! From my perspective, one of the most intriguing ideas presented in the last two days of talks on human trafficking, was that Dan Archer had spent time peacefully interviewing traffickers themselves. While studying a topic as horrific as this one, it is difficult to find an unbiased perspective. While Archer’s perspective is far from unbiased, as his work is meant to help publicize and popularize the fight against trafficking, it is still quite the feat to accept the opinions and points of view of the criminals in question as valid towards understanding the issue.!
! In his presentation on monday, Anthony Talbot described the fight against human trafficking as an “unthinking movement”; that anyone would agree to help someone in this situation. In many ways this statement is true, there are very few people in the world who agree with child labor wholeheartedly, or would passively watch an underage prostitute be abused. But still every political, social, or moral issue is relative. On the personal-moral level, I do not believe I possess the gumption or stomach necessary to interview a perpetrator of human trafficking with the same composure and attitude that I would use whilst interviewing a victim. I have already made up my mind that a trafficker’s actions are inherently abhorrent, and could never accept their position in this market as valid and morally sound. Still, it must be noted that not everyone involved in the trade of human beings is evil at heart. As noted by both of our speakers, the motive behind this market is not the desire to hurt and disenfranchise vulnerable people, but rather to accrue an enormous profit in the process. This idea is easy to accept but difficult to fully understand. I am willing to bet that many traffickers were once in vulnerable positions themselves, and joined the trade to escape the same state of being as those whom they prey upon.!
! When Dan Archer first described his interviews with traffickers in Nepal, I was shocked that he would approach them at all. After some thought, I realized I had been projecting my own opinions and prejudices onto the topic. I had been Imagining his travels as something similar to war photography; hiding behind ruined structures, searching for survivors hiding in makeshift shelters, and avoiding the criminal traffickers at all costs. But the battlefield of human trafficking is no war zone, the crimes occur in hidden, semi-legal ways that do not disrupt the order of society. Perpetrators and victims of this trade live among us. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had met a few in my life. I
have definitely benefitted from the work of trafficking victims. I am not innocent of shopping at Target or H&M. Through ignorance of the injustices employed by major companies, our society has unknowingly endorsed the use of modern slave work, even though the vast majority of western society does not agree with these methods.! ! It is difficult to understand how to deal with an issue so widely accepted and simultaneously denied by one’s own society, especially if the issue transcends borders. My reactions and opinions on the topics presented in the last two days are all based in my understanding of society as derived from the way of living local to the United States, and specifically the urban United States. As a class, we question the legality of trafficking based on our communal understanding of legality in countries that possess government. Thus Journalism around this subject, and international journalism in general, strikes me as a very complex maze of morality that consumers of media tend to take for granted. Archer joked about how one of his articles was assessed as a three minute read after months of work, but it is a valid point. Articles surrounding international policy must be carefully crafted in order to fit the target audience’s understanding of culture and morality. As the receivers of this media, we rarely glimpse the difficulties of this process, and the differences between societies. More often, americans think of foreign life as identical to our own, or stereotypical in a generally negative fashion. In reality all societies are complex organisms with positive and negative aspects galore.!
! Archer was able to approach sex traffickers for interviews because he understood that these people were not monsters. they would not hurt him for inquiring about their methods. Traffickers live among common people, not in secluded ruins where human trafficking occurs. The issue is closer than we like to realize, while simultaneously occurring in places we could never imagine. This is why Human trafficking is so difficult to publicize. It is a complex worldwide market, not a gang of kidnappers on the run.