trafficking makes it hard to fight, but the trafficking law is a valuable new tool and we will use it."

Read more here.

Congress OKs tough anti-trafficking bill

WASHINGTON (BP)--Congress has approved legislation that supporters believe will strengthen both the domestic and international efforts to combat human trafficking.

Passage by the House of Representatives and Senate on the same day brought an end to a lengthy, contentious debate over competing pieces of legislation. Activists in the anti-trafficking movement strongly favored a measure approved overwhelmingly by the House last December over one proposed in the Senate. In the end, a new bill more closely resembling the House version passed without objection in either chamber.

President Bush is expected to sign the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, H.R. 7311, into law.

To read more about what the bill will do, read the article here.

First-Ever Rock Concert at Angkor Wat Temple Raises Awareness about Human Trafficking

SIEM REAP, Cambodia, Dec 15, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- An international line-up of rock musicians took a stand against human trafficking at a recent concert at the Angkor Wat temple sponsored by the MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) campaign, a project supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This was the first rock concert ever performed at the massive 12th-century temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was bathed in floodlights for the event.

More than 1,200 fans spilled from the bleachers to the edge of the jungle to hear The Click Five from the U.S., Placebo from the U.K., Grammy Award-winner Duncan Sheik, Australian pop star Kate Miller-Heidke, Cambodian hip-hop legend Pou Klaing, and Cambodian pop stars Sokun Nisa, Meas Soksophia and Chorn Sovanrech.

"We're here to call attention to human trafficking, a form of slavery that is as big a problem today as perhaps anytime in history," Placebo lead singer Brian Molko told the invitation-only audience. The concert also featured traditional Khmer dancers and clips from Traffic: An MTV Special, a documentary about human trafficking that was funded by USAID.

Read more here.

The Power of One-Plus-Many Produced Historic Anti-Trafficking Legislation

Congress passed historic anti-trafficking legislation. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) passed both the House and the Senate within several hours. That timely victory was more than two years in the making and represents the triumph of one man’s passion and a broad coalition’s power.

It is safe to say that the legislation would not exist without the whole-hearted passion and the incredible commitment, dedication, skill and determination of Michael Horowitz, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, who has for over a decade presided over a loose, broad-based coalition of left-right activists who unite in opposition to human slavery and exploitation but differ on almost every other issue. Keeping that group of diverse leaders united and focused is in itself a monumental accomplishment, but satisfying the different expectations required a level of expertise that is rare indeed.

It is also safe to say that the legislative victory would have been impossible without the grassroots involvement of organizations like Concerned Women for America and the Southern Baptist Convention — two conservative groups that have been intimately and extensively involved in the nitty-gritty lobbying and negotiating that were essential to passage of the legislation. It is rare for conservative groups to get headlines for their involvement in what is commonly referred to as “social justice” issues, yet CWA, the Southern Baptists, and the Salvation Army, along with many other evangelical organizations, are usually found in the trenches when such battles are being waged, whether domestically or internationally. Certainly, in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation and labor slavery, conservative leaders are essential to success.

Read more here.

Also, here are three ads to bring light to the situation of human trafficking. They're really interesting, but also kind of graphic...

And, (I know, there's a lot today!) here's an interview with Katie Ford, former CEO of Ford Models and current modern-day abolitionist. It's an interesting interview and she very briefly addresses the issue of the new administration's role in ending trafficking. Certainly worth reading :)

High School Students Warned About Human Trafficking

Each year, thousands of young people worldwide become the victims of human trafficking, or modern day slavery. Some cases are starting to occur in urban areas of the United States. WUWM’s Marti Mikkelson visited Riverside High School on Milwaukee’s east side, where students wanted to learn more about the issue.

---

It’s the final hour of the school day and five dozen students have gathered in the library of Riverside High School, listening to Maggie Wynne. She’s director of anti-trafficking at the U. S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Her office rescues victims of human trafficking and prosecutes those responsible.

She says the crime started overseas, but in the past decade, has become more prevalent in the U. S. She says traffickers often approach teenagers and then things can happen quickly.“Say you’re a 14-year-old girl and some 22-year-old man drives up his car and starts giving you compliments and telling you how good you look and things like that. And, you start thinking this is really cool. I’ve got a cool boyfriend. He likes me and he loves me and I love him and then you start a sexual relationship. And then the boyfriend starts saying well, if you love me you’ll do some things for me, and then they start making demands. All of a sudden the demands turn into, well if you want to keep getting these nice things you have to bring in some money,” Wynne says.

Wynne says that’s how teenagers are forced into prostitution, child pornography and hard labor. Sometimes they’re flown to other countries for arranged marriages.

Read more here.

Human Trafficking Victims To Get Green Card

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The U.S. federal government will grant permanent residency to human trafficking victims. On Monday the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published through its website an interim final rule that permits non-immigrants with "T" and "U" statuses to acquire green cards.

The two non-immigrant classifications were the result of the approval of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in October 2000. The act granted T visas to immigrants who were victims of human trafficking and U visas to victims of crimes who suffered mental or physical abuses.

But the rules limit the adjustment of status for T visa holders to 5,000 people, although it covers only the main visa applicant, not their families who are also permitted to change their immigration status together with the main visa holder.

The USCIS explained it took the agency almost six years to come up with regulations because the change in migration status of T and U visa holders involve complex, difficult legal and policy issues which took long to resolve.

Immigration advocates hailed the release of the long overdue regulations. According to Diana Velardo, an immigration lawyer at the University of Houston, it will help the human trafficking victims move out of uncertainty and move on with their lives.

After the rules are published in the Federal Register, it will become final in 30 days.

Source

Iqbal Masih

Hey guys, I found information on that child I talked about at the fondue party yesterday. His name is Iqbal Masih, and he's Pakistani, not Indian.

http://www.mirrorimage.com/iqbal/who/who.html
This has an interview with him, but he doesn't speak English so there's a voiceover for him.

http://www.mirrorimage.com/iqbal/
The same website, but this talks about the school that was started in his honor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iqbal_Masih
Of course, a Wikipedia article :)

http://www.stopchildlabor.org/teensandstudents/iqbal.htm
A nice news article written on the 3rd anniversary of his death.

There are other things, of course, but a lot of them have the same information over and over. But if you're interested in exploring on your own, here's a Google search for his name.

U.S. subcontractor confined more than 1,000 foreign workers in Iraq warehouses

By ADAM ASHTON - McClatchy Newspapers

1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, the Texas firm formerly known as Halliburton, hired the men, who are from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions.

"It's really dirty," a Sri Lankan man told McClatchy Newspapers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still wants to work for Najlaa. "For all of us, there are about 12 toilets and about 10 bathrooms. The food - it's three half-liter (1 pint) bottles of water a day. Bread, cheese and jam for breakfast. Lunch is a small piece of meat, potato and rice. Dinner is rice and dal, but it's not dal," he said, referring to the Indian lentil dish.

After McClatchy began asking questions about the men on Tuesday, the Kuwaiti contractor announced that it would return them to their home countries and pay them back salaries. Najlaa officials contended that they've cared for the men's basic needs while the company has tried to find them jobs in Iraq.

The laborers said they paid middlemen more than $2,000 to get to Iraq for jobs that they were told would earn them $600 to $800 a month. Some of the men took out loans to cover the fees.

"They promised us the moon and stars," said Davidson Peters, 42, a Sri Lankan. "While we are here, wives have left their husbands and children have been shut out of their schools" because money for the families has dried up.

The men live in three warehouses with long rows of bunk beds crammed tightly together. Reporters who tried to get a better glimpse inside were ushered away by armed guards.

The conditions in which the men have been held appear to violate guidelines the U.S. military handed down in 2006 that urged contractors to deter human trafficking to the war zone by shunning recruiters that charged excessive fees. The guidelines also defined "minimum acceptable" living spaces - 50 square feet per person - and required companies to fulfill the pledges they made to employees in contracts.

A U.S. military spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq referred questions to KBR. The spokesman said that the American military wasn't aware of the warehouses until McClatchy and the Times of London began asking questions about it on Monday.

Some of the men who've been living in the warehouses said that KBR representatives visited the site two weeks ago. They said Najlaa held their passports until the KBR inspection, which Najlaa officials denied. Seizing passports is a violation of the U.S. military's 2006 instructions to contractors.

KBR didn't answer direct questions about the warehouses but issued a two-paragraph statement. "When KBR becomes aware of potential violations of international laws regarding trafficking in persons, we work, within our authority, to remediate the problem and report the matter to proper authorities. KBR then works with authorities to rectify the matter," it said.

Reached in Kuwait, Najlaa chief executive Marwan Rizk said the company recruited the laborers for contracts it expected to begin servicing, but the work didn't materialize. He didn't specify which contracts fell through or why they were delayed. The company offers a number of services in Iraq, including catering at U.S. military bases.

"We had some obstacles with the services we were contracted to do," Rizk said. "These obstacles were not forecasted."

He said it's the company's practice to begin paying its employees once they start their jobs, though Najlaa credits them from the time they arrive in Iraq.

While the main complaint in the warehouses centered on living in what many considered prisonlike conditions, Najlaa officials said it was crucial to keep the men in the compound to prevent kidnappings or other dangers.

Read the rest of the report here.

Thanks to Asher for finding this and Dear Kitty for posting it!

News!

Hey guys, I found two really interesting articles today!

Students at Calvin College are doing a Human Trafficking Awareness week that will be full of activities so people can learn more about human trafficking. Maybe we could incorporate some of these ideas into the Week of Action next semester?
http://www.calvin.edu/news/2008-09/human-trafficking/

Also, Fox News did an interview with Ambassador Mark Lagon concerning human trafficking. It's mostly focused on South and Central America and the Caribbeans, especially because this interview comes after Joran van der Sloot stated that he sold Natalee Hollaway into slavery for $10,000. It's a short interview, but it's very interesting. The second article is an interview with various people concerning this recent development in the Natalee Hollaway case, if you're interested.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460130,00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460108,00.html

Also, I don't know if anyone would be interested, but I've completed my thesis over human trafficking and the modern-day slave trade in Southeast Asia! Here's a link to read it, if you'd like. This is the rough draft, so if you do read it and think of any corrections I could make, PLEASE let me know! :)
http://tinyurl.com/6jaoft

Top U.S. Diplomat on Modern-Day Slavery Named As New Executive Director of Polaris Project

We are happy to announce that Polaris Project has named Ambassador Mark P. Lagon, Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) of the U.S. Department of State, as our incoming Executive Director.

Dr. Mark P. Lagon was confirmed by the Senate in 2007 to serve as Ambassador-at-Large and Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP), and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State. The TIP Office coordinates U.S. Government activities in the global fight against modern-day slavery, including commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor.

As one of the leading voices in the global movement against modern-day slavery, Ambassador Lagon has demonstrated deep commitment and energetic leadership in pursuing the eradication of all forms of human trafficking. We are confident that Ambassador Lagon brings the right leadership to Polaris Project to continue the success we have achieved and expand the impact of our work against human trafficking to new horizons in the years ahead.

We invite you to read the full announcement and learn more about Ambassador Lagon on our website.

Attorney general's report details human trafficking in Texas

AUSTIN — Texas has become a major hub for human trafficking, state officials said Monday while proposing a more aggressive response to what a senior lawmaker described as "modern-day slavery."

Nearly 20 percent of human-trafficking victims found nationwide have been in Texas, according to a report released by Attorney General Greg Abbott. The 57-page report, mandated by the Legislature in 2007, also identifies Interstate 10 as a major route through Texas for human-trafficking rings.

Abbott released the report at a news conference with Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, who introduced legislation to combat the problem.

"These human traffickers are like cockroaches," she said.

Her bill, prepared for the 81st Legislature, which convenes in January, would create a task force in the attorney general’s office, start training programs for local law enforcement and implement an awareness campaign for communities. It would also improve programs for assisting victims.

Abbott, Van de Putte and others said human trafficking has grown into one of the nation’s top criminal enterprises. Abbott’s report, compiled from federal data, news reports and other research, said traffickers often lure victims into phony moneymaking opportunities, then hold them in slaverylike conditions.

Read more at the Star Telegram website.

Special Assignment: Human Trafficking in Wisconsin

It's been called modern day slavery -- human trafficking. Victims' advocates say it's happening across Wisconsin -- "in plain sight."

Last year, the state began a survey -- to identify the level of human trafficking here. More than 200 cases of victims were identified. But experts believe that's likely a low number for this fast growing industry.

"I can guarantee you in grocery stores all over this state and in some hotels, there are places where human beings are trapped by others," Carmen Pitre says.

Nataliya knows the feeling.

"I was in the house like a prison," Nataliya says.

She was working as a travel agent in her homeland of Ukraine when she met an American man.

"I was very happy to have him in my life because I lived alone with my son," she says, "We could talk on the phone every day."

Eventually the couple decided to live together in the Milwaukee area.

"I was so excited to go to the U.S. because it was, a great opportunity to be in a family ... to have a new family ... to have a husband ... and good father for my son."

Within three weeks of her arrival on American soil, Nataliya says the man proposed.

"He prepare everything. It was beautiful wedding... there in the church with his family."

Then, she says, within days everything changed.

Read more here.

MTV Networks, USAID Look to Raise Awareness of Human Trafficking

BANGKOK/HONG KONG/SINGAPORE, November 3: MTV Networks in Asia, the MTV Europe Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are teaming for a range of events and concerts across Asia to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking.

The new initiative, which kicks off in Cambodia, includes four events featuring well-known local and international artists, with anti-trafficking organizations and government agencies distributing information about exploitation and human trafficking. A highlight of the Cambodian campaign will be a concert held at Angkor Wat, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, on December 7, featuring the U.S. band The Click Five, among other artists. The Cambodian series of events wraps December 12 in Phnom Penh in recognition of Cambodia’s National Day to Combat Human Trafficking.

The initiative is part of the MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) campaign, which will produce a range of TV programs from the Cambodian concert for broadcast in Cambodia and on MTV channels internationally. In addition to performances, the programs will feature interviews with the bands, NGOs and other activists about the dangers of trafficking, as well as clips from MTV EXIT’s other anti-trafficking programming, including documentaries, animated works and short films. MTV EXIT television programming is offered free of charge to all broadcasters and organizations.

"MTV EXIT is fully aware that through broadcast on MTV, further broadcast on national terrestrial broadcasters, and distribution through NGOs, our messages will be seen by youth and adults from diverse social groups," said Simon Goff, the campaign director of MTV EXIT. "With these upcoming on-the-ground events, MTV EXIT is using the power of live music to educate youth across the region about human trafficking. The Cambodia live concert tour is a vital focal point in the wider education of those people most at risk."

Six additional events and tours are planned for other Asian nations next year.

Courtesy of WorldScreen.com.

Proposition to legalize prostitution strikes chord in San Francisco

By Elizabeth Pfeffer and Angela Hart
Correspondents

There may be truth to the cliché "sex sells," but when it comes to the sale of sex, everyone pays.

This is the central argument by both opponents and supporters of Proposition K, which would make San Francisco the first U.S. city to decriminalize prostitution.

Many sex workers say there's a cost to their line of work that goes beyond dollars and cents: Routinely exposing themselves to dangerous, sometimes violent situations, prostitutes are unable to seek the protection of the law without simultaneously exposing themselves to prosecution.

...

Yet the proposition's critics warn decriminalization of sex work could come at too high a price. Beyond the day-to-day protection of sex workers, they say it would draw pimps and traffickers to San Francisco like moths to a flame.

"I don't see any good coming from a law, which, if passed, would codify the exploitation of women and create a greater demand for human-trafficking victims," said Sharmin Eshraghi Bock, an Alameda County deputy district attorney who heads the Human Exploitation and Trafficking unit.

...

Not only would the proposition decriminalize prostitution, it would also prohibit law enforcement agencies from applying for or receiving federal and state money for programs that require compilation of racial information, a commonly used tactic in investigating human trafficking. These funds — more than $11 million, the city Budget Analyst's Office estimates — would be reallocated to programs that aim to reduce violence and discrimination against sex workers, under the proposal.

...

"This ballot measure reflects the myth that prostitution is a victimless crime. But the reality is this is a billion-dollar international industry of commercial sexual exploitation and child molestation," Harris said. "If passed, the measure would severely hamper the city's ability to investigate and prosecute human-trafficking cases."

City officials fear San Francisco will become a haven for human traffickers because of the provision that would prevent investigations based on racial profiling.

But the measure's proponents hope the proposal would create an even playing field for sex workers, who often say they are targeted by police based on their race, particularly Asians.

Read the full story here.

Freedom, Justice, and Rock ’n’ Roll

By Steve Beard

It was Justin Dillon’s passion and profession that unexpectedly exposed him to the dark underworld of the international slave trade. He’s a musician, and his band was touring through backwater cities in Russia when a young female translator began talking about an upcoming extraordinary opportunity she had to come to the United States. When he asked for more details, he discovered that what she thought was a great opportunity was instead an elaborate and nefarious seduction — the kind of effective ruse targeting vulnerable young women around the globe.

The musical documentary Call + Response is Dillon’s ambitious and masterful artistic counterattack to an all-too-easy-to-overlook enemy who still sells men, women, and children like commodities to the highest bidders. The grainy, undercover film footage taken in Asian brothels is interspersed with the testimony of eloquent activists such as Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission and actress Ashley Judd, as well as performances by the Cold War Kids and Matisyahu, the Orthodox Jewish reggae artist.

According to Dillon, it is not as if he tapped his speed-dials in order to call in favors from his celebrity friends: He really didn’t have any. Instead, he began cold-calling managers and agents. It worked. The film features performances by Natasha Bedingfield, Moby, Five for Fighting, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Switchfoot, and the incomparable rapper Emmanuel Jal. As a child, Jal was taken from his family in Sudan in 1987 and trained to serve in the rebel army, Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). In almost five years, Jal fought in two civil wars as a child soldier. He was later smuggled out of the country by a British humanitarian. Jal began rapping to express the repercussions of his experiences.

In the midst of the rock and rap, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, actress Daryl Hannah, and Kevin Bales of the activist group Free the Slaves etch out the scope and enormity of human trafficking — what the film refers to as “the world’s 27 million most terrifying secrets.”

Continue reading here.

Connecticut Man Sentenced to 360 Months in Prison for Leading Brutal Sex Trafficking Ring That Victimized U.S. Citizens

WASHINGTON, Oct 14, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Prosecution Illustrates DOJ 'Victim-Centered' Model

Dennis Paris of Middletown, Conn., was sentenced today to 360 months in prison, five years of supervised release and $46,116 in restitution for his role in organizing and facilitating a prostitution ring that victimized minors and coerced multiple young women to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. Paris --- one of 10 defendants associated with this trafficking ring --- was convicted in June 2007 on multiple counts of commercial sex trafficking through force, fraud or coercion.

"As this case illustrates, human trafficking can victimize any vulnerable person, including U.S. citizens, and girls as young as 14 years old," said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The Department works with non-governmental organizations to address the needs of victims and our investigators and prosecutors take the time to earn their trust. This victim-centered approach has been essential to our success in dismantling networks who exploit minors or adults for commercial sex."

Read more here.