Nicholas D. Kristof:
M. is an ebullient girl, age 10, who ranks near the top of her fourth-grade class and dreams of being a doctor. Yet she, like all of India, is at a turning point, and it looks as if her family may instead sell her to a brothel.
Her mother is a prostitute here in Kolkata, the city better known to the world as Calcutta. Ruchira Gupta, who runs an organization called Apne Aap that fights human trafficking, estimates that 90 percent of the daughters of Indian prostitutes end up in the sex trade as well. And M. has the extra burden that she belongs to a subcaste whose girls are often expected to become prostitutes.
The conclusion:
...it is surreal that these scenes are unfolding in the 21st century. The peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the 1780s, when just under 80,000 slaves a year were transported from Africa to the New World.
These days, Unicef estimates that 1.8 million children a year enter the commercial sex trade. Multiply M. by 1.8 million, and you understand the need for a new abolitionist movement.
Read the rest.
2 comments:
Unbelievably heart-breaking. My own daughter just turned nine...I can't imagine. Thank you for shedding light on an injustice that is probably unheard of to most of America.
There are just so many stories of human rights violations like this (persecution of Christians, slavery, sex trade, etc.) At our church (and now at a couple others), we started a group called "Christian Advocacy" where once a month to pray and do an action item (write letters,etc). Our goal is "to inform, organize, and inspire Christians to pray and act on behalf of the oppressed". Can you imagine if groups like this were at 100's of churchs. Please check out or Faceboolk page http://www.facebook.com/ChristianAdvocacyNow and "like" us. God bless for posting the article.
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