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You know, right now the statistics say there's between
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10 to 20 million slaves in the world and it's higher
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than it's ever been in the history of time
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and so I think people have and owe themselves that
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responsibility to pay attention to what's happening
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and to realize that, unfortunately, it is happening in your own back yard.
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It's so difficult how...should we catch the mouth of the snake or
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the middle part or the tail, you know? So where to begin and how to begin.
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When you go to these villages it's completely absent of two generations; it's absent of the teenage
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population and then the young adult population.
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And the reason being is because most of those individuals
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are in the big city working in the sex trade.
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It hurts me badly, in my heart, to know it's happening
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in the centre of the city and no one looks at it.
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We just pass by. We're used to passing by.
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Ok? And that's the cult that I see the world going, we just pass by.
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Everyone has a time and place to when they're going
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to be ready to hear these types of issues happening.
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But I feel like the more empowered you are, the more you aware are,
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the more likely you are to make a lasting solution happen.
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Kamathipura is the red light area of Mumbai.
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In this area there are many prostitutes who work with diseases
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so to create the diseases the red light preferred to brothels
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where are the diseases that put red light
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so they still exist. We do consider sex as work.
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We think, because of poverty, all women can be pushed
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to these kind of activities. A lot of women from Nepal or West Bengal or from the south of India
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they come and they are forced by the mafias and the _ by the demand
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Because they come from village, they don't have food where they live
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so they have no choice to work where they are
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after they abandon their village, their family will not accept them.
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The proper people, the pimps, the traffickers control the women, you see,
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in such a way that...and everyone is party to that crime, you see,
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the police is party to the crime; they're supported by the politicians, the criminals, the mafia and the
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and this is all hand in glove, you see, and what to do?
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So we thought of hitting the police first, you see.
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Because, in spite of all of the pollution within that crime, you know,
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they work within the...some framework they were working, you know,
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of so-called "rule of law". We involved an active Human Rights Commission
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and then we somehow tried to pursue the whole thing and tried
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to say whatever was happening was going against the women only.
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The women are not criminals, they're not accused; they're victims themselves, you know?
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You know? And the whole treatment is like treating them as criminals, you know?
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They're almost ridiculed. So it was all happening and we hit the police
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after the police...obviously we hit one point where the whole nexus
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shakes, you see? Despite all this effort, you know,
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at the end of the day we realized the women were still weak, you know?
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They could not break that cycle of slavery, you know, within the red light area.
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So it's more psychological also, the slavery works more psychologically, you know?
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So they would not speak against the brothel people, or those things or anything, you know?
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Because there would be no structural changes there, you know?
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We were not very judgemental about that whole point that women should not be in prostitution
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this or that, we have no...not at all that mentality about that
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but the only idea we always had was that the minors should not be forced into prostitution
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and even the major women should not be forced into it, you know?
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At the voluntary level they can continue with the trade.
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So we realized, you know, some maybe have to hit the bottle (bottom?), people send things on, you see.
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At times it's very admissible also, you know, it looks as if they are in agreement, you know?
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But it is not that way. The whole paradigm shift in the world came with
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the involvement of civil society in that. So in 2005, October or November,
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we involved like 4 or 5000 people in the rescue. It was a major rescue operation.
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The civil society went in. We informed the police, we informed everybody
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but we knew they would not come. We did all the legal exercises, see, that is required
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then we went in their as a civil net, as the citizens of this country, you see
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We cannot let it...and that is what I say: something horrible happening
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and then we just walk past. How is that possible, you know?
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And we rescued almost 50 girls from that rescue operation:
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girls from Nepal, from Bengal, Behad(?), you see? And, we rescued them
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and then we're also fighting a criminal case against the brothel people
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so we are fighting, as you see, we are almost fighting over 150 cases now
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against almost something like 450 human traffickers.
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We're also working on the source area, you know, to prevent human traffic.
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It's something that really shocked me; I became really impassioned with
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learning about human trafficking and joining the movement
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to raise awareness about human trafficking about 3 years ago.
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So I came to Thailand with the intention of just learning more about
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what was happening to women and children so it happened that
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I was reading books and articles and all of these different publications and
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it only mentioned women and children. So when I finally got to Chiang Mai and
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I passed the bars where all of our boys worked, I was completely shocked.
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And it just was this incomprehensible kind of site because I just hadn't read about it.
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And I got really angry and I said "Well, how come we aren't learning anything
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about the fact that boys are being victimized just as much as the girls are?"
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And the candid response that I kept getting from the community, from NGO workers
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was "These boys are all gonna get HIV and die so why should we care?"
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"Why waste our resources on these boys?"
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And I just thought that was so unfair that they would be so easily overlooked and so easily ignored.
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And the more I talked to the boys, the more they realized that society really didn't care at all about them.
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And that was, you know, the push behind behind starting Urban Light,
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was, to 1: provide services to these boys, but to also get the message out
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that boys should be involved in the language as part of the victims of this horrible, insidious crime
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that's happening all over the world, but what I'm seeing specifically in Chiang Mai and in Thailand.
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One thing that we've really noticed is that the definition and kind of the vision that
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people have when we talk about trafficking is a little bit distorted.
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It can come in so many different forms and in so many different ways.
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And the way in which our boys are victims of trafficking is that they are
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essentially pushed into the city life by their families so they're not essentially shackled;
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they're not behind bars; they're not, you know, kept inside a room.
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And I think that's the common misconception that a lot of people carry.
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Essentially they're free to come and go, so are they really in fact victims of trafficking?
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And we go back to the definition that if you are under 18 and you're working in the sex trade
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with these types of vulnerabilities and these types of, you know, push factors
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then, yes, you are considered a victim so the shackle then becomes
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the family that have that really high expectation; the shackle becomes
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the lack of education, the discrimination for a lot of these hill tribe people,
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in particular, our boys, who are mostly Agka(?) which is a hill tribe
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an ethnic minority, which there is a ton of villages in the northwest part of Thailand.
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One thing which I do not know whether you have been caught with that, I think,
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is the aspect of gratitude. Because we have our culture of Buddhism also
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gives admiration to those who are grateful children to their parents,
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this is the very highest merit the children can do to their parents
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but there are many forms of paid gratitude, you know
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We are taught that parents are the first god, you know.
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You do not go to the table at your parents' place if you do not pay
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respect to your own parents at home, because they are the first monk,
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In the old days, when the children worked very hard to help,
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do any kind of hard work at home, taking care of them when they get sick
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and, you know, things like that, this is a kind of paying the gratitude
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is a grateful children already. But it was, it is taught them, you know
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if you talk about the first monk, who's .
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So that is the first. You have to do something for them, to make them happy in that time.
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to be like money, when the world of materialism coming in.
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And so it's a very hush hush topic; everyone knows what`s going on,
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but no one will really say where the money's coming from
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and that becomes just a big, huge weight on a lot of these boys
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that I'm talking to, because they don't want anyone to know what they're doing
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but they just know that they're doing good because they're providing for their families.
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You know, in a twisted way, the boys also see them as people that want
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to help them; they don't see them as, the boys don't see these sex tourists
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as people that wanna take advantage of them.
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And that's a really frustrating part, is that, you know, the boys are
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so respectful of the men that come here. It's very much a Thai way.
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And they'll never talk badly about them. And, you know, I think the Johns,
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to this realization where they say, "You know what, I don't want
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In a restaurant? In a hotel? At a tour agency?"
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to do this anymore. I don't care if I'm not sending any money home
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to my mom; I just don't wanna do this." And that's when we react.
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That's when we really go hard and we say, "You know what,
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then let's go on job interviews. Where do you wanna work?
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then let's go on job interviews. Where do you wanna work?
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It's a huge challenge for us, but we know that at some point, it clicks
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So it really started off with just providing English. Once we started
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doing that, we realized that there were a ton of other services that
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were in need as well. We're now providing intensive case management.
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So that can include health services, going to the doctor, getting a physical exam,
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getting tested for HIV, getting STI treatment and testing, getting housing services
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and just different, like, different components in life that
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many people take for granted, but for these boys they've never had access to.