CURRENT EVENT 2

CURRENT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SLAVERY

• Known as "Human Trafficking"
• Using other humans for sexual slavery and forced labor
• Over 2.5 million in forced labor
• Majority of victims between the age of 18 and 24
• Estimated 1% of victims are identified

ATRICLE 1: UNITED STATES NEWS SOURCE

• http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012/09/27/human-trafficki...
• This article was about a girl from a broken home. An alcoholic father, a drug addicted mother, and no one home.
• She was lured into trafficking, beaten, and raped. Night after night, she set up "dates"; 6 a week.
• "You can sell drugs once, you can sell women a thousand times." Assistant United States attorney Alessandra Serano
• Asia Graves works with non profit organizations to help students who are being sold for sexual slavery.

CONTINUED...

• Graves visits school and talks to young women about her story in attempts to "lift the tortured souls"
• This article makes me sick. I read the details about what happened to ONE girl. Thinking about the
• 100s of 1000s of girls who are sold every day, beaten and raped as if they weren't human.
• The pain it must be to go through something like that is unimaginable to me. The violation of human
• Rights is so immense, the criminal of this crime would seemingly have to be inhuman themselves

ARTICLE 2: INTERNATIONAL NEWS SOURCE

• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/opinion/22kristof.html?adxnnl=1&ref=human...
• Meena Khatun was stolen from her village in India and was sold right away. She was beaten when she tried to defend
• Herself. She was then drugged and sold. She would sleep with 10- 25 men a night. She had 2 kids, a boy and a girl
• Which she was separated from. She escaped and married off, but tried to go back for her children. The boy escaped
• And went to Meena for help. She helped her kids escape before the girl could be sold into sexual slavery.

CONTINUED...

• Meena is now fighting to abolish sex trafficking in India. Meena and her children
• Were brave to stand up to some of the worst traffickers.
• This article was also very sad, but gave me hope for some of the children standing
• Up to slavery. The courage Meena and her kids showed was greater then some
• World leaders. To be able to stand up, even when you get beaten for it, is powerful.

ARTICLE 3: HUMAN TRAFFICKING ADVOCACY GROUP

• The Polaris Project: named after the star that guided slaves to freedom in the Underground Railroad
• Goal: get people thinking differently about human trafficking and raise awareness
• Next project will be to invest 1.6 million into billboards.
• "The glow of a few billboards isn't much competition next the the strips blinding lights, but it's a start"
• They still have a long way to go, but they are getting a start.

CONTINUED...

• The issue of human trafficking is a very big one. There are groups out there that do what they
• can, but it seems as if it isn't enough. The article talked about putting up billboards, but to me
• I don't think this is a very good solution. Billboards are good for advertising, but not for trying
• To raise awareness for a human rights issue.
• http://www.polarisproject.org/media-center/polaris-project-in-the-news

COMPARISONS

• Each first two articles had a story about people in human trafficking who escaped
• The slaves who escaped immediately devoted their life to helping others escape
• All three articles say that they do what they can, but there is still so much to be done
• for human trafficking.
• These articles showed how inhumane and terrible human trafficking really is

CONTRASTS

• One article talked about a girl caught in the u.s. And another in India.
• Asia was lured in by a trafficker, Meena was stolen
• Meena had children who were also slaves, while Asia didn't.
• The slaves in Asia's story seemed like normal people, no one knew about the slaves in meenas story
• Asia talks at schools trying to raise awareness, Meena tries to take direct action against traffickers.