Human Trafficking
In Italy, two teenage Bulgarian sisters have been rescued by the Italian police from a circus in which one of them is said to have been forced to swim with piranhas. The older sister (nineteen years old) swam in a glass tank while the younger one (sixteen years old) was forced into a container where the circus staff tossed snakes at her causing her to be injured by one of the snakes, police said. Four members of the family have been freed from what has been described as a “Circus of Horrors” south of Naples. The women were paid 100 Euros ($158.46) a week, forbidden to leave the camp and forced to work 15 and 20 hour shifts. Their story is one of thousands that are involved in human trafficking networks in Europe.
The E.U. (European Union) estimates that 500,000 people are affected by trafficking every year in Europe. In 2006, more than 100 Polish workers were freed from forced labor camps in the Puglia region of Italy where they had been promised seasonal farm work. Human trafficking is surprisingly a very large problem in foreign countries and especially throughout Europe.
“They are told, come for a good job in Milan, or Amsterdam or Madrid. Then it turns out it is not a job at a bar or a hairdresser, instead they are forced to have sex with many, many different men and the traffickers are paid. Sometimes they try to escape but they are capture and brought back again. Sometimes they are sold from one gang to another, so we are really talking about a form of modern day slavery,” said Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General for the UK
It is truly appalling to know that across the world, there are still people living as slaves doing things that nobody else will do for the amusement of the wealthy. The problem is the same as it is in America. People who are desperately seeking work cannot find it anywhere but abroad. But, to get the job they must be smuggled into the country, and in most European cases, they don’t get the job they’re promised. It is shocking to look in at the secret lives of others and find that many are following lifestyles against their own will. Like many problems, this just highlights the true con of man. Greed has never been as prevalent as it is today. Lives are being forfeited for the economic interest of another.
This passage from Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” follows the idea that evil will always be in existence, “…it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.”
Ed Tom Bell, the character who says this quote is expressing his thoughts on a type of evil that no moral man can understand. He believes that his father in the dream can create a light in the darkness, but then he woke up. This goes to show that evil will always be prevalent.
There will always be evil, but there will also always be good to counter it. I believe that situations like human trafficking should not be ignored. If anything should be focused on in Europe, one should definitely be the underground slave trade that still exists today.
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/64471
http://www.oliverwillis.com/news/index.php/2008/03/26/bulgarian-sisters-were-circus-slaves-forced-to-swim-with-piranhas/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7314175.stm
