Journalism professor discusses human trafficking issues

Human trafficking is not merely about forced prostitution and sex slavery, but instead encompasses a much wider variety of issues related to coerced labor, independent journalist and visiting professor Noy Thrupkaew argued at a talk Thursday.

Thrupkaew will deliver the same presentation as a Technology, Entertainment, Design talk at the TED national conference in March.

The talk began with Thrupkaew’s account of her discovery that until the age of three she had been raised not by her parents but by her “auntie.” Her "auntie" was stripped and beaten for offenses as minor as being late to pick her up and eventually ran away. Thrupkaew later learned that her "auntie" had been a trafficked worker doing domestic work in hopes of obtaining a visa.

Thrupkaew defined human trafficking as the “the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel another person’s labor.” She said that although most people think of human trafficking as a way of forcing helpless young women into prostitution, sex trafficking is not representative of the crime of trafficking as a whole.

Prostitution accounts for only 22 percent of human trafficking offenses worldwide, she noted, while extortion of ordinary goods and services that we rely on every day accounts for 68 percent.

“When most of you think about human trafficking, you don’t think about people like my auntie,” she said.

She added that most victims of human trafficking are people of color, and that the criminal justice system is not effective in resolving human trafficking crimes. Out of the possible 21 million trafficked workers in the world, about 50,000 have been identified for certain, she said.

Law enforcement rarely investigates trafficking situations unrelated to sex or open violence, and most instances of labor trafficking are settled in civil courts, not criminal courts, she said.

Thrupkaew explained that trafficking occurs in environments where workers are excluded from protection and denied the right to organize.

“Trafficking does not happen in a vacuum,” she said. “It happens in systematically degrading work environments, especially in places like the United States, where the echo of slavery has been enshrined in our economy and in the institutions that we keep.”

Echoing a statement by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Thrupkaew said we should fight against labor exploitation by questioning the products that we buy and researching where they may have come from.

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“What would happen if each one of us demanded that the companies we support eliminate exploitation from their labor environment?” she said. “If all the CEOs out there went through their businesses with a fine-tooth comb and said, ‘No more.’”

Exploited workers, Thrupkaew said, are in need of solidarity, not saving, and we need to show that we believe individual prosperity is not independent of the prosperity of others.

The event, titled “Dispelling Myths about Human Trafficking,” took place as part of the Butler and Wilson Colleges’ Current Affairs Roundtable. The event took place in a crowded Wu Special Dining Room at 6 p.m.