Combating modern slavery

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

On Dec. 8, the Temple Sholom Sisterhood Social Action Committee and the Vancouver section of National Council of Jewish Women of Canada hosted a public forum on human trafficking.

Last year, Marni Besser, who is with both the sisterhood and NCJW, went to Montreal for the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism's biennial conference. At that meeting, she attended a workshop on modern slavery, or human trafficking, by Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom's Temple Committee Against Human Trafficking. Besser presented a report about the Montreal synagogue's workshop to the Temple Sholom Sisterhood and, since then, the two local women's groups have been actively raising awareness about the issue.

Speakers at the recent forum, which took place at Temple Sholom, were University of British Columbia Prof. Benjamin Perrin, Staff Sgt. Sanjaya Wijayakoon of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Border Integrity program and Laura Holland of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network. The evening was moderated by Globe and Mail columnist Marsha Lederman.

"A problem like human trafficking does not simply exist because we have had this problem for a very long period of time. It exists because many people have been bystanders," said Perrin.

Later in his talk, Perrin defined human trafficking to mean "treating people like property and, in fact, that's the definition of slavery.... You can buy property, you can sell it, you can exchange it, you can destroy it, you can do whatever you want with it and, when people are treated like that, it is such an inherent indignity and it destroys lives."

Perrin explained that he became involved in researching human trafficking about 10 years ago. He has since written extensively on the topic and is working on a book, which, according to his website, is "tentatively titled Journey of Injustice: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking, to be published by Penguin Group (Canada) in October 2010."

Perrin is also the founder of the Future Group, a nongovernmental organization that combats human trafficking. In his remarks, he referred to the group's 2006 international study on the treatment of human trafficking victims (Falling Short of the Mark), which gave Canada a failing grade. As a signatory to the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (the "Trafficking Protocol"), which came into force Dec. 25, 2003, Canada undertook certain obligations, but the study concluded, "Canada has systematically failed to comply with its international obligations under the Trafficking Protocol related to the protection of victims of human trafficking. Canada's record of dealing with trafficking victims is an international embarrassment and contrary to best practices." In the study's comparative analysis of best practices, Canada received an F. The United States (B+), Australia (B), Norway (B), Sweden (B), Germany (B-), Italy (B-) and the United Kingdom (D) all fared better.

Since then, there has been some progress, said Perrin. For example, Canada now has "a system of temporary residence permits, to let foreign victims of trafficking at least temporarily remain in the country so they can get some assistance, some medical care that also wasn't being covered." Later, Perrin noted that, since 2005, human trafficking has been a Criminal Code offence and there have been many charges laid across the country, with five convictions so far and dozens of cases now before the courts.

Perrin said that what we see here "is not the human trafficking that you see on TV or in the movies. There's no cargo-container shipments. There's no locks and chains to people to beds. Traffickers in Canada are far more sophisticated."

He shared some of the findings of a 2008 Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CSIS) report, Organized Crime and Domestic Trafficking in Persons in Canada. The study can be found on the CSIS website and some of the main points listed by CSIS are: "The organized crime networks assessed generate illicit income primarily from the confiscation of victims' earnings (ranging between $300 and $1,500 daily per prostitute)"; "Middle-class females between the ages of 12 and 25 are typically recruited by male peers who also may have been specifically recruited by organized crime. These males use the promise of affection as a primary tool to lure potential victims"; "Hip hop music, clothing and prostitution are popularized by several of the identified networks to facilitate recruitment through social networking (including online), making the sex trade culturally attractive for potential recruits."

Perrin explained that there is also trafficking of persons for exploitation in sweatshops, for example, or for forced organ donation. "They're all places where we see people exploited, so human trafficking is about more than simply prostitution, but, here in Canada, this is a major concern," he said about the sex trade.

One of the methods of coercion, said Perrin, is to harm a family member and, he said, "That's the kind of problem with how many people and, sometimes, some officials who don't know better, still treat victims of human trafficking: they're looking for the locks and chains on the doors." But many victims are "controlled by threats and violence," he said.

Perrin gave examples of the very short sentences being handed down, including those of Imani Nakpangi, the first person in Canada convicted of human trafficking involving a minor, who was sentenced for five years, but credited 13 months for pre-trial custody; and Michael Lennox Mark, who pleaded guilty to trafficking a 17-year-old girl "after spending one year in pre-trial custody. He got two-for-one credit and he was out of jail within one week of being convicted."

Bill C-268, an act to amend the Criminal Code, is before Parliament, explained Perrin. The bill "would put a minimum sentence of five years for human trafficking of children under 18. It's consistent with both Canada's international treaties we've signed, as well as the Constitution and it's consistent with other Criminal Code offences." But the bill has stalled in the Senate, said Perrin, "We need to change that law. And it's not about retribution or punishment, it's about the protection of these victims and sending a much stronger message."

Wijayakoon echoed these comments, as well as shared some of his own experiences as an undercover RCMP officer.

"Benjamin touched upon a really important point," he said, "that the Criminal Code and this other set of rules called IRPA [Immigration and Refugee Protection Act], it's kind of the Immigration Act, really set out for me, as a police officer, the rules that I have to follow to charge someone with human trafficking.

"I bet you that all of you have an idea of what you think is human trafficking and I bet you that I personally agree with your view of what it is, but, unfortunately, my personal views can't override the Criminal Code or this Immigration Act. Within those two sets of rules, that's how me and my unit have to function."

Wijayakoon has had a long career in law enforcement, including working on the unsolved murders and disappearances that have occurred along Highway 16, known as "the Highway of Tears."

"There were 25 murders from 1969 till 2003, 24 of which were young native girls," said Wijayakoon. "I left that unit midway through that investigation to come to this unit."

With respect to his move to the human trafficking unit, Wijayakoon lamented the fact that, "since 2005, the RCMP of British Columbia have not charged anyone with human trafficking." He said that, internally, the unit has made "a real change" and we "have brought in guys who are there to do this type of work," as opposed to focusing primarily on other organized crime activities.

The scenarios that Wijayakoon shared about actual cases on which he has worked demonstrated the point that Perrin made about the limitations of the Criminal Code with respect to convicting offenders of human trafficking.

Wijayakoon explained that, in an ideal world, the undercover officers would catch someone on video saying, "Yeah, I flew these 10 women over from Taiwan and I told them when I was in Taiwan that they're coming over here to work in a hair-dressing salon but then, when they got here, I took their passports and I threatened them with a gun and said, 'I'll kill you and your family if you don't become a prostitute.' That stuff is textbook human trafficking. In the dream world, that's what they would be saying to us. They don't quite go that far.... The problem for us is that the rules as set out by the Criminal Code really, really stipulate very clearly that, in order for us to charge someone with human trafficking, that person has to be exploited. And the definition of exploitation is for them to really truly fear for their safety or the safety of their family.

"Unfortunately, the judges and the courts really don't understand that. For me personally, any woman who is in prostitution is there because she's under duress, whether it was because her father molested her as a child or whether she feels some societal pressure, something, she's there not of her own free will. Unfortunately, that's my personal view [and] the Criminal Code doesn't agree with that. So, for us as police officers, we need to take it 10 steps further than that and we need to get this guy to confess to us that they are exploiting this person by using ... violence and these threats."

Wijayakoon said he worked on one case in which he, undercover, arranged to purchase two girls from their handler. "Unless that girl tells me, 'I don't want this to happen, he's forcing me to do this' [i.e. that she's not voluntarily being sold] ... just the fact that someone is selling another human being, it's technically not human trafficking."

Recounting a story about a judge in one case who contended that, really, the victim could have left her situation at any time, Wijayakoon said, "Anyone who says that, they truly don't understand the dynamics and the power imbalance that exists in human trafficking."

Wijayakoon said that human trafficking is increasing in the Lower Mainland, but "we really haven't charged anybody and we really haven't dedicated the resources yet, and it's time for us to really start pushing cases forward and I think you're going to start seeing in the next year or two a lot of our cases come to light."

Holland, who knows personally several of the children murdered or missing along Highway 16, said she came to Vancouver from Smithers, B.C., where she was born and raised, "because of the racism and sexism and the violence that we faced as aboriginal women in the north" and she didn't want her sons "to grow up hating their own people because of what other young men were saying and doing." Within nine months of her arrival here, she said, women started disappearing from the Downtown Eastside, "so it seemed like no matter where I went, aboriginal women were being killed or disappearing. What brings me here is, it's hard not to be active, it's hard not to be an activist when your friends and family are being killed and when your friends and family are dying and nobody is doing anything. There's not enough being done."

Holland said, "It's really hard not to think about human trafficking and prostitution as the same thing because, at the end of the day, you have usually a man who is raping a woman. It doesn't matter how she got there. It doesn't matter if she came from Asia, Southeast Asia, eastern Europe or a nearby reserve. At the end of the day, a woman or child is being raped. And when we think about trafficking and think about the word coercion, coercion is like, I'm [incredibly] hungry and I need to pay my rent and you'll give me money for this, that's coercion. That's all you need."

She said, "In order to really start making a dent in prostitution, we have to start focusing on the demand.... If there's no demand, there's no problem." She believes that abolition is the middle-ground solution: "It punishes the buying of sex and not the selling of sex, so that women and children who are trapped in prostitution don't end up criminalized. I know so many women who can't get jobs now because they've been charged with solicitation."

Holland was filling in on the trafficking panel for her friend Georgina, who couldn't be there, but sent written remarks, which Holland read. It was a moving account of Georgina's long experience of abuse, prostitution, drugs and alcohol. Of the organizations that helped her and for which she even campaigned, Georgina wrote, "They gave me condoms to protect me from disease and pregnancy but did not offer me hope. Nor was I offered any real exiting strategies. This confirmed that this was my so-called destiny. Housing, training and jobs weren't available."

When her mother died, Georgina was 22. "This was a turning point in my life," she wrote. "I no longer had a reason to be in the Downtown Eastside. I tried to find help for myself through detox and treatment centres and AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] programs. There were no services designed to help women exit the streets, just the harm-reduction model: condoms and bad trick sheets. The issues that we have to face when we leave the streets are many: shame, post-traumatic stress syndrome, displacement, lack of self-esteem. I had no education, no experience to find a job and safe, affordable housing was not available to me."

Both Holland and Georgina do not support the legalization of prostitution. About prostitution being called the oldest profession in the world, Georgina wrote, "then how come aboriginal people can't even come up with a name for that in our traditional languages? Our languages are ancient. It's not our culture. It's not what I want to leave for my children. Prostitution is nothing but violence against women, why would we want to leave that to our children?"

In the question and answer period that followed, Holland said that there are many ways people can help, including donating to or volunteering at a local women's shelter or rape crisis line, writing to members of Parliament that the legalization of prostitution is not the answer, or participating or donating to the 19th Annual Women's Memorial March (honoring the lives of the women murdered or missing from the Downtown Eastside), which takes place Feb. 14.

Other questions focused on the upcoming Olympics, the consensus among panelists being that there wasn't enough being done to stem the potential increase in human trafficking, but that other events, like the Calgary Stampede, for example, were more problematic. From watching Craiglist, said Holland, "you can very clearly see that women are being moved from one family event to another."

At this point, Lederman read a statement from Joyce Murray, Vancouver Quadra MP and Liberal critic for the Vancouver Olympics. In her comments, Murray recognized that human trafficking exists in Canada and said, "We must acknowledge that Canada is not immune to the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of women and it is not void of human trafficking and modern slavery. As the Vancouver 2010 Games come, we must do everything in our power to mitigate human trafficking and to raise awareness for prevention and create anti-trafficking measures."

Craiglist came up more than once during the evening. Wijayakoon said he thought that a legislative change was necessary to prevent the use of Craigslist – and the Internet in general, including Facebook – to facilitate sex trafficking. Perrin noted that, in the United States, Craigslist "initiated something called the 'joint statement,' which cracked down on the anonymous posting. There was no longer anonymous posting; you had to provide a working telephone number at least and then there was a credit card fee, which limited it even further. What they saw is a dramatic decline in both the number of ads posted in major U.S. cities – we're talking about Los Angeles, New York – and they also saw less explicit ads selling sex for children. So they saw some results, and they also cooperated with law enforcement. That joint statement was signed in November of 2008 in the United States. To this day, we have nothing currently signed for this comparable in Canada."

After the event, which was introduced by Temple Sholom Sisterhood president Alexis Rothschild and concluded by NCJW Vancouver president Debby Altow, the approximately 75 attendees had time to visit information tables and learn about some of the organizations that work in this area and how to become more involved.

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