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Monday, February 27, 2006
Editorial: Defying rescuers
WHOSE side are they on?
The campaign to stop sex trafficking is mired in a controversy as ironical as it is puzzling: the victims’ rejection of their police rescuers.
The passage of Republic Act 9208, known as the Anti-trafficking in Persons Law of 2003, has not yet resulted in a clampdown of the global sex trade that uses Cebu Province as a “primary transit point, receiving and destination area,” as pointed out by Sun.Star Cebu in a March 2005 special report on trafficking in persons.
In Kara Mae Muga Noveda’s three-part special report, a ranking police officer was quoted as saying that the anti-trafficking drive should be “pro-active, preemptive and preventive” by cracking down on sex syndicates.
But even in their current thrust to rescue prostituted women and minors and educate the public, the authorities seem to lose the war for the “hearts and minds” of the very same persons they are supposed to protect.
Why are the victims fleeing from their rescuers?
Beast, not Beauty
Recent criticisms of the police strategy to resort to “undercover sex” for entrapping commercial sex workers have reopened the can of worms suspected of sabotaging the government’s trafficking campaign where it matters the most: among the exploited.
According to the nongovernment organization Gabriela, this illegal industry employs flesh workers that have ballooned to a population of 400,000, excluding “unregistered, seasonal prostitutes, overseas entertainers and victims of external trafficking.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund documented that there used to be only seven provinces where sex rings operated in 1984. By 1997, the syndicates operated in 37 provinces.
Instead of being curtailed, trafficking is fed by a combination of factors involving the prostituted, the sex industry, and the police, one of the primary implementors of RA 9208.
Not blind justice
A factbook on global sexual exploitation reports on many lapses in enforcement. For instance, although the law penalizes prostitutes with 30 days of imprisonment, and procurers, a minimum of six months to six years imprisonment, many of those arrested by the police are only fined.
The bailable offense of vagrancy is sneered at by freelancers or streetwalkers and their pimps as a police alibi to harass and extort a portion of their earnings.
Law enforcers are also accused of exploitation when they resort to “undercover sex” for flushing out sex workers or parade the workers in front of the media during raids, while sparing the customers, managers and owners of the casa (brothel).
According to the InterPress Service, many of those who report foreign pedophiles to the authorities regret doing so because the aliens most often post bail or flee the country. The first local anti-trafficking case was filed in January 2004 against David Machanik, an American national operating a studio that was allegedly offering online sex.
The case was later archived because the authorities could not serve a warrant of arrest after failing to locate the American.
Dirty cops
At the root of this lack of cooperation and hostility is a deep-rooted suspicion of police corruption.
According to the Children’s Legal Bureau, many victims hesitate to give their written affidavits or do not show up during the hearing. This results in the dismissal of cases against the recruiters, talent managers and bar owners accused of trafficking.
If there is no follow-through to keep the case open, it may be due to the complainant’s lack of finances or interest, or a failure of nerve. According to popular perception, police protection shields capitalists in the flesh trade from feeling more than the “pinch of the law.”
As the Sun.Star Cebu special report pointed out, poverty may be at the root of the world’s oldest profession. However, it is the “powerful untouchables” that keep trafficking thriving and unstoppable.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 27, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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