MEMPHIS, Tenn. (ABP) –The woman came over from China expecting love, marriage and a better life, according to a speaker on human trafficking June 19, during a workshop session at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Memphis, Tenn.
But she wasn’t allowed to leave her house for three years.
Her husband was the only one who ever told her she was beautiful and loved, said Paul Lange, executive director of Oasis USA. She had a twisted loyalty; at times she felt loved and dedicated to her husband, but most days he abused her.
He seized her documents so she couldn’t leave, Lange said. Instead of the freedom she sought, she became a captive in her own house.
Lange said there are over 20 million slaves today. In the U.S. alone, he said, over 15,000 people are trafficked each year.
“We think it is something that happens far away,” Lange said. “But it is in our backyard.”
Oasis USA works in community development, health care and education, with a focus on human trafficking. “We work for the dignity of humans around us,” he said. “Because humans are made in the image of God.”
The organization does work in India, especially with street children. Oasis leaders noticed that many of the children were disappearing and found out they were being forced to work in factories and brothels.
“The face of slavery has shifted in the past couple centuries,” Lange said.
According to Lange, 293,000 youth are trapped in prostitution. Worldwide, 50 percent of trafficking victims are children and 80 percent are women.
“It is as lucrative in the black market as drugs,” according to a video clip shown by Lange.
After drug dealing, human trafficking is the second-largest criminal industry in the world, according to a brochure called “Look Beneath the Surface.”
For example, in Thailand, prostitution is a significant sector of the nation’s overall economy. Even the government and police profit from the trade.
Lange noted that 25 percent of sex tourists are Americans.
The problems created by human trafficking are compounded in AIDS-ravaged Africa.
In Ivory Coast, Lange said, people are forced to work in cocoa farms. Americans consume $13 billion in chocolate a year; 43 percent of that comes from Africa. Much of the cocoa that becomes chocolate is farmed by child laborers who are trapped in servitude.
In one video Lange showed, a boy who works on one of these farms was asked what he would tell Americans who eat the chocolate. He said, “Tell them when they bite into the chocolate that they are consuming the flesh of me and my brother.”
It’s not just the chocolate business. Virtually all major industries in developing nations have been tainted, to greater or lesser extents, by human trafficking.
Minnie Rooks said she heard about modern-day slavery from an International Women’s Day of Prayer speaker at her church, Crossroads Baptist Church in Fremont, Calif. She said it was something she didn’t want to hear about only once and then do nothing more. “I feel like it is the calling for my life,” Rooks said. And she feels connected to the Oasis organization.
Lange encouraged people to understand and learn to identify the signs of human trafficking. He also suggested searching for “Fair Trade” labels on the products people buy to help reduce the number of humans being trafficked. These labels denote products created using suppliers that try to practice fair labor policies.
Lauren Bethell, a former American Baptist missionary who founded a ministry in Thailand that rescues prostitutes and sex slaves, addressed a similar topic in a sermon during a June 19 plenary session of the CBF assembly.
Bethell, now a human-rights advocate in Eastern Europe, said many congregations let fear prevent them from ministering to people who are abused and trapped in destructive lifestyles, especially “people who feel they are so wounded they could never be healed.”
But she said Jesus modeled for Christians a way to overcome that fear.
“Jesus is our example of bridging that gap,” she said, citing the biblical story of the woman at the well to illustrate how Jesus ministered to the whole person. “I am so glad CBF appoints missionaries that minister holistically.”
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— Greg Warner contributed to this story.