Tuesday 3 March 2009

TAKEN

This entry is about a very lucrative and thriving business, Women and Children Trafficking! I'm no expert in this, but recently I watched a movie 'TAKEN' and I read a book 'THE ROAD OF LOST INNOCENCE' and coincidentally both are about the same issue. Since creating awareness has always been my passion (chewwahh!!)-(I've always preferred giving health education than doing CPR)-so I decided to write what the movie and book are about.



This movie is directed by Pierre Morel (The Transporter). It is an action-pack movie, something like the Bourne saga. Bryan is a retired highly-skilled spy, who went to search for his 18-year old daughter who was kidnapped in Paris. This movie showed how his daughter was taken, then how Bryan used his James Bond + Bourne skills to rescue her.

What I want to share is how his daughter was kidnapped. She traveled with her best friend to Paris for a holiday on their own (just 2 girls, no parents or man accompanying them). They were approached by a young man at the airport, who was posing as another tourist (his job was to target young women traveling alone), and he shared taxi with them to the hotel (to save cost). So the man knew where they were staying and alerted his gang members and later that day the girls were kidnapped. And the kidnappers did not want ransom.

They are women traffickers. They drugged the kidnapped women heavily and sold them to brothels all over Europe. Virgins were not sold to brothels but they were kept for auctions, to be sold to millionaires eg Arab oil merchants. (Now if you don't believe the Arabs do this, then you should read a book titled 'Princess' by Jean Sasson-a true account by a royal Saudi princess). The girls were heavily drugged, so there is no way they can escape or fight themselves. Once you are taken, that is the end of the story. And the worst thing is, these women traffickers are mafias, they bribe government officials and they settle problems with guns. No law is above them.

Women trafficking has been going on for decades, but previously they smuggled Eastern European women who were promised jobs as domestic servants in wealthier countries, but according to the movie, now since smuggling these women are harder and more expensive because of the regulations (as once shown in CSI Miami), they resorted to easier alternatives, lone female tourists. I believe this is not just a Hollywood imagination, there must be some ground for this.

And where exactly is the Young Girls / Children Sex Slaves Heaven? Yesss... South East Asia!! -as told by a Cambodian Humanitarian Activist, Somaly Mam, in her book THE ROAD OF LOST INNOCENCE.

errr.. I think this entry will be too long to include the review of THE ROAD OF LOST INNOCENCE (and the book deserves its own entry), so I will stop here and post another entry on the book.

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