Universal jurisdiction is the way to convict child traffickers
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By: Father Shay Cullen
Young children are being abducted and disappeared in Puerto Galera, Mindoro Island. A young boy had his eyes and guts cut out in nearby Baco. Five and six-year-olds have been sexually abused by foreign paedophiles with impunity in the Philippines. Young girls are being sold to US troops in Angeles City. It's just sex trafficking as usual. Where have we failed?
This week the European Union is debating the trafficking of persons. They have much to learn and face a hard task stopping it.
Small children from Pakistan and Bangladesh are sold as camel jockeys to Middle Eastern states. Some are as young as three and are deprived of food and sleep to keep them under weight so as to be the lightest jockeys. Some have been controlled by sexual and physical abused. Others die under the pounding hooves of the camels.
In the Philippines, as many as 85,000 Filipinos mostly women, are recruited abroad yearly for jobs such as domestic help and nursing. Many end up in forced sex slavery.
Rupert Cook, a radio journalist, told of how Lanni, a young mother with a sick son in need of an operation, took a domestic servant job supposedly in Paris but was diverted to the Ivory Coast and sold to a sex bar. There she was forced to be a prostitute and take four customers a day.
Officials in Washington assured me that they are already investigating Filipinos linked to trafficking under the US complicity law. This law says that any Filipino person shown to be complicit in the sex trade or trafficking can be brought to trial for violation of human rights wherever they are committed.
These laws might be used against those permitting the sex industry to thrive in the notorious paedophile sex resort of Puerto Galera on Mindoro Island. Alarming reports told of the abduction of young children. Parents and teachers are in a state of panic. A white van has been seen in the area where several children disappeared. The most notorious area is between Calapan town and White Beach.
The mysterious murder of a young teenager boy found with money in his hand and his internal organs and eyes gouged out near Baco a few weeks ago is believed to be a revenge killing by a paedophile slave master from whom the boy ran away. A news black out has kept this out of the press so far.
The USA and NATO commanders are trying to implement a zero tolerance rule forbidding troops from frequenting sex bars. This is proving hard to do especially in Korea, Okinawa, Japan and Angeles City in the Philippines, where pimps boast openly of the business they do selling girls to the GIs.
Universal jurisdiction and police action is needed to stop this trade. The suspects must be charged in any county irrespective of where they committed the crimes. This is the only sure way to end the impunity of offenders. They may evade justice at home but not abroad. [End]
