Translator: Esther Alvarez de Prado
Reviewer: Raquel Alvarado Imagine, imagine that a mother has to give her young child away to somebody, a total stranger who is going to take this child away,
far away and she may never see him again. Or imagine a father
who is going to have to sell his underage teenage daughter twelve years, fourteen years old and marry her off to a 70 year old person in another continent, and he may never see her again. And the tragedy of that is that, even if she was in trouble and needed help and asks for his help he's unable to take her back. This is part of what we call
modern-day slavery. And slavery exists, it exists now. In the age of wonderment, that is my question,
that in the 21st century why are we allowing slavery to exist? It exists in a big way. There are at least 27 million slaves
in this world today 27 million. That's far more than the slaves that were transported out of Africa
over a period of 400 years east and west. It's a fastest growing organized crime
in the world right now. It is even ahead of drugs. Drugs get consumed and that's done. Human beings are being sold,
and resold, and resold It fetches 32 billion dollars a year
in revenue. The problem with this is it goes
under the name of "human trafficking". And "human trafficking"
does not do justice to the kind of brutal, dehumanizing things
that slavery brings with it. And we don't see it, it's a hidden crime. For all you know, you may be sitting amongst people
who have been trafficked before and you would not even know it. I am a journalist and I tell stories. And I've been telling stories of death
and destruction, and stuff in the past, with some of the major American networks. Beirut, Bosnia, Somalia,
Baghdad, the works. Everything was fine, because
that's when I was getting my thrills, my adrenaline, ups, highs,
lows, excitement, all of that. But then, in 1995 this is what happened to me. This was in Sarajevo in 1995 when a 500-pound bomb hit our office TV station, that's me, coming out of there. This bomb wounded 36 people,
killed one person and damaged my eye. In fact I lost the vision
in my eye for a while. But thanks to the doctors in Sarajevo
and at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore they got it fixed, so this eye is good. But symbolically what happened?
This fixed eye started seeing life
in a very different way. Instead of death and destruction I started to feel that I should tell the stories of people in the world who normally do not have a voice. Whose voices are unheard because they don't matter, they're poor, marginalized,
people don't care about them they don't have the power. And these are stories of people little people fighting big battles and sometimes even winning them. So as part of this I got into the question of human trafficking
because of the UN and starting looking into it
and I was horrified. When you say human trafficking
I thought, it is a sex trade, illegal immigrants,
illegal smuggling of people. It isn't any of that,
it isn't about Russian pole dancers no, it is a lot more horrible than that. So we co-produced,
with the help of an organization called "End Human Trafficking Now", a six-part series for the BBC
on human trafficking around the world. We cannot even begin to start
to tell you the stories because they are so horrific but in these clips
you might just get an idea of what goes on. (Video) (Boy) I usually go to the beach
to ask for money. Sometimes at home we have nothing.
This is how we get food. (Narrator) James' father thought
their money problems were over. (Man) After he started going to the beach he got used to seeing the white people. The first days he came and said that
there is a white man who likes him and will help us at home. I said to him, 'This is good news, at least we won't have any worries anymore. (Boy) He gave me 500 shillings (7$)
and did bad things to me. He raped me. (Woman) You say you are going to provide
a boy? (Man) Yes. (W) And a girl?
(M) Yeah. (W) Which class? (M) The girl? Is in class seven. (W) The girl who is in class seven
is ten years old. Or 11? (M) Ten years. (W) And the boy is nine?
(M) The boy is ten years. The one who I'm going to bring to you
is my cousin. (W) Your cousin?
(M) Yeah. I got him from [his] home
because he is learning from me (W) Uh huh. So you are providing
some shelter for him? (Narrator) The girl you are listening to
is the friend of an underage bride who was sold by her father for 900 USD. Her father said, "Baby, don't make a fuss
our family needs the money [900$]..." He said, "I have no job,
your mum is sick." (Narrator) The 14-year-old was too afraid
to make the call herself. My friend was then sexually abused
at her husband's house. She got pregnant...
but the baby died. Now she's on the street. Her husband has asked for his money back
but her family has spent it. It's a tragedy. (Man) He said give me your child.
I will make him work. I did not like it
but I had no choice. 12 small children plus 18 older children
all slept in one room. We woke up at 9 o'clock and sat down
and worked until 12 o'clock midnight. He did not pay us wages but gave us food
and 50 Rupees [US $1] every Sunday. (Woman) She beat me. Sometimes I lost my mind. I didn't see her coming. She pushed me... and said... 'You have to be dead, dead, dead.' It was the third floor upstairs. When I was in the air I [rotated] myself, because I thought
then I'm going to fall like this I will break my head. So I [rotated] myself,
I don't know how. I come like this. (Narrator) How many people
have you managed to convict of human trafficking in Mexico? [Congresswoman Rosi Orozco
Head of Human Trafficking Unit of Mexico] One. Faridoun Hemani: These are some
of the stories we found as we went worldwide
covering human trafficking. The tragedy is that you see
in so many instances the first boy that we saw, James,
seven years old, he was raped that tourist who took him in
and imprisoned him in a hotel room went off scot-free. He was the powerful one. The police even didn't want
to know about him. You look at how easy it is to buy and sell children, ten years old and usually from a position of trust. So many people are sold into slavery by people in whom they have placed trust. Here we saw what happened. A guy who's got a girl and a boy
cousins, and he's selling them very happy, very happy to sell them to our undercover camera operators. We look at the boy in India. We had our crews cover some raids where the police actually
freed some of these kids. And then kids like that
when they go back to their parents what happens? The parents are unhappy
that the kids have come back home. Because now,
they have to feed one more mouth and they have lost one source of income. So the kids are nowhere. You look at the girl in Egypt, I've said about her before, so heavily abused
not even by her husband, but by somebody else and cannot come back home. And this lady in Kenia,
that we interviewed her story is quite amazing but the fact that she is even alive when she was sold into slavery
under false pretenses to Saudi Arabia. She thought she was going as a nanny she turned out to be a domestic slave. She got sold from one family to another then another woman started making her
short skirts and things like that to get her ready to go into prostitution.
She resisted. As a result that owner,
and I won't say employer - it was the owner - pushed her off the third floor balcony. And as she is falling, you can imagine
what's going through her mind? She's trying to tell us
and she is saying, I look down and I say
how do I rotate myself what do I do, how do I stop my head
getting crushed? So in that ten seconds that it takes to go from the third floor balcony down and there was a swimming pool
at the bottom she decided if I fall like this
I will save my life. And she did. She fell this way, broke both her hands,
we found her in Kenia. And she was one of the luckier ones. Her owner, went scot-free. Because the owner
pretended to the police that this woman was trying to run away, she packed all the clothes in bags
and put them out there. So when the police came she said
she fell when she was trying to run away. There were two or three
other Kenian women at that time,
that actually came back in coffins. And the families could do nothing about it
they were powerless. Now, if you think for a moment that this happens just in Asia,
in India, in places like that it doesn't. Much closer to home we saw this lady from the Human Trafficking Unit in Mexico. Two years ago, tens of thousands of people
being trafficked and how many were convicted? One. There has to be something
that can be done. But even closer than that, here, at home, in Texas. Now, I love Texas,
I've been here many times before, I've had the benefit of the generosity
of a lot of Texans hearts as big as everything else in Texas. But, Houston, we have a problem. We have a problem because Texas has got the largest number
of trafficked people in the US. 25% of trafficked people
in the US are here. Houston airport provides the hub
for the majority of the people coming into the US, 18,000 people trafficked into the country. The I-10 corridor from
El Paso to Houston is the largest corridor
for human trafficking. 30,000 people transit
in and out of the US but it's not just people from outside. There are a quarter of a million minors,
mostly girls, who are trafficked into prostitution in the US. Quarter of a million. We're not talking about Kenians,
Sri Lankans, Philippinas, anything we're talking about Americans, domestic human trafficking. And what happens, some of these are just
simple disputes where people leave home. Girls leave home,
have a row with their parents. And somebody befriends them,
becomes a boyfriend, makes them feel good. And the next thing they know is
they are trapped into prostitution and they cannot get out. So if you look at the strip-clubs,
or if you look at the truck stops and see all these women, the majority of them
don't want to be there but they don't have a choice. Now, one of the examples of how people get trafficked in is again it's on the question of trust. This is in a poor village in Zambia. The young boy whose face is circled is a boy by the name of Given Kachepa. His family, like everyone else,
has got dreams and hopes for their children. What happens is a priest, from Texas
goes out to Zambia and he talks to the family. This boy, together with others,
[has] a gift from God. They can sing. They are in the a capella voice choir. And that is supposed to be
his ticket to America and out of poverty. So the priest comes out
and tells the parents and other parents like them, why don't you bring your kids over, send your kids over, I'll take them. We will go and sing in choirs
all over churches, we'll raise money
we will educate your boys, we will feed your boys we will send money back to you
and you can build schools and ensure that the kids get an education. And who can say no to a priest? If you cannot trust a priest,
whom can you trust? And the same story is repeated,
not just the church. In West Africa people hand over their kids
to koranic teachers or in India you'll find them
in Hindu temples in Thailand you'll find them
in Buddhist temples it's everywhere,
you just have to look the problem is that it's hidden,
you have to look. So the family says yes and, the kids come here and they start singing in Texas. And the priest delivers. He delivers the church choir singing the fund raising, all of that. But not one penny goes out to the kids or to the people at home. There is in many cases
not even medical care even TB was a problem,
it went untreated. The kids worked seven, eight,
nine hours a day no breaks, no nothing,
they were not allowed to complain because if they complained,
there was manipulation used. The priest would say,
"I would send you back home and tell your parents
you were disobedient or disrespectful." And that couldn't happen
because the parents would have a hard time accepting
that this was your ticket to freedom to everything, to your future
and you blew it by being disrespectful. So in that way the kids were forced to work incredible hours, no breaks, no nothing. Thankfully that ended in about two years. Thankfully that ended
and for Given Kachepa he was very lucky. There was a guardian angel
in the form of Sandy Shepperd, a lady from Dallas
who took him in. She even took in the other kids first
and then helped either find homes or find safe passages back for them. But she kept Given here
and gave him every opportunity before even adequate
human trafficking laws were in place. She fought the system and made sure
that he had a safe home here. And that is a lucky thing
and a good thing. Because he's now here
in the United States and safe. But it isn't safe for everybody. A lot of the kids that went back because they couldn't cope
with all of this when there was alcoholism
or drugs or violence, they just could not cope. And not all stories
can be success stories like Given. They cannot be because
we have to do something about it otherwise they will not
all be successful stories. So, what can we do?
Very quickly. We can make a difference. We can ask the right questions,
ask people who make our garments are these garments using forced labor? They will listen to you,
the brand names will listen to you. They want your money,
they will listen. Ask the chocolate manufacturers is this slave-labor, child-labor
from West Africa? Ask your gadget makers,
your electronic gadgets, is this slave-free labor? Ask them and they will listen. You can call hotlines
that are set up. Call them,
if there's a doubt about anything, ask. And get your law-enforcement authorities
to really take action and not treat the victims
as the perpetrators but the traffickers. And all of this can make a difference. All of us can really make a difference. If you think you cannot make a difference that's wrong. To the world, you may be a person but to a person you may be the world. And you can make that difference. And now what I want to show you is this gentleman here. He previously was trafficked
into the US he's a third year student
of dentistry in Dallas and he is none other than
our Given Kachepa that we talked about,
in the States here, now. That is a success story. (Applause) (Woman) We are today honored and graced with the presence of the man himself. Mr. Given Katchepa
and Sandy Shepperd. Please put your hand together
to welcome them. (Applause) You met Sandy who is your second mom and what sense of hope
did she provide you? Because I realize that
you were betrayed by adults when you were a child, so what sense of hope
did Sandy provide for you at that point? Given Kachepa:
She gave me a lot of hope because I grew up without anything. I lost my mom in 1992
and then I lost my dad in 1994. And then I got in
this trafficking situation and I was in it for two years and then when she came into the picture it gave me hope
that I could try to do something out of my life because there's a lot of poverty
in Africa and just to think that
I could go to school and try to learn and become something
and eventually in the future I might be able to go back home
to my country and be able to help the people
that are still suffering on a daily basis even to this day, I mean, trafficking
is happening everywhere. There's 27 million slaves
around the world today and if we are not doing anything
to try to combat it then it's going to continue
the only way we do that is by spreading the word
and making sure that the public understand
that this is happening and then we can resolve the issue. I'm not happy about
being known as a modern-day slave but if I can do it to help one more person then I'm willing to stand up
on a stage like this and tell my story. (Woman) And your being here
is doing exactly that. Thank you Given.
