Quotessence
Home / Topics / Human Trafficking Quotes

Human Trafficking Quotes

Browse 129 quotes about Human Trafficking.

Related topics

Human Trafficking Quotes

“A Brief History of Earth Cannibals (Sonnet) There's no such thing as slave traders, get your language straight, you idiots - they were human traffickers, not traders, you trade in commodity, not people. Colonizers were not slave traders, they were terrorists and traffickers; settlers are not civilizers, they are plague upon the civilized world. The world outside europe was already civilized beyond the wildest dreams of the europeans, then those brutes set sail, and the human race experienced an extinction level catastrophe. To trade in human lives like livestock is the savagest form of cannibalism - white history sells the West as the free world, but dig into earth history, and you'll realize, West is the biggest threat to life and freedom. Here is some rectified history, dig up the rest for yourself - Churchill was a big fat cannibal, Leopold was an ugly deadly virus, Columbus was a most wanted terrorist.”

“Added to the shock of the routine violation of their bodies was the trauma of having to relinquish their children to unknown slave-holders. [W.E.B.] Du Bois considered this physical, mental, and spiritual abuse of black women--with its inevitable result being the destruction of the traditional African family--the highest crime committed by slave-holders and the one thing for which he said he could not forgive them.”

“There is a slave trade still in this country—yes, the real and horrific sex and human trafficking trade run by organised criminal gangs, which is appalling and must be stopped. But there's the hidden slavery too of children exploited and used within their own families, within organised and ritual abuse.”

“We think of agents, traffickers and facilitators as the worst abusers of refugees, but when they set out to extort from their clients, when they cheat them or dispatch them to their deaths, they are only enacting an entrepreneurial version of the disdain which refugees suffer at the hands of far more powerful enemies – those who terrorise them and those who are determined to keep them at arm’s length. Human traffickers are simply vectors of the contempt which exists at the two poles of the asylum seeker’s journey; they take their cue from the attitudes of warlords and dictators, on the one hand, and, on the other, of wealthy states whose citizens have learned to think of generosity as a vice. [from the London Review of Books Vol. 22 No. 3 · 3 February 2000]”

“Maybe slavery has been with us for centuries because of the inclination to maintain economic systems geared more toward commodifying human existence than developing its spiritual, creative, or scientific potentials. Such commodification instantly erases any recognition of humanity as a priceless value unto itself and reduces individuals as well as entire races, or a specific gender, to a bargain-priced 'other.”

“The people of the city of Savannah within their collective conscience could follow previous examples in history and forgive the atrocities of actual slavery committed against slaves themselves. But what was it [the city] to do with the knowledge that children completely unaware of the greater ramifications of slavery were led to the Civil War slaughter in its name? How does one acknowledge with forgiveness such an unforgiving mutilation of one’s own mind, body, soul, and legacy?”

“But he couldn't feel self-pity in the face of the memorial. He hadn't lost nearly enough as these children, who'd lost their homeland and, in many cases,their whole families. Perhaps they had gained something, too, though. They had at least escaped the concentration camps, been taken in by good, caring families, and had grown up to live their lives in relative freedom.”

“Although a handful of progressive individuals favoured independence from Spain, Cuba's economic elite was conservative, fearful of the economic and social consequences of a break with the colonial motherland. Without Spanish support, the planters would not be able to sustain the slave system on which their economic power was based, nor would they be strong enough to crush slave revolts”

“What if I make it through this, so damaged that the rest of my life is a living hell? A graphic rerun of everything I survived, but over and over and over again?” She inhaled a shuddering breath. “So every single detail—that was already burned into my brain and every inch of my body—gets worked in like oil on a cutting board!” Tears dribbled down her face. “But I’m not a cutting board, Dakota, and what I went through in British Columbia was not oil to be worked in,” she whispered. “It was worse than dying, and I’m afraid that living after this will be a worse punishment than I ever imagined.” She shrugged one shoulder. “And I don’t think I’m up to the task.”

“Who are these girls? Where do they come from? How do they end up on the street? Outsiders- and that includes most police officers, judges, the general public, and politicians- mistakenly believe that if these girls don't like what they are doing they can just walk away. What a growing number of dedicated cops and community activists began to realize is that the illusion of choice is the biggest obstacle to getting people to see these girls as the victims they are. "In order to have a choice you need to have two viable options to choose from," says DIGNITY's Kathleen Mitchell. "The choice for these girls is not 'Do you want to turn a trick or do you want a wonderful life?' That's not even on the table." Most girls on the tracks are running from something worse they faced at home. In survey after survey, in one city after another, statistics show that prostituted children suffer prior abuse as a staggeringly high rate.”

“At any hour of the day or night, Stanton will get a call about the latest underage victim who was picked up in a prostitution bust or an undercover operation, and he makes his way to the detention center. He is always struck by how the girls change. When he first sees them in their "work outfits," they do not seem much like children, with skimpy dresses, daring hairdos, heavy makeup, and flashy nails. After they shower, clean up, and put on the detention center's sweatpants and tops, they lose their street-worn years. "Then it hits you, these are really just kids," Stanton says. Invariably, the girls are not receptive to him, at least not at first. They are tough, and they are angry, and Stanton knows he has to be straight with them. "I never try to bullshit them," Stanton explains. "These kids are sharp. They have radar. Their lives depend on reading a man, be it a pimp or a trick, so they know when someone is lying to them. You really have to be genuine to earn their trust.”

“Too often in the past, Garrabrant felt, some prosecutors were reluctant to take on complicated cases against pimps. "If I went to any federal prosecutor in the country and said, 'Listen, I have a thirteen-year-old girl who was kidnapped, forcibly taken from her home, and forced to have sex with a forty-year-old guy and then sold to other men,' they would be saying, 'Bring it on.' " But Garrabrant found that if he took the same scenario and instead described the girl as a prostitute working for a pimp, prosecutors got cold feet. Their attitude was that if some young girl wants to go do that, there is nothing to be done.”

“The movie and the political campaign GEMS built around it were typical of [Rachel] Lloyd's in-your-face approach to politics and publicity. "If we just framed it as 'rescuing children,' people would give us more money," she says. "I could put pictures of little scared blond kids on our Web page. But this isn't about rescuing a child from a bad situation. This is about what we, as a culture and a society, are creating; why can this be perpetuated within our society?”

“Our guns were still strapped onto our backs, because a gun meant life. Without it there was no life in the LRA. After crossing the water and walking for a long time, there was a whisper in my heart, telling me that if we kept the guns we would get killed. I was learning to listen to this gentle voice that spoke to my heart. This time what was said was hard to accept. I didn't know how I would convince my friends to throw away what seemed to be their last hope. The voice would not leave me alone. It continued to whisper in my ears to drop the guns.”

“What freedom are we to find when our restless minds are enslaved under the chains of human trafficking? What freedom do we preach when our females breathe through enraged wounds? They are used and abused, left in caves alienated and bruised. What is this language we speak of when we talk about the law, since the human right clause is ignored and flawed? Whom is it protecting because here we are protesting? Isn't this law ought to save the bodies of young females? Isn't this law ought to be brave and remove females from sex frames? Instead, it chooses for women and children to die leaving their loved ones with no goodbyes. Human trafficking, I say, has made enough money for the day.”