This Thursday post will be a little brief. I just wanted to bring to your attention this article I found on CNN.com, about Mohammed Iqbal in Pakistan, who was forced - by poverty, by pressing medical bills - to make the decision between selling his children or selling his kidney to pay his landlord.This is not the first instance of a man having to make that decision, nor will it be the last. Because human trafficking is such a lucrative business (slavery is the world's second largest illegal enterprise, second only to drug trafficking), it has become an economic decision over a human rights one on whether it would be more beneficial to sell a part of oneself or one's progeny. It is terrifying that we have allowed such a world to come about that even makes such a pressing decision possible.
A few months after Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, rumors came about that the family of one of its young stars - Rubina Ali, who played the youngest Latika (pictured above) - was attempting to sell her to make money - $300,000, in fact. And now news has come up that the slums in which they lived were bulldozed in a government effort to clean up the city, which is, in of itself, rather ridiculous.
It should not take award winning directors with lots of money swooping in to force people to pay attention to this problem. The plight of the children alone is heart breaking, and we should not stand idly by.
Education is key to solving the issue. Please follow the links in the sidebar, learn what you can, educate yourself, and spread the word. Human trafficking and modern day slavery can stop now.
No comments:
Post a Comment
The owner of this blog tolerates no form of hate speech, including racial slurs, citing stereotypes as fact, or anything else deemed intolerant or hateful by the blog author. While you may have a right to say it, it does nothing to advance productive discussion, and therefore any comment containing such speech will be deleted accordingly.