Talk about SEX
OK my title got some of you. I meant talk about SEX SLAVERY.
I was viewing the YouTube profile of Ara Manoogian, an investigative journalist at Hetq and a blogger who has traveled undercover to Dubai to report the human trafficking of Armenian women and children, and found out something that made me very sad – a 19-year-old female user from Armenia had posted a comment urging Ara to remove his videos about the trafficking of Armenian women and children:
| January 17, 2007
barev [hello]
Es uzum asel vor duk ANPAYMAN petkek jenjel ajt videonere hay axchikneri masin vor ‘ashxatumen’ Dubai um. [I want to say that you WITHOUT CONDITIONS should delete those videos about Armenian girls who are “working” in Dubai]
Duk petka haskanak vor da mer hayeri hamar vate.
Gitem vor jishta ajt amene u tents baner linumen.
Bajts… [You should understand that it is bad for Armenians. I know all of that is true and things like that happen. But…]
Vor tex chen linum?? [Where don’t these things happen?]
Bolor jerkirnerum ka bajts irank internetum chen denum. [These things are in all countries that they don’t post on the Internet]
Ajt videonere mer hayastani hamar vat reclame. [These videos are bad advertisement for our Armenia]Gentrumem jenjeq!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Please delete]
The young woman’s comment shows that human trafficking is a taboo in Armenia. “Don’t talk about it, it makes us look bad.”
Photo from Polaris
It doesn’t make us look bad because we are organizing it, but makes us look bad because there are prostitutes among Armenians.
After all that awareness people still don’t get what human trafficking means. Last week, when I interviewed a random lady in downtown Denver for an upcoming school-project documentary, she thought human trafficking meant “lot’s of people walking on the street.”
You say it is slavery, they answer slavery doesn’t exist. You say it is sexual slavery, “macho” men jump in and say, “wow, where?”
I guess women are the “best” audience to raise awareness about human trafficking in. So please, especially Eastern European and Armenian women, TALK ABOUT SEX SLAVERY, let your friends know that it exists, and watch videos about Armenian women and children trafficked to Dubai.
Trafficking is when people are tricked or forced into slavery and kept in it with threats and torture. It is not a woman’s or a child’s fault to be a human trafficking victim. TALK ABOUT SEX SLAVERY. TALK ABOUT IT.
Anahit on 01 May 2007 at 8:43 pm #
OK I have no idea who the girl is, but this is all I have to tell her. “GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!!!” What does she know about Armenia and most of all trafficking. Maybe her crippled Armenian shows that.
Arapo on 02 May 2007 at 6:28 am #
Very sad that many still wish to turn a blind eye to such problems…As if they’ll disappear on their own.. By the way Manoogian doesn’t write for Hetq, at least not as a full-time writer.