House Bill vs Sex Trafficking 
Awaits Senate OK

A House bill which aims to punish sex trafficking is awaiting approval in the Senate, to be followed by a possible consolidate bill. If enacted, says author Rep. Liza Maza of Bayan-Muna, will go a long way toward saving thousands of Filipino women – as well as children – from this social menace. It is just a first step, Maza cautions, however.

BY DENNIS ESPADA 
Bulatlat.com

Stories of young Pinays (Filipino women) escaping from prostitution dens in Asia, Africa and Europe have hugged the mainstream television and newspapers.

There was in the ‘80s PHILNOR, a Norway-based marriage bureau, which supplied Norwegian men with “small, beautiful, kind and mild” Filipino women, as its advertisement went.

Then there was the case of Lisa Mamac which painted a lucid picture of the realities of sex trafficking.

Promised a job as a receptionist, Lisa was forced to work in different sex clubs in The Netherlands for three years. She escaped when Dutch police raided the brothel. In 1985, she made a statement against her Dutch recruiter Jan Schoeman, and when she came home, she filed a case against her Filipino recruiter Nestor Placer, a city fiscal.

The militant women’s alliance GABRIELA (General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership and Action) stood then with Lisa as she went through her fight. Public campaigns pressured both the Philippine and Dutch courts for a speedy dispensation of justice for Lisa. In the end, Schoeman was charged with white slavery in the Philippine court, deported to Holland and condemned to serve time in prison.

Nothing new  

Sex trafficking is the transport of people, mainly women and children, from one place to another within and across borders, for sex trade and sexual exploitation. Most cases reported in the media reveal that victims were forced into the sex trade by use of threat, intimidation and deception. Under harsh circumstances, victims end up in prostitution.

The National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) estimates that 25,000 to 35,000 Filipinas are trafficked every year throughout the world and that 200,000 of them are in the global sex trade.

“We saw for ourselves how sex trafficking denigrates women as persons. How it denigrates a woman physically and mentally affecting the survivor’s psyche – deeply enough to maim them for life – even when legal justice is carried out,” GABRIELA’s Hedda Calderon said, adding that sex trafficking is, “a social and a criminal felony that reinforces women as commodities and sex objects.”

The continuing social and political crisis has brought rapid and unhampered control of wealth and power by the elite, where livelihood opportunities for most Filipinos range from slim to none. It is this vast sea of poverty that forces women and children to allow their bodies to be abused by men just to earn a living.

NCRFW’s television “info-mercials” which are supposed to laud women’s empowerment appears nothing but a pretense of virtue, however, as many women are still constantly sold for sex in growing numbers.

Legislation efforts  

After several decades, lawmakers have finally taken the problem of trafficking of Filipino women seriously.

In 2002, Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Liza Largoza-Maza authored and filed House Bill 4432, otherwise known as the “Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act,” which seeks to legally ban sex trafficking. It has since then gained the support of many members of Congress.

The bill states that forms and venues of sex trafficking include: “recruiting women and children for military prostitution; mail-order brides system; trafficking for purposes of making them ‘comfort women’; knowingly leasing or subleasing space used for sex trafficking; production, printing and other forms of documents and certificates, advertising and promoting, assisting in misrepresentation or fraud for exit documents, facilitating or helping exit or entry for sex trafficking; confiscating, concealing, or destroying sex trafficked person’s documents; patronizing, buying, or engaging the services of persons especially women and children for sexual exploitation; and, benefiting from forced labor and slavery.”

Maza said that the House still waiting for the bill’s approval in the Senate, to be followed by a bicameral conference to consolidate two versions of the bill. The activist-solon noted that the bill, if passed into law, would be a big help for the victims.

“The victims would have a legal basis for filing a case. In most of the incidents, the perpetrators go scot-free because of the ambiguities in the law, or it has become so prevalent and at times, already widely accepted,” Maza said.

In a comparative study on the two versions of the bill, Emily Cahilog, national coordinator of the Purple Rose Campaign, which is a global movement against sex trafficking, told Bulatlat.com that there are slight disparities in its definition of terms.

“The use of trafficked persons vis a vis victims of trafficking may become a contentious issue. In the definition of trafficking, both versions recognize that trafficking may be done through legal or illegal means, forced or not forced, or with or without the victim’s consent. In this case, the Senate version use of trafficked persons in the title is near to the definition stated in both versions of the bill,” says Cahilog.

GABRIELA, which has supported Maza’s efforts, however, believes that the issue of sex trafficking goes beyond Congress.

“Legislation is but a measure to define the crime and provide punishment for the perpetrators. This would be rendered moot and useless without addressing the more basic issues of ever-narrowing employment opportunities for women and the social and cultural structures that push women to be easy preys of sex trafficking,” GABRIELA deputy secretary general Emmi de Jesus says. Bulatlat,com 

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