21st Century Slavery

Documentation of a world wide plague of human trafficking on every continent should create in all of us a sense of righteous anger and zeal for stamping out the circumstances that allow for such in our generation. The buying and selling of human beings is being carried on in many forms…in an underworld of crime and drugs and prostitution…and in a very visible world of poverty, war, and disease. The exploiters are those who feed off of the brutal exploitation of children, forcing them into battle or drug peddling or fodder for the pornography industry and sex trade.

An estimated quarter of a million individuals in the United States are being held in some form of controlling and illegal bondage. Young women and children have been the most frequently victimized. Typically those from other countries are invited to take on work and then after entering the country, forced into environments where their credentials are taken away, their communication with family is cut off, and their identity hidden. They are in turn forced to participate in all kinds of illegal activity under the threat of death or being told that they will be beaten or maimed or in some other way intimidated into submission. The examples are many and the methods abominable.

It is time for the nations of the world to work together to bring an end to the stealing of children to force them to become child laborers or child soldiers in the armies of warlords and tyrants. It is time for the sick mentality of those who use children for profit to end. It is time for those who allow the exploitation of children to be named, blamed, and shamed for the crimes they perpetrate.

The O. T. prophets cried out for justice and righteousness in the land. When something else is the norm of the day, the very foundations of what we value as liberty will falter and fail. Lest we forget, the strength of a nation is revealed in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Likewise, the weak and the poor should not be condemned to death because of where they are born or because there are no voices to speak for them. Speak out…do what you can do…stop the apathy.