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AN TRAFFICKING
[HUMAN FOR PROFITS]
Jojo M. Fung, SJ
PERSONS FIRST [UTAMAKAN MANUSIA DAN MARTABATNYA]
- In the global black market of underground syndicates, humans have become commercial commodities, bought and sold, for prostitution and cottage industries.
- Modern day slaves are not usually held in chains, and they are rarely bought or sold in public. Slaves can be male or female and may be as young as 4 years old (but a person can also be born a slave), and may continue to work until death. Slaves may work up to 20 hours a day, sometimes more, up to 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.
- Pope John Paul II on Trafficking. In His Letter to Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran on the Occasion of the International Conference “Twenty- First Century Slavery-the Human Rights Dimension to Trafficking in Human Beings,” May 15, 2002: “The trade in human persons constitutes a shocking offense against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights. Already the Second Vatican Council had pointed to “slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, and disgraceful working conditions where people are treated as instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons” as “infamies” which “poison human society, debase their perpetrators” and constitute “a supreme dishonor to the Creator” (Gaudium et Spes, 27). Such situations are an affront to fundamental values which are shared by all cultures and peoples, values rooted in the very nature of the human person.”
- On October 28, 2005, in his message for the 92nd World Day of Migrants and Refugees, to be observed January 15, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI addresses the trafficking in human beings —“a scourge,” he says, within the migration phenomenon — and calls for respect for all human beings, especially women’s vulnerabilities: “It becomes easy for the trafficker to offer his own ’services’ to the victims, who often do not even vaguely suspect what awaits them. In some cases, there are women and girls who are destined to be exploited almost like slaves in their work, and not infrequently in the sex industry too.”
- Pope Benedict next echoed the June 29, 1995, condemnation by Pope John Paul II, in “Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women,” of the “hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit.”
- The CST decries “the persistence of many forms of discrimination offensive to the dignity and vocation of women in the area of work is due to a long series of conditioning that penalizes women, who have seen “their prerogatives misrepresented” and themselves “relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude.” [CSDC 295:169][1]
- Social Sins. The illegal trafficking of humans to be exploited for gain as cheap labor in the black market is rightly termed as “social sins” because they are actions that result in “a direct assault on one’s neighbour.” [CSDC 118:67] The Church understands social sin as “every sin committed against the justice due in relations between individuals, between the individual and the community, and also between the community and the individual.” Social sins refer to relationships that “are not always in accordance with the plan of God, who intends that there be justice in the world and freedom and peace between individuals, groups and peoples” [CSDC 118:67] rather than untold suffering and broken human spirit, even death.[2]
- Human beings are not “products” or “things” with a price to be sold in the black market, let alone illegally. In the understanding of the Catholic Social Teachings of the Church, human beings are priceless, rated “top of the range” in the order of creation, for God has saved “the best for last,” that is the creation of humans (Gen 1:26)
- God’s Image & Likeness. The disfigurement by the black market system of illegal human trafficking is an affront against human persons created in God’s image and likeness. The Church denounces the social sin of illegal human trafficking because the Church has aligned herself with them, offering humankind “God’s tent of meeting, “God’s dwelling place among all” (Rev. 21:3) thus women and men find support in the redeeming love of Christ and “here humankind is met by God’s love…” [CSDC, no. 60: 32][3]
- The Church “sees in women and men, in every person, the living image of God. This image finds, and must always find anew, an ever deeper and fuller unfolding of itself in the mystery of Christ, the perfect Image of God, the One who reveals God to us and we to God. They are valuable in God’s sight, because “Christ, the Son of God, “by his incarnation has united himself in some fashion with every person.”” Through his act of total self-giving, Christ has enabled us to “share in the nature of God, who gives us infinitely more “than all that we ask or think.” (Eph 3:20) [CSDC no.122:69] The church “invites all people to recognize in everyone – near and far, known and unknown, and above all in the poor and the suffering – a sister and brother “for whom Christ died” (1 Cor 8:11; Rom 14:15) [CSDC, no. 105:61)
- The CST further clarifies: “Since something of the glory of God shines in the face of every person the dignity of every person before God is the basis of the dignity of human beings before fellow humankind.” [CSDC, no. 144:80][5] The CST states: “Only the recognition of human dignity can make possible the common and personal growth of everyone (cf. James 2:1-9)” [CSDC, no. 145:80] The dignity of person can possibly be safeguarded and promoted “only if this is done as a community, by the whole of humanity.” [CSDC, no. 145:80]
- In thus honoring human beings as God’s image, the Church warns: “In no case, there, is the human person to be manipulated for ends that are foreign to her/his own development, which can find complete fulfillment only in God and God’s plan of salvation.” [CSDC 132:74]. Human beings can never be sacrificed on the twin altars of “the all consuming desire for profit” and “the thirst for power…at any price.” [CSDC no. 119:68][6]
- With this awareness created in us through the CST, let us make an effort to remember January 11th each year as The National Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery Awareness Day. Let us make it a point to offer the following prayer as a family, a BEC, a parish, for the 27 million people who are enslaved around the world in some forms.
Our prayer: Liberator Lord,
you came to set us free from all forms of slavery and to heal us into freedom.
Let us remember those who have suffered from slavery and the millions who still suffer as slaves.
We pray for Raj, in Bangledesh,
whose family sold him into slavery at 10 because the younger children were starving and they needed to
buy rice.
We pray for Victoria, 17, from Moldova,
forced into debt slavery in Bosnia and put to work as a prostitute.
We pray for 14-year-old Jonah from Sierra Leone,
who was enslaved by the military when he was ten.
We pray for Julia Gabriel, 19,
smuggled from Mexico to find a better future in the U.S.,
only be to be forced to pick crops under armed guard in South Carolina for 12 – 14 hours a day.
We pray for Mai, 27, a new mother,
who was separated from her baby and forced to work on roads in Burma.
We pray for all your children who have suffered the injustice of slavery.
We know, Lord,
that you have created human beings with dignity and that slavery is a horrible injustice.
Empower us, who are not enslaved, to fight for the rights of those who are.
Help us to pray and empower us in action to free your enslaved children.
Liberator Lord, hear us, help us, and set your children free through us.
Amen.
[1] John Paul II, Letter to Women, 3: AAS 87 (1995), 804.
[2] John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 16-54:AAS 77 (1985), 214.
[3] See also Second Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 40: AAS 58 (1966), 1057-1059; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centissimus Annus, 53-54:AAS 83 (1991), 859-860; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 1:AAS 80 (1988), 513-514.
[4] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1931.
[5] Second Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 29: AAS 58 (1966), 1048-1049.
[6] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 37:AAS 80 (1988), 563.
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