Why Isn't This News? Anti-Slavery Law Passes Congress
The Discovery Institute's embryonic Center for Human Rights and Bioethics--of which I am a part--is very concerned with working to prevent slavery and human trafficking. That is why we were so pleased that the William Wilberforce Trafficking and Victim's Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 has passed Congress and will be signed into law. Considering the importance of this issue to human freedom, it is puzzling that Google and Yahoo searches found zero news stories.
The law--that will be in effect until 2011--focuses on trafficking within the United States and throughout the world; it greatly strengthens the role and authority of the Trafficking in Persons Office and greatly enhances the tools available to domestic criminal prosecutors of traffickers. It also increases protections available to trafficking victims in the U.S. through newly authorized programs to assist U.S. victims of trafficking and vulnerable-to-trafficking unaccompanied foreign national children brought to the United States. The Act also greatly strengthens U.S. government efforts to end the use of child soldiers.
With regard to the last point--a crucial issue in poor countries--Title IV prevents the provision of various forms of military assistance to countries that use children in government military forces or government-supported armed groups. This will be an important tool to address the use of “child soldiers” around the world, who in addition to being placed in situation of extreme violence and danger, are regularly victimized by brutal physical and sexual abuse.
Human exceptionalism demands an end to odious practices such as slavery, sex trafficking, and impressment of child soldiers. It was too difficult passing this bill--as Discovery Institute senior fellow John Miller pointed out in the NYT a few months ago--but finally the deed is done. Bueno!
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:02 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
From my desk on lunch break:
WOOT!
About three years ago, the Anime No Kai (Anime Society) at University of Houston had an on-campus event that included a number of Q&A panals, including one on Japanese society. One of the things I found terribly disturbing was hearing about "juicy bars" in Japan - keep in mind Japan is a modern society, as modern as you can get, and pretty darn civilized 89% of the time.
One of the panal members was an American woman of Irish descent who lived with her American husband on a military base in Japan, and one day at an outing, they went to this "juicy bar" and met a man from... I'm wanting to say Montana. Well, he'd been brought to Japan under the impression he'd find a job there and would be able to make a new living, and instead he was stuck working at a low-paying job in a bar because he couldn't afford to pay off his debt to the people who brought them over, and he spoke no Japanese when he arrived.
So he was a virtual slave there, unable to make enough money to get back home. Likewise, there are lots of women who work in those bars who are either natives or who are brought in same as that man, and keep in mind this isn't prostitution they're brought for. They're brought in for cheap labor, and it's only in finding someone (a Japanese citizen, usually) that they can marry that they can get away from these bars, because like in America, marrying a citizen of Japan makes you a citizen, and under protection of Japanese laws.
I have the highest regard for Japan (though you *do* have to wonder about a country where it used to be legal to buy teenage girls' used underware from vending machiens), so this isn't a jab at the country itself. This is a universal problem.
However, I want to show my colors for a moment and point out that Japan is completely secular these days. Religious beliefs and superstitions (very different from each other) do abound, but they don't "interfere" with daily living. Thus, it doesn't really surprise me that Love Hotels where teenage girls can have sex with adult men are plentiful, that sex shops are common, that women are looked down on if they don't use "proper" vocabulary (there are many levels of politeness, and some levels are for men only; women and girls are expected to be more polite than men), and that some men are avoiding marriage and instead having sex with an array of life-sized dolls.
Again, I love the Japanese culture (though I can't speak the language for anything), and I love the modern advances, the beauty of their artwork, and the generally up-beat and interesting personalities I meet among the Japanese. But I fear that America is losing its hold on traditional Judeo-Christian values that put strong regard for human life above the self-centered desires of the individual, and that we risk having some of the problems they do in Japan.
Honestly, this bill is awesome - we need to be a good influence and do the best we can by *everyone.* That way others will start to emulate us.
And please don't think I'm singling Japan out. I picked it for an example here because they *are* so modern, so technologically and scientifically advanced, and so creative, and yet have so many problems easily seen in their country and culture. America has as many problems, though our sense of morality makes us shun them and hide them under the rug, instead of treating them like they're nothing new.
An example - in Japan, girls as young as 12 or 13 frequently go looking for older men, in a sort of "sugar daddy" situation. One time a youngster hit on an American soldier, and it blew up everywhere when he and she started sleeping together. According to the soldier's wife on that panal, such behavior is totally common and not thought about much in Japan, but because the Americans who found out about it made such a racket (it's one of our own who was in the wrong here), Japanese citizens became uncommonly concerned. And yet girls were doing the same thing again with Japanese men all during this fiasco. I'll be happy to look up the information on the event I'm talking about and share.
The story of the Justice Department's opposition in the linked article is very disturbing.
I wonder what we will see under the new administration.
Wasn't the Justice Department opposed because there was some aspect to the law that restricted prosecution of the sex workers themselves?
I do know that some feminist groups were concerned that the law NOT be used as an overlapping/extra form of going after those trafficked.
"Why isn't this news?" it would make Bush look good, or, at least human. (Not really why, but sort of).
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