UEA INDIAN SOCIETY

Human trafficking is the process of TRAPPING people through the process of violence, deception or exploiting them for financial / personal gain. Human trafficking is one of the MOST COMMON CRIMES in our world today and it isn’t spoken of as much as it should be. A lot of people in the world use human trafficking as a way of making money as it is highly profitable (the profit margins are higher than almost any other industry in the world). It’s hard to detect and the punishment is viewed as worth the crime in the eyes of the traffickers because the LAWS AND PENALTIES ARE TOO LENIENT. It is advertised in movies and we don’t acknowledge it. Now we may all have seen the movie 365 days on Netflix and obsess over the character Massimo. Have we ever thought that the character glorifies sex slavery and promotes Stockholm Syndrome? Its more than sexual, it is rape culture and a method of human trafficking. This misunderstanding is the reason why we must shed light onto the realities of human trafficking and help spread the word instead of promoting it!

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Trafficking has three steps: action, means, and exploitation. Child trafficking has two steps: action and exploitation. This is because means is irrelevant as children can’t legally consent

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MYTH: TRAFFICKING AFFECTS FOREIGNERS:

Wrong. In fact, nearly a quarter of all victims of trafficking found in the UK last year were British, making this the most common victim nationality, followed by Albanian (13%) and Vietnamese (10%).

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How are British people trafficked? Homeless people offered jobs that turn out to come with threats and without pay; teenagers groomed into criminal exploitation by gangs; girls and women forced into prostitution by abusive partners or by organised criminals: all of these and more would involve trafficking.

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MYTH: HUMAN TRAFFICKING INVOLVES CROSSING AN INTERNATIONAL BORDER:

Human trafficking means moving someone by means such as force, fraud, coercion or deception, with the aim of exploiting them. It is a form of modern slavery.

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You don't have to cross an international border, and much trafficking takes place within countries. It could even mean taking someone just next door.

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MYTH: MOST VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING ARE SMUGGLED INTO THE UK:

Not true. For a start many are British. But even among those that did travel to the UK, more than half of those reported to the Modern Slavery Helpline in 2018 arrived by plane (where means of transport was known).

 

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The statistics below shows the flow of human trafficking as there is a misunderstanding that it doesn’t happen in Western countries:

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