#freedom chains

DAVAO CITY—More and more people, particularly women, are falling prey to human trafficking syndicates in Northern Mindanao out of sheer poverty, groups keeping watch on trafficking cases said.

Bernardo Mondragon, head of the group Child Alert, said most cases of human trafficking in the region involved minors who are lured into the growing but clandestine world of “sex entertainment” because of poverty.

Jeanette Ampog, head of the group Talikala, said the increase in the number of human-trafficking victims is directly proportional to an increase in levels of poverty where human trafficking thrives.

Ampog said her group had documented 35 cases of human trafficking in this city alone. Of these, 33 cases involved minors, aged 17 and below, as victims.

She said this was alarming as it indicated that the city has become both a destination and jump-off point for trafficked minors and women.

Child Alert and Talikala estimate that at least 6,000 women and children had been lured to prostitution in the city.

To learn what you can do to help survivors of sex trafficking visit www.fashion4.org

NARATHIWAT, December 14, 2011 (AFP) - Police in Thailand said they had rescued 41 women from Laos on Wednesday who had been forced to work as prostitutes in a southern border town.

The 45-year-old owner of a karaoke parlour was arrested on charges of human trafficking and detention of persons under the age of 18, following a tip-off from a relative of one of the victims.

"She called her parents and asked for help. After investigation, we obtained a search warrant and raided the place. We found and rescued 41 women," said police lieutenant Komvich Padhanarath.

The women, who were working in the tourist town of Sungai Golok near the border with Malaysia, were aged between 16 and 23 years.

"They said they were told by the broker that they would come to work as waitresses with a high salary but they ended up being forced into prostitution. Their passports were seized by the owner," Komvich said.

The same factors that make Texas a corridor for international trade — proximity to Mexico, ports and transportation hubs that link the Lone Star State with the rest of the nation — also make it a corridor for international crime. Chief among those crimes is human trafficking.

A study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that 25 percent of the nation's human trafficking victims are in Texas. Another report from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott found that 20 percent of the 800,000 trafficking victims in the United States pass through Texas.

Between January 2008 and June 2010, the U.S. Justice Department reported more than 2,000 incidents of sex trafficking — the trafficking of people involving the use of force, fraud or coercion to participate in the sex trade. About 1,200 of those incidents involved adults, while 1,000 involved minors.

Those numbers alone should be shocking. But experts believe reported incidents of this modern form of slavery constitute only a small percentage of the actual cases of human trafficking.

Human trafficking is a big criminal enterprise, with Texas playing an outsized role. But Texas leaders — including Abbott and state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio — have raised awareness and strengthened state laws against human trafficking.

That's a major reason why Texas earned a B — the highest grade given — for its efforts to combat human trafficking by Shared Hope International, a nonprofit dedicated to the eradica-tion of sex trafficking and slavery. Texas was one of only four states to earn the high mark.

Tough laws can only have an impact, however, if resources are dedicated to enforce them. The Express-News reported that the Bexar County Sheriff's Office handles about 50 human trafficking cases annually. But on Sept. 1, a $1 million federal grant that funded a human trafficking task force came to an end.

Van de Putte and Abbott fought to obtain a $200,000 state grant that will extend the human trafficking task force for another year. Given San Antonio's location at the nexus of the I-10 and I-35 corridors — two major routes for human trafficking — the loss of federal funding is troubling.