Breaking Chains, Building Community

A short documentary featuring grassroots solutions to sex trafficking in India, Thailand, and Cambodia from 18 different NGOs.

You know, right now the statistics say there's between

10 to 20 million slaves in the world and it's higher

than it's ever been in the history of time

and so I think people have and owe themselves that

responsibility to pay attention to what's happening

and to realize that, unfortunately, it is happening in your own back yard.

It's so difficult how...should we catch the mouth of the snake or

the middle part or the tail, you know? So where to begin and how to begin.

When you go to these villages it's completely absent of two generations; it's absent of the teenage

population and then the young adult population.

And the reason being is because most of those individuals

are in the big city working in the sex trade.

It hurts me badly, in my heart, to know it's happening

in the centre of the city and no one looks at it.

We just pass by. We're used to passing by.

Ok? And that's the cult that I see the world going, we just pass by.

Everyone has a time and place to when they're going

to be ready to hear these types of issues happening.

But I feel like the more empowered you are, the more you aware are,

the more likely you are to make a lasting solution happen.

Kamathipura is the red light area of Mumbai.

In this area there are many prostitutes who work with diseases

so to create the diseases the red light preferred to brothels

where are the diseases that put red light

so they still exist. We do consider sex as work.

We think, because of poverty, all women can be pushed

to these kind of activities. A lot of women from Nepal or West Bengal or from the south of India

they come and they are forced by the mafias and the _ by the demand

Because they come from village, they don't have food where they live

so they have no choice to work where they are

after they abandon their village, their family will not accept them.

The proper people, the pimps, the traffickers control the women, you see,

in such a way that...and everyone is party to that crime, you see,

the police is party to the crime; they're supported by the politicians, the criminals, the mafia and the

and this is all hand in glove, you see, and what to do?

So we thought of hitting the police first, you see.

Because, in spite of all of the pollution within that crime, you know,

they work within the...some framework they were working, you know,

of so-called "rule of law". We involved an active Human Rights Commission

and then we somehow tried to pursue the whole thing and tried

to say whatever was happening was going against the women only.

The women are not criminals, they're not accused; they're victims themselves, you know?

You know? And the whole treatment is like treating them as criminals, you know?

They're almost ridiculed. So it was all happening and we hit the police

after the police...obviously we hit one point where the whole nexus

shakes, you see? Despite all this effort, you know,

at the end of the day we realized the women were still weak, you know?

They could not break that cycle of slavery, you know, within the red light area.

So it's more psychological also, the slavery works more psychologically, you know?

So they would not speak against the brothel people, or those things or anything, you know?

Because there would be no structural changes there, you know?

We were not very judgemental about that whole point that women should not be in prostitution

this or that, we have no...not at all that mentality about that

but the only idea we always had was that the minors should not be forced into prostitution

and even the major women should not be forced into it, you know?

At the voluntary level they can continue with the trade.

So we realized, you know, some maybe have to hit the bottle (bottom?), people send things on, you see.

At times it's very admissible also, you know, it looks as if they are in agreement, you know?

But it is not that way. The whole paradigm shift in the world came with

the involvement of civil society in that. So in 2005, October or November,

we involved like 4 or 5000 people in the rescue. It was a major rescue operation.

The civil society went in. We informed the police, we informed everybody

but we knew they would not come. We did all the legal exercises, see, that is required

then we went in their as a civil net, as the citizens of this country, you see

We cannot let it...and that is what I say: something horrible happening

and then we just walk past. How is that possible, you know?

And we rescued almost 50 girls from that rescue operation:

girls from Nepal, from Bengal, Behad(?), you see? And, we rescued them

and then we're also fighting a criminal case against the brothel people

so we are fighting, as you see, we are almost fighting over 150 cases now

against almost something like 450 human traffickers.

We're also working on the source area, you know, to prevent human traffic.

It's something that really shocked me; I became really impassioned with

learning about human trafficking and joining the movement

to raise awareness about human trafficking about 3 years ago.

So I came to Thailand with the intention of just learning more about

what was happening to women and children so it happened that

I was reading books and articles and all of these different publications and

it only mentioned women and children. So when I finally got to Chiang Mai and

I passed the bars where all of our boys worked, I was completely shocked.

And it just was this incomprehensible kind of site because I just hadn't read about it.

And I got really angry and I said "Well, how come we aren't learning anything

about the fact that boys are being victimized just as much as the girls are?"

And the candid response that I kept getting from the community, from NGO workers

was "These boys are all gonna get HIV and die so why should we care?"

"Why waste our resources on these boys?"

And I just thought that was so unfair that they would be so easily overlooked and so easily ignored.

And the more I talked to the boys, the more they realized that society really didn't care at all about them.

And that was, you know, the push behind behind starting Urban Light,

was, to 1: provide services to these boys, but to also get the message out

that boys should be involved in the language as part of the victims of this horrible, insidious crime

that's happening all over the world, but what I'm seeing specifically in Chiang Mai and in Thailand.

One thing that we've really noticed is that the definition and kind of the vision that

people have when we talk about trafficking is a little bit distorted.

It can come in so many different forms and in so many different ways.

And the way in which our boys are victims of trafficking is that they are

essentially pushed into the city life by their families so they're not essentially shackled;

they're not behind bars; they're not, you know, kept inside a room.

And I think that's the common misconception that a lot of people carry.

Essentially they're free to come and go, so are they really in fact victims of trafficking?

And we go back to the definition that if you are under 18 and you're working in the sex trade

with these types of vulnerabilities and these types of, you know, push factors

then, yes, you are considered a victim so the shackle then becomes

the family that have that really high expectation; the shackle becomes

the lack of education, the discrimination for a lot of these hill tribe people,

in particular, our boys, who are mostly Agka(?) which is a hill tribe

an ethnic minority, which there is a ton of villages in the northwest part of Thailand.

One thing which I do not know whether you have been caught with that, I think,

is the aspect of gratitude. Because we have our culture of Buddhism also

gives admiration to those who are grateful children to their parents,

this is the very highest merit the children can do to their parents

but there are many forms of paid gratitude, you know

We are taught that parents are the first god, you know.

You do not go to the table at your parents' place if you do not pay

respect to your own parents at home, because they are the first monk,

So that is the first. You have to do something for them, to make them happy in that time.

In the old days, when the children worked very hard to help,

do any kind of hard work at home, taking care of them when they get sick

and, you know, things like that, this is a kind of paying the gratitude

is a grateful children already. But it was, it is taught them, you know

if you talk about the first monk, who's .

to be like money, when the world of materialism coming in.

And so it's a very hush hush topic; everyone knows what`s going on,

but no one will really say where the money's coming from

and that becomes just a big, huge weight on a lot of these boys

that I'm talking to, because they don't want anyone to know what they're doing

but they just know that they're doing good because they're providing for their families.

You know, in a twisted way, the boys also see them as people that want

to help them; they don't see them as, the boys don't see these sex tourists

as people that wanna take advantage of them.

And that's a really frustrating part, is that, you know, the boys are

so respectful of the men that come here. It's very much a Thai way.

And they'll never talk badly about them. And, you know, I think the Johns,

That's when we really go hard and we say, "You know what,

It's a huge challenge for us, but we know that at some point, it clicks

then let's go on job interviews. Where do you wanna work?

then let's go on job interviews. Where do you wanna work?

to this realization where they say, "You know what, I don't want

In a restaurant? In a hotel? At a tour agency?"

to do this anymore. I don't care if I'm not sending any money home

to my mom; I just don't wanna do this." And that's when we react.

So it really started off with just providing English. Once we started

doing that, we realized that there were a ton of other services that

were in need as well. We're now providing intensive case management.

So that can include health services, going to the doctor, getting a physical exam,

getting tested for HIV, getting STI treatment and testing, getting housing services

and just different, like, different components in life that

many people take for granted, but for these boys they've never had access to.