Human trafficking rises to presidential proportions
- Apr 15, 2008 - comment
The road to the White House in 2008 has exposed differing opinions among the presidential candidates on issues ranging from abortion to health care to the economy, but on one topic that has gone virtually unmentioned in speeches and debates each of them could sound the same note.
ERLC President Richard Land, who does not endorse political candidates, is calling upon the three leading White House contenders to add human trafficking to their campaign platforms.
On April 14, Land sent letters to Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) urging them to “vigorously and vocally” support legislation to help both free the millions throughout the world who are forced or coerced into sex or labor industries and prosecute their buyers and sellers.
“I strongly urge you to demonstrate the kind of leadership of which you are capable by making this issue a central component of your campaign platform and by actively supporting the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007 (H.R. 3887),” stated Land.
The legislation bears the name of the British parliamentarian whose Christian convictions compelled him to work toward the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. In 1807, after years laboring to overcome the apathy and opposition of many of his countrymen and colleagues in parliament, Wilberforce finally witnessed Britain outlaw its slave trade.
In this spirit, Land entreated each candidate to be “the Wilberforce of our day,” noting that the legislation “will build on our already tremendous successes internationally and also enable us to deal more decisively with trafficking in our own country.”
An estimated 800,000 people, primarily women and children, are trafficked across international borders every year, a significant number of whom are victimized by the growing sex trafficking industry. They are then forced to sell their bodies as often as dozens of times daily, but receive little more than routine beatings from their pimps, who collect virtually all profits.
A 2000 trafficking law, the basis for the Wilberforce Act, has ratcheted up pressure among nations worldwide to clamp down on the trafficking industry, but domestic efforts have not fared as successfully.
“We cannot possibly continue to require the rest of the world to do more than we are willing to do right here at home,” stated Land in the letter. “Through this bill the federal government will be better able to assist the states in their efforts to eradicate sex trafficking by choking it at its core—the pimps and suppliers of women and girls. It will also provide more resources to help rescue the women and children who have been brutalized by this slave trade.”
Enclosed with Land’s letter was a letter he and 149 diverse leaders sent March 20 to members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees, the key panels that could determine the fate of the legislation, urging them to support the House bill. He also spotlighted an opinion piece entitled “The Pimps’ Slaves” by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and an article that appeared in Prism magazine, which uses a timeline of pictures taken over several years to show the physical deterioration of women battered and bruised by their pimps.
The gravity of addressing human trafficking ought to make the issue more than just a convenient talking point on a campaign stump. It should embolden presidential candidates and average Americans to work to expunge the slavery in our midst. Each of us must do our part to carry the torch of Wilberforce and others committed to this ideal.
If you agree that no man, woman, boy, or girl should be bought and sold into a life of slavery, please tell Sens. Clinton, McCain, and Obama, as well as your state’s U.S. Senators, to support the House-passed Wilberforce Act (H.R. 3887).
Further Learning
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