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Press Release by mykindredspirit2.home.att in Home and Family
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Weapons missing in fight against U.S. modern-day slavery and domestic terrorism
View all releases by mykindredspirit2.home.att
This press release is about: information, trafficking, modern-day, victims, slavery, government, include, these, terrorism, effective, those
2004-07-22, mykindredspirit2.home.att - We of the U.S. must raise our performance standards. The U.S. anti-slavery efforts` quarter of 1% "success" rate being flouted in President Bush`s "Tampa" speech, purporting to indicate that "America will not tolerate slave traders," falls way short of acceptable. But it is understandable when the fight lacks a critical weapon: information essential in victim rescue, and investigation, apprehension and prosecution of traffickers. We cannot continue to allow room for such information, including reports of possible trafficking situations, to fall through the cracks, to continue to be disregarded nor to fall on deaf ears.(PRWEB) July 22, 2004 -- Those of us with loved ones and friends who have been taken victim of U.S. modern-day slavery have a significant interest in halting this epidemic crime, particularly if those loved ones and friends are still being held. Others who are now aware of it, because they have now been able to "decipher" it in their community and/or have become aware of it due to media publicizing, may now also have a vested interest in resolving the circumstances that allow this horror to exist in, and continue to spread throughout, our midst.
Among all of these people, there is a great deal of valuable information in their awareness of the factors and schemes facilitating and masking trafficking activities and preventing investigation.
This information may include that about the methods that are being used to restrain and control victims and methods that help ensure that victims do not, or cannot, try to escape nor do or say anything to reveal their actual situation.
It may include the tactics that traffickers are using to coerce officials and other community members to "go along with" trafficking activities, or the schemes that deliver implicit threats to anyone who may be considering somehow sabotaging these illicit operations.
It may include the patterns members of the community are suspecting or seeing, perhaps the systematic bullying and/or sexual assaults, that facilitate easy sexual exploitation of even very young children and/or eventual total control of even adult victims.
It may include where and how slavery, trafficking, accompanying crimes and related terrorism are being, relatively, openly carried out.
It may be information further enhanced through intimate and/or long-term understanding of the environment and local culture that provides such fertile conditions for these schemes and tactics - this horror - to breed.
It may even include information relating to particular victims or trafficking operations, information essential in victim rescue and protection, and essential in apprehension and prosecution of perpetrators.
In addition to the web site I`ve set up, http://mykindredspirit2.home.att.net, that relays some of this type of information, often as it is being revealed and as schemes are unfolding, numerous other loved ones of "missing people" also have web sites. Some of those sites also relay at least some information relating to methods and schemes of abduction and possibly the environment and local culture that facilitates these activities.
If nothing else, they often relay what these loved ones of possible trafficking victims are also experiencing in horror, torment and/or other results of these tragedies, the situations that make these loved ones, also, victims of this crime.
But information is only as valuable as the way it is used, the results of what is done with it.
Effective programs against U.S. modern-day slavery and the related domestic terrorism must incorporate the type of information, just described, in their research and plan design. At every program level, from community coalitions, to intermediary non-government organizations intent on somehow servicing victims of human trafficking, to the network of federal agencies now responsible for these efforts, the overall program plan and resulting coordinated system must include features that accommodate or circumvent these real-life factors that play such an integral part in the proliferation of this crime. Only then will we even begin to have a chance to rescue U.S. modern-day slavery and other trafficking victims, apprehend and prosecute perpetrators, and present any meaningful challenge to traffickers.
Those with this important information must somehow relay it to those in our government who are developing anti-slavery programs.
Before this can be done, those of us on the front line of this fight must push for installation and implementation of effective mechanisms that enable that information to be transmitted, and ensure that it is incorporated in program research, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. We must be certain that management of the U.S. effort against modern-day slavery is comprehensive, appropriate and, most important, effective.
Government ears must be made receptive. Evidence must be shown that they are. We must begin demanding such evidence of officials.
It is critical that avenues be set up to allow relaying such information in the most complete, accurate, efficient and effective manner and in a way that does not further jeopardize the safety of informers nor the integrity and effective utilization of that information. We cannot continue to allow room for such information, including reports of possible trafficking situations, to fall through the cracks, to continue to be disregarded nor to fall on deaf ears.
Mechanism must be installed and implemented to allow public scrutiny of government efforts on a real-time basis, rather than in annual reporting or other times that government officials decide to publish information of these efforts.
Most important is the recognition of the organized crime, and subsequent terrorism, aspects relating to modern-day slavery activities. Effective program plans to fight this crime must incorporate measures and mechanisms that are cognizant of this major factor in the rampant growth of worldwide modern-day slavery.
The success of these efforts is so critical to so many of us.
There is no room for acceptance of even the poor success rate reported in President Bush`s current "Tampa" speech relating to U.S. human trafficking and that is being publicized in many news articles throughout the nation and the world.
The President`s speech is accessible at http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/washfile_feature1.html:
· "14,500 and 17,500 victims of trafficking cross our borders every year," means that this estimate is only that of those who arrived in our country in one given year and who are already a victim of trafficking. It does not include those who arrived in our country, already a victim of trafficking, in previous years and who are still here and in captivity. It also does not include people, such as those so many of us may know and love, who have been taken victim here, in the U.S.
· "Since 2001, we`ve charged 110 traffickers. That`s triple the number charged in the previous three years." Dividing 110 by those 3 years since the beginning of the alleged implementation of the U.S. "VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING AND VIOLENCE PROTECTION ACT OF 2000," Public Law 106-386, 106th Congress, results in a calculation of an average of only 36.6 people per year charged with trafficking.
· "Charged" is not saying convicted, nor even prosecuted, and is not saying whether, if even convicted, it just amounted to an ineffective slap on the wrist.
· Dividing that average of 36.6 by even the lower 14,500 figure being reported indicates an estimated "success" rate of .25%, i.e., a quarter of 1%!!!!
We of the U.S. must raise our performance standards.
We cannot continue to tolerate the ineffectiveness of U.S. government efforts on which considerable tax money has been spent and is being further appropriated in the name of fighting modern-day slavery, which, in itself, in addition to being a form of domestic terrorism, is, as the President states, "now the third-largest source of money for organized crime, after arms and drugs," which are also some of the accompanying crimes of trafficking, and is seen by some as a possible source of revenue for world terrorists.
There is no room to tolerate the continued pouring of resources into what are supposed to be U.S. government efforts to fight this crime and yet that still permits so many, many victims, particularly victims of U.S. modern-day slavery, to simply languish in their horrible situation.
More information about this dilemma is in previous articles I`ve published that are listed in my July 12, 2004 article, "Feel free to publish, circulate, plagiarize," www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/7/emw140194.htm
Source: PR Web™
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