New Film Uncovers Scale of Human Trafficking.
QUEST: Last year, slave traders made hundred billion dollars. To put that in perspective it's more that Intel, Microsoft, Nike, Google and Starbucks combined. The claim has come from a new film about human trafficking, which premiered here in New York last night at the United Nations. The film is based on the reporting of one activist who followed the evil practice around the globe.</s>SIDDHARTH KARA, SCREENWRITER, "TRAFFICKED": The most challenging aspect of bringing this movie together for me was trying to figure out how to put into the script as much as I wanted to about the issue of human trafficking. All of the complexity, the nuance without making it sound pedantic or didactic. And walking that balance, that fine balance between shaking up the audience to the truths and realities of human trafficking, but not making it so difficult to I said no one wants to see the film.</s>ELISABETH ROHM, ACTRESS, "TRAFFICKED": I think there is power in numbers, especially when a film is important and art can become a voice for a movement, and for a change of consciousness. The statistics that Siddharth has pointed out in this film, I hope that a film like this and films that deal with these issues really enrages people, so that there is change. I hope that when people see "Trafficked", I hope that they understand this is a crucial serious issue. We are talking about millions of victims.</s>KARA: I hope the message they get is human trafficking happens everywhere including in this country, in the United States and rich Western countries. I hope they realize it is a very sophisticated global business enterprise. And I hope that they realize it generates immense profits, in excess of $100 billion globally last year. Finally, I hope they realize destructive, corrosive and dehumanizing impact this phenomenon has on the victims.</s>QUEST: And the screenplay writer Siddharth Kara is with me now. The movie is based on his book "Sex Trafficking", and with me in the C suite. Good to see you.</s>KARA: Thank you, Richard.</s>QUEST: Extraordinary movie. Absolutely extraordinary. It was a privilege to be their last night in the United Nations. How much of the movie is a conglomerate of different stories? How much is a dominant story in all of this? Because it's pretty terrifying stuff. It's pretty horrific stuff. And the thought that any woman, any person would go through that is quite apart.</s>KARA: I endeavored to base the characters, the scenarios, the things that happened, the plot line on real things that I have documented around the world. Fictionalize things here and they are to tell a film story. But I think you're absolutely right, it is appalling and shocking and heart wrenching.</s>QUEST: OK, but let's be clear here, what you are saying, but not just about the movie, but in our freedom project work, there are women who are tied up, shackled and used as sex objects, prostitutes against their will in the world at this moment. In this country at this moment.</s>KARA: Unquestionably, it happens today, they may be shackled, they may be coerced to other ways, there may be threats against them and their family members. It happens here in the United States. There is still slavery in this country and it happens all over the world.</s>QUEST: When you take that -- because I'm not being venal, I am not being unpleasant but we are a business program. The motivating force for this is money.</s>KARA: There is no question about it, this is not cruelty for cruelty's sake, the profit motive is the driving force of modern-day slavery, and it is the driving force of sex trafficking. As I pointed out last night at the event, sex trafficking is the most profitable form of slavery the world has ever seen, it's not hard to figure it out, do the math. A woman is forcibly sold and raped for money 10 times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, year after year. It can get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits per slave per year.</s>QUEST: OK, there is a difference in a sense of where you break that cycle between a developing country which doesn't necessarily have the law enforcement infrastructure, where official corruption may be a detriment, to say the EU, the United States or one of the OECD countries, where one should be easier to deal with this.</s>KARA: You are quite right depending on where you are in the world, corruption will be a larger factor or not, and certainly in developing nations with the immensity of poverty and gender bias, gender violence, you have to work on protection, educating young girl so they are not sold off at the age of 10, 12. Protecting and preserving their dignity. That is how you prevent sex trafficking from even starting in many developing countries. Let's not lose sight of one important fact, there is a character if you remember from last night, in the United States coming out of the foster care system. A vulnerable young girl she ages out, and there are no protections in place. And she is trafficked and recruited very quickly, and that is a common story.</s>QUEST: How do you prevent something like that, the woman she was put into the care of was supposedly known and vetted. The entire infrastructure of social services was there and still failed. So, I ask you, how do you prevent the systemic abuse rather than the isolated abuse. Because the isolated abuse is always going to happen.</s>KARA: Absolutely, two things, governments have to get more active and expressed more --</s>QUEST: What does that mean?</s>KARA: Money, it means money. They need to spend the money it takes to rid the world of slavery once and for all.</s>QUEST: On what?</s>KARA: Law enforcement, protection, survivor protection, coming out of foster care protection, vulnerable family dislocated children protection, and guarding against the exploitation.</s>QUEST: Why don't they spend that money? I understand money is short by governments, there are many causes. Do you spend it on that protection or you spend it on someone who needs a heart transplant? Or do you spend it on building a new energy power facility? That is the reality of the hard decisions.</s>KARA: It is a fair question, we are in a resource constrained world and capital is a resource constrained, and if you are politician you are thinking what do I spend my money on? Defense, antiterrorism, climate change, slavery? I'm not saying we need to spend as much money on slavery as we do to fight terrorism or protect against climate change. But we do not spend enough. I will give you one very simple statistic, in this country, the United States, we spend more on defense in one day than we have spent on the last 10 years to fight slavery.</s>QUEST: What do you hope comes from this movie?</s>KARA: Awareness, number one, I hope people will learn and understand the complexity, the nuance, the destructiveness of the human trafficking journey. And number two they people will be impassioned. Policy makers at the highest levels will be impassioned to say, no more. Slavery should have been abolished hundreds of years ago. It has to happen now.</s>QUEST: It was a privilege to see your movie last night. Thank you, sir, for joining us. And we will have a Profitable Moment after the break.