A new UN report , shows that human trafficking is on the rise and taking on “horrific dimensions”, with sexual exploitation of victims the main driver. Children now account for 30 per cent of those being trafficked, and far more girls are detected than boys – UN News, Global Perspectives/Human Stories.
Female slaves
Each year hundreds of girls disappear
Deep into the dark interior never to be seen again
Leaving behind their stories of horror staining the walls of the cheap wooden shelters
I saw their curly hair matted and kinky ironed and braided
They gather at the muddy standpipes scrubbing their bodies with hard brushes washing the night’s filth away
But that kind of filth is here to stay
I saw the ghosts of young girls haunting the forest trails
How many are buried there I fear to reveal
A stench of desperation clogs the air
Innocents with their dreams of tomorrow crushed beneath the odorous bodies of miners’ deaf ears cannot hear their screams
They cry for their mothers they cry for someone to rescue them from this fate that is not their own
They cry for us to protect them from the judicial backlog we call justice
Displaced females tricked stolen and bought
Forced into slavery
Condoms an option HIV not their decision sexual expertise a stipulation
I counted 26 rumshops and 226 ranges
Rough wooden walls with a tin roof a hard mattress
They have numbers
I counted 7 churches
I counted 20 missionaries handing out condoms
And bibles
I saw toddlers gyrating against each other
I saw adults applauding
I met a mother and her three daughters
I saw the police policing the girls into their sheds I saw the police leaving their beds
I heard the hollers of women getting pounded I heard the derision of the hardened slaves
They abuse each other these girls that grew into women in this life
Bitterness alleviated through the pain of the innocent
And so the victims the slaves the young babes are flown in boated in and herded in through the trails
Stolen from villages far and wide throughout the jungle along the coast over the borders and across the ocean
I saw a little girl playing and I saw her future lying beneath her father brother miner
I saw her die even as she innocently smiled
As I flew away over the mountains I felt crippled by my inability
I faced no less in the city
the miners were replaced by government workers businessmen city officials and Ministers
In the rumshops I met young silky haired girls flat chested and budding hips
In the nice hotels I met fair skinned teens in school clothes with takeaway boxes
In an Oceanside resort I met girls who spoke in Asian tongues done up like Chinese dolls they had never seen past the front doors of the brothel in the city of which they live in
In my hotel I heard Brazilian girls screaming
I flew away again this time far away but no matter how far I fly I cannot leave their cries behind…
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Rising human trafficking takes on ‘horrific dimensions’: almost a third of victims are children