One of the more horrifying aspects of being an MP is that you come into contact with issues that tend to be out of the public eye but are still of real concern. One that I would mention immediately in this regard is people trafficking – quite literally the process of enslaving individuals, moving them from their home country or place of residence to the other side of the world where they then end up as prostitutes, child abuse victims or slave labour in a run down factory, restaurant or warehouse.
Until relatively recently though we recognised that such slavery existed – indeed I wrote about it when we celebrated the refurbishment of the Archway arch which commemorates the abolition of slavery by William Wilberforce and others – we did not know the scale and traction of this trade worldwide.
Horrifyingly it does appear to be far worse than earlier projections would suppose, and it is growing rapidly as a form of illicit global operations beginning to match drug and alcohol smuggling in scale and even international rackets.
Now I know that unfortunately the enslaved victims are not always as innocent as you would want them to be. There are often gullible people who think that they can buy their freedom and a passage to the West by going through the traffickers. Of course traffickers play on the riches that these individuals will receive when they are successfully moved. However we know that too often one element of illegality is overtaken by another as the traffickers are able to extract more money from those individuals. When they cannot pay they are turned into slaves too frightened to go to the authorities as they will be deported home, where they fear they will receive a very uncertain welcome.
To be fair to the UK it is has tried very hard to bear down on this trade. It has now signed the various UN protocols that cover this issue, but more importantly in many respects it has tried to enforce them. In addition a new Bill was passed hurriedly through the House last week which will further help the authorities to intervene.
Then there is Operation Pentameter, which for a time was overseen by the recently retired Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Dr. Tim Brain set up to monitor the scale of the devilish trade. Sadly Pentameter did get some criticism in that it has not had the desired success in breaking down organised trafficking with few numbers of those trafficked and even fewer of the traffickers being caught. However it is quite simply wrong to believe that the scale of the trade has been greatly exaggerated. It just proves how difficult it is to apprehend offending people and should make us even more determined to root out this evil.
Part of the problem besides the lack of transparency in how traffickers work is that those who are the victims are often dispersed far and wide when they come into this country to better hide them. Thus surprisingly many young girls have turned up in brothels in the most unlikely of small towns where the evil perpetrators hope that they are out of sight and out of mind.
Most distressing of all has been the tales coming out of Haiti that amongst those actively helping the bedevilled children of the country are those acting on behalf of paedophiles, keen to traffic those children to the West. This matches what was happening previously in Sri Lanka where known child abusers had settled in the then territory of the Tamil Tigers allowed to carry on their depraved activities in return for financial support being given.
That proves the genuine global nature of this awful trade and it behoves the international community to do more to attack it. However it is no good the UK waiting for action at that level – it needs to redouble its efforts here to at least considerably reduce this most barbaric of human behaviour.
David Drew
MP for the Stroud Constituency