Fighting Modern Day Slavery in India

This moved me.


Fighting Modern Day Slavery in India, by Laure Sheahen.


Similar to Cambodia and elsewhere, human traffickers in India go to isolated villages and deceive teenagers into letting them take them to the city with the false promise of good paying jobs. Of course, once the teenagers leave, they are held by force and kept in brutal, inhuman conditions.  Besides girls being trafficked for prostitution, boys are trafficked for labor slavery.

A priest in India, Father Urray, is having success in preventing this evil.  He heads an organization, called the Aasha Association, that goes to the remote villages that are being targeted by the traffickers.  At the villages, they educate the people and form vigilance committees.  The villages now keep records of people who leave the village to work in the cities. One village elder keeps an old cell phone, so that if anyone from the village who is working in the city gets in trouble, they can call him.

Can something like this work in Cambodia and elsewhere?  Note that this is not the same thing as putting up advertisements or handing out leaflets, something that is currently done in Cambodia.  The reason that the effort in India works is because responsible people in the village are being engaged in the effort. I love the solidarity and the sense of community responsibility that it both draws upon and fosters.

It takes a village.

Stephen M. Bauer