We need to confront persistent evil of slavery, even in Tasmania

Melody Towns says slavery is hiding in plain sight in the modern world.

I AM often asked, “does slavery affect us here?”

It’s a common question that is either driven by apathy or empathy, the two polar opposites to a problem that did not end years ago but is instead growing daily, with more slaves now than ever before in history.

Those who are empathetic tear up as I start to tell them what I wish I didn’t know, but now cannot look away from.

Yes, slavery happens everywhere. This $32 billion growing industry is not only viewed in plain sight in the brothels of Cambodia, where the smiles coming from the young girls standing near the open doors are not always what they seem.

Modern slavery is not only confined to stories like Srey Pov’s, who the New York Times reported was sold to a brothel by her family at the age of six and then tied to a bed to be raped for her virginity by a western foreigner. Stitched back up and then sold for her virginity twice more, her story is one of continual rape and torture until rescued at the age of nine through the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Slavery isn’t just confined to those women of Europe often referred to in small Bulgarian towns as the “missing”. These young women, desperate to leave the surrounding poverty and hopelessness of their situations, find themselves offered a hand up that is too good to be true. It comes in the form of job offers from friends and family they trust, jobs that will lift them out of their perceived bleak future and give them the life that they see western women living through their smartphones and Instagram accounts.

Handing over their passports, they willingly climb into a van and drive across European borders into their brand new future.

This brand new future is not what is promised. Passports are not returned until “debts” are paid and the jobs they were offered don’t exist. Forced to work in local brothels, drugged and raped up to 40 times a day is their new reality.

If they try to leave they are brutally gang-raped, beaten and “broken down” until they are compliant.

Only 1 per cent escape or are ever rescued and if they are, demand is so high, the supply endless and the risk so low, traffickers just start the process again with a new girl.

This brutal process was explained to me as we drove the same route that traffickers take from Bulgaria to Greece, when I was visiting Be Hers’ grant partner A21.

Be Hers was started when people hearing these types of stories chose not to look away but to tried to do something.

Now a growing national anti-trafficking movement based out of Hobart, we have shared stories of the plight of these women with thousands

of people through our annual Be Her Freedom events, turning apathy into empathy and empowering those around us to use their freedom to fight for hers.

Slavery doesn’t just happen in the sweatshops of Bangladesh, where people are literally crushed under the growing demands of western consumers wanting fast fashion and wanting it cheaper than ever before, with the real price often paid by those making the products who barely survive on less than 60 cents per day and are trapped within a poverty cycle they can never escape.

Slavery happens here in Australia. In our little island state of Tasmania. As reported in this newspaper last week, “Two Tasmanians have been charged with trafficking a vulnerable person into Australia and keeping them as a slave” ( Mercury, July 26). Slavery happens today. In our cities. In our neighbourhoods. On our doorsteps.

Glimpses of slavery are seen as I sip my coffee in a local cafe reading an ad in the Mercury which states: “Some sex workers have been tricked or forced into sex work. If you think this could be someone you know, you can help them by reporting it to the Australian Federal Police.”

Slavery is an injustice hidden in plain sight. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the numbers — some sources estimate up to 48.5 million people around the globe are currently enslaved. It’s easy to look away and to think what can I do to help? But the local Launceston story exposed only last week is a reminder that we all need to do something. Freedom was fought for before and must be fought for again. Freedom is never free and requires all of us to choose empathy over apathy, requiring not just tears and compassion but action to see slavery abolished once and for all.

Tickets are on sale for a Be Her Freedom event in Hobart in September.

Melody Towns is the founding director of Be Hers, a national charity based in Hobart, raising awareness and funds to fight human trafficking.