GOD CALLED ME

An Assignment in Asia Took on Global Significance
By June Ramage Rogers

On a sultry morning in August of 1987, just days after my husband and I had arrived in the fascinating city of Bangkok, Thailand, to serve as the pastoral team at the International Church, I entered the Christian Guest House to pick up a message that was to change my life. It was an invitation from Koson Srisang, executive secretary of the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (representing all the Councils of Churches in the third world), to help with a new project on child prostitution and tourism. Little did I know that the documentation our project would carry out with the part-time staff and volunteer study teams from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Thailand would result in the launching of an international campaign, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism), that would draw the leaders of many nations, including the queen of Sweden, into its work.

Documenting the Facts

By the time I arrived, the coalition had already solidly documented the relationship between the sex industry and modern tourism and, as it turned out, correctly anticipated a massive growth in tourism in Southeast Asia in the latter part of the 1980’s and beyond. The coalition had also correctly anticipated that along with this growth would come a dramatic increase in women and children being sexually abused and turned into commodities. The purpose of our action project, then, was to document the effect of an increasingly visible tourism-linked sex industry, on children, their families and their communities. We would be furnishing information on children sold, coerced and enslaved in the brothels and entertainment places of international tourist centers.

In setting up the team in Sri Lanka with the National Christian Council, I learned about a form of prostitution that mainly affected little boys, some as young as five years of age. Foreign tourists bought gifts for young boys, sometimes even building a room on the child’s house, in order to exploit the child sexually. It was horrifying that all too many parents looked the other way.

Saddened but determined, I traveled on to the Philippines to set up the team there with the wonderful women’s group, Gabriela, and staff from the National Council of Churches (Philippines). They were already on top of the issue and took me into the areas of prostitution in and around Manila, urgently sharing their deep concern about the increase in the sex trade, especially as it affected young children. They were eager to help with the documentation that could confront the nations of the world with this pernicious modern form of child slavery.

I returned from these two trips to hear the report of my Thai colleague who had been setting up the team in Thailand. I could barely handle the news that there could be as many as 800,000 child prostitutes in Thailand alone. As the teams in each country began their work, there followed many tearful nights as I read story after story of children who were forced or sold into a life of prostitution in brothels all over Southeast Asia. I learned of towns in the northeast of Thailand where the largest house in the village was one bought by a family whose young daughter was sending money home from her work as a prostitute. Even unborn children were being sold to pimps.

I wondered sadly what manner of evil I had gotten involved in; I became angry. I was not alone. “Few issues,” said Ron O’Grady, who became ECPAT’s coordinator, “create such strong anger as the sexual abuse of young children.”* Also distressing was knowing this issue is part of a much larger problem of social injustice and human exploitation in all its manifestations—economic, cultural, social, spiritual and psychological.

Reporting Out

At a seminar in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in May of 1990, which I chaired, the country teams reported out to government officials, social scientists, church leaders, and activists from around the world. The participants were appalled. They denounced child prostitution as a desecration of our children. They called for concerted action immediately at the local, national and international levels, to resist and counter this destruction of our children. ECPAT was born.

As I read Ellen Lukas’ accompany article (pp. 4-5, July/August 1997 Horizons), I was filled with memories of those early beginnings: of the optimism with which we attacked a formidable problem with such limited resources, of the pain and subsequent anger of learning how widespread and devastating the situation really was, and finally, of the joy of finding so many at all levels who were willing to pitch in to try to eradicate this evil. I shall be eternally grateful that God called me to be a part of this timely effort

A WORD OF INTRODUCTION

Though the article above was written in 1996 on my experience in Southeast Asia in the late 1980’s, the tears of women and very young children continue to flow. In the past few weeks the horrors of the ongoing trafficking and abuse of women and children have especially haunted me. The “weeping of my sisters” seems endless (see poem by Ingrid Piying Lia.)

Yesterday “Threads of Justice”, a newsletter from the PC(USA)’s Office of Women’s Advocacy, arrived at my post office box highlighting “The Worth of Women: Trafficking in the United States of America.” A shocking fact from the U.S. State Department was noted. “After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest criminal industry in the world today, and it is the fastest growing.”

Several weeks ago my husband and I visited the Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, the national museum to highlight the work of the Underground Railroad before and during the Civil War. After seeing and reflecting on the horrors of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century in the United States, we were confronted by stark announcements of slavery in the early part of the 21st century, the most virulent being the trafficking of human beings!

Last night I was drawn back to the places that haunted me in my study of child prostitution in Southeast Asia in the late eighties. Walking through the streets of Patpong, the notorious red light district in Bangkok, Thailand, Anderson Cooper of CNN news shared slices of that ugly reality today and its continuing pernicious effects on children both very young girls and boys.

I am grateful to Church Women United for telling this story and celebrating those who have participated in the struggle to eradicate this vicious form of modern slavery: the trafficking of women and children.

2007

 

June Ramage Rogers is an elder at Hanover Presbyterian Church, Hanover, Indiana, and was a member of the 1996-97 Global Exchange, A Caring Journey

This article originally appeared in the July/August 1997 issue of Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women. Reprinted with permission. To subscribe to Horizons or order PW resources, contact Presbyterian Distribution Service, 800/524-2612.

(For a summary of this important story, see Ron O’Grady’s book, The ECPAT Story, published in 1996 by ECPAT with Pace Publishing.)

Win Tomorrow

By Ingrid Piying Lia

I feel the darkness of this world
Not because the sun has set
Not because my eye has dimmed
But because I see, I see
That pale twisted face beneath the rouge.

In this lonely night
My tears flow down endlessly
Because I hear the weeping of my sisters.
Beloved, tell me who
Has caused so much suffering
So much suffering.

Use our blood and sweat
To tell them
Please take away those hands that block the sun
Share with us one ray of warmth!
Use our blood and sweat
To win tomorrow
Springtime shining in our children’s faces.

Ingrid Piying Lia directs the Rainbow Project which researches the causes and results of prostitution in Taiwan.