Traffickers enslave 4-year-olds for forced labor

Traffickers enslave 4-year-olds for forced labor
Report: Campaign underway to persuade, buy or shame violators into making changes
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By Naomi Laine
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

A new report from the U.S. State Department has documented Afghan children as young as four years old being forced to work in the sun, turning over partly dried bricks, Thai men trafficked to the United States in debt bondage, children used as soldiers in Burma, and a 6-year-old from Ghana who was forced to work on a fishing boat on Lake Volta for $20 a year.

The authors said the 2007 Trafficking in Persons report was assembled to persuade governments and other groups to work together harder on the effort to eradicate such human trade, either through their altruistic sentiment, their mercenary interests, or if those don't work, shame.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said it was 200 years ago that the British Parliament outlawed the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a move that was the result of William Wilberforce's decades-long effort. But the "modern-day form of slavery" is just as bad, or worse.

"Perpetrators prey on the most weak among us, primarily women and children, for profit and gain. They lure victims into involuntary servitude and sexual slavery. Today we are again called by conscience to end the debasement of our fellow men and women," Rice said in an introduction to the 240-page documentation.

"As in the 19th century, committed abolitionists around the world have come together in a global movement to confront this repulsive crime," she said.

"The power of shame has stirred many to action and sparked unprecedented reforms; and the growing awareness has prompted important progress in combating this crime and assisting its victims wherever they are found," she said.

Its reports are horrifying: Sisters ages 10 and 12 taken by their parents to a videographer who films them in sexual acts, Vietnamese children brought into the United States to be used in the drug smuggling industry, Russian students brought to the United States for forced labor, selling ice cream.

Just as bad is the machinations that go on as nations caught by the report try to save face, scrambling to take actions they believe will preserve financial aid that comes from the United States. The loss of such aid is a possibility because, according to the U.S. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, countries in the Tier 3 category, where the most significant problems have been documented, can "face sanctions such as the withholding of humanitarian and nontrade-related assistance."

In addition, the United States also could vote to deny a nation World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance.

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