XIII Seeing the Faces of Slaves

Slavery has many disguises. Each one deepens the malevolence of its evil. Slaves are out of sight. We see no interviews with workers in garment factories, no videos of raids to brothels, no stories of children in mines. All of that is kept behind closed doors. The disguises have a job to play. As a result, we the public are deprived of knowing and then caring.

There are reasons for this pall of secrecy. The conditions which enforce slavery, if known to the public, would horrify. These conditions are seamy, shocking, and subtle. 

The seamy side enters with the advent of streaming. Previously, voyeurs had magazines, novels, and movies. Viewing was thus restricted. With streaming, salacious life has been brought to the digital world. And, yes, it has been monetized. Darkness has brought desecrated wealth to many.

The Philippines initiates the highest volume of streaming sexual scenes. A schematic of the IP sites going out from the hubs in Manila covers the earth. Instantly, what was done in a back room can now be viewed — for a fee — in bars, bedrooms, and brothels around the world. Mark you, the ages of those forced to engage in the scenes begin with pre-teens.

[Source:https://ijmstoragelive.blob.core.windows.net/ijmna/documents/studies/Final_OSEC-Public-Summary_05_20_2020_2021-02-05-055202.pdf?mtime=20210204215202&focal=none]

This industry has a supply chain—people who will become the subjects. Some of these are victims of what are called “left-behind children.” This mainly refers to China where masses have  moved to the urban areas. The lure is for better jobs and more opportunity in the cities than in the rural areas. 

What often happens is the parents make these shifts, leaving behind the children. These become the vulnerable, the fearful, the naive, and the victims of “friends” and “relatives” who will offer them a home and a family. The children follow, only to discover themselves smuggled to places like where filming takes place in Manila. 

The subtle can also be located in China. With the one-child policy in place for many years, the results have been an imbalance of gender. The men outnumber the women to the extent that finding a wife has become difficult. Adding to the problem is the freedom that many women are treasuring, as they become middle-class, wealthy, and enjoying single life. 

One sinister solution has been smuggling women from North Korea into China with the promise of marriage. The fee is hefty—in the thousands of dollars— and is readily paid. They are entering nothing but forced marriages, sexual slavery, and other hardships.

“Snakeheads” was the term for these smugglers in China. They would arrange for women and children to be duped and then moved to countries in the West. The fee was as high as $30,000. Those who made the trip then had to repay the smuggler, basically becoming enslaved in the garment shops, brothels, or other form of forced labor. 

In the mid-2010s the leaders of the Snakeheads were arrested and sent to prison. Since then the mafia-like organization no longer runs under that name, but runs nonetheless.

The shocking piece of slavery is found in children in armies. While the numbers are hard to pin down, the estimate is between 250,000 and 300,000. 40% of them are girls. They are mostly in the para-military armies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and other places of war. 

[Source: https://theirworld.org/explainers/child-soldiers#section-5]

What raises the shock level is that many of these children volunteer to join! Some, to be sure, are kidnapped and stolen. But many turn up at the camps and ask to join. Their reality sees the alternatives as grim: scarce food, families without either or both parents, and fear that they might become the target of the marauding gangs. For them, joining the army is seen as the solution to their plight. 

There are grim pictures indeed, but these are pictures rarely seen. Slavery has disguises. The victims remain unseen. Sadly, this sets them apart from God’s Other Children. The persecuted Christians, for example, get hearings, advocates, and stories. The hungry are brought before us by photographers and news stories. But the slaves—the prostitutes, workers who make our shoes, laborers in brick kilns, children who carry guns—they are nearly invisible.

Which takes me to the question I ask at the end of these articles:

What can we do to help them? The right answer is: Weep. “Weep with those who weep,” we are told. But how can we weep for those we do not see?

The rule of thumb goes like this: “Put a face on them.”  Yes, that is what this needs—a way to bring them into the open, a way for us to see their faces, a way to see and hear about their hurts and wounds. Then, what they are experiencing will be as real to us as the faces we see in our own families. And that is my suggestion.

I ask you to put the faces of your children and grandchildren on the slaves at the kilns, the girls behind the doors of brothels, boys in the coal mines. See them as you see your own children. I put the faces of my grandsons on the boys who carry guns or hover over garments. I put the faces of my granddaughters on the girls who are taken and abused.  By this, we remove the disguises.

Do you have sons and grandsons, daughters and granddaughters? No, you would not wish any of this for them. If so, would it not make you weep?

XII Slavery Exposed and Opposed

 

About three years ago my wife and I swung by Kolkotta on a trip between Bangalore and Kathmandu. It was in Bangalore where we visited Asha Kiran, the school for special needs children referred to in one of my previous articles on children. In Kathmandu we visited the woman who introduced us to the Musahar people, the tribe that is the prototype for this series.

In Kolkotta (formerly known as Calcutta) our guide was Madeline Linnell. We knew Madeline through her father, Julian, who succeeded me as Director of Anglican Frontier Missions. Madeline was an intern at the Kolkotta office of International Justice Mission (IJM). What we learned in those days with her made a lasting impression about trafficking and the scarcity of justice.

Kolkotta is the major hub for sex trafficking in all of Asia. The statistics accompanying that status tell of a world hidden and foul. The goal of IJM is justice. Their place of engagement is more often the courts, rather than places of rescue, though they certainly miss no opportunity to bring many out of slavery.

Seeking justice for sex traffickers takes the people of IJM into levels of sordid corruption. The work of IJM is heavy—both by the challenges of their legal efforts and by the resistance from the spiritual strongholds they encounter. Success only comes when victims have courage to speak publicly, traffickers can be caught, and the police do not collaborate with the traffickers.  They work, as Constance says, with fear and trembling, and they know the evil and the evildoers up close and personal.

Two prominent features of the office at IJM stood out.  First, the seriousness of their corporate worship. It is a daily ritual, with a Bible passage and homily, singing, and testimony. The prayers of the day reflect the people they support as well as the the forces they oppose.

Second, the daily routine in the office is livened by tricks—surprises, jokes, pranks, anything that lifts the atmosphere. They even enjoy competition between the separate offices for unexpected shenanigans. 

Both of those features, I do believe, keep Satan at bay.

In our conversation at the IJM office one lawyer brought up the Super Bowl. “Many men show up who put their morals to the side and find a sex worker, probably one who has been trafficked.” That sentiment is often made, but the association of Super Bowl with sex workers may be overstated. The opportunity for the sex trade is certainly high at the Super Bowl but probably no higher than at most other major sport events.

Protests at the Beijing Olympics, however, have highlighted the Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province. In this case the world has pictures of the camps, the trains, and the places of “re-education.” In addition, testimony has come out of the torture and enslavement of this people. 

These protests at the Olympics reflect the growing public awareness of sex trafficking and the power of public opinion against the perpetrators. A couple of examples illustrate this.

In March of 2020 reports came out of forced child labor being used by farmers who sourced the coffee for Starbucks. The company immediately instituted a zero tolerance for such sources. The Philippine government has acknowledged the horrific sex trade going out of that country and has emerged as a key force with IJM in combatting the slave trade there. Uber drivers and airline staff in the Los Angeles area are being trained to spot women who may be trafficked in preparation for the Super Bowl. Massive pressure has turned on large companies like Nike, Apple, and Under Armour whose sources in the past have relied on child labor or slaves.

Still, the on-going presence of slave trade and child labor is pernicious and pervasive. After all, what else can we expect from the spiritual forces of evil and the wickedness of the human heart. Public pressure does not see most of the hidden places where women and children are treated with dehumanizing abuse. (Source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print)

Kilns in India, North Korea, Pakistan, Cambodia: In Haryana, alone,  there are about 40,000 children making bricks.

Diamond mines in Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Congo, Liberia: Children between 5 and 17 work in underground mines in hazardous conditions.  

Fishing boats on Lake Volta, Ghana, Peru, Indonesia: Children must go under water to free nets from stumps and fallen trees.

Coffee plantations in Brazil, Costa Rica, Yemen, Tanzania, Panama, Kenya: Forcibly recruited children may not leave the plantations, are not paid, and have no means to return home.

Brothels: in most countries: A shroud kept by the malice of their pimps hides the sadness of these women. Their number is legion, and their life knows only lies, deceit, and darkness. 

The common theme underlying the millions of people enslaved is quite simple. Owners deceive the families with loans, forcing the enslaved children to work in forced labor until the debt is paid. For forced labor,  Work conditions include long hours, insufficient food, the threat of beatings, and isolation for their families. For sex slaves, they are the possessions of their pimps.

Most of the products from most of these countries are in compliance with fair contractual agreements about age, hours, and compensation. Still, beyond the “most” lie 40 million slaves in the world today. A close look at who they are next week. 

I close with the two questions for us:

What can we do to assist them: One answer is to learn about them. Here are websites that tell their stories. 

https://www.ijm.org/slavery

https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/forced-labour/s

This website gives prayer suggestions for each day: 

https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/forced-labour/

What can we learn from them: Two things, both about evil: 1) The power of evil, Satan’s domain clearly exposed. 2) The line dividing good and evil does not separate bad people and good people but goes through the heart of every human being, even ours. At least,    that is what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said as he reflected on the horrors inside the Gulag and inside his own heart. 

 

XI Slaves. Slavery, and God

This series spotlights several segments of the world that are precious to God but don’t make the news. I call them God’s Other Children.  The prototype has been the Musahar people of Nepal. They are eschewed by their neighbors, abandoned by the government, and ignored by the church. Yet in the eyes of God, they, too, are the very ones for whom our Lord was crucified. 

Others we have looked at are the persecuted church (North Korea), children (on the streets and in war zones), the hungry (Chad), and the least evangelized (Iran). 

Today I turn to a group who are the victims of the deepest depravity of humankind. Though the circumstances of the prior groups are lamentable, what is done to slaves is barbarous, cruel, and savage in the extreme. 

Over the next weeks we will learn about slaves in the mines in Pakistan, kilns in India, the fishing industry of Ghana, trafficking in the Philippines, factories in Bangladesh, and the Super Bowl. We open our view on slaves and slavery by seeing into the heart of the Father of these children. We find that the unsearchable riches of God’s love have found the hiding places of the darkest abysses of horror.

Paul gives lofty expression of that love. In the conclusion of Romans 8 he declares all the possible things can separate us from the love of God but don’t. In the list is one piece outside the experience of most: nakedness. Yet that for all who are in slavery, that is precisely the circumstance that holds hope. Whatever the abhorrent treatment of being naked or otherwise abused, that has not removed them from God’s love.

We recoil when we come close to the vivid details of OSEC (Online Sexual Exploitation of Children) or CSECM (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Material). Like touching a hot surface, we draw back, satisfied just to know it is hot. These images, these stories we just don’t want to hear or see. Besides, we know they will break our hearts. 

God does not recoil; he does not withdraw from them to a safe distance. Rather, he draws close to them. He stays close enough that he hears their muffled cries, he sees the beatings, he knows their despair. He stands beside them when they are working from 6 to 6 with little food, fear of beatings, and unremitting hard work. He feels their fear with darkness comes, the time when women are taken out to be raped. Nothing separates them from their heavenly father, and, yes, it breaks his heart.

With his broken heart he has outrage. For he sees the people who perpetrate these atrocities. He knows each by name and records what they have done to his children. No, he does not sit motionless in response. He will bring a day of justice. They have not seen it yet, but they will know how fearful it is to come before the living God.

The prophet Nahum opens with the co-mingling of God’s mercy and his vengeance. “The Lord is slow to anger, but he is a jealous and avenging God. He rages against his enemies and will by no means clear the guilty” (Nahum 1:1-3). After all, what kind of God and heavenly Father would he be if the plaintive cries of his children went unanswered. He has a day, and the words used for that day of judgment are: wrath, thunder, curse, fury, and anger. 

As there is a day of judgment for the evil, so he has a day of redemption for these children. 

Ezekiel gives us a picture of what their life will be. He fills the description with these images: living in the wild and sleeping in peace; showers not of rain but of blessings; fruit and vegetation that will feed without giving out; bars of previous yokes broken; a land with no fear, no insults, and no hunger. Ezekiel closes with these welcome words: “You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God” (Ezek. 34:31).

Theirs is a special case, however, because of a missing piece of God’s ordinary plan.  Paul describes the way the Kingdom expands: “Everyone who calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how can they believe in God unless someone has been sent to proclaim him?” 

Someone has come to us and told us of the Savior. But for these children, no one has been sent. With rare exceptions, none of these has been told of the hope of a Savior—none in the brothels, none in the mines or boats or factories, none where trafficked women are held captive. 

For them, the day of redemption will be the day of discovery. For the first time they will see the light of God’s love. The unknown love of a mother, the care of a father so barely known in their lives here—all that will be waiting in the embrace of their heavenly Father. He will be their Great Physician who will remove their scars and treat their wounds. He will heal their memories and remove their fear by his perfect love. And out of his broken heart will flow his tears of joy.

Luke tells us of the tears of a woman. She was “from the streets” and had quietly entered the place where a Pharisee had prepared a feast for Jesus Christ. She stood behind him and opened a jar of perfume. Then she bathed his feet and washed them with tears—her tears of joy for the one who loves her and all God’s children like her. 

XV Trampling the Poor in the nations beginning with M

 Crouching behind statistics of economy and trends in politics lie malicious traps that trample the poor. These traps may be direct assaults on their well-being or, more often, indirect consequences from power plays far removed. The poor are left with upheavals beyond their control, with fear and uncertainty always at their door. 

What follows are some realities that lie behind statistics and trends. They are extracted from a sampling of nations, all beginning with M. From these we see what trampling of the poor looks like. 

Madagascar:  Indigenous ethnic religion oppresses the people and their aspiration to rise out of poverty. The population relies on subsistence farming, but slash and burn has decimated about 80% of the rainforest cover for plants and animals. That means that the majority live on about $2 a day. 

Malawi: High population growth, high poverty, and huge national debt challenge life there. Lack of adequate medical care has left AIDS as the leading cause of death. 

Malaysia - Sabah and Sarawak: “Insider capitalism” (meaning the powerful get richer and the others get poorer) has left 26% below the poverty line. Racial discrimination, corruption, and crime will leave them there for a long time.

Maldives: Except for the privileged and powerful, people in the Maldives face rising crime, gang wars, abuse of children, and endemic drug use by teenagers. All this combined with the spiritual strongholds of pre-Islamic occult suppresses visions of change. 

Mali: This country ranks at 178th out of 182 on the Human Development Index. One in five children does not survive beyond the age of 5. One-third of those surviving are malnourished. 

Mauritania: Being divorced to marry another is considered a compliment in this land. So much for family stability. Oil discovery has increased corruption and further impoverishes most of the population. Thousands live in slavery in the interior, abetted by racial discrimination of the White Moors against the Black Moors. 

Mexico: Drug cartels, gang violence, and corruption in law enforcement leave 60% of the population in poverty. These are mainly the rural poor and exploited slum-dwellers. 10% of Mexicans are Amerindians. They have no official status and thus face severe poverty. The insatiable drug habit of people in the US brings huge income to the government, blunting any real effort to eradicate the drug trade. 

Mozambique: The legacy of Marxist economy, recurring cyclones, a destructive colonialism, and civil war has left this nation one of the world’s poorest. The consequence are found in poor health care, AIDS, malaria, TB, and other lethal diseases amidst the poor. Traumatized by violence, natural disasters, and disease, spiritual brokenness lies deep in these people.

Myanmar: Systemic violence has not left this nation for decades. The present junta has targeted minorities, who already carry burdens of impoverishment and torment. The military has redefined “ruthless.” 

These sad profiles set the poor before us. We may note several recurring headings:

Vulnerability. The poor lack arms, education, wealth, power, health, food, advocates. This sets up a scenario of easy abuse and unchallenged exploitation by the powerful, the armies, the educated, the strong.  The poor have little reason to hope for change.    

Violence. The sinister of the world face little resistance to their designs of evil. Gary Haugan is the founder of the International Justice Mission. He argues in his book, The Locust Effect, that until violence is addressed, the poor lack the means to rise out of poverty.

Law enforcement. This has a tight connection to violence. Haugan gives story after story of how law enforcement sides with the criminal, the predator. How can there be hope for justice in the courtroom when those who represent the law are also violators?

Light in the soul. The poor must combat the message that accompanies these discriminations—that they are the lowest of society, they don’t matter, they have no worth, and they bring scourge on their society. The determination that can counter that requires spiritual strength that is rare in those communities.

There is light ahead for the poor. Next week I will write on the virtues of the poor. (No kidding.) And the Psalmist reminds us: “Justice will again be found in the courts, and all righteous people will pursue it” (Psalm 94:15).

What can we do for the poor of the world? I recommend using Operation World. This monumental work is a day-by-day guide for prayer for all the nations of the world. Its primary focus is the expansion of Christ’s kingdom. One part of the examination always relates to the poor. 

This web site takes you to the nation of the day and prayer focus. For today we pray for Benin. 

https://operationworld.org

With apologies to: Macedonia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Mauritius, Moldova, Martinique, Mayotte, Montenegro, Montserrat, and Mongolia.

Operation World has been the source for the information in this article.