Human Trafficking

49.6 million. According to the Global Slavery Index that's the latest estimate for the number of slaves in the world today. It could be just another number in a blur of facts that fly by our faces in a day, but this nearly 50 million number has a face. It includes women and men, boys and girls who are held in bondage as sex slaves, domestic servants, and child soldiers.

Of course, that is only an estimate since slavery thrives in darkness. But another news item gives this statistic an even more horrifying angle. A British paper shared a story about “Daniel” (not his real name) who was brought into the U.K. for what he had been told was a "life-changing opportunity.” He thought he was going to get a better job. Instead, it was then that he realized there was no job opportunity and he had been brought to the UK to give a kidney to a stranger.

"He was going to literally be cut up like a piece of meat, take what they wanted out of him and then stitch him back up," according to Cristina Huddleston, from the anti-modern slavery group Justice and Care.

Luckily for Daniel, the doctors had become suspicious that he didn't know what was going on and feared he was being coerced. So, they halted the process.

Daniel was not free of his traffickers though. Back in the flat where he was staying, two men came to examine him. It was then he overheard a conversation about sending him back to Nigeria to remove his kidney there.

He fled, and after two nights sleeping rough, he walked into a police station near Heathrow, triggering an investigation that would lead to the UK's first prosecution for human trafficking for organ removal.

Despite international and domestic efforts, about 10 percent of all transplants worldwide are believed to be illegal—approximately 12,000 organs per year. For example, according to the World Health Organization as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers each year around the world. While there is a black market for organs such as hearts, lungs, and livers, kidneys are the most sought-after organs … The process involves a number of people including the recruiter who identifies the victim, the person who arranges their transport, the medical professionals who perform the operation, and the salesman who trades the organ.

Sometimes the journey to Christ begins when someone encounters horrendous evil. At other times the journey to Christ starts as the nonbeliever joins with believers to promote justice.

Sek Saroeun was a Buddhist and a law student. Working as a DJ at a bar in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sek knew liquor was not the only item on the menu. Girls, often young girls, were sold for sex. Disgusted by this evil, Sek began to work as an undercover informant for the International Justice Mission, a Christian human rights group.

While spinning music and scanning the bar for suspects, Sek also skimmed the pages of a Bible someone had loaned him. The words of Scripture brought him comfort and alleviated his mounting fear of being exposed as an informant. Sek found his heart changing as he worked alongside Christians to protect these vulnerable young girls. As he later shared, his “fear led to longing; longing led to transformation that is unimaginable.” Not only did Sek eventually become a Christian, today he is the top lawyer for the International Justice Mission in Cambodia.

In her book, Rebecca McLaughlin writes:

In 2018, ISIS victim Nadia Murad, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese physician Denis Mukwege. Dr. Mukwege, nicknamed “Doctor Miracle,” is a pioneering surgeon who has treated thousands of victims of sexual violence for the medical aftereffects of gang rape and brutality.

Recognizing Jesus's relentless call on Christians to serve the suffering, Mukwege urges fellow believers:

“As long as our faith is defined by theory and not connected with practical realities, we shall not be able to fulfil the mission entrusted to us by Christ. If we are Christ's, we have no choice but to be alongside the weak, the wounded, the refugees and women suffering discrimination.”

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation in 1822. As she grew up, she was made to work driving oxen, trapping muskrats in the woods, and as a nursemaid. Harriet's owners frequently whipped her. And she endured the pain of seeing three of her sisters sold, never to be seen again. But when her owner tried to sell one of her brothers, Harriet's mother openly rebelled. The would-be buyer gave up after Harriet's mother told him, "The first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open."

Her mother's actions likely implanted in Harriet the idea that resistance to evil was right—and could sometimes be successful. As a child, Harriet herself … would run away for days at a time. But there were rays of joy in her life, as well. Harriet's mother told her stories from the Bible, which developed in her a deep and abiding faith in God.

When Harriet was about 26 years old, she learned that she might be sold away from her family. The time had come to try to escape. She made her way some ninety miles along the Underground Railroad. She traveled at night to avoid slave catchers, following the North Star, until she reached Pennsylvania, and freedom. Once there, she dared to make a dangerous decision: She risked her own freedom in order to give others theirs.

For eight years, she led scores of slaves north to freedom. During these trips she relied upon God to guide and protect her. She never once lost a runaway slave. As Harriet herself later put it, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

She gave all the credit to God, explaining, "'Twant me, 'twas the Lord. I always told him, 'I trusts to you. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,' and he always did." Her faith deeply impressed others. As abolitionist Thomas Garrett put it, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul."

In his book Visions of Vocation, Christian author and thinker Stephen Garber tells the story of meeting a woman who directed the Protection Project, an initiative under Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government that addresses human trafficking. Garber asked her, "So why do you care about the issue of human trafficking?"

She told the story of her heart opening to the cries of women and girls who were sold into slavery, often involving sexual bondage. After writing on the issue, the Kennedy School hired her to work at their Protection Project initiative in Washington D.C. Then Garber describes what happened next:

As we talked in her office, I watched her staff walking by in the hallway outside her door, and their serious and eager faces impressed me. She eventually said, "I get the most interesting applications here. Just imagine. Harvard University, Washington, D.C., human rights. It's a powerful combination, and it draws unusually gifted young women and men from the best universities in America."

But then she surprised me with these words, "After a few weeks they almost always find their way down the hall, knock on my door and ask to talk. Now, I know what they are going to say. After thanking me for the position and the opportunity, a bit awkwardly they ask, 'But who are we to say that trafficking is wrong in Pakistan? Isn't it a bit parochial for us to think that we know what is best for other people? Why is what is wrong for us wrong for them?' To be honest, I just don't have time for that question anymore. The issues we address are too real, they matter too much. I need more students like the one you sent me, because I need people who believe that there is basic right and wrong in the universe!"

Self-worship is at the heart of all kinds of evils. Greed, lust, selfishness, fear—all are forms of self-worship … [Here's a graphic example of how self-worship works]: In Phnom Penh, a twelve-year-old girl has been sold to a brothel by her father. As a victim of her father's self-worship, she has been reduced to a solution for a desire or need that he has. She is the sacrifice to his self-worship. Every time she is raped for pay, the man raping her uses her to gratify his perverted sexual desires in an act of self-worship. The brothel owners who commoditize her flesh are worshiping self as they daily exchange her pain for their profit.

While this is most vivid in the red-light districts of Cambodia, the reality is that self-worship is at the heart of nearly every decision and every system or city that we make today. That same self-worship is at the heart of our decisions to go to porn sites and pay for the flesh of the downtrodden and oppressed, our decisions to purchase products manufactured by known violators of child labor laws, and our decisions to consume foods and beverages that come from people who receive little or nothing for their labor.

In the end, we are all Phnom Penh. We are all a part of the nightmare, and we are all unfit for the dream of God.

People sometimes ask, How could sex trafficking happen in America's small towns or big cities? Julie Waters, a family law attorney and director of Free the Captives ministries, offers the following scenario of human trafficking that occurs every day in American towns and big cities:

We turn a blind eye to the 15 year old inner city girl who is being trafficked. Why? Because we turned a blind eye when she was three-years-old being severely neglected by her mother. We didn't see the empty fridge or the apartment without electricity. We turned a blind eye when she was seven-years-old and being raped by her uncle. We turned a blind eye when she was 13 and started missing school and running away from home. And now today when she is forced to sleep with 10 men a night by her pimp at the age of 15, we turn a blind eye because we never saw her to begin with.

Ernie Allen, the Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says that human trafficking occurs when people "are owned by someone else, lack the ability to walk away, and lack the ability to make a decision in their own self-interest to do something else." Sadly, this doesn't just happen in countries around the globe. It's all around us even in the U.S.—as the following headlines from American newspapers demonstrate:

• "Northern California teens sold for sex"
• "Federal authorities from Memphis honored for breaking up child sex-trafficking ring"
• "Fort Myers, Florida, woman accused of using children as prostitutes"
• "North Alabama man convicted in sex trafficking of an underage girl"
• "Human trafficking ring used girls as young as 12 … prosecutors say"
• "Georgia man arrested for engaging minors in sexual servitude"
• "Somali sex trafficking ring in Tennessee"
• "Mississippi man pleads guilty to sex trafficking"
• "Sex trafficking in the U.S. called 'epidemic'"
• "18 years for [Chicago] sex ring boss convicted of human trafficking"