Risk of Exploitation
Human Trafficking
Roza, a young woman from Turkmenistan, was promised a good job as a nanny in Dubai. When she arrived, she was forced to work in a Russian brothel. "It was horrific," she said with tears of shame and pain in her eyes. "I worked all night, every night, six days a week, and was beaten if I refused to perform." After eight months of this torture, she escaped. But her brokenness remains.[iv]
Human Trafficking is the lucrative business of coercing or selling people into slavery. According to the US State Department, of the 2.5 million trafficked slaves around the world, about 80 percent are female, around 50 percent are underage, and most are used for sexual purposes. Most of the victims are from Asia and Eastern Europe. [v]
Central Asia has an increasing number of human trafficking victims.[vi] Many are girls in their teens or twenties who are sent to the Gulf States in the Middle East. With stellar promises of well-paying jobs as waitresses, nannies, or models, for example, they are tricked into leaving all that is familiar and are forced into prostitution.[vii] Most have no hope of escape as their personal ID is taken from them, they are controlled by threats against themselves or their families, and they are paid little or nothing for their work, and are so filled with shame that even if they could break free, they fear rejection from their families.[viii]
Two teenage girls from northern Kazakhstan were much more fortunate than Roza. The girls, one in grade 10 and the other in grade 11, were looking for a way to get away from home and have a more exciting life. They jumped at the chance to go abroad and make good money as waitresses. A woman met them in the country's capital, Astana, and took them to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. There the girls discovered the plan for them to be sent to the United Arab Emirates to work as sex-slaves in nightclubs. They appealed to the Uzbek police and were able to return home unscathed. The woman who had tricked them was heartbroken at the girls escape. Her plan was to bring these two unsuspecting girls to Dubai to exchange them for her own precious daughter who was enslaved there in the sex trade.
[ix]Central Asian girls need to be freed from prostitution, to find healing in Christ and to either be accepted back home or find true jobs to support themselves.
Not every person in Central Asia is directly at risk from bride kidnapping, imminent natural disaster or human trafficking. Many of these beautiful people live their lives in relative security. However, thousands who are struggling today with these horrors need to know that there is hope and a reason to go on living. In My Fair Lady, the hard, self-centered Henry Higgins transformed Eliza Doolittle into an elegant, poised lady of society. The power of our Almighty God and his Gospel of grace and hope is incomparably greater. Through our prayers and personal involvement in his mission, he will transform the lives and circumstances of people like Gulmira, the Tajik family and Roza. How would he have you join him in this ministry of transformation?
The author is an International Worker in Central Asia whose heart is burdened for the difficult issues so many people face in these countries. It is her desire to raise awareness in order to inspire people to pray, give and even become involved in working toward solutions.
[v]Offman, Craig, "MP takes aim at pedophiles with bill," National Post. Monday, October 29, 2007.
[vi]"Central Asia: Special Report on Human Trafficking."
[vii]"US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2007: Kazakhstan." Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. March 11, 2008.
