-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200001216.shtml
Hillary Supports Sex Trafficking
By Catherine Edwards
When a carefully worded transnational definition of sex
trafficking is modified to outlaw only involuntary
participation, the result is legalized prostitution by
semantics.
She was filled with hope after accepting a job to work
in a restaurant. She finally could leave behind the
back-breaking labor of lemon harvesting. Her family in
Mexico would be proud. But her happiness soon turned to
unimaginable despair. When she met her new boss, he gave
her tight clothes to wear and condoms to give customers.
She was beaten, raped, locked into a trailer and forced
to have sex with whomever walked through the door. It
was every woman’s worst nightmare.
Two million women and children each year are
“trafficked” by criminals in this way for sexual
purposes. Half of them are in Asia, where Thailand and
Burma are infamous for enslaving children and women into
a lifetime of sexual prostitution.
But this trailer prison was not in Bangkok. This woman
was in Florida. She is one of the 50,000 women brought
into the United States every year to become sex slaves.
Promised a better life and a respectable job, their
lives become a living hell.
This literally is slavery. And an unlikely coalition of
religious conservatives and feminists has developed to
fight it. But a small group of feminists has been trying
through the back door to decriminalize sex trafficking.
Led by the President’s Interagency Council on Women,
which is chaired by Hillary Rodham Clinton, these women
actually have become advocates for the sex industry by
trying to change the definition of prostitution in a way
that critics fear may legalize it. That definition now
is being negotiated in Vienna for the U.N. Convention on
Transnational Organized Crime.
Religious critics and a powerful lobby of feminists led
by Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland claim that the
administration’s position only can have the effect of
legalizing prostitution. The dispute in Vienna is about
defining the word “trafficking.” The definition
supported by the Hillary Clinton team speaking for the
United States, the Netherlands and several other
European countries would include only persons who are
trafficked by force, fraud or deception. This differs
from the current U.N. definition, which outlaws sex
trafficking for any reason, be it voluntary or forced.
Proponents of the change contend that women should be
guaranteed the right to sell their sexual favors as
they please and be protected by labor laws and local
government services. Opponents to changing the
definition, fearful that the Vienna convention would be
finalized in mid-January, fired off letters to the
president and the first lady demanding to know why the
administration was attempting to legalize prostitution
by international agreement.
Former White House aide Chuck Colson, the Christian
advocate who runs Prison Fellowship Ministries, and
former Reagan secretary of education Bill Bennett, now
codirector of Empower America, wrote a critical op-ed
article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. They
called the Clinton position “hard to fathom,” especially
when the Clinton/Gore team purports to be pro-woman.
“There can be no meaningful “consent to one’s own sexual
exploitation,” they added, “particularly when one lives
in poverty and desperate circumstances.”
Republican Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania and 32 other
members of Congress sent a letter to the president in
mid-January expressing concern about administration
advocacy of legalized prostitution. The congressmen
noted that by narrowing the definition of trafficking in
the Vienna protocol to allow for the prosecution only of
those who can be proved to have used force, only a
handful of sex traffickers ever would be prosecuted.
“Is prostitution forced upon a young woman whose family
tells her they will starve if she does not sell her
body?” the congressmen asked, ex-pressing hope that
they could work with the Clintons and Gore to reverse
the course of action and to liberate, rather than
legitimate, women and children in bondage to the sex
trade worldwide.
Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty
Commission was joined by other religious conservatives
in a tersely worded letter sent to Hillary Rodham
Clinton in early January questioning her commitment to
combat sex trafficking. Soon President Clinton received
a similar letter from the major feminist organizations,
including Equality Now, Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, the National Organization for Women and the
Feminist Majority.
The 1949 U.N. Convention for the Suppression of the
Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the
Prostitution of Others calls for punishment of any
person who exploits the prostitution of another person,
even with their consent. Jessica Neuwirth, president of
Equality Now and the other cosigners of the letter to
the president expressed grave concern that the
administration’s position would undermine the
long-standing U.S. commitment to this older convention
and to fight prostitution, be it forced or voluntary.
The first lady, running for U.S. senator from New York,
devoted a syndicated column to the issue, declaring her
commitment to fight sex trafficking. Claiming that she
has worked to raise awareness on this issue for the last
five years, she parsed an attack on her detractors for
accusing her of lobbying to weaken international laws or
the laws of sovereign nations.
Soon a spokesman at Mrs. Clinton’s office was saying
she has not been involved in the Vienna negotiations,
leaving the important work to her staff and
nongovernment organizations, or NGOs, that support
legalization of prostitution through this artful change
in definition, say critics. Groups that support the
change include Manhattan-based Human Rights Watch and
the Washington-based International Human Rights Law
Group.
Upset about this stir, the first lady’s Interagency
Council on Women issued a “fact sheet” on the issue,
attempting to debunk what they call “myths” that have
been circulating about their position. They reiterated
their commitment that the treaty would not undermine the
current 1949 U.N. treaty. They went on to say, however,
how closely they are working with Human Rights Watch and
the International Human Rights Law Group and how their
position enjoys broad support by many countries and
activists.
But what about at home? Prostitution is illegal
everywhere in the United States except in two counties
of Nevada.
Reagan Ralph of Human Rights Watch asserts that getting
the treaty passed is paramount and that making a
concession to a country such as the Netherlands, which
has legal prostitution, is worthwhile if it enables the
treaty to be approved. “But the United States is
supposed to be a leader,” responds Lisa Thompson, policy
representative with the National Association of
Evangelicals, one of the religious groups working hard
to fight sex trafficking. “To agree to this language
because some other European country wants it is
ridiculous.”
Finalization of the wording on the crime convention will
be dragging on for at least another eight months. So it
remains to be seen whether the scuffle over efforts to
legalize the sex trade by treaty will turn into a
donnybrook. It seems likely, however, that Mrs. Clinton’s
support for the redefinition will reverberate in her
New York bid for the Senate.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey issued a statement
during the January recess and vowed that when Congress
returns for the president’s State of the Union address,
“Congress will thoroughly review the U.S. position in
these talks -- and find out who is responsible for it.”
New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith and Democratic
Rep. Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut have introduced the
Freedom from Sexual Trafficking Act of 1999. The idea of
this legislation is to punish those who knowingly engage
in sex trafficking commensurate to conviction for rape.
The Clinton/Gore administration has opposed parts of the
bill. A memo leaked from the U.S. Information Agency
says the State Department is opposed to Smith/Gejdenson
and hopes to encourage a Democratic alternative.
Already the coalition that opposes the administration’s
position in Vienna has written to Rep. Ben Gilman of
New York, chairman of the House International Relations
Committee, to support Smith/Gejdenson.
But those who fear that legalization of allegedly
consensual trafficking in prostitutes will be dragged
into the back door of the United States by the Clintons
using treaty law as justification are only beginning to
pay attention. A favorite Clinton/Gore treaty, the U.N.
Convention to Prevent All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, to which the United States is a
signatory, already supports legalization of
prostitution. The U.N. committee assigned to oversee
implementation has written to the People’s Republic of
China: “The Committee is concerned that prostitution,
which is often a result of poverty and economic
deprivation, is illegal in China.”
Will such a U.N. mandate be imposed upon the United
States? Might prostitution be legalized and regulated
here as legitimate labor, as critics of the Vienna
protocol fear? Voters are asking those questions of
the first lady.
Meanwhile, the young Mexican woman whose story we told
at the beginning of this article has been able to escape
her captors. But will she be safe here? For now all she
says is this: “I am trying hard to be the person I was
before I came to the United States.”
Copyright © 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
.
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