In Hong Kong, Anglican consultation addresses horrors of human trafficking
Episcopal News Service, Hong Kong. November 9, 2009 [110909-03]
Margaret S. Larom
Women and men from around the Anglican Communion gathered in one of the most beautiful cities in the world Nov. 2-6 to focus on the ugly billion-dollar trade in children.
The trafficking of human beings, though banned by international and national laws, is flourishing, about 40 participants learned at a consultation in Hong Kong. A seemingly insatiable desire for young women and girls, and boys too -- for sex, for labor, for organs -- is fueled by evil, by greed, by ignorance, by unbearable choices made in the name of love, or as a last resort from desperate need.
The participants faced a barrage of statistics gathered by experts, and listened with broken hearts to stories shared by wounded healers. Sometimes aghast, sometimes inspired, they grew steadily more familiar with the "what" and the "where" and the "who," but still could not fathom the "why."
The consultation, organized by the Office of the Anglican United Nations Observer, Hellen Grace Akwii-Wangusa, in New York, was funded by a grant from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the generosity of Archbishop Paul Kwong of Hong Kong, who covered room, board, and ground transportation for all.
Overcoming jet lag and information overload with cheerful determination, the participants worked steadily all week in the hospitable YMCA Hotel on Salisbury Road, with sweeping views of Hong Kong's busy harbor shipping traffic and the magical laser lights show at night. They were treated to a 10-course restaurant dinner with Kwong one evening, Holy Eucharist in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist another, and a morning visit to one of the province's many social welfare projects -- the 13-story Providence Garden rehabilitation center for physically and mentally handicapped people.
Delegates to the consultation included Anglicans from 12 provinces – Korea, Japan, Philippines, England, Canada, USA, Mexico, Kenya, North India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Hong Kong. A significant number were young women who have attended meetings of the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in New York, thanks to the efforts of the AUNO, AWE (Anglican Women's Empowerment), and the Episcopal Church. They and others delivered country reports utilizing research in the U.S. State Department's TIP (Trafficking in Persons) reports and other sources.
According to the June 2009 TIP report, available here, the U.N.'s International Labor Organization "estimates that there are at least 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial sexual servitude at any given time. Of these victims, at least 1.39 million are victims of commercial sexual servitude, both transnational and within countries, and 56 percent of all forced labor victims are women and girls."
Various U.N. agencies have documented that human trafficking is one of the three largest international crimes (along with illegal trading in arms and drugs), and is one of the fastest growing, earning billions of dollars each year for its perpetrators.
The current economic crisis is fueling an increase in trafficking, warned key international experts at the consultation, including:
- Amalee Rae McCoy of Bangkok, the UNICEF regional child protection consultant for East Asia and the Pacific;
- Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw of Myanmar, the national project coordinator of the U.N. Inter-Agency Project (UNIAP) on Human Trafficking in Myanmar; and
- Mark Peter Capaldi, deputy director of ECPAT International, based in Thailand. (ECPAT stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes; the movement has chapters around the world.)
Some heartening stories were shared during a day focusing on the church's response.
Miryoung (Magdalena) Kim of the Diocese of Taejon, Korea, described her work with prostituted women as president of the Women Survivors Community in essays that revealed not only the prophetic nature of her ministry but also the heart and mind of a spiritual poet.
Subhro Prakesh Tudu, coordinator for the Anti-Trafficking Project and Development and Justice Wing of the Diocese of Eastern Himalaya, Church of North India, told the heart-breaking story of Susana, who was taken aged 14 -- with her father's permission -- to work in another town but now, the victim of predatory practices and an unwanted pregnancy, is praying for death at 16. Subhro showed how the diocese has created a series of "vigilant cells" in villages throughout the district, training bus drivers and persuading police to watch for vulnerable girls, with the result that half the missing girls in a two-year period have been rescued and brought home.
Edwina Antonio Santonio, executive director of Bethune House Migrant Women's Refuge in Hong Kong, told of the services they are able to provide to abused domestic workers, mostly from Philippines but also other Asian countries. A Young Adult Service Corps volunteer from the Episcopal Church, Maegan Collier of the Diocese of Alabama, is working at Bethune House as part of her year's commitment to the Cathedral of St. John's ministry for migrant workers.
The Rev. Dr. Sirirat Pusurinkham of Thailand, a UCC pastor who is founder and director of My Thai Kids Orphanage at Prattachisuk Presbyterian Church, described how at the age of 9 she lost some of her friends -- sold into the sex trade by parents overtaken by poverty. Feeling so sad, angry and helpless then, she has worked ever since to save children from a similar fate. Yet a tidal wave of greed and gross appetite threatens to swamp her efforts. She works in the so-called Golden Triangle of Thailand, a "paradise" of opium, prostitution, trafficking and slavery.
Legal issues and legislative advocacy were highlighted in several ways. Efforts in Hungary, a member of the European Union but still a "young democracy," were described by Andrea Ferenczi, president of the Association for Women's Career Development in Hungary.
The Rev. Dr. Carrie Pemberton of the Church of England, founder of CHASTE (Churches Alert to Sex Trafficking across Europe) and author of Not for Sale and The Real Scandal of Sex Trafficking, noted that while churches may say there is no money for an anti-trafficking campaign, church leaders can offer their blessing (as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has).
Laura A. Russell of the Diocese of Newark, a Legal Aid attorney in New York City and co-drafter of the New York State anti-trafficking legislation, offered definitions, debunked myths, and described ways to help victims as she led participants through a description of the realities that govern her work. A newly appointed member of the Episcopal Church's Committee on the Status of Women, she is particularly interested in the links between the feminization of poverty, migrant workers, and prostitution.
The consultation was undergirded with prayer and worship, personal visioning and stress reduction techniques including a Christian tai chi. The Rev. Maylin Biggadike, Diocese of Newark, and Phoebe Griswold, Diocese of Pennsylvania, provided theological reflections that grounded participants in Scripture and Christ's redeeming love, but also challenged them to see and name as evil the sinful slave trade of the 21st century -- and not to rest until it's stamped out. Bishop Naresh Ambala of Eastern Himalaya Diocese, Church of North India, gave a powerful testimony citing the many biblical mandates for protecting children from harm.
The faith-based approach to the subject of trafficking, as well as the various best practices described, made an impression on the representatives of non-church agencies. ECPAT's Capaldi said he was sure that he and other "secular" agencies in the fight against trafficking would invite faith-based organizations into their planning and implementation efforts henceforth.
Another positive outcome came when Anglican UN Observer Wangusa noted her desire to organize an Anglican Communion-wide conference on trafficking in the future. Nine persons -- Anglicans/Episcopalians as well as outside experts – volunteered to serve on a planning committee. (This initial consultation was planned for Wangusa by Alessandra Pena, Beth Adamson, Christina Hing and Maylin Biggadike, AUNO/AWE volunteers; Peter Ng, the Episcopal Church's partnership officer for Asia and the Pacific; Anna Gula, AUNO intern in New York; and the Rev. Peter Douglas Koon, general secretary of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui.)
The Anglican Communion, situated in 165 countries, is well situated to "get done what must be done," said Griswold. "This conference can make that difference by what we decide here to speak boldly, truthfully and with great love to the church and the world." Noting that "we are people who love life, who sustain the work through love, and who will not give up," she issued a call to bring "life-giving energy" to the work.
"Joining with suffering -- in this case the human suffering of poverty, loss of freedom of self and body -- is the stuff of being with God and being empowered, truly and miraculously empowered, to make the world whole and lovely once again."
-- Canon Margaret S. Larom is the Episcopal Church's interim director of the Advocacy Center and program officer for international justice and peacemaking. Larom, a longtime member of the Presiding Bishop's staff at the Episcopal Church Center, attended the Hong Kong consultation and addressed participants on the importance of church policy-building in accomplishing advocacy with the government as well as civil society. Using the human trafficking resolution brought by the Committee on the Status of Women to this year's General Convention as an example (A167), Larom pointed out that the efforts of a few can be leveraged into the voice of many.