Added:
Feb. 08, 2010
Mexico
Dallas Morning News Editorial: Mexico's
Rock-bottom Moment
Excerpt
Against a two-decade timeline of
drug-trafficking outrages in Mexico, last Sunday's slaughter of 16
at a teenager's quinceañera party in Ciudad Juárez seems likely to
follow a familiar pattern. First comes stunned horror. Then comes
the national outcry to do something. Government officials get hauled
before the legislature for questioning. Someone resigns. Outrage
subsides. Life goes on, same as before.
The Mexican government's behavior
resembles that of an addict who's yet to hit that rock-bottom moment
of realization that things absolutely must change. Yes, President
Felipe Calderón has deployed thousands of soldiers and police
officers to border cities and targeted corrupt public figures for
prosecution. But that's clearly not sufficient.
Back in the 1990s, it seemed impossible
that Mexico could slide any further into the depths. Remember when a
Catholic cardinal was murdered by drug-cartel gunmen in Guadalajara?
Or the well-reported links between a president's brother and the
drug cartels? The army general named head of Mexico's drug
enforcement agency who was subsequently arrested as an operative for
a major cartel? The two northern governors implicated as operatives
in a major cartel?
The next decade brought unspeakable
levels of violence as rival cartels vied for territorial control.
Thousands died. A free-for-all atmosphere now prevails, especially
in Juárez.
"Mexico has abandoned us, betrayed us,"
José Luís Aguilar Rangel said as he looked down upon the coffins of
his son and nephew, two of the young victims of the Sunday massacre.
In late 2008, Mexico's federal human
rights commission reported that, on average,
prosecution and conviction occurs in only one out of every 100
crimes. That's for reported crime. In
90 percent of cases, people don't even bother. Rangel clearly
isn't alone in believing the government has abandoned him.
Yet, through it all, Mexican officials
consistently play down what's happening. It's worse in Guatemala,
they say. Just last month, Dallas Consul General Juan Carlos
Cue-Vega sought to minimize the border-area violence as mainly drug
thugs killing other drug thugs.
We don't buy it. Those Juárez teens had
nothing to do with the drug cartels. In December, gunmen killed the
mother, sister and aunt of a military hero who had been killed
participating in a drug raid. The terrorists made clear: Come after
us, and we'll go after your entire family.
" Where is the line drawn on
indiffer-ence?
If we cannot answer this question, the assassins can continue hiding
themselves under the cloak of a complicit population – [complicit]
either by conviction or by apathy," the Mexico City daily El
Universal commented...
Dallas Morning News
Feb. 05, 2010
See also:
LibertadLatina
Commentary
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 |
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From top left: Rigoberta Menchu, Esther
Chavez, Teresa Ulloa and Lydia Cacho |
A Rock-bottom Moment in U.S. Action to Combat Latin American
Human Trafficking and Slavery?
Let's draw the line on
indifference !
The February 5, 2010 editorial by the Dallas Morning News,
Mexico's Rock-bottom Moment, accurately
describes the atmosphere of government corruption and indifference
(at the federal, state and local level) that permeates Mexico and allows criminals to
engage in horrendous behavior with reckless abandon.
That reality does not only apply to the war on drug cartels. These
conditions of impunity also make it nearly impossible to effectively fight
modern human slavery and other forms of sexual and labor
exploitation.
We say 'modern' human slavery, but in Mexico, slavery,
from the time of the Spanish colonization, had actually
never stopped. Poor Indigenous and mixed-race (Mestizo) peoples, who
are racially marginalized in Mexico, have always been easy marks for
sexual and labor exploitation. This reality impacts children
especially hard.
In 1994, for example, a U.S. National Public Radio news report noted
that in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, the majority indigenous
population was expected to serve their whole lives as unpaid peon
farm workers on the plantations of wealthy Mexicans of European
descent, in exchange for nothing more than being given rice and
beans.
That is slavery!
The ability to rape and demand free labor of the Indigenous and
Mestizo poor in Mexico with impunity has been a 'right' of the
Spanish descended elites for 500 years.
As we have stated in previous comment-aries, our focus on the crisis
of gender oppression in Mexico came about because:
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1) The oppression of women is
severe, and especially impacts
indigenous women and girls;
2) by extension, the sex trafficking
industry, fueled by the
multi-billion dollar drug cartels,
enslaves tens of thousands of women
and girls each year;
3) Mexico is Latin America's border
with the United States, causing the
great majority of migration and
human trafficking from the region
into the U.S. to be funneled through
Mexico;
4) With "60 plus" percent of the
human trafficking victims in the
U.S. being victims who are Latin
American, solving the Mexican crisis
holds the key to solving foreign sex
and labor trafficking in the U.S.,
and potentially in much of Latin
America;
5) Mexico has a brave and very articulate women's rights,
indigenous rights and anti-trafficking movement, lead by
many unseen leaders, and others who are more visible. they dare to
confront impunity in Mexico, despite the risk of government
sponsored intimidation, false imprisonment and murder
that they face for disrupting the status quo and the power of the
elites.
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How can a Mexican Government that acts to support those who oppress
women be an honest partner in suppressing the power of sex and labor
traffickers?
How can a Mexican society that is based upon very strongly embedded
traditions of male supremacy (machismo) change to actually begin to
defend the basic human rights of women and girls, when its own
government fights reform to maintain the status quo?
How can a Mexico where influential business and political leaders
have corrupt ties to the sex trafficking 'industry' defeat those
forces?
How can activists make progress when international organizations
such as Amnesty International have identified the fact that human
rights activists face false imprisonment to halt their work, and,
together with activist journalists, face a very real threat of being
murdered?
These are the pressing questions that the women's rights movement
face and seek answers to.
This movement deserves the full moral and financial and
collaborative support of human rights, indigenous rights and women's
rights activists, and all people of moral conscience, from across
the world.
Most importantly, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama
must stand up and very publicly demand that the State of Mexico stop
fighting against these human rights movements, and finally
adhere to their international commitments to respect the rights of
women and children.
The recent track record of the Calderón administration shows that it
is indifferent to the issue of human slavery, and will only take
minimal action to avoid getting a bad grade (and thus risk possible
U.S. sanctions) from the annual U.S. State Department Trafficking in
Persons report. Therefore, the movement to end slavery continues its
long struggle to force the Calderón government to change its
misogynist ways.
Among the leaders of Mexico's pioneering women and children's rights
movement are Teresa Ulloa, a pioneering women's rights
lawyer and Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking
in Women for Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC). Ulloa has
been a clear voice for identifying the need to enact and enforce
anti-trafficking laws. She has identified the fact that 50 million
women and children are at-risk of falling into the hands of human
traffickers across all of Latin America. She has also declared that
5 million victims of human trafficking exist within Mexico. Ulloa
has also stated that an estimated 1.5 million persons engage in
prostitution in Central Mexico alone, and that 75% of those at any
given time are girls between the ages of 12 and 13. Ulloa's serious
research into these problems contradicts the research of others who
conclude that only 20,000 children are engaged in prostitution in
Mexico.
We also salute award winning journalist, author and women's center
director Lydia Cacho, who responded to the impunity in child sex
trafficking in the internationally popular tourist city of Cancun,
Mexico by writing a well-researched book that exposed the complex
links of collaboration between millionaire entrepreneur Jean Succar
Kuri and child sex trafficker and a network of other businessmen and
corrupt government officials. In response to the publication of
Cacho's book, in December of 2005 the child sex trafficking network
exposed by Cacho arranged with the governor of Puebla state, Mario
Marin, to have Puebla state police officers arrest Cacho and drive
her over 1,000 miles to Puebla state to face criminal charges of
defamation for the accusations made in her book. During the trip and
while in prison, state officers threatened Cacho with rape and with
death.
Eventually cleared of the charges, Cacho has recently faced
continuing threats to her life by armed suspects who shadow her
daily movements. She lives 24 hours a day with armed guards. While Cacho's
supporters in Congress demanded an investigation by the Supreme
Court (a role that the Court may play in state corruption cases
under Mexico's constitution), and
despite the fact that one Supreme Court justice assigned to
investigate the case found evidence to
warrant investigation of Governor Marin by the full Court, the Court's justices
decided that Cacho's treatment did not constitute a violation of her
basic rights.
In utter disgust at the Supreme Court's behavior in this case, the
Attorney General's special prosecutor for crimes against women,
Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, resigned.
Child sex trafficker Jean Succar Kuri is in jail
thanks to Cacho's efforts. However Puebla Governor Mario Marin and Succar Kuri's other
accomplices continue living undisturbed in complete freedom.
We posthumously salute Esther Chavez, Lydia Cacho's mentor and the
founder of the movement to publicize and demand action to end the
mass murder (femicide) of women in northern Mexico's Ciudad Juarez.
Chavez' tireless work to confront the apathy and impunity of
government officials was the training ground that taught a
generation of new leadership in the Mexican women's rights movement.
By extension, Esther Chavez' legacy guides all
of our efforts to dare to face into the wind and openly confront misogynist
terrorism across Latin America.
Like Esther Chavez, Rigoberta Menchu is a long time leader working
in defense of the basic human rights of indigenous peoples. A K'iche'
Maya woman from Guatemala, Menchu's work impacts conditions for
indigenous women and children in both Guatemala and Mexico. Winner
of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, Menchu was a 1997 candidate in
Guatemala's presidential elections.
Rigoberta Menchu and her family survived the 1970s-to-1990s
anti-Mayan genocide in Guatemala in which 200,00 people died,
including 50,000 women. Several members of Menchu's family were
murdered, and she, like hundreds of thousands of Mayan Guatemalans,
had to flee the attempts of the nation's government to mass murder
its indigenous citizens.
Today Menchu continues to promote indigenous and women's human
rights through the
Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation (La
Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum).
Menchu has been especially active in efforts to end the sex
trafficking of young indigenous girls in Guatemala and Mexico, where
they consitute one of the largest groups victimized by commercial
sexploitation of children (CSEC).
We also give high praises to the
CIMAC women's news agency. Their
large network of women reporters has persistently documented
the outrageous injustices confronting women and girls in Mexican society.
CIMAC is not
afraid to point the finger at government agencies and officials
where that is warranted, in addition to identifying major criminal
organizations and individuals who victimize
women and girls with impunity.
CIMAC's highly professional news team has described in accurate detail the
facts surrounding the issues of sex trafficking, rape and other
crimes against women, and the lack of
legislative and law enforcement action in Mexico to protect women
and girls from these atrocities.
On the single issue of the rape with
impunity of (mostly indigenous women and girls) by Mexican military
personnel, CIMAC has published more than
340 comprehensive articles
since 2007.
In July of 2008, CIMAC's offices were ransacked by 'unknown' vandals.
CIMAC's computers were destroyed or stolen. This act of intimidation
occurred days after CIMAC published an article that identified the
fact that high ranking military officers working at Mexico City's
equivalent of the Pentagon frequented the child prostitution
brothels that exist just down the street from military headquarters.
Letters of solidarity poured in from across the globe in response to
these criminal acts, which remain in impunity.
We especially applaud the fact that CIMAC for covering the mass
gender atrocities facing poor indigenous women in a Mexico where
such crimes are never, ever punished.
A Google search of the CIMAC News web site shows that:
* 120 CIMAC articles mention Rigoberta Menchu
* 170 CIMAC articles mention the late
Esther Chavez
*
120 CIMAC articles mention Teresa Ulloa
*
550 CIMAC articles mention Lydia Cacho
We also give kudos to CIMAC for publishing information from the
International Organization for Migration's office in Tapachula,
noting that the southern Mexican border with Guatemala is a lawless
zone where between 450 and 600 women and girl migrants from Central
and South America are raped each day. The same CIMAC article notes that the global NGO Save the Children has identified
southern Mexico as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual
exploitation of children in the entire world.
Thanks to the trailblazing work of these brave journalists and
activists, the criminals, the wealthy business owners and corrupt
public servants who cooperate with them can no longer hide under a
rock. The evidence is irrefutable that an ongoing mass gender
atrocity is taking place in Mexico, and neither the Mexican federal
government (lead by
a National Action Party which has openly
misogynist policies), nor the United States is taking any visible
action of significance to stop that violence.
Thanks to the heroic work of Rigoberta Menchu, Esther Chavez, Teresa Ulloa, Lydia Cacho, the
team at CIMAC and many other activists, the fact of the human
slavery crisis in Mexico and the rest of Latin America cannot be
denied by anyone.
These realities present a challenge to the global, and especially to
the U.S. based anti-trafficking movements. Do they remain silent on
this issue, or do they take appropriate action to give the crisis
facing Latinas a proper seat at the table of deliberations in this
movement?
The modern anti-trafficking movement was born
in the 1990s in response to the enslavement of thousands of Eastern
European and Russian women after the fall of the Soviet Union, and
focused today principally on the issues of the enslavement of
European, South Asian, East Asian and domestic minor U.S. youth.
The focus areas reflect, interestingly enough, the ethnicities of the the majority of the
activists in this movement.
All of those populations deserve attention. So do Latin American
victims. Latin American and Asian victims were trafficked into the
U.S. long before the anti-slavery sprung-up in Western nations (The
risk of being sex trafficked was known in the U.S. even in the
1950s).
Yet
more than ten years into the development of this movement, we have
yet to hear public pronouncements about the Latin American / Latina
immigrant human slavery crisis from the U.S. Federal Government, nor from
the academics nor major U.S. NGO heads in the U.S. who have pioneered the
effort to stop modern slavery.
During a number of major speeches on human trafficking that I have
attended, virtually every region of the world will be mentioned except
Latin America. Latina immigrant victims in the U.S. are
almost never mentioned. Academic papers, speeches and promotional
materials from the major anti-trafficking organizations are equally
lacking in coverage of the crisis facing Latin America.
In late 2009, for example, I called Public Radio's nationally
broadcast Diane Rehm Show based at WAMU, from American University
Radio, to talk with Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporters
Nicholas D. Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn (a former Times
reporter), as they discussed their book
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression
into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.
In a reflection of the limited priorities of the majority of NGOs
and U.S. federal government voices in the anti-slavery movement,
Kristoff and WuDunn emphasized both in their book and during their
radio interview, that their coverage of the crisis in women's rights
as it exists in developing nations involved East Asia, South Asia
and Africa. They did not even mention Latin America.
When I stated that Mexico is a major crisis area for human
trafficking and that Save the Children had identified southern
Mexico as the largest region for commercial sexual exploitation of
children in the world, both authors responded by saying that, in
their view, India was the largest zone for sex trafficking in the
world and had to be tackled first. They admitted that they had not
looked at Latin America in researching their otherwise important
book on gender oppression.
In point of fact, the
sex trafficking networks began to
focus on Latin America in their search for large numbers of
women and children to enslave as law enforcement began to crack-down
on Asian sex trafficking several year ago. Latin America's crisis
is, arguably, just as large as that of India, where around 1 million
children are sex trafficked at any given time.
One of my main motivations for expanding the
LibertadLatina
project (we are now in our ninth year), was to respond to
the lack of publicly available factual information on the crisis in
Latin America. That information gap leaves Latin American relatively
isolated and without support from the global community (with the
active role of the United Nations being a welcome exception to that
fact).
I recall that about 7 years ago, a young Asian American man who had just graduated from college with a
major in Women's Studies, and who was then a volunteer at Polaris
Project, one of the leading anti-trafficking NGOs in the U.S., told me that "Latin America
doesn't have a human trafficking problem. My professors said that
Latin America didn't have a problem." This guy changed his
attitude
after I referred him to the
LibertadLatina
web site.
We would hope that such ignorance was a thing of
the past. But today in 2010, the U.S. based anti-slavery movement continues to discuss
anti-trafficking as a crime that impacts Europeans, Asians and U.S.
domestic minor victims only.
We really have to wonder what the
motivations are that drive that misguided thinking.
U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca,
the Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. State Department, is
the U.S. Government's leading voice on human slavery issues. He is
Mexican-American, and has prosecuted over 100 human trafficking
cases, many involving Latin American victims and perpetrators.
I n 2002
CdeBaca invited me to apply for a position as a victim
advocate working with his
team at the Justice Department's inter-agency Worker's Exploitation
Task Force. So it is with great respect that we implore
Ambassador CdeBaca to respond forcefully to the
critical
emergency
facing women and girls in Latin America and its Diaspora
in the U.S., a crisis that he is thoroughly familiar
with.
We also insist that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Ambassador CdeBaca's boss, and U.S. President Barack Obama,
Secretary Clinton's boss, move into action forthwith to address the
defense of women and girls being exploited by the Latin American
networks who prostitute enslaved Latina victims in urban brothels and rural
farm worker camps in almost every county and city in America.
Ambassador CdeBaca, Secretary Clinton and President Obama, we insist
that you get together and collaborate to develop a public policy and
action plan to address the "60 plus percent" according to
Ambassador CdeBaca, of
human slavery victims in the U.S. who originated from Latin America.
Funding a few NGOs across the region (some of whom are known to
misuse their mandates), is not an adequate answer.
You can act to combat these problems without requiring an
earthquake to kick-start you in the right direction, which is a
process that we have seen of late in regard to Haiti.
We need everyone, the general
public, concerned NGOs, academics and other activists to contact the
White House, the U.S. State Department and their congressional
members to demand immediate action in regard to the Latin American
and indigenous aspects of the human slavery crisis.
Without our
efforts, the crisis will continue to grow out of control, putting
at risk and entire generation of young women and girls who deserve
the right to live in freedom from the tyranny of the gender hostile
environment that they live in today.
Write to you senators.
Write to your House of Representatives members.
Write to President Obama
U.S. Department
of State
2201 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20520. Main
Switchboard: 202-647-4000.
End Impunity Now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Feb. 08, 2010
See also:
Trata de blancas
en Centroamérica
Human Trafficking
in Central America [and Mexico]
María de Jesús Silva [who's daughter Jackeline Jirón
Silva was kidnapped into sexual slavery at age 11 -
comments on her search across Central America and
southern Mexico for her daughter]: "I saw things that I never
imagined existed... The brothels are full of
children, sold by traffickers and abandoned by their
parents. I saw them prostitute them-selves and wished
that any one of them would have been my daughter. I
settled for caressing the hair of these girls, and I
imagined that in the 'next' brothel, I was going to
find my daughter. Everything that I have suffered
through is nothing compared to what my girl is going
through."
...According to Ana Salvadó, executive director for
Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean for
Save the Children:
"the panorama for childhood in Latin America is
growing more bleak over time, and child trafficking
is growing rapidly in each of these countries..."
…Save the Children has identified the border region
between Guatemala and Mexico as being the largest
hot spot for the commercial sexual exploitation of
children in the entire world. Ana Salvadó: "It is a
bottleneck, because many children attempt to migrate
from Central [and South] America to the United States, and they
never get past [southern] Mexico…
…A study by the international organization
ECPAT…
...reveals that over 21,000
Central Americans, mostly children, are prostituted
in 1,552 bars and brothels in Tapachula, Mexico…
Traffickers sell these child victims to Tapachula's
pimps for $200 each.
More that 50% of these children are from
[indigenous] Guatemala. The rest are Salvadorans,
Hondurans and Nicaraguans.
They range in age from eight to fourteen-years-old.
...In 2006, the
International
Labor Organization conducted a survey of
adult attitudes in Mexico, Central America and South
America, where it is quite easy [for men] to engage in sexual
relations with children.
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Some 65% of
respondents stated that they don't see any
problem, and they don't feel any sort of
conflict or fear in regard to having sex
with boy and girl children, and "they don't
feel that there is anything wrong with doing
it." |
...Mexico has been converted into a paradise for
pimps and a living hell for thousands of Central
American girl children like Jackeline Jirón Silva,
whose captors have prostituted her during the past
32 months. It is known that during half of that
time, Jackeline has been held in the southern
Mexican state of Chiapas.
-
Ana Lilia Pérez
Revista Contralínea
Oct. 22, 2007
See also:
En Japón, de 3 a 4 mil
niñas mexicanas víctimas de ESCI
Afirma la experta Teresa Ulloa
Three to four thousand underage
indigenous girls from the poor states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero
and Mexico [state] have become victims of commercial sexual
exploitation of children (CSEC) in Japan.
Puebla city,
in Puebla state - Teresa Ulloa, Latin America and
Caribbean Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women
(CATW) announced her estimates of the numbers of indigenous children
sex trafficked to Japan, and explained that traffickers trick the
victims using offers of thousands of dollars for their parents in
exchange for [obtaining permission] to take their daughters. The
parents are told that their girls are going to the United States to
work in fast food restaurant jobs.
Taking advantage of the condition of submission that Mexico's
indigenous communities are forced to live in, the traffickers take
their victims to Japan where they are prostituted and work as
geishas, a role that Asian women no-longer want to play because
today they have more decision-making power than in the past.
Ulloa said that before these victims from Japan are repatriated, the
home conditions of these girls must be investigated to assure that
they can be reintegrated without facing the risk of being sold or
sexually exploited again.
Ulloa noted that in the year 2002 the CATW helped to repatriate two
sisters, ages 8 and 10, who had been prostituted in a brothel in New
York. They were subjected to exploitation again, 15 days later,
because their family "had sold their daughters in exchange for two
goats and two cases of beer."
During her interview with CIMAC Noticias, Ulloa declared:
"the
subject [of child protection] is not on the national agenda.
Much attention is paid to drug trafficking, but the government
hasn't even realized that the same drug trafficking networks are
used for the [sex] trafficking of children, and that organized crime
regards this activity to be one of their most important businesses."
Nadia Altamirano Díaz
CIMAC Noticias
Dec. 12, 2008
See Also:
Human Rights Activists in
Mexico Under Attack
Activists suffer
imprisonment on fabricated charges to stop them from
doing their work
Amnesty International
Jan. 21, 2010
See Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
Journalist / Activist
Lydia Cacho is
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
See also:
The United States
Obama's Slavery Czar
Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca fights
human slavery for a living...
...Whether it was farm workers, or women in brothels, the
percentages continue to be overwhelmingly Latino.
Sixty-plus per cent of the
[trafficking] victims in the U.S. are Hispanic.” ...
Lynn Sherr
The Daily Beast
Nov. 24, 2009
See also:
Ransacking of Longtime Women’s News Agency in
Mexico City Raises Concerns About Motives
The devastation and disorder of a burglary and violent vandalism at
the women’s news agency CIMAC (Women’s Communication & Information)
offices in Mexico City last weekend suggest that it was more than a
common break-in, according to Lucía Lagunes Huerta, general director
of the organization. Manual Fuentes, a lawyer for CIMAC noted that
the evidence might be “leaving a message that CIMAC is vulnerable.”
On behalf of the news agency, Fuentes filed a burglary charge with
the Attorney General’s office of the federal district of Mexico.
CIMAC has covered women and women’s human rights issues throughout
Mexico, Central & Latin America and the world for 20 years,
including special in-depth articles about various unresolved cases
of femicide and sexual violence against women in Mexico as a
systemic violation of women’s human rights. This journalistic work
has included the hundreds of murders and disappearances of women in
Juarez, Mexico; the 14 cases of sexual assault charges of women
against soldiers on July 11, 2006 in Castaños in the northern state
of Coahuila; and charges of sexual assault and torture of 26 women
by Mexican police on May 3, 2006 in San Salvador Atenco (northeast
of Mexico City), all of which remain unresolved.
Fuentes said that in the legal documents filed about the burglary
against CIMAC, Erica Cervantes, a staff member declared that when
they arrived the morning of Monday, July 28th they found the locks
to their offices smashed and totally destroyed. Likewise, the
disarray in the office was extensive and unlike typical burglaries
was focused more on documents and files, including those containing
confidential information about special investigations and coverage
by CIMAC. Fuentes said, “it was obvious they were searching for
information and documents…this is something that is very serious
since CIMAC is dedicated to the denouncement and dissemination of
issues that affect women in the exercise of their human rights.” ...
FIRE – Feminist International Radio Endeavour
July 30, 2008
See also:
Modern-Day Slavery in Mexico and the United
States
...As Mexico and the U.S. are connected physically and through
criminal links, issues the Mexican government deals with will
subsequently impact the U.S. Many of the Mexican criminal networks
notable for narcotrafficking are also involved in human trafficking.
According to the Inter Press Service, “at least 20 networks are
involved in the trafficking of persons, with links to organized
crime rings involved in other activities like drug smuggling.”
Rampant corruption plagues the U.S.-Mexico border, where
high-ranking Mexican officials have been accused of taking bribes
from drug rings. According to Gary Hale, DEA intelligence chief for
Houston, the U.S. effort to end the drug war has forced these
criminal networks to seek “other crime activities to generate their
income.” Hale reports that, due to the U.S. government’s crackdown
on drug trafficking, crime rings income has decreased significantly.
As a result, many of the criminal networks have searched for other
activities, like human trafficking, to supplement their income.
Ambassador C. de Baca believes that focusing on eradicating human
trafficking could improve U.S.-Mexican efforts to combat other forms
of transnational crime. According to C. de Baca, human trafficking
“appears to be an area where the [Mexican government] is prepared to
cooperate with [the U.S.].” C. de Baca and others are hopeful that
the exchange of information on human trafficking cases will build
relationships between Mexican and U.S. officials that might help
further combat the drug war. ..
Megan McAdams
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Dec. 21, 2009
United States: Migration and Trafficking in Women
A comparison study on migration and trafficking in women in the US.
Until recently, trafficking of women in the United
States was rarely acknowledged. It was not until Russian and
Ukrainian women began to be trafficked to the United States in the
early 1990s that governmental agencies and many NGOs began to
recognize the problem. As many critics, including us, have pointed
out, Latin American and Asian women were trafficked into the United
States for many years prior to the influx of Russian traffickers and
trafficked women. The fact that it took blond and blue-eyed victims
to draw governmental and public attention to trafficking in the
United States gives, at least, the appearance of racism.
Patricia Hyne
Coalitio Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
2002
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Added:
Feb. 08, 2010
Guatemala
 |
|
At the January 31st, 2010 commemoration
of the 1980 Spanish Embassy Massacre, Nobel Laureate Dr.
Rigoberta Menchu Tum kneels at a tapestry covered with
the names of many of those who were murdered by
government forces during the Guatemalan civil conflict. |
Exposición fotográfica y artística en
conmemoración del 30 aniversario de la masacre de la embajada de España
El día domingo 31 de
enero de 2010 diferentes organizaciones de derechos humanos de
Guatemala, montaron una exposición plástica en la Plaza Mayor de la
ciudad que incluyo una galería fotográfica de los acontecimientos
sucedidos hace 30 años. La actividad se abrió con una conferencia de
prensa presidida por la Dra. Rigoberta Menchú Tum.
Photographic and
artistic exhibition in the 30 commemoration of anniversary of the
massacre of the embassy of Spain
On January 31st,
2010, human rights organizations from across Guatemala presented an art
and photography exhibit to commemorate the 30th anniversary
of the Spanish Embassy Massacre in Guatemala City. The event began with
a press conference by moderated by Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum.
Distinguished human
rights defenders, including Aura Elena Farfan, Julio Solorzano Foppa,
Miguel Ángel Alvizures participated.
Gustavo Meoño and Mario
Minera related to the assembled crowd the history of the Spanish Embassy
Massacre, in which 37 Mayans, students and Spanish diplomats were
killed. The victims included Vicente Menchú, father of Dr. Rigoberta
Menchu.
Noting that, despite
the time that passed, this crime remains in impunity. The participants
called on the authorities to take action, open an investigation, and
punish those responsible for the murders.
The exhibition included
photographs that the events of the day of the massacre, as well as the
consequences of the government repression during the civil conflict. The
photos of some of the [45,000] persons who were made to disappear
[during the genocide] were shown.
A huge quilt with the
names of victims of the armed conflict was laid in the center of the
event grounds.
Guatemalan artist
Marlon García displayed some of his works, and collaborated in
organizing the exposition.
Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation
La Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Feb. 02, 2010
See also:
 |
|
An indigenous woman in Guatemala holds a sign
saying: Wanted: Jose Erain Rios Montt (the unseen part says,
"for genocide") - during the 28th anniversary of the
Spanish Embassy Massacre in Guatemala City, Guatemala in
2008.
General José Efraín Ríos Montt
is best known outside Guatemala for heading a military
regime (1982–1983) that was responsible for some of the
worst atrocities against civilians in the 36-year Guatemalan
civil conflict.
Photo: MiMundo |
About the Spanish Embassy Massacre
Starting in 1977, a large number of Maya
K’iche’ and Maya Ixil inhabitants from the municipalities of Nebaj,
Chajul, San Juan Cotzal and San Miguel Uspantan, all located in the
northern region of the Department of Quiche, began to organize under
the newly created Committee for Peasant Union (CUC). During the year
1979, a number of oppressive acts were carried out by the army
against the residents of these municipalities.
[That is - military campaigns by government
soldiers of mass-rapes and massacres carried out against entire
villages of innocent civilians].
In response to such repression, Maya
Ixil and Maya K’iche’ peasants, many of them members or local
leaders within the CUC, travelled to Guatemala City so as to
denounce both at national and international levels the human rights
atrocities which were taking place in their communities.
Once in Guatemala City, the peasant
delegation visited a number offices and personalities seeking help
in divulging their accounts. But their effort was in vain. At the
National Congress, access was denied to them. The press also refused
to cover the story.
The delegation, however, did receive
support from students at the University of San Carlos (USAC),
militants from the Robin Garcia Student Revolutionary Front (FERG),
some labor unions, as well as a few social organizations... In the
end, they decided to occupy an Embassy.
A public declaration from the indigenous
communities which peacefully occupied the Spanish Embassy, dated
January 31, 1980, states: “...We have been left no other choice but
to occupy the Spanish Embassy as the only resource to make our pleas
known at both local and international levels.”
The military government of General Lucas
Garcia decisively selected to remove the protesters “by any means”.
Hence, after only a few minutes after the occupation took place,
dozens of police and state security agents surrounded the Spanish
Embassy grounds.
Immediately after knocking down the
door, [the security forces] made use of a flamethrower, or similar
gas-emitting device, against those found inside the ambassador’s
office; most were struck by the flames from the waist up and
propelled backwards, hence causing a pile-up effect.
Dark smoke was seen come out of the
windows, and all 37 people present were burned alive.
The case of the Spanish Embassy Massacre
serves as precedent and proof of the intensive and excessive
political repression applied by the Government of Lucas Garcia in
1980. It clearly reflects the situation lived during such time where
political opposition, demands for social justice, and the
denouncement of human rights violations were completely disallowed.
In addition, it also reflects the state of terror in which Guatemala
society lived under at that time.
Twenty-eight years after the event, a
number of activities were carried out to commemorate those
massacred: a demonstration in front of the Constitutionality Court
(CC), a forum focusing on the topic of Impunity, as well as a vigil
in front of the current Spanish Embassy.
Spanish Embassy Massacre: 28th Anniversary
MiMundo
Feb. 27, 2008
See also:
Rigoberta Menchú in Nicaragua
On October 16, 1992, Rigoberta Menchú
Tum, heir of the Maya-Quiché people of Guatemala, was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee recognized in Rigoberta
Menchú "a symbol of peace and reconciliation 500 years after
Christopher Columbus' arrival to America," underscoring that she is
a "vivid symbol of peace and reconciliation despite the ethnic,
cultural and social divisions in her country, the American continent
and the world."
Only a week before, Rigoberta Menchú had
been in Nicaragua to attend the III Encounter of the Continental
Campaign of 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Grassroots
Resistance, held in Managua from October 7-12. During her stay, she
was given an honorary doctorate in Humanities from the Central
American University (UCA). The UCA paid homage to her "contribution
to the defense of human rights and the indigenous peoples of Latin
America, particularly in her country, for more than 15 years,"
describing her as "a dignified and distinguished representative of
the indigenous peoples of our continent."
Rigoberta Menchú's personal
denunciations of the marginalization of the continent's indigenous
peoples, of which she and her family have been victims, praised UCA
rector Xabier Gorostiaga, have "contributed to educating
international public opinion about these very serious problems." He
noted that she has become "a genuine representative of the
indigenous peoples and popular majorities of Central and Latin
America, reclaiming the right to freedom and to the life of our
cultures, principles shared by the Society of Jesus and the Central
American University of Nicaragua."
Father Gorostiaga also recognized that
Menchú has been a "Christian leader in her indigenous community,
daughter and sister of martyrs, participating since age 10 in
pastoral activities, deeply dedicated to an evangelizing mission in
favor of the most oppressed and to the formation of an autochthonous
church in Guatemala."
Central American University
Dec.,
1992
See also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
About the genocide and femicide confronting
women and girls in Guatemala
Added:
Feb. 08, 2010
Florida, USA
Advocates Hope to Rescue Underage Super Bowl
Sex Slaves
Super Bowl XLIV
Two dozen volunteers from around the
country gathered inside a Miami conference room earlier this week to
prepare for the Super Bowl.
They're not here for the game, though.
They will spend several days fanning out through the city to rescue
underage girls who have been trafficked to South Florida as sex
workers.
``The Super Bowl is obviously a really
big deal for prostitution,'' Sandy Skelaney, a program manager at
Kristi House, a program for sexually abused children, told the
group.
``We have a bunch of girls being brought
down by pimps.''
Just as police, hoteliers, restaurateurs
and retailers have prepared for the big game, so too have children's
advocates. For weeks, volunteers have printed fliers, prepared
scripts and organized outreach teams in an effort to identify --
and, with luck, rescue -- girls who are being forced into
prostitution.
Last year, when the Super Bowl was held
in Tampa, the state Department of Children & Families took in 24
children who were brought to the city to serve as sex workers, said
Regina Bernadin, DCF's statewide human-trafficking coordinator.
``Miami is known as a destination city
for human trafficking, and sporting events are generally recognized
by the experts as magnets for prostitution,'' said Trudy Novicki,
who heads Kristi House...
Throughout the year, Miami-Dade police
hold between 15 and 20 operations targeting underage prostitution.
For major events, such as the Super Bowl, the department works with
the FBI's Innocence Lost Task Force.
``At large events such as this, we
increase our presence . . . with the ultimate goal being that no
children are sexually exploited,'' Maj. Raul Ubieta, who works with
the department's Strategic and Specialized Investigations Bureau,
said through a spokesman...
The outreach workers are organized into
eight teams, divvying up the Spanish-speakers and trying to have one
man each. In teams of two, three or four, the volunteers -- who came
from as far as New York City and Alabama -- spread out across
Miami-Dade -- from South Beach to Hialeah to Downtown Miami....
Marbin Miller And Jennifer Lebovich
The Miami Herald
Feb. 5, 2010
Added:
Feb. 08, 2010
North Carolina, USA
Human-Trafficking Ring Busted in Wilson
Wilson County Sheriff
Wayne Gay says that investigators arrested a man Thursday for
allegedly running a prostitution ring with ties to human
trafficking, according to media reports.
WITN News reports that
Felipe Ramirez Chavez faces a misdemeanor charge of maintaining a
place for prostitution. Chavez was being held in the Wayne County
Jail Saturday under a $1,000 bond and has also been placed placed
under a detainer by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Gay told WITN that a
few weeks ago, acting on tips about a prostitution ring, deputies
raided a house on U.S. Highway 301 and found one woman. Information
from that raid led them to arrest Chavez at his residence at 2101
Fair Place in Wilson.
Two women were found at
Chavez's residence, but investigators believe that three or four
women lived there, Gay said.
The sheriff said he
believes this prostitution ring is unique in the county.
Chavez's first court
appearance was set for March 5.
WRAL
Feb. 6, 2010
Added:
Feb. 06, 2010
Missouri, USA
|
 |
|
Flor, 37, talks about her experience as a
labor trafficking victim: "I thought slaves were only in
the past, just in history. It happens every day."
From:
A New Slavery: Border Crossing -
Photo Gallery -
The Kansas City Star
Photo: Keith Myers / Kansas City Star |
Kansas City Star’s Human Trafficking Series
Wins Award in Kansas
The
Kansas City Star’s series on human trafficking in America has won
the 2009 Burton W. Marvin Kansas News Enterprise Award.
The
award was presented Friday to reporters Laura Bauer, Mike McGraw and
Mark Morris during the annual William Allen White Day festivities on
the University of Kansas campus.
“We
are again happy to honor quality journalism in Kansas,” said Ann
Brill, dean of KU’s journalism school. “The winners this year
represent the impact that great storytelling can have in a
community.”
The
five-part series, published in December, found that the U.S.
government is failing to find and help thousands of human
trafficking victims. According to the judges, the series reflected a
“commitment to serving the public and demonstrated initiative on
acting on that commitment.”
The Kansas City Star
Feb. 05, 2010
See
also:
The Kansas City Star’s week-long human
trafficking series from December of 2009
The Kansas City Star
Dec., 2009
See also:
LibertadLatina
Note
We would like to applaud the Kansas City Star for their December,
2009 special series of articles on human trafficking. Their work was
one of the few mainstream English language print articles in recent years that focused on the fact that
Mexico, Guatemala and other regions of Latin America confront a
major sex and labor trafficking crisis. They also highlighted the
fact that Latin Americans comprise the majority of human trafficking
victims in the United States.
End Impunity Now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Feb. 06/07, 2010
Added:
Feb. 06, 2010
Haiti
Port-au-Prince - Former U.S. President
Bill Clinton urged the U.S. and Haitian governments on Friday to
resolve the case of 10 American missionaries accused of trying to
take children illegally out of quake-hit Haiti.
Clinton, named by the United Nations to
coordinate relief efforts for survivors of the devastating Jan. 12
quake, made the appeal during a visit to the shattered Haitian
capital, Port-au-Prince, his second since last month's disaster.
The accused U.S. missionaries, most of
whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, were arrested a week
ago and charged on Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal
association.
Haitian authorities say the group tried
to take a busload of 33 Haitian children across the border into the
Dominican Republic without any papers proving the minors were
orphans or any official permission to take them out of the country.
The missionaries deny any intentional
wrongdoing and say they were only trying to help children left
destitute by the Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000
people, injured some 300,000 and left over a million more homeless.
The Americans' case is diplomatically
sensitive and aid groups complain it has distracted media and world
attention away from the struggle to feed and shelter hundreds of
thousands of Haitians camped out in wrecked streets.
"What's important now is for the
government of Haiti and the government of the United States to get
together and work through this," Clinton told CNN in Port-au-Prince.
He said he understood the Haitian
government's efforts to try to protect its children from possible
child traffickers and unlawful adoptions following the catastrophic
quake.
But he also said the missionaries could
be telling the truth when they argued they simply wanted to help the
children and did not mean to violate any laws. Evidence has emerged
that many of the intercepted children were not orphans but were
given up by parents who wanted them to have a better life [Note that
the missionaries at-first stated to the press that all of the
children were orphans -
LL].
"The government of Haiti ... (is) not
looking for some big fight here. They just want to protect their
children and they also want to make sure they have a good inventory
so they don't send children away that maybe have an aunt or an uncle
that have an income," Clinton said...
Reuters
Feb. 5, 2010
Added:
Feb. 06, 2010
Texas, USA
Deputies Investigating Alleged Abduction, Sex
Assault
Houston -- A nine-year-old girl
was approached and nearly abducted at an apartment complex in
southwest Houston Saturday. Her family is thankful she's safe, but
police haven't found the man who investigators say tried to lure her
away.
The Precinct 5 Constables Office was
called out to the University Apartments on Beechnut near Fondren at
around 2pm. When they arrived, they found the shaken nine-year-old
girl. She told authorities the man lured her to the back of the
apartment complex by asking her to help him find his cat.
When he got back there, authorities say
the man made a sexual advance on the girl and tried to get her into
his truck.
Fortunately, she managed to escape and
ran and reported the incident. Neighbors meantime, are mad.
"What I think about it is that if I see
him, you won't have to worry about him," said neighbor Joe York.
"You'll never have to worry about him again."
"It's kind of worries me because you
know it can happen to anybody," said neighbor Erik Benitez. "Just
like it happened to a little kid, it could happen to any grownup."
The suspect is described as an Hispanic
man between 35 and 40 years old. He was last seen driving a blue
Toyota truck. Deputy constables, as well as Houston police officers,
searched the neighborhood Saturday afternoon, but he was not
located.
We are told HPD's juvenile sex crimes
unit has been notified. Anyone with information is encouraged to
call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
KTRK
Jan. 24, 2010
Added:
Feb. 06, 2010
Florida, USA
|
 |
|
Composite image of suspect |
Deputies Investigating Alleged Abduction, Sex
Assault
The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office is
asking for help with their investigation of reported abduction and
sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl in the area of Palmetto Circle
in Port Charlotte.
Deputies took the call about the alleged
abduction shortly after 9:30 p.m. Thursday. The girl said she was
walking by herself and that two men forced her into their car.
The girl says both of the men were in
their mid twenties.
She said one of the men was Hispanic and
described him as tall and skinny with black spiky hair and wearing a
red shirt.
She told deputies the other man was
white and wore glasses. The girl described that man as tall and
thin, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.
She said both suspects speak English
with a Spanish accent.
The vehicle is an older white 4-door
car, with dark tinted windows, and a reflective stripe down the
side.
If anyone has information about this
case, please call Detective Ian Alvarez at (941) 575-5361 or Crime
Stoppers at 800-780-TIPS.
WBBH
Feb 05, 2010
Added:
Feb. 05, 2010
Georgia, USA
|
 |
|
Thomas E. Perez
Assistant Attorney - General - Civil Rights Division -
U.S. Department of Justice: "...Human
trafficking will not be tolerated in the United
States..." |
Citizen of Mexico Sentenced for Role in
Federal Sex Trafficking Conspiracy
Atlanta - Miguel Rugerio, 28, a Mexican national, was sentenced to
federal prison today by United States District Judge Clarence Cooper
on charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and related
immigration offenses, and of transporting one of the victims of the
conspiracy, a young Mexican woman identified as “N.M.,” in
interstate and foreign commerce for purposes of prostitution.
Acting United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said of today’s
sentencing, “This defendant lured young women from Mexico with the
promise of money and legitimate jobs and then forced them into
prostitution and repulsive living conditions. He is now going to
federal prison for five years and then will be expelled from the
United States.”
In
Washington, D.C., Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for
the Civil Rights Division, said, “This defendant deprived vulnerable
victims of their freedom, their dignity and their civil rights.
Today’s sentencing should send a clear message to would-be
perpetrators that human trafficking will not be tolerated in the
United States.”
“Few
crimes are more repugnant than sex trafficking helpless and innocent
victims,” said Kenneth Smith, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S.
Immigration and Customs (ICE) Enforcement Office of Investigations
in Atlanta.
“This
sentencing is gratifying given the horrible conditions the victims
in this case were forced to endure. While we can’t erase the
suffering these women experienced, by aggressively investigating and
prosecuting these cases, ICE and its law enforcement partners are
sending a powerful warning about the consequences facing those
responsible for such schemes.”
FBI
Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Greg Jones said, “Today’s sentencing
of Mr. Rugerio provides further opportunities for law enforcement
agencies such as the FBI, as well as the many and varied victim
assistance based agencies, to highlight the growing crime problem
known as human trafficking. Mr. Rugerio will now have five years in
federal prison to consider the exploitation and victimization of
those that he brought in to the U.S. under false pretenses for
purposes of prostitution.”
Chicago Press Release
Feb. 04, 2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
The United States, The World, Haiti
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca:
…I’m the Ambassador-at-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking. Today, Secretary Clinton will chair the President’s
interagency task force. She’ll be joined by other members of the
task force, including the Attorney General, the secretaries of
Labor, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services; the USAID
Administrator, the Director of National Intelligence, as well as
representatives from the White House, Department of Defense,
Education, Agriculture, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.
This meeting,
which… is mandated under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, is
the first held under the Obama Administration. In today’s meeting,
we will look forward to a very candid and progressive discussion
that highlights the work that each agency is conducting individually
as well as collectively to combat modern slavery. In addition, it’s
a chance to preview the anti-trafficking efforts in the days, weeks,
and months ahead as we work together to make measured progress
against every form of exploitation, including forced labor, peonage,
and sexual servitude, in response to the President’s declaration of
January as Human Trafficking and Slavery Awareness and Prevention
Month.
[In regard to child trafficking in Haiti:]
Ambassador CdeBaca: We have begun to
– we’ve actually got funding out the door already to a group called
Heartland Alliance that’s part of the child cluster that’s one of
the more experienced U.S. counter-trafficking organizations. They
work with a lot of the trafficking victims in the Midwest. They’re
out of Chicago. But they also do counter-trafficking projects for –
with grant money from us around the world. And they’re stepping up
their activities in Haiti…
Ambassador CdeBaca:
…There’s been reports, that I think have been reported on in the
news as well, of men coming into some of the camps, using offers of
food or water to get girls to leave with them in trucks. Now,
obviously, we don’t have any hard evidence as to what’s happening to
those girls once they leave with those men, and so that’s why the
term “the notion of” trafficking…
What we’ve done in
the last three weeks is we’ve repositioned a number of those
projects. In the Dominican Republic, for instance, we’re working
with the Solidarity Center so that we can try to turn that project
around a little bit and have it catch, if there are folks that are
coming over the border in search of jobs, in search of work, that
they know their rights, that they know that they shouldn’t put
themselves into a situation where they can be exploited.
So we’re working on
the Dominican side with that project, and then we’re also moving
money into Haiti as far as trying to build up those child protection
brigades, as far as working with the groups such as the
Jean Robert Cadet Restavek Foundation
and others to try to make sure that we can have some things in place
to protect those children.
Question:
You asking for more money for Haiti? You said that previously you
had about $500,000 a year in projects. And I know you guys have –
don’t have yet an exact sum for assistance for Haiti. But do you
plan to ask for additional money to combat these kinds of – to
combat trafficking in Haiti?
Ambassador CdeBaca:
Well, we have 500,000 to begin with. We will reposition about
another a million, taking that from other projects, frankly. And so
we need to look at how we make sure that those projects, which – the
money of which hasn’t gone out the door yet. And those countries
don’t necessarily (inaudible) or not, now that we’re looking at the
Haitian side.
Obviously, we’re
looking at what the long-term funding needs are. We have about $20-,
$22 million in grant funds that we administer in the Trafficking
office. We work with our partners at USAID and at the International
Labor Affairs Bureau over at DOL, and we are shaking the trees right
now to figure out what money there is in this year’s budget, as
opposed to looking into the next year...
[The linked web page contains a video
recording of this presentation.]
Luis CdeBaca
Director, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
U.S. Department of State
Feb. 3, 2010
See also:
Changing Views: Government Promises Action
The Obama administration is weeks away from announcing a new surge —
this one aimed at escalating the war on human trafficking in
America.
“In January we are going to be announcing a major set of
initiatives,” Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security, told The Kansas City Star.
Napolitano disclosed the administration’s plans at the conclusion of
The Star’s six-month investigation exposing numerous failures in
America’s anti-trafficking battle.
Although details of the plan were not released, advocates and other
experts said they’re cautiously optimistic that this is the best
chance in years to address many of the problems revealed in the
newspaper’s five-part series. They’re also hopeful that the
administration, which has reached out to them and asked what changes
are needed, will correct structural flaws in the broken system.
“It is
time to go back to the drawing board and promote a more seamless,
coordinated plan,” said Florrie Burke, a nationally known advocate
for trafficking victims.
Other
experts said it’s also time for congressional oversight hearings on
the flagging decade-long struggle, and time to centralize an
anti-trafficking effort that is thinly spread across a vast
bureaucracy plagued by inter-agency wrangling and a lack of
coordination.
Part of: Human Trafficking in America | A Star series
Mark Morris, Mike Mcgraw And Laura Bauer
The Kansas City
Dec. 15, 2009
See also:
LibertadLatina
Commentary
|
 |
|
Chuck Goolsby |
We note for the record that the Obama Administration indicated in
December of 2009 that they would be presenting a major new
initiative to combat human trafficking during January of 2010. As of
February 3rd, 2010, that announcement had not yet happened.
It is
not hard to understand that an escalation in attempts at terrorism
within the U.S., as well as the Haitian earthquake emergency are
likely to be among the factors that have pushed back such an
announcement. It is concerning, though, that we see no sign in the
February 3, 2010 news conference comments of Luis CdeBaca, Director of the U.S.
State Department's Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons, that the Obama Administration is on the verge of
rolling-out
any such effort.
We hope that, whenever this action is taken (and even if it never
comes about), the Obama
Administration recognizes that, as Ambassador CdeBaca stated in a
December, 2009 press interview with the Kansas City Star, some 60%
of trafficking victims within the U.S. are from Latin America, and
a great many victims are trafficked across the Mexican / U.S.
border.
Currently, the attention to Haiti's emergency is very much in order. We note
that the world press has sounded the alarm bell about the risk of
child sex trafficking in the wake of the Haitian earthquake like
never before.
While the press, assisting governments and NGO organizations work
through the ongoing crisis in Haiti, we ask the world to also
remember that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children and
young women face an equally urgent risk of kidnapping, rape and sex trafficking
across Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet neither the U.S. federal
government nor the NGO community nor most major news entities in the English speaking world have
strongly acknowledged, nor have they reacted effectively to that harsh reality.
We hope that the press and the NGOs who get invited to attend events
such as the February 3rd Preview to the Annual Meeting of the
President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking
in Persons dare to ask the hard questions, as some reporters at the
event asked in regard to Haiti (see the linked event transcript).
The same questions need to be asked about U.S.
government policy and action in defense of human trafficking and
exploitation victims across the Americas, and indeed the world.
We are most concerned at this time about the deafening silence in
regard to Latin America's enormous problems with human exploitation
and slavery. That silence has existed not only during President
Obama's term, but it also occurred during the administration of
President George W. Bush.
When prominent academics, government leaders and press writers and
authors speak publicly about human trafficking, the focus is
invariably on the crisis in Europe, Asia, and to a lesser extent
Africa and domestic minor sex trafficking victims in the U.S. All of
these communities deserve, and have gotten attention.
Those who have not gotten attention are the women and children of
Latin America and the Caribbean where, as leading anti-trafficking
activist Teresa Ulloa, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking
in Women (CATW) for Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC)
notes, an estimated 50 million women and children are at-risk of
falling into the hands of human traffickers. As Ulloa further
states, some 5 million victims exist in Mexico alone.
Given that 60% of the trafficking victims in the U.S. are Latin
Americans, where is the U.S. government's attention to their crisis?
'Little Brown Maria Trapped in the Brothel' deserves our help
now!
Ignoring the issue allows the drug cartel financed
mega-traffickers to laugh all the way to the bank, because they know
that at least today, Uncle Sam is not even thinking about coming
after them. Nor, apparently, is Uncle Sam planning to defend and
rescue 'Maria' anytime soon.
We insist upon a change to that way of thinking. Does the fact that
poor indigenous and African descendent victims in Mexico and the
Dominican Republic are people of color really mean that CNN, U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and anti-trafficking NGOs who
receive federal funds can't ring the alarm bell and help put out the
fire, and must continually ignore this raging emergency?
We insist, among dozens of other items on our
to-do list, that the U.S. Government demand that Mexico and Japan
ACT NOW to rescue and restore the estimated 3,000 to 4,000
indigenous children who have been kidnapped with impunity by the
Japanese Yakuza mafias and taken to Japan to be sold as 'geishas' in
sexual slavery.
Giving attention to Haiti is a good start. Of course, hundreds of
thousands of trafficked children existed in Haiti before the
earthquake.
Where was the press then?
Writing from the middle of an anti-trafficking movement that is
maturing... but slowly!
End Impunity Now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Feb. 04/05, 2010
See also:
The United States
Obama's Slavery Czar
Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca fights
human slavery for a living...
...Whether it was farm workers, or women in brothels, the
percentages continue to be overwhelmingly Latino.
Sixty-plus per cent of the
[trafficking] victims in the U.S. are Hispanic.” ...
Lynn Sherr
The Daily Beast
Nov. 24, 2009
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti
|
|
|
Haitian music star Wycelf Jean
|
Wycelf Jean Reacts To Human
Trafficking Arrests In Haiti
In light of the tragedy in Haiti, a new problem is rising in
the capital of Port Au Prince, human trafficking.
Ten Americans were arrested Sunday on charges of human
trafficking after Haitian officials say they tried to take
33 Haitian children ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years
to the Dominican Republic without proper documentation and
permission.
Now outraged about the turmoil racking his country, Wyclef
Jean released a series of angry tweets denouncing the
traffickers saying, “My message to the child traffickers n
Haiti I give you my word we will hunt you Down one by one,
and you will be judge[d] with no Mercy!”
The civilians accused of trafficking are part of a Baptist
church in the U.S. and maintain that they were trying to
save abandoned and orphaned children and planned to relocate
them to safety.
They are being held at a government building until officials
determine if they should go before a judge.
Haiti's government has halted all adoptions for the time
being unless the adoption plans were set in motion before
the quake.
Danielle Canada
HipHipWired.com
Feb. 1, 2010
See also:
Wyclef Jean Volunteer Killed By
Haitian Car-Jacker
Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean was forced to deal with another
tragedy while helping desperate survivors of the Haiti
earthquake, after a volunteer for his
Yele Haiti
foundation was shot dead in a car-jacking.
The former Fugees star and native Haitian rushed to his
homeland when the massive tremor hit the nation earlier this
month, ravaging the poor country's infrastructure and
killing more than 150,000 people.
But Jean and his team of volunteers had to contend with more
than just the devastation left by the earthquake, they
witnessed the desperate lengths Haiti's people were going to
in a bid to survive - which ended in terrible consequences
for one young helper.
He explains, "Jo Jo was shot and killed on the second day we
were there. He was the victim of a car-jacking. I left him
alone for two hours and he was driving in the city.
"A guy stopped him and told him to get out of the car. No
one knows quite what happened next but he was shot twice and
killed instantly. The jacker didn't even want the car, he
just wanted to take the fuel."
And Jean is adamant he will never be able to forget the
horrific scenes he witnessed.
He says, "It looked like the apocalypse - there were bodies
everywhere. It's a sight that will stay with me for ever.
It's something you just can't put into words. I filmed
everything with a video camera because I was convinced
people would not believe what we told them."
www.StarPulse.com
Jan. 31st, 2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti, Puerto Rico
|
|
|
Ricky Martin arrives at the 52nd Annual
GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 31, 2010 in
Los Angeles, California.
Photo: Larry Busacca, Getty Images for NARAS |
Ricky Martin Has Haiti on His Mind
Amid the glamour of the red carpet, Ricky Martin's mind was
on Haiti.
The singer, who has been campaigning against human
trafficking for several years, just returned from the
island.
"Situations like this, unfortunately, people take advantage
and they start traffic human beings," he said. "It's very
intense down there, kids crying in the street, corpses
everywhere. It's going to take a while for things to get
back to normal."
Martin plans to start working with Habitat for Humanity to
start rebuilding homes in Haiti.
Marco R. della Cava
USA Today
Jan. 31, 2010
See also:
The Ricky Martin Foundation
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Missouri and Kansas, USA
Two Agencies Won't Seek Federal Funds in an
Effort Against Human Trafficking
Two local agencies - the Independence Police Department and Hope
House - received three-year Justice Department grants in 2006 but
will not reapply, officials said. The grants expired at the end of
last year.
It is unknown whether other local agencies will apply for grants,
according to Justice Department officials. New grants will be given
later this year.
Independence police didn’t reapply because detectives must focus on
other crimes, said Maj. Ken Jarnigan. Two detectives assigned to
human trafficking are now fighting cyber crimes, he said.
“It was a juggling act; which priority do we focus on?” Jarnigan
said. “We felt like our department and citizens would be better
served by them doing cyber crimes rather than human trafficking. In
a perfect world we would have tried to do both.”
Hope House CEO Mary Anne Metheny said in a statement that the
shelter would continue to provide services for victims eligible for
existing programs.
“However, we will no longer offer human trafficking training or
facilitate the coalition against human trafficking,” Metheny said.
The Kansas City Star reported in December that the U.S. attorney’s
office had stopped referring human trafficking victims to Hope House
after the shelter reportedly failed to fulfill some of its
obligations under the grant.
Although trafficking is considered a coastal phenomenon, more
alleged traffickers — 36 in the past three years — have been
prosecuted by federal authorities in western Missouri than anywhere
else in the nation. One Kansas City case, involving Giant Labor
Solutions, is thought to be the largest labor trafficking ring
uncovered in U.S. history.
But the absence of federal money for the human trafficking task
force won’t change what local authorities are doing, said U.S.
Attorney Beth Phillips.
“The task force is still fully functioning,” Phillips said. “It’s
still meeting and investigating and prosecuting cases. Human
trafficking investigations remain a priority of our office.”
Laura Bauer and Mike McGraw
The Kansas City Star
Feb. 02, 2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti
Bandas de Violadores Aterran a las
Haitianas
Bands of Rapists Terrorize Haitian
Women
Los criminales
recorren como alimañas los campamentos de desplazados para elegir a
sus víctimas. La policía se confiesa incapaz de proteger a las
mujeres.
When night falls,
criminal men with lanterns roam the refugee camps in search of their
victims. The police confess that they cannot protect all women...
www.publico.es
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti
Aumenta a un Millón la
Cifra de Niños Huérfanos
Earthquake Pushes Number of Haitian
Orphans to 1 Million
El número de niños
huérfanos tras el terremoto que devastó Haití se ha duplicado y
alcanza actualmente el millón de afectados, según un informe de la
Comisión Europea.
El Universal
Mexico City
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti, The Dominican Republic
Haitiana Recupera Hijo Robado en Cabo Haitiano y
Vendido en Dominicana
Haitian Woman Recovers Her Child,
Kidnapped in Cape Haitien. Child had been sold in the Dominican
Republic
Tras ser
secuestrados en Haití, muchos menores son vendidos para luego ser
explotados en las calles de República Dominicana, como pedigueños o
en actividades de prostitución, como fuera el caso del hijo de
Cariné Oguí Pié, quien recuperó en esta ciudad, al norte de
Dominicana, a su hijo de siete años, que fuera robado en Cabo
Haitiano y trasladado, vendido y obligado a trabajar en las calles
santiagueras como mendigo.
La Nacion Dominicana
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti
Niños Haitianos Pululan
por las Calles
Haitian Children Mass in the
Streets
La procuradora del
Tribunal de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes de Santiago, Antia Beato,
estimó ayer necesario que instituciones públicas y privadas realicen
esfuerzos conjuntos para resolver el drama que representa la
cantidad de menores de origen haitiano que pernocta en las calles de
esta ciudad, al ser traficados desde su país.
www.listindiario.com.do
Feb. 03, 2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Haiti
Miles de Haitianas, Sin Servicios Salud y Con Mayor Riesgo de
Violencia Sexual
Thousands of Haitian Women Lack Health Services and Risk Sexual
Violence
Miles de haitianas
no pueden acceder ni a los servicios de salud reproductiva ni a sus
métodos habituales de planificación familiar y afrontan un mayor
riesgo de violencia y de explotación sexual.
EFE
Feb. 02, 2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Indonesia
Red de Prostitución Infantil que
Operaba por Facebook fue Desmantelada
A
Prostitution Network Selling 15- and 16-year-old Girls, Operating on
FaceBook, is Taken Down by the Police in Jakarta.
La Policía de
Indonesia arrestó a dos supuestos proxenetas que administraban la
organización.
EFE
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Spain
Las Niñas Agredidas en el
Bus Escolar, Invitadas a Irse de su Instituto
Two 12-year-old Girls Sexually
Assaulted on School Bus are Invited to Leave their School
Una ya ha sido
trasladada a un centro concertado.
La otra víctima de la agresión no puede pagarlo y convive a diario
con cuatro de sus agresores.
www.20Minutos.es
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Spain
Una Madre se Enfrenta a
30 Años por Prostituir a Sus Hijas, Menores de Edad
A
Mother Faces 30 Years in Prison for Exhibitionism and for
Prostituting Her Underage Daughters
El padre también se
sentará en el banquillo por mantener supuestamente relaciones
sexuales delante de las pequeñas
www.diariodesevilla.es
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Brazil
Campaña Contra la Explotación Sexual Será Lanzada en Rio de Janeiro,
el 8
Rio
de Janeiro Will Start a New Campaign Against Sexual Exploitation
February 8th
Con el slogan "Explotación
Sexual de Niñas/os y Adolescentes es Crimen.
www.adital.com.br/s
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Bolivia
Víctimas de Abuso Sexual en Hogar Vida ya Son 42
Forty Two Victims of Sexual Abuse Have Been Discovered in an
Orphanage Run by Evangelical Christians in the town of Sipe Sipe
El personal sabía desde hace tres años que los mayores
violaban a los más pequeños
Staff remained silent for at least the past three years while
knowing that children between the ages of 4 and 13 were were being
raped at the Life Center.
www.lostiempos.com
Feb. 03,
2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Texas, USA
|
 |
|
Benito
Vargas |
Fugitive Finder: Sex Trafficking Suspect
Benito Vargas has a history of human
trafficking and is currently wanted on Suspicion of Aggravated
Sexual Assault of a Child.
Investigators said he found his latest
victim in Jalisco, Mexico, and his mother and sister both
participated in abusing the girl.
On October 27, 2009, while in Jalisco,
Vargas persuaded a 16-year-old girl to leave her home and return
with him to his home 210 W. 10th Street in San Juan.
Vargas took the girl to Matamoros and
arranged for her to be smuggled into the United States.
Upon arriving at the San Juan [Texas]
home, investigators said Vargas repeatedly assaulted, verbally
abused and raped the girl.
The teen was forced to wake up at 5
a.m., bathe three children who lived in the house with Vargas'
mother and sister, and walk the children to a nearby school.
The girl was also expected to complete
daily chores including preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Investigators said the teen tried to
defend herself and received countless threats that she would be
killed or arrested for being in the U.S. illegally.
On December 13, 2009, the girl was
kicked out of the house.
With no relatives, friends or anywhere
to go, she sat by the curb in front of the house for two days and
did not eat.
At night, she would sneak onto the
property and sleep on an old sofa in the front yard.
Police believe Vargas is in Mexico along
the U.S./Mexico border.
Vargas is described as a 23-year-old
Hispanic male with brown eyes and black hair.
He is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs
180 pounds.
Vargas also goes by the name Benito
Cordero-Vargas.
Call the San Juan Crime Stoppers line at
(956) 283-TIPS if you know how to find him.
Benito's mother, Ofelia Vargas, has been
arrested for not reporting the abuse.
Benito's sister, Belen Vargas, was
already in custody on unrelated charges and is now facing assault
charges.
ValleyCentral.com
Feb. 01, 2010
Added:
Feb. 04, 2010
Texas, USA
ICE: Houston a Hub for Human Trafficking
HOUSTON -- U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agents have conducted what they call an
"unprecedented" criminal investigation into Houston transport
businesses suspected of illegally smuggling people into the county.
On Tuesday, 22 people were arrested and
charged with using their businesses to transport recently smuggled
aliens. Eighty-one illegal immigrants were also arrested and have
been placed in removal proceedings.
The three-month investigation dubbed
"Night Moves" targeted both transport businesses suspected of
housing immigrants, as well as the individual drivers who move them.
ICE agents say Houston has become a growing hub for human
trafficking. In one location, immigrants were guarded with weapons,
pit bulls and surveillance cameras.
In addition to the arrests, ICE agents
also seized 32 vehicles, 18 weapons, and $45,000 cash.
Katherine Whaley
Feb. 3, 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
Haiti
 |
|
A girl stands inside an open air market in
Port-au-Prince.
Photo:
Reuters / Shannon
Stapleton
|
Haitian Women Lose Out
In Post-Quake "Survival
Of The Strongest"
In one of the camps sheltering the homeless in Haiti's
earthquake-stricken capital, a group of male volunteers stands guard
over hundreds of teenage girls and young women as they sleep during the
night.
The women there are so afraid of being attacked that they have organized
the protection themselves, according to ActionAid, which says several
women have already reported cases of rape or sexual abuse to their staff
in the camp.
Elsewhere in Port-au-Prince, women have left food lines empty-handed
after groups of men raided food distribution sites watched by police who
were too few and too powerless to stop them...
Aid workers and human rights activists are increasingly worried that in
a country where women's rights are routinely trampled upon or ignored,
women are again being marginalized. This time, they fear women are
losing out on their fair share of desperately-needed aid following the
devastating quake that killed up to 200,000 people and left nearly 1
million more homeless in the Caribbean island nation...
Loss of Rights Icons
Experts with experience of responding to natural disasters say women
and children are especially vulnerable after such calamities.
But this is particularly true in a country where one-third of women
and girls said they had suffered physical or sexual violence, and more
than 50 percent of those who had experienced violence were under the age
of 18 -- such were the findings of a study carried out by the
Inter-American Development Bank in Haiti in 2006.
In one report, a Swiss doctor described how he treated a girl --
who, he said was at most, 12 years old -- for vaginal lacerations after
she had been pulled out from under the rubble and raped by her rescuer.
The account was a harrowing reminder of how precarious life can be for
women and girls in Haiti, Bien-Aime said.
On top of their battle to deal with the aftermath of quake, Haitian
women lost three of their best champions in the Jan. 12 disaster.
Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne-Marie Coriolan were women's
rights icons who were instrumental in the campaign to criminalize rape,
experts say.
The law was eventually changed in 2005.
"What the loss of these women for Haiti means is really the loss of
half of the women's movement which was a powerful movement but
nevertheless very, very small in numbers, very limited in capacity and
resources," Bien-Aime told AlertNet.
"Each of these women who died contributed enormously to the lives of
women in terms of changing laws and seeking justice for women who have
been violated in some way whether it's domestic violence or rape. They
were irreplaceable in the context of Haiti."
Merlet, who held a senior position in the Ministry for the Rights of
Women, was one of the first women to document cases of rape during
Haiti's 1991-4 military regime and identify its use as a political
weapon, Amnesty's Ducos said.
Marcelin founded Kay Fanm, which for many years operated the only
shelter in the country for women who had been battered by their husbands
and boyfriends. It later opened another shelter for survivors of sexual
violence.
Coriolan founded one of Haiti's largest women's advocacy groups,
Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn (SOFA).
Against a backdrop of widespread impunity and poverty, these
organizations were important in ensuring that survivors of sexual abuse
received immediate access to adequate medical care -- anti-retrovirals,
contraceptive pills -- as well as psychological support and legal
advice.
The deaths of these leading activists were a blow to Haiti's women's
rights movement, but Ducos said many women were part of this movement
which despite the challenges continues to evolve and grow.
Katie Nguyen
AlertNet
29 Jan 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
Haiti, Latin America
|
 |
|
Ecuador's President Rafael Correa answers
questions from journalists next to Haitian President Rene
Preval, during a news conference in Port-au-Prince January
29, 2010. |
Shipment From Puerto Rico Unexpected Blessing
For Orphans And The Hungry
Today
World Concern is beginning to feed
3,000 additional people and provide emotional support to orphans
because of a donor from Puerto Rico. The donor decided to help those
suffering in Haiti and coordinate the shipment of two barges full of
food, tarps, clothes, toys and other emergency supplies to Haiti.
Though it was not neatly packaged, this aid has provided World
Concern yet another opportunity to immediately deliver food to
hundreds of hungry families. World Concern is delivering the toys
included in the shipment to an orphanage.
"There are a lot of people around the world who want to help," said
World Concern President David Eller. "This is a great example of the
world's generosity to Haiti."
In the meantime, World Concern waits on massive supplies of aid to
be released by larger clearinghouses, hopefully within the next day.
"It has been frustrating knowing that resources have landed in the
country and systems have been delayed in getting these supplies
released," said Eller...
Seattle-based World Concern has worked in Haiti for more than 30
years and currently provides hope to 125,000 people. Our staff of
more than 100 in Haiti work with the poor includes microfinance,
agriculture, disaster response and small business development. World
Concern works with the poor in 24 countries, with the goal of
transforming the lives of those we touch, leading them on a path to
self-sustainability.
For more information and to donate, visit
www.worldconcern.org or call
1-866-530-5433 (LIFE)
World Concern - USA
Via Reuters' Alertnet.org
Jan. 29, 2010
A group of American Baptists have become
embroiled in the center of a growing fear in Haiti after the
devastating earthquake - human trafficking.
Ten men and women were detained in
Malpasse while allegedly attempting to cross the border into the
Dominican Republic with 33 children in tow without proper paperwork,
according to officials.
"No children can leave Haiti without
proper authorization, and these people did not have that
authorization," Haiti's social affairs minister, Yves Cristalin,
told Reuters.
The church group, most of whom are from
Idaho, were arrested Friday night. They claim to have been taking
the children - ranging in age from two months to 12 years old - to
an orphanage in the neighboring nation.
"In this chaos the government is in
right now, we were just trying to do the right thing," said Laura
Silsby, a spokesperson for group, to the Associated Press.
The Baptists were part of the "Haitian
Orphan Rescue Mission," Silsby said. It's goal is to save abandoned
children and bring them to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach
resort in the Dominican Republic, which the group claims to be
converting into an orphanage.
"We had permission from the Dominican
Republic government to bring the children to an orphanage that we
have there," she told Reuters.
"They accuse us of children
trafficking," Sillsby said. "This is something I would never do. We
were not trying to do something wrong."
Haitian officials fear child trafficking
could be underway following the devastating earthquake.
Speaking to CNN last week, Prime
Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he has received reports of kids
being sold, and he believed human organs were also being taken from
victims of the quake for profit.
But aid group UNICEF was quick to refute
the claims, saying child trafficking is a major concern in the
impoverished nation, but there is no hard evidence to back up the
government official's claims.
Michael Sheridan
New York Daily News
Jan. 31, 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
Texas, USA
[Texas Supreme Court to Make Decision on the
Rights of Prostituted Children]
Sixteen-year-old Angela was said to be a “case study” in the
difficulty domestic human trafficking victims represent to law
enforcement.
Though first forced into prostitution at age 11, it would be several
years before local police would discover her. But instead of being
rescued as a child victim, she was placed into the juvenile system
in 2008 on a theft charge after a man accused her of stealing his
wallet and pants. Only after first prosecuting her as a criminal —
due in part, they said, to her uncooperativeness — did law
enforcement recognize her as a child victim. Some months later her
full story came out.
County officials said last summer that ‘Angela,’ diagnosed with
hepatitis and HIV, was finally in a “safe place” getting counseling
and medical attention.
Some would like to see child victims jump straight to the help line,
and a decision pending with the Texas Supreme Court could move
things strongly in that direction, according to Dottie Laster, a New
Braunfels-based advocate fighting against human trafficking and the
sexual exploitation of children.
The case involves a girl identified as B.W., taken from her mother
at age 11 and placed with Child Protective Services. After running
away from CPS, she was picked up by Houston Police Department
officers two years later after they observed her trying to sell
herself on the street. She was booked on charges of prostitution.
Later, after her age of 13 became known, she was placed in the
juvenile system and charged with delinquency for committing
prostitution instead of returning her to CPS.
Attorney Ann Johnson argued that the child should have never been
put on the “prosecutorial train.” That state law holds that children
under the age of 14 cannot consent to sex. Period.
“Despite their discovery that one of the passengers on that train
was a 13-year-old, mentally deficient child with undeniable evidence
of sexual exploitation no one to this day has pulled the emergency
stop cord to say, ‘Wait. We’re supposed to be handling this issue
differently’” Johnson said...
“You can protect a child when they’re in danger without charging
them with a crime,” Laster said, adding that the outcome in the case
could transform how state law enforcement responds to child victims.
“I believe if they rule to protect the victim that it could greatly
change the way juveniles are protected in Texas; if they rule to
punish the victim, it could set us back years and cause harm to many
more juveniles, or minors, children. However you want to say it, I
still look at them as children.”
And if Texas judges find their way to the federal mindset, they will
discover that “any child in commercial sex is considered a victim of
trafficking,” Laster said.
Of course, this is Texas. Worse. This is Houston, Texas, we're
talking about.
The city was pegged last year as the national hub in child
trafficking. Judging from the position of the DA's office, reform
there — despite the training that Laster, now working with
MillionKids.org and running her own consulting group, has
given many of its law-enforcement officers - may come most
grudgingly.
Greg Harman
The San Antonio Current
Jan. 30, 2010
Added:
Jan. 31, 2010
Mexico
Niñez cada vez más expuesta a migración y
trata
Children are Ever-More
Exposed to the Migration and Trafficking
México DF, - Esther es una niña
guatemalteca de cuatro años de dad que durante varios días viajó a
través de México con la finalidad de llegar a Estados Unidos para
reencontrarse con sus padres, quienes pagaron a una “coyote” para
que la acompañara.
Antes de partir, la “coyote” le dio
instrucciones para responder a los interrogatorios de la migra
mexicana: tendría que guardar silencio, mientras que su acompañante
fingiría ser su madre. También tendría que “hablar como mexicana” y
aprender el himno nacional de México.
Sin embargo, en un retén de Coahuila a
Esther le preguntaron que si traía “pisto” y ella respondió que sí,
evidenciando no ser mexicana, pues en algunas partes de Centro
América “pisto” significa dinero. Fue entonces cuando las detuvieron
y Esther fue repatriada a Guatemala.
Esto es solo un pequeño esbozo del
contenido de la publicación “Migración sueños y esperanzas del sur”,
divulgado por la organización chiapaneca Melel Xojobal, que muestra
la migración en la frontera sur, principalmente de niña y niños que
viajan de Centroamérica a México para alcanzar el sueño americano...
Narce Santibáñez Alejandre
CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Jan. 29, 2010
Added:
Jan. 31, 2010
Mexico
Tráfico de Influencias Beneficia Pederastas en
Oaxaca
Impunidad en el caso
del Instituto San Felipe
Influence Peddling
Benfits Pedophiles in Oaxaca State
Impunity Continues in
the San Felipe Childcare Center Sex Abuse Scandal
México DF, - Han pasado tres años desde
el abuso cometido contra el hijo de Leticia Valdés Martell cuando
tenía cuatro años edad, en el Instituto San Felipe en Oaxaca, y el
caso sigue impune. Los agresores siguen en libertad a pesar de que
fueron plenamente identificados por el niño.
En conferencia de prensa, la señora
Valdés Martell explicó que el Instituto nunca fue clausurado y la
única detenida, Magdalena Rufina García Soto, quien entregaba al
niño para ser abusado, podría salir en libertad, porque la Tercera
Sala Penal del Tribunal de Justicia del Estado de Oaxaca ha
retrasado por más de medio año la resolución de confirmar o
incrementar la sentencia que se dictó por 10 años.
En lo que respecta a Gabriel Constantino
García (esposo de la directora Yolanda León Ramírez) y Salvador
Pérez Ramírez (maestro de computación), ambos violadores del niño,
siguen prófugos, pues el Ejecutivo estatal no ha consumado las
órdenes de aprehensión...
Cirenia Celestino Ortega
CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Jan. 29, 2010
Added:
Jan. 31, 2010
Florida, USA
West Palm Beach Vigil Brings Attention to
Stash Houses for Sex Slaves
West Palm Beach - Rick Rose was
suspicious of the constant flow of cars visiting a small-frame house
next to his well-appointed bed and breakfast in one of the city's
trendiest urban neighborhoods.
"We thought it was drug-dealing," he
said of the reason he summoned police.
So, the president of the Grandview
Heights Neighborhood Association was understandably stunned when
federal agents raided the house, saying it was used as a brothel by
a sophisticated ring that brought young Mexican women into the
United States and forced them to work as sex slaves.
"It sounds weird to say, but in general
they were very nice people," he said of his former neighbors. "I
guess we're all a little bit naive about what's going on around us."
Around 7 p.m. Thursday, 20 people with
flashlights gathered at the Armory Art Center across from the house
on Lake Avenue to draw attention to the illegal activity that often
goes unnoticed.
While federal agents two years ago shut
down the ring that also used three other West Palm Beach houses, the
illicit trade still flourishes elsewhere in the city, said Renee
Morrison, a Palm Beach activist who organized the vigil.
"The point of this is that we have a
form of terrorism in our neighborhoods," she said. People, she said,
have to get involved to stop it...
...According to agents who were involved
in the 2008 raid of the ring that extended from here to Homestead to
Fort Myers, it's often hard to detect. The houses appear to be
normal residences...
The ring was busted when one of the
victims began cooperating with federal authorities. Eventually,
another victim led them to the house with the picket fence on Lake
Avenue. She was initially smuggled into the United States when she
was 14 and taken to Queens, N.Y., then Atlanta and then Miami, wrote
Jonathan Cruz Camacho, an agent for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement. To keep her in line, her husband/pimp would
regularly beat her.
She was moved often between stash houses
on the state's east and west coasts. Two here were on Wellington
Street, off Mercer Avenue, and another was on Bradley Street, off
Parker Avenue south of Southern Boulevard. She was taken to the Lake
Avenue house to turn $25 tricks, Camacho wrote. She told agents she
made about $2,500 a week.
Ultimately, a global positioning device
planted on a van used to transport the nine women led agents to the
various houses. Six people were charged.
Three - Elodia Capilla Diego, Sergio
Gonzalez Ramos and Marcelino Berduo-Lopez - listed the Lake Avenue
house as their address. Diego and Ramos are serving five-year
sentences. Berduo-Lopez is serving a 13-year sentence.
Two others - Arturo Rojas-Gonzalez and
Raymunda Torres - were sentenced to five years in prison. Timoteo
Reyes-Perez, whom the immigration bureau identified as the brutal
husband/pimp of the woman who was smuggled into the country when she
was 14, is still at large.
Jane Musgrave
The Palm Beach Post
Jan. 28, 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
Massachusetts, USA
Accused Rapist Deported Before Facing
Indictment and Trial
Illegal immigrant makes bail; feds send him
home to Guatemala
Weymouth - Defense and prosecution were ready for Genesis Orrego’s
arraignment on child rape in superior court. Orrego was charged with
molesting a 10-year-old neighbor his girlfriend often babysat in
Weymouth.
But Orrego, who faced charges of rape of a child with force and
indecent assault and battery of a child under 14, wasn’t there. He was
in federal custody, and the following week he was deported to his native
Guatemala.
He had been freed on $10,000 bail on the local charge,
turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and they
were doing their job – deporting him out of the country.
Norfolk County prosecutors knew Orrego, also identified in court as
Genesis Orrego Gonzales, was in the country illegally, and said at his
earlier arraignment in district court that ICE had placed a detainer on
him. Orrego told police he had been in the U.S. for more than 10 years
after walking for four months from Guatemala to Texas.
When he made his $10,000 bail, which prosecutors had requested be
$100,000, he was transferred into ICE custody on July 27, according to
immigration officials.
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office expected him at his
arraignment in superior court in Dedham on Sept. 24 after being indicted
by a grand jury. Spokesman David Traub said the district attorney’s
office was in contact with ICE and filed paperwork to make Orrego
available for the Sept. 24 arraignment. They found out that wasn’t the
case that day.
“It was his ability to meet the $10,000 bail that put him into ICE
custody,” Traub said...
Prosecutors can argue at arraignment that an immigrant with ties
outside the country is a flight risk.
“In this case and other cases, we argue for high cash bail, but we
don’t control what is set,” Traub said.
Allison Manning
The Patriot Ledger
Jan. 19, 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
Florida, USA
Previously Deported Sex Offender Indicted for
Reentry Into the U.S.
Miami - A 30-year-old Mexican national
was indicted Thursday on charges of reentering the U.S. after having
been lawfully removed following a U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) investigation.
According to the indictment and a
previous complaint affidavit filed with the court, Celestino
Ramirez-Hernandez was found in the U.S. on Nov. 19, 2009, after
having been removed from the United States on March 30, 2002.
Statements made in court during a
detention hearing held January 14, 2010, indicated that
Ramirez-Hernandez had been convicted in 2001of statutory rape of a
child under the age of 16.
He was sentenced to 10 years’
imprisonment, but was allowed to serve the sentence on probation.
The defendant was physically removed
from the U.S. on March 30, 2002, and was barred permanently from
returning to the U.S.
Thereafter, Ramirez-Hernandez reentered
the U.S. on an unknown date. Using the alias of Leonel Lopez, he was
subsequently convicted in 2006 of grand theft and possession of a
stolen/forged driver’s license.
While under court supervision, it was
discovered that Leonel Lopez was actually Ramirez-Hernandez, a
convicted sex offender. Statements made in court indicated that he
failed to register as a sex offender and was convicted of this
offense.
While the Ramirez-Hernandez was
approaching completion of his four-year sentence in a Miami-Dade
detention facility for failure to register as a sex offender, an ICE
agent and deportation officer assigned to ICE’s Criminal Alien
Program (CAP) interviewed Ramirez-Hernandez.
Through ICE’s Secure Communities
partnership, the agents and officers ran his fingerprints through
DHS and FBI databases and confirmed the defendant’s sex conviction
and prior removal.
Subsequently, ICE officers and agents
placed an immigration detainer on the defendant to ensure he would
not be released from custody.
On Jan. 11, 2010, ICE officers and
agents arrested him on a criminal complaint prior to the filing of
the indictment.
If convicted, Ramirez-Hernandez faces a
maximum of 20 years in prison.
EthiopianReview.com
Jan. 27, 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
The United States
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Crime Blotter
Excerpts:
Jan. 26, 2010
- Agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near Tucson, Arizona.
...The subject had multiple prior convictions for sex offenses in
the State of California, and had been previously removed from the
United States.
Jan. 25, 2010
- Tucson Sector – Agents arrested an illegal alien from Mexico near
Douglas, Arizona. ...The subject had a prior conviction for lewd and
lascivious acts with a child in the State of California and had been
previously removed from the United States.
Jan. 21, 2010
- Agents arrested an illegal alien from Ukraine near Crookston,
Minnesota. Records checks revealed the subject had multiple felony
convictions, was a convicted sex offender, and had been previously
removed from the United States.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
Jan. 27, 2010
Added: Jan. 31, 2010
Texas, USA
|
 |
|
Sketch of suspect |
Harris County Sheriff's Office:
Man Exposes Himself To Girls
Spring - A man who claimed to be an
undercover police officer exposed himself to two girls, KPRC Local 2
reported Friday.
Harris County sheriff's deputies said
the man approached two girls, ages 7 and 10, near the intersection
of Long Pine Drive and Ridge Crest Drive in Spring on Dec. 20.
The man, who was driving a blue car,
pulled up alongside the girls and told them he was an undercover
police officer, detectives said.
Investigators said the man got out of
the car, asked the girls what they were doing in the neighborhood
and asked if they were using drugs.
The man patted the girls down, officials
said.
One of the girls asked to see his badge
and he exposed himself to them, detectives said. He then got back
into his car and left.
The man was described as Hispanic and 20
to 30 years old.
Anyone with information is asked to call
the
Harris County Sheriff's Office at
713-529-4216 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
KPRC
Jan. 29, 2010
Added: Jan. 28, 2010
The United States
 |
|
Ambassador Mark P. Lagon
speaks on human trafficking in Ohio - Jan. 11, 2010
Photo: Tom Dodge - The
Columbus Dispatch |
Polaris Project Announces Executive
Transition
The Board of Directors of Polaris Project announces that
Ambassador Mark P. Lagon is leaving the position of
Executive Director and CEO on February 1, 2010. "I have had
the privilege of helping direct a truly driven and
innovative organization," said Ambassador Lagon. "Polaris
Project continues to inspire and lead the anti-trafficking
movement in our common vision for a world without slavery."
Prior to joining Polaris Project, Ambassador Lagon served as
Ambassador-at-Large and Director of the Office to Monitor
and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) at the U.S.
Department of State and as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary
of State.
"During his time at Polaris Project, Ambassador Lagon has
worked tirelessly to champion the eradication of modern-day
slavery, to address the demand for commercial sex and forced
labor, and to increase corporate accountability around human
trafficking." said Derek Ellerman, Board Chairperson and
Co-Founder. "Polaris Project commends Ambassador Lagon for
his dedication to fighting human trafficking and wishes him
every success in his future plans."
The Board of Directors has named Bradley Myles as the
incoming Acting Executive Director until the executive
search process is completed. Bradley Myles joined Polaris
Project in 2004 and currently serves as the Deputy Director
and as a member of the Executive Management Team, overseeing
the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC),
national training and technical assistance efforts, and
client services programs in Washington, DC and Newark, NJ.
Polaris Project
Jan. 27, 2010
See also:
See also:
Changing the World By Wiping Out Human
Trafficking
Katherine Chon, co-founder of
Polaris Project, is honored on the Women'sDay magazine list
of women who are changing the world
Although slavery is widely considered a thing of the past,
its prominence is still shocking—it’s currently the
second-largest and fastest-growing criminal industry
worldwide. Devoted to eradicating modern-day slavery and
human trafficking, Katherine Chon founded the Polaris
Project while a senior at Brown University in 2002. In
addition to operating the National Human Trafficking
Resource Center Hotline, the project provides shelter and
services for survivors, trains law enforcement and other
aides, and advocates for better laws to end modern slavery.
Women's Day
Dec. 11, 2010
See also:
Activist Calls For Stand-Alone Ohio Law Against
Human Trafficking
The head of a major international group
fighting human trafficking says Ohio stands at a "tipping
point" in recognizing the problem and tightening laws and
enforcement to deal with it.
Mark Lagon, head of the Polaris Project, a
former U.S. ambassador and human rights expert under
Secretary of State Colin Powell, said at a human trafficking
conference today at the Statehouse that federal and Ohio law
enforcement officials are making a "high-level commitment"
to attack the problem.
Federal officials estimate that up to 17,500
women and girls are trafficked for sex [into] the U.S. each
year. Another 300,000, many of them girls as young as 11,
are considered vulnerable.
Lagon recommended that Ohio law be changed to
make human trafficking a standalone crime, not simply an
add-on to other charges as it is now. He said the law should
have a broader definition of trafficking that includes
forced labor in addition to coerced sexual activity.
In addition, Ohio and other states need to
provide more assistance to trafficking victims, particularly
juveniles.
"We don't have a place to put these
prostituted teens when we find them," Lagon said. Too often,
they are viewed as criminal to be locked rather than victims
to be helped, he said.
Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
Jan. 11, 2010
Added: Jan. 28, 2010
California, USA
|
 |
|
Andy Pimental |
Salinas Officer Injured in Arrest
A Salinas Police officer was injured Friday in attempting to
take an assault suspect into custody.
According to police, the officer was hurt while taking down
Andy Pimental, who was suspected of threatening [to attack]
a pregnant woman near the intersection of Williams and
Grandhaven; the woman told police she did not know Pimental
and that he had forced her to seek safety inside a car.
Police say Pimental took a swing at an officer arriving on
the scene; a second officer helped to control the more than
300 lb. Pimental, but Pimental fell on the officer's knee.
The officer was taken to a hospital for treatment; Pimental
was arrested for assault and battery charges.
[The linked article includes a
video report.]
KCBA
Jan 23, 2010
Added: Jan. 28, 2010
Texas, USA
|
 |
|
Arnoldo Arenas |
Waco Authorities Bring Back Alleged
Child Abuser From Mexico
Waco - A man has been brought back to McLennan County by the
U.S. Marshals Office after he fled to Mexico three years ago
amidst a sexual abuse of a child investigation.
Forty-eight-year-old Arnoldo Arenas was returned to Waco
Friday afternoon and charged with five counts of aggravated
sexual assault of a child and is now held on one million
dollars bond.
Authorities say Arenas fled in 2007 after police began
investigating a situation in which he allegedly fathered a
child with a 13-year-old girl back in 2000.
It took law enforcement three years to get Arenas back to
the U.S. because he is an American citizen, but also a
Mexican citizen. This situation was the first of its kind in
McLennan County.
"I have been a part of the force for 13 years and I have
never been a part of anything like this," said Kim Clark, a
detective for Crimes Against Children.
It's not unusual for authorities to extradite a U.S. citizen
from another country, but it is rare for someone to be
extradited with dual citizenship in both the U.S. and
Mexico.
"Because he has citizenship in Mexico, we can't just go to
Mexico and bring him back as a U.S. citizen. The Mexican
government has to approve the case before they send him
back," Detective Clark added.
It's a process that took years of meticulous paper work and
thousands of dollars.
KXXV
Jan 23, 2010
Added: Jan. 28, 2010
Texas, USA
|
 |
|
Rudy Gonzales |
Man Arrested In School Sex Assault
San Antonio - Extra
staff were patrolling the halls of Jefferson High School Friday,
after two students were arrested and charged with sexually
assaulting another student.
Rudy Gonzalez, 18,
is charged with aggravated sexual assault.
The other teen is
being charged as a juvenile.
Police said they
assaulted a female student in an emergency exit stairwell on
Wednesday while classes were in session.
A representative for
the San Antonio Independent School District said alarms will be
installed on interior doors that will go off if anyone tries using
the stairwell.
KSAT
Jan 22, 2010
Added: Jan. 27, 2010
Haiti
 |
|
Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel
Kouddous and Elizabeth Press from
Democracy Now
are in Haiti reporting on the
devastating earthquake. |
Haití: Entre el Olor a Muerte y la
Silenciosa Desesperación
Haiti: Between the Odor of Death and
Silent Desperation
Puerto Príncipe, Haití 26 ene 10 . – Tè tremblé significa
“terremoto” en creole, la lengua criolla de Haití. La
traducción literal es: “La tierra tembló”. Tras el terremoto
de enormes dimensiones que devastó Haití, el hedor a muerte
está en todos lados. En el Hospital General, los cuerpos
apilados cerca de la morgue forman una montaña de más de un
metro de altura...
Recordando A La Feminista Myriam Merlet
En nuestro recorrido por la ciudad, fuimos a la casa
de Myriam Merlet, la jefa de gabinete del Ministerio
haitiano de la Mujer y una destacada feminista que
ayudó a llamar la atención internacional sobre el
uso de la violación como arma política y trabajó con
la dramaturga y activista Eve Ensler en el
movimiento Día-V para ayudar a poner fin a la
violencia contra la mujer.
Hallamos su casa, y de hecho a todas las casas que
la rodeaban, destruida. “Acabamos de retirar su
cuerpo”, nos dijeron los familiares de Myriam el
domingo, cinco días después del terremoto. No se
sabe cuándo murió, ni si podría haber sido
rescatada. Su hermana Eartha nos llevó a visitar su
tumba.
Eve Ensler describe a Myriam Merlet: “Myriam era una
luz. Era la fuerza de Haití. Fue una de las más
grandes feministas. Era una feminista radical.
Bromeábamos a menudo acerca del hecho de que era
loco que ella y Marie-Laurence, que es la Ministra
de la Mujer, estuvieran de hecho en el poder, que
tuviéramos feministas radicales en el poder. Fue una
mujer que dejó Haití en la década del 70 y luego
regresó para luchar y defender y llevar el cambio
social y el progreso y la lucha por las libertades y
la igualdad racial y por la libertad e igualdad de
género”...
Amy Goodman
Democracy Now/ CIMAC
Jan. 26, 2010
See also:
“Haiti is Shaken to the Core”:
Amy Goodman Reports from
Port-au-Prince
“Haiti is devastated as if a bomb, many bombs, exploded
throughout Port-au-Prince and beyond, where help has not
arrived at all,” reports Amy Goodman on her travels outside
of Port-au-Prince to the epicenter of the earthquake. “The
smell of death hangs in the air.”
...I have to say, one of our—one of the very sad moments was
when we first came in. I had gotten a call from Eve Ensler,
our guest who’s in the studio with you, and I—and it’s
painful for me to even say this in her hearing because of
this tremendous loss. She called me—I think we talked at
2:00 in the morning—before we came in on Sunday, and said,
“Please, try to find my friend. Try to find Myriam Merlet,”
who was more than a friend to Eve Ensler, but to so many
women in this devastated community. And she gave us an area,
not even an address, because she didn’t know it. But we went
to that area in Paco. It is not a poor area like Cité
Soleil, but it is down. It is on a hill. And it is an entire
community under rubble. And we made it to her house as the
sun was setting.
And there was a group of people who were sitting across the
street crying. And we said, “Myriam Merlet, do you know
which is her house?” And they pointed, and they said, “We’ve
just pulled her body up, and we have brought it down the
street.” I looked around and asked if there was family. They
said, yes, her sister Eartha, Eartha Merlet, and she was
sitting in the middle of the group weeping. And we asked her
if she could bring us to the makeshift grave site. It was
just down through the rubble. They had dug a deep, deep hole
and covered the casket a bit. And Eartha talked about her
beloved sister...
Amy Goodman
Democracy Now/ CIMAC
Jan. 26, 2010
Added: Jan. 27, 2010
Texas, USA
West Texas Could be Corridor
for Human Trafficking
You’ve seen it portrayed in movies and on
television, but it’s a very real epidemic.
Millions of people each year are forced into
modern-day slavery or prostitution.
Now law enforcement officials say the problem maybe
closer than we think.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Houston
and El Paso are two of the most intense trafficking
areas in the country.
ICE officials says offenders bring their victims
right here through west Texas.
Texas attorney Greg Abbott called a human
trafficking prevention task force meeting last
Tuesday to better identify victims.
"Texas comprises the largest portion of that,” Jerry
Garnett with Immigration and Customs Enforcement
said, “So there's going to be a large volume coming
through the state of Texas." ...
Debt bondage can easily turn
"smuggling" into "trafficking"
Debt bondage would be cases were the aliens were
smuggled into the U.S. and they're forced into
working in order to payoff their smuggling fees.
In most cases the victim never pays off their
smuggling fees.
“For females its prostitution or massage parlors,”
Garnett said, “Children it's a little bit different
but children could also be traffic for the sex
trade.”
Garnett says is a way to lure people in who are just
looking for a way to live in America
“They try to tell the people, we'll bring you into
the United States, well find you a job, we'll do all
this for you and rope the people into it.” Garner
said.
Jennifer Samp
CBS 7 News
Jan. 25, 2010
Added: Jan. 27, 2010
Alabama, USA
|
 |
|
Sketch of suspect |
Man Sought for Trying to Lure
School Girl
Chicago police today issued a community alert after
a man tried to lure girl into a sport utility
vehicle last week in the city's Brighton Park
neighborhood.
The girl was walking in the
vicinity of 2900 West 47th Street on Friday at 6:50
a.m. and en route to the bus stop at 47th Street and
Francisco Avenue when the suspect drove up and said
"Metete Adentro" ("Get In"), according to the alert.
The girl responded "No" before the suspect attempted
two more times as the girl waited for her bus to
school.
The man is described in the alert as Hispanic, 30 to
40 years old, heavily built, 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-9,
240 to 270 pounds, with a light complexion, brown
eyes and black wavy hair that has silver/gray
specks.
The man was driving a white four-door Toyota SUV,
police said.
Anyone with information should call Wentworth Area
detectives at 312-747-8380 or Deering District
police at 312-747-8227.
Jeff Finkelman
Chicago Breaking News
Jan. 25, 2010
Added: Jan. 27, 2010
Alabama, USA
|
 |
|
Jorge Zuniga |
Newton Man Charged with Raping
12-year-old
Newton man faces a possible life sentence in prison
after Houston County Sheriff’s deputies arrested him
on charges he raped a 12-year-old girl more than
once over the last two months.
Court records show detectives arrested Jorge Luis
Lopez Zuniga, 20, of Pine Acres Drive, late Friday
and charged him with two felony counts of
first-degree rape and first-degree sex abuse.
According to the Houston County Jail Web site,
Zuniga was booked into the facility just before 7
p.m. Friday on the three felony charges. Court
records show he’s being held without bond, which was
set by Houston County Circuit Court Judge Brad
Mendheim.
Court records also show Zuniga was charged with the
rape of the Newton girl between Dec. 1, 2009, and
Jan. 16, 2010, along with an additional similar
offense on Jan. 16, 2010. A detective also charged
Zuniga with forcible sex abuse of the same girl on
Jan. 16, 2010.
Zuniga faces 10 to 99 years or life in prison for
each of the first-degree rape charges, if he’s
convicted of each of the class A felony crimes. He
also faces one to 10 years in prison if he’s
convicted of the class C felony crime of
first-degree sex abuse.
Matt Elofson
The Dothan Eagle
Jan. 25, 2010
Added: Jan. 27, 2010
Georgia, USA
Teen Escapes Rape Attempt
A would-be rapist fled Sunday night after he ripped
off his victim's clothes and discovered he had
attacked a man dressed as a woman, Athens-Clarke
police said.
The suspect was riding a bicycle when he started
stalking a 17-year-old walking along Bray Street
near Fourth Street in East Athens about 6:30 p.m.,
police said.
The teen began to walk faster, but the man caught up
to him, grabbed his arm and dragged him into some
nearby woods.
The attacker started to take off the teen's clothes,
tearing his shirt and yanking off his boots; he
realized when he stripped off the teen's pants that
the victim was male, too, police said.
The victim fought back, but his attacker kicked him
repeatedly, police said.
The man ran when the victim's cell phone rang, but
by then witnesses on Bray Street had called 911,
police said.
The victim crawled from the woods and was sitting on
the ground, crying in the rain, when police arrived.
The teenager only could describe his attacker as a
fat Hispanic man who wore a gray hoodie and
sweatpants, according to police.
The attacker will be charged with criminal attempted
rape and false imprisonment if he's found, police
said.
"It doesn't matter that (the victim) wasn't a
female," Athens-Clarke Capt. Clarence Holeman said.
"The suspect's intent was to commit rape."
Online Athens
Jan. 26 ,
2010
Added: Jan. 26, 2010
Haiti
 |
|
Haitians receive water
and food from U.S. Marines |
Llega a Haití ayuda de feministas
latinoamericanas
Busca beneficiar a
sectores más vulnerables; niñez y mujeres
Aid from Latin American
Feminists Arrives in Haiti
Activists seek to aid
the most vulnerable: children and women
Costa Rica, - El 23 de enero llegaron
por aire, mar y tierra a Puerto Príncipe, los primeros donativos del
Campamento Internacional Feminista para las mujeres haitianas y
fueron entregados por la delegada de las feministas latinoamericanas
y del Caribe, Sergia Galván.
La feminista se reunió con las
activistas feministas haitianas de diversas organizaciones, entre
ellas SOPHA y ENFOFAM.
Entre la ayuda enviada de Santo Domingo
a Haití se encuentran dos camiones llenos de comestibles, medicinas,
lámparas, baterías, tanques de gas, tiendas de campaña, sacos de
dormir, medicamentos y otras necesidades personales de aseo y salud,
La ayuda será entregada directamente a las activistas que se están
reorganizando en la capital para trabajar con las poblaciones más
vulnerabilizadas: las mujeres y la niñez.
“Hemos podido llenar estos dos camiones
debido a la solidaridad de tantas organizaciones aquí en República
Dominicana y la respuesta solidaria de organizaciones y personas que
han mandado ágilmente dinero a nuestra cuenta”, dijo Galván.
Mientras que las feministas Ana Irma
Rivera Lassen, Aidita Cruz, Nirvana González y María Suarez (RIF)
salieron hoy lunes de Puerto Rico, con algunas de las más de 20
tiendas de campaña recogidas una por una, producto de la solidaridad
de personas y empresas en ese país donadas a Radio Internacional
Feminista...
María Suárez Toro
RIF/CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Jan. 25, 2010
See also:
Updates From Haiti
Since our last update on the Haiti
earthquake, we have heard back from one more of our advisors,
Nikette Lormeus. A short note that made us so relieved at the Global
Fund: “Dear friends, I can tell you that I am still alive. Thank
God!”
With a death toll looming at over
200,000, we feel blessed to know that some of our Haitian sisters
have survived this disaster, the worst earthquake to have hit the
country in 200 years.
The Americas team was jumping with joy
when they heard from Nikette by email yesterday morning. But we also
know this is not true for a lot of women’s groups. We express our
condolences for our sister activists who perished in the earthquake,
as shared by the Astraea Fund.
Our sister organizations have been
wonderful in highlighting the GFW’s Crisis Fund as a way to support
women’s groups that will rebuild Haiti. From WomenThrive, to Ms
Foundation’s generous gift of $10,000 to the Crisis Fund, we look
forward to working with our Haitian sisters on the ground once
direct relief organizations leave the shores.
Under the leadership of our grantee
partner in the Dominican Republic, Colectiva Mujer y Salud, and the
Feminist Radio Endeavor (FIRE),
a “feminist camp” has been established on the border of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti. The purpose of the camp is to create a
physical space from where all these feminist and women’s
organizations can coordinate efforts. FIRE is going to broadcast a
radio program to share the stories of women, Colectiva Mujer y Salud
will coordinate health services and the delivery of humanitarian
assistance in the hands of women, and other organizations will
coordinate activities from the camp. Our advisors in the region are
offering their services and support: Yamilet Mejia from Nicaragua is
helping with psychological support for the survivors and Patricia
Guerrero from Colombia is helping with her expertise on preventing
sexual violence...
Global Fund for Women
Jan. 20, 2010
See also:
|
 |
|
Myriam Merlet, líder feminista haitiana /
Haitian feminist leader (1953-2010) |
Feminist International Solidarity Camp “Myriam
Merlet” To Open On Haitian-Dominican Republic Border
Campamento De Solidaridad Feminista Con Haití
"Miriam Marlet"
Feminist Radio Endeavor (FIRE)
Jan. 20, 2010
Added: Jan. 26, 2010
Mexico
Mexican Agency, Group Seek
Protection for Juárez Activists
A Mexican government agency and Amnesty
International have urged authorities to protect
other activists in Juárez after the recent murder of
a woman activist.
The federal Mexican National Commission on Human
Rights asked Chihuahua officials to provide safety
for the activists, including Cipriana Jurado, a
longtime labor advocate.
Jurado said federal officers detained her in 2008
while she was investigating the death of Saulo
Becerra Reyes, who was among a group of men who were
picked up by federal authorities on Oct. 21, 2008,
on suspicion of ties to drug-trafficking.
Amnesty International said a death certificate
states Becerra died from a brain hemorrhage a day
following his detention. However, authorities never
acknowledged Becerra's detention, and Becerra's body
was not found until March 2009.
Mexican authorities freed Jurado after several
nongovernmental groups came to her aid.
Amnesty International said Jurado also accompanied
the late Josefina Reyes in marches and other
protests involving alleged abuses by soldiers and
federal agents, who were sent to Chihuahua state to
battle the drug cartels.
Josefina Reyes, who was shot to death Jan. 3 in her
Valle de Juárez community, was the mother of Miguel
Angel Reyes Salazar, one of several suspects federal
authorities detained last September with Rodolfo
"Rikin" Escajeda, a man U.S. and Mexican
investigators said was a dangerous drug dealer.
Mexican authorities presented Escajeda and Reyes
Salazar at a press conference in Mexico City, but
Reyes' mother claimed she had no contact with her
son and therefore could not verify he was still
alive. Julio Cesar Reyes, another one of her sons,
was killed in 2008 in Valle de Juárez.
Diana Washington
Valdez
The El Paso Times
Jan. 12 ,
2010
See also:
Added: Jan. 26, 2010
Mexico, Texas, USA
UT Law Students, Faculty Helped Get Slain
Juárez Woman's Mom Asylum
El Paso - Faculty and students at the
University of Texas at Austin Law School played key roles in two
unprecedented cases involving the notorious Juárez women's murders.
Their low-profile work contributed to
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling against the Mexican
government, and to a successful claim for U.S. political asylum for
the family of one of the slain women.
Denise Gilman, a lawyer and professor,
supervised law students at the university's Immigration Clinic. They
worked on Benita Monarrez's petition for asylum, representing
Monarrez and her family for free.
"Several law students worked on the
complicated asylum claim, which began in October 2007 when Benita
was detained in Austin," Gilman said. "Asylum claims in this country
are still very stringent, and it's hard for people without legal
representation to prevail.
"Benita passed the initial credible fear
interview, and the U.S. immigration court in San Antonio approved
her claim in the spring of 2009."
Monarrez said she received constant
threats because she would not drop the investigation into the
slaying of her daughter, Laura Berenice Ramos Monarrez. Ramos, 20,
was among eight young women whose bodies were discovered in a Juárez
cotton field in 2001.
Organizations such as Amnesty
International, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and
even members of the U.S. Congress had documented threats against the
relatives of victims and activists in Juárez who sought justice.
Since 1993, more than 600 girls and
women have been murdered in Juárez, including 145 so far this year.
The number of women slain in Juárez is disproportionate compared to
other cities in Mexico with similar populations.
Diana Washington Valdez
The El Paso Times
Dec. 22, 2009
Added: Jan. 25, 2010
Mexico
|
 |
|
Amnesty
International:
Obtilia Eugenio Manuel,
founder and president of the
Organization of the Me’ phaa Indigenous
People (OPIM) in Guerrero state in
southern Mexico, has been the victim of
numerous death threats and acts of
intimidation since 1998.
The campaign of
intimidation against her got so serious
in recent years, Obtilia and her family
were forced to flee their community out
of fear. For example, in January 2009, a
man who had been following her on
several occasions shouted at her: "Do
you think you’re so brave? Are you a
real woman? Let’s hope you also go to
prison… If you don’t go to prison, we'll
kill you."
None of the threats or
acts of intimidation against Obtilia has
been investigated. |
|
 |
|
Amnesty: "Activists
suffer imprisonment on fabricated
charges to stop them from doing their
work."
Photo: Javier Verdin / La
Jornada |
|
 |
|
Indigenous women protest
for the freedom of 5 prisoners of
conscience from the Native community of
Ayutla
Amnesty: "Defending human
rights in Mexico is life-threatening."
Photo: Javier Verdin/ La
Jornada |
Recent Reports and Articles by
Amnesty International on the Crisis of Impunity in
Mexico
Human Rights Activists in
Mexico Under Attack
Activists suffer
imprisonment on fabricated charges to stop them from
doing their work
The Mexican authorities are failing in their duty to
protect human rights activists from killings and
life-threatening harassment and attacks, Amnesty
International warned on Thursday in a new report.
The report Standing up for justice and dignity:
Human Rights defenders in Mexico describes more than
15 cases of defenders who have suffered killings,
attacks, harassment, threats and imprisonment on
fabricated charges between 2007 and 2009 to prevent
them from doing their work.
"Defending human rights in Mexico is
life-threatening and the government is not doing
enough to tackle the problem," said Nancy
Tapias-Torrado, researcher on human rights defenders
at Amnesty International. "When one human rights
defender is attacked, threatened or killed, it sends
a dangerous message to many others and denies hope
to all those on whose behalf the defender is
working".
Amnesty International said it believes there are
dozens of such cases, very few of which are
effectively investigated and even fewer brought to
justice. In none of the cases included in the report
has a full investigation been carried out and in
only two of them suspects are in detention.
Human rights defenders take action to protect and
promote human rights. States have a responsibility
to protect these people and ensure they can carry
out their work.
Activists working to protect the rights of
communities living in poverty, those who defend the
rights of Indigenous peoples or work to protect the
environment are at particular risk of attack. Their
work is seen as interfering with powerful political
or economic interests. Too often they are treated as
trouble-makers not as human rights defenders working
for a better society where respect for human rights
can be a reality...
"The Mexican government must urgently develop an
effective and comprehensive programme of protection
for human rights defenders," said Nancy
Tapias-Torrado.
Amnesty International
Jan. 21, 2010
See also:
Task Force Convenes to Take on Human
Trafficking
Attorney General Greg Abbott summoned
the first meeting of the newly formed Human Trafficking Prevention
Task force Thursday.
The task force was created by the 81st
Texas Legislature. It was pioneered by [state] Senator Leticia Van
de Putte and [state] Representative Randy Weber.
The goal of the task force is to ensure
law enforcement officials have state-wide communication and
cooperation.
"By working proactively to improve
collaboration, task force members are better positioned to crack
down on traffickers and provide desperately needed services to human
trafficking victims," Abbott said.
The U.S. State Department estimates
between 14,500 and 17,500 victims are trafficked into the U.S. from
all over the world. Those statistics revealed that
one in five of victims who were trafficked
domestically are believed to have been in Texas.
"We can go to the very heart of the
problem by expanding beyond a mere prostitution prosecution and go
after an entire ring of people who are trafficking individuals, 80
percent of whom are women [and] 50 percent of whom are children, and
forcing them into sex slavery or other kinds of servitude," Abbott
said.
The U.S. Department of
Justice labeled El Paso and Houston as the “most intense trafficking
jurisdictions in the country.”
A human trafficking report from 2008
offered 21 recommendations to help reduce human trafficking and
improve services to victims.
News 8 Austin Staff
Jan. 22, 2010
See also:
View the 93-page human trafficking report
"Texas Response to Human Trafficking." (PDF File)
Office of the Attorney General of
Texas
Nov., 2008
See also:
Texas, USA
Attorney General's
Report Details Human Trafficking in Texas
Austin - Texas has become a major hub
for human trafficking, state officials said Monday while proposing a
more aggressive response to what a senior lawmaker described as
"modern-day slavery."
Nearly 20 percent of human-trafficking
victims found nationwide have been in Texas, according to a report
released by Attorney General Greg Abbott. The 57-page report,
mandated by the Legislature in 2007, also identifies Interstate 10
as a major route through Texas for human-trafficking rings.
Abbott released the report at a news
conference with Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, who
introduced legislation to combat the problem.
Dave Montgomery
The Star-Telegram
Nov. 18, 2008
See also:
Texas, USA
Senator Van de Putte Files the Texas
Anti-Human Trafficking Act
San Antonio - Today, November 10,
Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) filed Senate Bill 89,
the Texas Anti-Human Trafficking Act.
According to the U.S. Department of
State, human trafficking occurs in urban and rural settings alike,
with more than 25% of all U.S. trafficking victims trafficked
through Texas. After working with the Office of the Attorney
General, law enforcement personnel, and various non-government
organizations dedicated to combating human trafficking, Senator Van
de Putte has authored SB 89.
Highlights of the Texas Anti-Human
Trafficking Act are the creation of a state-wide human trafficking
prevention taskforce, training for peace officers, as well as
increased protections for underage victims of trafficking.
"Although we have made great strides in
the last session of the legislature, there is much more to be done.
Everyday thousands of defenseless children and vulnerable adults are
trafficked through Texas and forced into labor or sex."
"We cannot afford to allow these
atrocities to continue the vile practice of modern day slavery,
stated Senator Van de Putte."
Office of Senator Leticia Van de
Putte
Nov. 10, 2008
|
Added: Jan. 24, 2010
Haiti
 |
|
Veteran Mexican women's rights lawyer and
CATW-LAC director
Teresa Ulloa requests
donations to assist the personal situation and work of
CATW-LAC's
representative for Haiti and other French-speaking
nations in the Americas,
Geylande MesGadieu
|
Estimadas Compañeras y Compañeros, Amigas y Amigos,
Geylande MesGadieu,
nuestra Directora Nacional de la
CATW-LAC
en Haiti y Coordinadora de la Zona Francofona, está
viva. Sin embargo está pasando por una situación muy
desesperada, ya que perdió su casa, su vehículo, su
ropa y su oficina. Se quedó sin nada, inclusive el
día de hoy que pude hablar por teléfono con ella, me
comentó que no tienen agua, ni alimentos.
Como en todas los casos
de guerra o desastre, las mujeres, jóvenes, niñas y
niños que se quedaron sólos, se vuelven muy
vulnerables frente a los tratantes y explotadores.
Ella tiene necesidad de resolver sus necesidades
básicas para poder empezar a organizar y estructurar
la ayuda y protección de las poblaciones más
vulnerables.
Hemos abierto una cuenta
exclusiva para recibir sus donativos para ella y
para su trabajo. Ojalá nos puedan apoyar.
Recibimos aportaciones
desde US$10.00 Dlls.
Chères
Camarades,
Guylande Mesadieu, notre
Directrice Nationale de la
CATW-LAC
en Haïti et Coordinatrice de la zone Francophone,
est vivante, toutefois elle est entrain de passer
par une situation très désespérée, puisqu’elle a
perdue sa maison, son véhicule, ses habits et son
bureau. Elle est restée sans rien, même le jour
d’aujourd’hui j’ai pu parler avec elle par
téléphone, elle m’a commentée qu’elle n’a pas d’eau,
ni aliments.
Comme dans tous les cas
de guerre u désastre, les femmes, jeunes, filles et
garçons qui ont restés seuls, deviennent très
vulnérables face aux traitants et exploiteurs. Elle
a besoin de résoudre ses besoins basiques pour
pouvoir commencer à organiser et structurer l’aide
et protection des populations plus vulnérables.
Nous avons ouvert un
compte exclusif pour recevoir ses donations pour
elle et pour son travail.
J’espère que vous
pourrez nous aider.
Nous recevons
contributions depuis US$10.00 Dlls.
Dear Friends,
Geylande MesGadieu, our
CATW-LAC
National Director in Haiti, who is also our French
coordinator for the French speaking Caribbean, is
alive. However, she is going through a very
desperate situation. She lost her home, her car, her
clothes and her office. She has nothing at all. She
lost everything. Even today, when I spoke with her
on the telephone, she told me that they do not have
water or food.
As in almost all cases
of war and disaster, women, youth, and children who
find themselves alone become more vulnerable to
being co-opted by traffickers and exploiters.
Geylande
needs to solve her basic needs so that she can begin to
organize to help protect the most vulnerable persons
in Haiti.
We have opened a bank
account exclusively to receive donations for
Geylande
and her work. We would appreciate your help.
We are receiving
donations starting at US$10.00 dollars.
|
Titular de la Cuenta / Titulaire
de compte / Name of the Owner of the Account:
Coalición Regional Contra el
Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas en América Latina y el
Caribe
Bank:
BBVA Bancomer
No. de Cta. /
No. De compte /
Account Number:
0170826413
Moneda / Monnaie / Currency:
US Dollars
Clabe Interbancario
/ Inter Banque Clé / Interbank
Code:
012180001708264136
Succursale / Succursale /
Branch:
5038 DF Obregón-Centenario.
ABA NUMBER (US Dollars Only):
BCMRMXMMPYM
Intermediary Bank Name:
J. P. Morgan Chase Bank
Location: New York, N.Y., USA
Bank Routing/Fed. Routing/ABA:
021-000-021
SWIFT BIC:
CHASUS33
|
If possible, please send
a scanned or electronic copy of the transaction to:
finanzas@catwlac.org
Por su solidaridad y
apoyo de siempre, Muchas gracias.
Par sa solidarité et
appui de toujours, Merci beaucoup.
For your solidarity and
support, Thank you very much.
Sororalmente /
Amicalement / In Sisterhood,
|
Teresa C. Ulloa
Ziaurriz,
Directora Regional de la
Coaliación contra el Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas en
América Latina y el Caribe, A.C.
Regional Director of the Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women for Latin America and the
Caribbean
(CATW-LAC)
email:
tulloaz@hotmail.com
|
|
Added: Jan. 23, 2010
Haiti, Mexico
[News
Briefs]
More than 50 Mexicans are reported missing from Haiti’s
January 12 earthquake; a Mexican woman’s body was recovered.
Last week, a Mexican rescue team freed a Haitian woman
trapped in the home of Port-au-Prince’s Catholic archbishop,
who was killed in the quake.
The San Diego Tribune
Jan. 24, 2010
|
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