Originally Posted by Ananas

I guess it was the sheer magnitude of the numbers and the surprising comparison to slavery statistics that made me sit up. We hear about modern slavery, but it always seems to be happening "somewhere else" and no one bothers to think of the numbers, or the horror of it, or the lives taken by it.

Just recently, there were reports of NKorean women sneaking over the border who had chosen slavery and degradation over starvation. The situations in the Congo, Darfur, Liberia have been amply documented in various media (the film Blood Diamond touched on it). The traffic in Ukrainian girls was shown in film "Eastern Promises". The unequal treatment in various countries is known to us and always in the news (lashes for drinking a beer).

The story hit a little harder than I expected because it forced me to think, and not just in a superficial way. If we condemn the slavery that occurred in the past and fought to end it, why not now? To my mind, this is even worse because there are no communications gaps, no wooden ships plying the Atlantic Passage, no slave markets in the center of town. It's not like we cannot not know. Because there is no effort to end it, the abuses continue and worsen with impunity. It is slavery. It is sad. It is a human failing.