| Author |
Message |
    
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14182
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - 5:49 pm: | 
|
May 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Bush Takes On the Brothels
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
I'm guessing that President Bush's foreign policy will stand up about as well to the assessments of future historians as a baby gazelle to a pack of cheetahs.
Yet there is one area where Mr. Bush is making a historic contribution: he is devoting much more money and attention to human trafficking than his predecessors. Just as one of Jimmy Carter's great legacies was putting human rights squarely on the international agenda, Mr. Bush is doing the same for slave labor.
We don't tend to think of trafficking as a top concern, so Mr. Bush hasn't gotten much credit. But it's difficult to think of a human rights issue that could be more important than sex trafficking and the other kinds of neo-slavery that engulf millions of people around the world, leaving many of them dead of AIDS by their early 20's.
My own epiphany came in 1989, when my wife and I lived in China and covered the crushing of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Arrests of dissidents were front-page news, but no one paid any attention as many tens of thousands of Chinese women and girls were kidnapped and sold each year by traffickers to become the unwilling wives of peasants.
Since then, I've seen the peddling of humans in many countries: the 8-year-old Filipino girl whose mother used to pull her out of school to rent to pedophiles; the terrified 14-year-old Vietnamese girl imprisoned in a brothel pending the sale of her virginity; the Pakistani teenager whose brothel's owner dealt with her resistance by drugging her into a stupor. The U.N. has estimated that 12.3 million people worldwide are caught in forced labor of one kind or another.
In an age of H.I.V., sex trafficking is particularly lethal. And for every political dissident who is locked up in a prison cell, hundreds of teenage girls are locked up in brothels and, in effect, sentenced to death by AIDS.
In 2000, Congress passed landmark anti-trafficking legislation, backed by an unlikely coalition of evangelical Republicans and feminist Democrats. Even today, the Congressional leaders against trafficking include a conservative Republican, Senator Sam Brownback, and a liberal Democrat, Representative Carolyn Maloney.
But the heaviest lifting has been done by the State Department's tiny office on trafficking — for my money, one of the most effective units in the U.S. government. The office, led by a former Republican congressman, John Miller, is viewed with suspicion by some career diplomats who fear that simple-minded conservative nuts are mucking up relations with countries over a peripheral issue.
Yet Mr. Miller and his office wield their spotlight shrewdly. With firm backing from the White House (Mr. Bush made Mr. Miller an ambassador partly to help him in his bureaucratic battles), the office puts out an annual report that shames and bullies foreign governments into taking action against forced labor of all kinds.
Under pressure from the report, Cambodia prosecuted some traffickers (albeit while protecting brothels owned by government officials) and largely closed down the Svay Pak red-light district, where 10-year-olds used to be openly sold. Ecuador stepped up arrests of pimps and started a national public awareness campaign. Israel trained police to go after traffickers and worked with victims' home countries, like Belarus and Ukraine. And so on, country by country.
Some liberals object to the administration's requirement that aid groups declare their opposition to prostitution before they can get anti-trafficking funds. But in the past, without that requirement, U.S. funds occasionally went to groups promoting prostitution. And in any case, the requirement doesn't seem to have caused many problems on the ground (partly because aid groups sometimes dissemble to get money). In Zambia, India and Cambodia, I've seen U.S.-financed programs work closely with prostitutes and brothel owners when that is needed to get the job done.
Moreover, Ambassador Miller and his staff aren't squeamish prudes. Mr. Miller is sympathetic to the Swedish model: stop punishing prostitutes, but crack down on pimps and customers. He says that approach seems to have reduced more forced prostitution than just about any other strategy.
The backdrop is a ridiculously divisive debate among anti-trafficking activists about whether prostitution should be legalized. Whatever one thinks of that question, it's peripheral to the central challenge: vast numbers of underage girls are forced into brothels against their will, and many die of AIDS. On that crucial issue, Mr. Bush is leaving a legacy that he and America can be proud of.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
|
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 367
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - 6:29 pm: |
|
Bush thinks brothels have WMDs? |
hch
Citizen
Username: Hch
Post Number: 255
Registered: 8-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - 7:22 pm: |
|
Bush and brothels......
Come on folks, where are the jokes? |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1308
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - 10:37 pm: |
|
I think its a good thing he is devoting some energy to that. But they arent raising the minimum wage in the Marianas Islands, so the sex trade there is flourishing.
But good for Bust. Im glad he got one thing right. |
ina
Citizen
Username: Ina
Post Number: 355
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - 11:55 pm: |
|
Stopping the trafficking and enslavement of minors for sex work is a no-brainer. It's like being against torturing puppies and kittens. How does this jibe with Bush's mainstays of AIDS prevention: abstinence until marriage and discouraging condom use? |
Mr. Big Poppa
Citizen
Username: Big_poppa
Post Number: 647
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 8:21 am: |
|
Hoops...."Good for Bust"???? Freudian slip?  |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14195
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 10:51 am: |
|
Sure, it's a no-brainer when you think about it, but Bush has done more than preceding presidents. Let's give credit where it's due. It keeps our criticism honest.
|
The Notorious S.L.K.
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1383
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 11:23 am: |
|
Thank you Tom. If more of the other left leaning individuals were like you on MOL would be alot more interesting and fun.
-SLK |
dave23
Citizen
Username: Dave23
Post Number: 1751
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 11:48 am: |
|
To be honest, I didn't know about this. So I can now think of three things I agree with Bush on: (Elements of) immigration reform, funding for AIDS help in Africa, and sex trafficking. |
ina
Citizen
Username: Ina
Post Number: 356
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006 - 6:08 am: |
|
OK, so what happens to the youngsters AFTER they're freed from the brothels? You know a number of them are going to have STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Just how much practical help do you think they're going to get from the agencies that have been systematically defunded by Bush because they DO provide abortions and condoms, and how helpful are the parallel clinics he's set up going to be to people for whom abstinence was never an option? |
tjohn
Supporter
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 4315
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006 - 8:36 am: |
|
Good grief people. Can't we enjoy some collective satisfaction in this good thing that the Bush Administration is doing.
|
sportsnut
Citizen
Username: Sportsnut
Post Number: 2406
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006 - 10:10 am: |
|
tjohn - did you really ask that question?....here in maplewood? I'm surprised. People here have a blind hatred of the man. so much for the seemingly open minded intelligent people label some claim to have. When it comes to politics this has got to be one of the most close-minded group of people I have ever come across. |
GOP Man
Citizen
Username: Headsup
Post Number: 366
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006 - 11:28 am: |
|
and I've noticed it's only the libs who make blanket generalizations. |
mjh
Supporter
Username: Mjh
Post Number: 514
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006 - 11:32 am: |
|
sportsnut;
if you base your conclusion about this community based on MOL postings, I can see where you would come to this conclusion. Most of the time, MOL politics is "right wing-nuts" vs. "left wing nuts", and all of those in-between either give up in disgust, or post infrequently.
I also agree with Bush on the 3 things listed by dave23, and I did not vote for him and would consider myself left-leaning. Many of us are able to see beyond partisanship, and evaluate policy from a more independent minded stance. We just tend to bypass "discussions" on MOL most of the time.
In ina's defense (re: her post above), it's hard not to become jaded about these "good Bush policies" because money is being taken away from organizations with a proven track record in prevention of HIV because these organizations decline to give up teaching sex workers HIV prevention (they decline to take the "pledge" mentioned by Kristof). I don't buy Kristof's statement "But in the past, without that requirement, U.S. funds occasionally went to groups promoting prostitution". Nonsense. HIV prevention education and support have become synonymous with "promoting prostitution" under this administrations policies.
I work in the field (HIV), and have done a considerable amount of travel/work in SE Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. I certainly support the efforts against sex trafficking, and any efforts to reduce the kind of poverty that draws women into prostitution. But I firmly believe that you can support anti-trafficking programs while also supporting programs that provide for HIV prevention education and support. These are not counter-productive, but nevertheless this is not allowed under current policy, and the rug has been pulled out from under programs that truly helped women avoid sexually transmitted disease.
If you believe teaching sex workers about HIV prevention is bad policy, please review the history of the HIV epidemic in Thailand, and how HIV prevalence was markedly reduced through government-sponsored interventions with sex workers. I can assure you they taught HIV prevention methods without "promoting prostitution".
|
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page