QUESTIONS ABOUT “BAS! Beyond the Red Light”
21 12 2010After the projection of the film BAS! Beyond the Red Light at your school, we would like you to answer some questions.
The Purpose: To create a multi-platform tool for high school students to become aware of child trafficking.
A Few Facts:
According to the HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: “a child is a person below the age of eighteen years.”
According to the PALERMO PROTOCOL: child trafficking, is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, fraud, deception.”
Smuggling requires travel, trafficking does not, but it does t entail the exploitation of the person for labor or commercial sex.
Globally the average age of children trafficked into prostitution is getting younger: in Quebec it is 14.
Any child involved in commercial sexual exploitation qualifies as a “trafficking victim”.
Girls are much more vulnerable to trafficking than boys.
Child victims are twice as likely to be re-trafficked as adult victims and it is most likely to happen within two years of their first trafficking experience. *
Recruiting:
There is international “cross border” trafficking as happened to Geeta in the film, trans-provincial trafficking as often happens to Aboriginal girls in Canada, yet here in Quebec, “Internal” trafficking is often the work of gangs. Universally, in all three cases, there will be an individual or a small group who does the recruiting.
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The scenario for Internal trafficking might go something like this:
You may be having trouble at home…
1 – What kind of trouble?
2 – Imagine how you might be feeling? Angry, misunderstood?
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Someone your age, who you may have seen around, comes up to you at school, in the mall, at the bus stop…
3 – What would some kid say or do that would make you feel better? For you to let them into your world?
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That person, keeps showing up and soon you have told him or her all about your troubles.
4 -How might this happen? What made you trust this person? How would he or she have to act to gain your trust?
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Over a couple of weeks you develop a strong relationship with the recruiter, if it is a boy you may feel he is your boyfriend, at the same time you seem to be pulling away from friends and families into an exciting world with you at its centre.
5 – Describe how this might happen?
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Traffickers will then subdue the victim with psychological, physical or sexual abuse and force her or him into prostitution. Then they maintain control by confining him or her, providing drugs, using psychological abuse, even weapons….*
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Then comes the “moment of truth”. You are asked to show your friendship – to help out, to pay back the gifts you have been offered, the drugs you have used, your new friend needs money, the police are after him or her, he has to pay a fine – by doing nude dancing or agreeing to sex with someone. At first it might just be a friend of the recruiter, but later it will be for money.
6 – How do you escape from this? What would you do? Where would you go? Whom could you tell?
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As a general rule, to ensure obedience from their victims, traffickers use force, fear and deceit. *
Despite films like ours trying to focus on the issue, the commercial exploitation of children remains a largely hidden phenomenon, especially here in Quebec.
7 – Why do you think that is so?
8 – How would you change that?
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Although from numerous states across India, Pakistan and Nepal, the girls in the film had many things in common in their trafficking stories, as do girls and boys here in Canada.
9 – What increases vulnerability? And how could you protect yourselves against trafficking?
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*Meta data from the International Organization of Migration (IOM), 2007)
**IBCR report of trafficking of person in Canada.
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