Blushing Brides

Sex Trafficking & The Global Sex Trade

SEX FOR SALE. Signs like this aren't the norm, right? But try typing the word "Filipina," into Google. The first sites that pop up seem innocent enough: Online Dating services, a database for finding a romantic interest. Most of these services, however, are the site of the auctioning off of women, with come-on liners such as "Heavenly Bodies...Ready, Willing, & Able." Also called mail-order bride agencies, sites like these exist for women from almost every country: Russia, Japan, Vietnam, Ukraine. Men can peruse a gallery of pictures, choose a foreign bride to his taste, and ship her home.

Sex trafficking is defined by the United Nations as the movement of human beings for sexual exploitation. The trafficking of human beings is generally a source for one of the fastest growing areas of international criminal activity. This process of usually involves 3 locations. The persons, usually women and children, are taken from their home, the source country, to the transit country where the trade is centered, and delivered to the destination country.

internet marriage agencies are one of the most rampant instruments for this flesh trade. Clients can choose from a woman's hair color, height, weight, nationality. Christian singles sites that boast "virgin brides," while a site based in China brags of its abundance of "teen girls, 18 to 19!"

Women from economically unstable countries usually find the prospect of marrying a man from a wealthier country as a ticket to a better life. Many of these marriages, however, end in battery and abuse with little protection for the immigrant wives. In an interview with WeNews, Svetlana reveals her husband constantly raped, beat, and choked her during her ten-month marriage. And in a cry for help to her marriage broker, Svetlana was shaken off with, "It's just a different culture." The protection afforded to the paying client by law is not given to the women who lack citizenship; and the rigorous background checks which the women undergo is never required by the man purchasing her.

Sex Trafficking is a multi-million dollar business in the United States. Since the 1980's, some 5,000 Filipina women have been married to American men annually through the "mail-order bride agencies" or the "international match-making agencies."

Another common trend in the sex trade is sex tours. operated by travel agencies in various countries. Russia is a popular destination for sex tours, which include a room booked at a hotel, a driver, restaurant reservations, and visits to selected bathhouses and brothels. There are even forums for 'rating' the sex tours of different countries. Men exchange reviews of their experiences in certain sex tours.

Nicole, 23, was a fresh graduate from a Catholic University in the Philippines, and a victim of gang-rape by four US Marines. Witnesses testified to seeing men lift Nicole "like a pig" from a van, pants and panty down to her legs, only to dump her in the street. The verdict: one Marine was sentenced to 40 years in prison, and the other three men were acquitted for complicity. Yet Nicole was still accused of being a prostitute out to seduce American soldiers. She continues to be an international symbol for the lack of attention given to victims of the human slave trade, who are viewed as less human, and whose basic human rights are overlooked due to the social stigma of prostitution. The case of Nicole is only one of over 2,000 cases against US troops who have occupied the Philippines. To date, not a single U.S. Soldier has been convicted.

Whenever a world power like the United States occupies a foreign country, their mostly-male presence creates a demand for "comfort women." Underground crime rings, which facilitate the drug trade, include the commodification of women. And as long as a foreign country like the US maintains their military or naval presence in a country, the demand for sex slaves is perpetuated.

An estimate by Gabriela Network states that about 20 million people, 90% women and children, are in the global sex trade. And in the world, the Philippines is the world's top exporter of women. Statistics report that in 2005, 750,000 women were exported to over 203 countries. 30% of these women ended up in the sex trade. The Philippine government has taken little action to regulate this blatant violation of human rights. Perhaps because of the annual $8 billion profit remitted to the country from prostituting these women.

In 2000, the US passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act to add new crimes under human trafficking and provide certain benefits and services to victims of the trade. Though the US has been at the forefront of condemning human trafficking, it is still chiefly a transit and destination country. The Act reserves treatment of trafficking survivors only if they can prove they are "a victim of a severe form of trafficking." Finding victims, however, can be difficult due to the hidden face of the crime.

This issue is open for the aware to get involved. The Purple Rose Campaign is an international effort to combat sex trafficking. Participants join in its mission to express and create a movement of opposition to capital's assault on the bodies of women and children. Millions are robbed every day of these basic human rights and a way to voice these injustices. Silence is complacency. Our dialogue is urgent.

Words to ponder over:

Comfort Woman (n.): A euphemism for a woman forced to work as a prostitute for Japanese servicemen during WWII.

"Cars would slow down and people would yell, 'You are a whore. This is no job for a girl like you.' But no one ever stopped to ask if they could help me."
   - Cara, sex trade victim

"Seriously, though - women are sexier when they're desperate. It's sad that women expect us to treat them like human beings... with pretty women, sex is the only draw."
   - one man's experience of the Russian Sex Tours, RussiaTravelForums.com

"It is a booming industry, run with ruthless efficiency by powerful, multinational criminal networks... Their expertise and ability to exploit the market are surpassed only by their regard for human life. Women are bought, sold, and hired out like any other product. The bottom line is profit."
   - Anna Diamantopolou, European commissioner in Employment & Social affairs 2002

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