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INTENTION : |
We pray that the cries of our migrant brothers and sisters, victims of criminal trafficking, may be heard and considered.
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Human Trafficking takes control over its victims and puts them in locations and situations where they are treated as commodities, to be bought and sold and exploited as workers or even as 'raw materials' in multiple and unimaginable ways.
Until recent times, such treatment was associated with colonialism and the slave trade. Despite the formal abolition of the latter, the exploitation of some human beings by others has not ended but now takes place in terrible new forms on a significantly large scale.
These are manifestations of immoral social, cultural and economic systems and practices, which promote consumerist attitudes and increase inequalities within and among regions. Besides, we are witnessing a growth of individualism and egocentricity, attitudes that tend to regard others through a lens of cool utility, valuing them according to criteria of convenience and personal benefit.
Human trafficking deprives many people of their identity and dignity and commodifies them to the advantage of a few.
Each year thousands of innocent men, women and children are victims of exploitative labour and sexual abuse, and organ trafficking, and it seems that we have become so accustomed to this, as to consider it a normal thing. Human Trafficking is deplorable; it is perverse; it is cruel; it is criminal!
Pastoral Orientations on Human Trafficking
Fabio Baggio C.S. and Michael Czerny S.J
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