I’ve just finished watching a DVD that I found profoundly disturbing.
It was even more upsetting because it was not fiction, but based on events that are truly happening.
The film (originally a mini series) is called Human Trafficking, which some of you have probably seen. If you haven’t seen it, let me warn you – it’s not for the faint-hearted. There were times when I wanted to turn it off (but for some masochistic reason, I didn’t). I sat there, during some chilling scenes, covering my eyes like a child watching a horror film, not sure whether I wanted to know the outcome. At other times, I felt physically ill.
So what made me keep watching? Probably the fact that it was a compelling story that lifted the lid off a sleazy underworld which, for all we know, could be right there under our noses.
As its title indicates, it is about a phenomenon that is also known as white slavery – the abduction of often underage girls from Eastern Europe for the purposes of forced prostitution. These are not your typical calculating, hardened prostitutes, which is the stereotype usually
conjured up when we hear the words “Russian girls”. They are ordinary (albeit extremely naïve and innocent) young girls who have been lured into this lifestyle with promises of glamorous modelling jobs or through a chance encounter with
someone who seems like the man of their dreams. Visas and passports are magically arranged and they arrive in the United States all
wide-eyed and excited. That’s when reality slaps them
cruelly in the face as they are unceremoniously bundled off into a van and taken into the worst part of the city to live in cramped quarters and to work in strip clubs. Oh and by the way, they are informed that to pay off the huge amount of money spent on them, they will have to work as prostitutes as well.
The US estimates that about 17,500 people are trafficked into its borders every year, most of them women and young girls. According to US government sources, the sale of women and girls is becoming as common as that of illegal drugs and weapons.
Treated as mere slabs of meat, they truly become a commodity, and because we are seeing it through the girls’ eyes, it becomes the most shocking aspect of the film. Of course, we have all heard that these things happen – but seeing it played out makes it more “real”.
The girls are passed around the men like nameless sacks, with no identity. They are rented out to the homes of rich folk where a group of young guys gather to party, and where the sight of the scantily clad girls is met with whoops of lewd laughter. When the man who is running the operation decides that more money is to be made out of porn, the girls soon find themselves immortalised on celluloid.
Meanwhile, “upstanding” men such as doctors scour the Internet for child
porn sites, and arrange
holidays with their mates to the Philippines where children can be bought for the night. This was, perhaps, the most horrifying, nauseating scene of all and although (obviously) the abuse was only implied, it was still enough to give me nightmares.
***
Phew, it’s such a relief, isn’t it, that we are blessed to live in Malta? Thank God, these things don’t happen in our country.
As if.
After all, we’re Catholic...
It even says so in our Constitution.