MMA Adresses Sunday Times’ Misreporting of Human Trafficking

The article on Sunday January 15th, 2012 “Woman tells of ordeal as drug-mule slave” refers. I would like to raise our concern about a crucial omission in the article, as well as highlight some additional ethical concerns.

The story presents a powerful firsthand account of a woman’s experience at the hands of drug traffickers. We learn how she was lured and trapped into a situation that endangered her life and saw her exploited by her captors. The story is not only newsworthy but also a gripping account. Our concerns is not the subject, but rather a substantial omission in that the sum of the crimes referred to in the story – human trafficking is simply absent. This case, which clearly constitutes human trafficking, needs to be named because the crime committed in the article is exactly that.

In line with the definition of human trafficking outlined by the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children referred to as the Palermo Protocol, the story detailed every component of the crime of human trafficking (lured, tricked, transported, trapped and exploited/enslaved), but nowhere in the article is it mentioned. It relayed in detail the experience of the woman, from her being lured under false pretences of employment after answering a job advert in a Durban newspaper (by a false company), transported to another country, warned that her family in South Africa would be killed if they tried to escape, forced to sleep with men on a regular basis and forced to swallow condoms filled with drugs to courier them to other countries accompanied by handlers.

It is quite possible that the reason the journalist did not mention human trafficking, was that no source mentioned it. It’s also quite common for victims/survivors of human trafficking themselves to not be aware that they were victims – and survivors – of human trafficking. It may also be that because we do not have comprehensive legislation against human trafficking, that it was not mentioned as cases often have to be prosecuted under various other crimes, including abduction, extortion, fraud etc. The only exceptions where human trafficking is currently legislated are to be found in the South African Children’s Act, which covers trafficking of children for any purpose, and in the Sexual Offences Act for adults of sexual exploitation. It should be noted that in the current case, the woman could be classified as a trafficking victim under the Sexual Offences Act as she was “often forced to sleep with four men every night”.À¨To read more, click here.