There are millions of soccer fans watching from home and 500,000 people expected to attend the 64 World Cup soccer matches at nine different stadiums over the next month in South Africa. But many of those in attendance will also be given “Red Cards” — which signifies the most serious offense in soccer — to draw attention to the issue of human trafficking in South Africa.
The Red Card campaign was created by Martin/Williams Advertising and the cards, which read, “The youngest pro footballer signed at 14; which is old if you’re a sex slave” or “Child slaves outnumber pro footballers. Makes you wonder what our favorite pastime really is” will be distributed guerrilla-style by street teams dressed as soccer referees. Each card also includes the message “Stop Offenses Against Children.”
But well before the first match got underway June 11, journalists like E. Benjamin Skinner and Johannesburg photographer Melanie Hamman broke this story in the US media with a story in Time magazine. And other journalists, like Skinner and Hamman, have gone to great lengths to expose the underside of this global event, reporting the rise of prostitution and human trafficking connected with the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, a country lacking effective criminal laws to combat the sex trafficking industry.
Skinner, a fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery, spent three weeks investigating human trafficking syndicates near two stadiums. A lack of comprehensive human trafficking laws in South Africa create an inviting opportunity for the sex industry to flourish during the World Cup unchecked. For example, the crack dealers that Skinner talked to were expanding into human trafficking because it was more lucrative and less risky. Human traffickers recruit women and children, either through force, coercion, or deception to exploit them in the sex trade or as slave laborers either in South Africa, where 70 percent of the children live in poverty, or from other countries like China.
“There’s less risk to peddling flesh than dealing crack. They were pretty brazen talking about collecting money from a 15-year-old to sell sex but were very cagey about the crack trade because there’s much higher risk of prosecution with that,” said Skinner. “They could sell a gram of crack for $50 and it was gone or potentially make up to $60 a night from selling these girls and, over the long term, have much healthier profits that are less likely to be impounded by the government.”
Skinner found that the lax human trafficking laws in South Africa and the prospect of the World Cup crowds created market conditions that encouraged profiteering in humans. “I’m really looking forward to doing more business during the World Cup,” Skinner quotes one trafficker saying in the Time article.
Hamman said that photographs are critical to taking an abstract idea and putting a human face to it, although the challenges of illustrating this particular story were great. “I’ve had to balance my role as photographer and my personal ethics in a way I’ve never needed to before. It’s not been the easiest of issues to take on, but photography remains a vital part of communicating this issue,” Hamman said, whose portrait of 16-year-old Sindiswa, a victim of human trafficking profiled in the Time story (left) died of AIDS days after she photographed her. “At times I’ve had to override the photographer in me when faced with a situation where I know that it’s not in the victim’s best interest to be photographed.”
Since Skinner’s Time story was first published, criminal charges have been issued against the main trafficker Skinner profiles, and he is encouraged by the international media attention on human trafficking and prostitution that has resulted since. “I was trying to cast a brighter light on the whole issue and now I hope South Africa will do its part,” said Skinner.
Skinner commended ESPN reporter John Barr and the ESPN network for picking up on the issue after his story was published in Time magazine in January. “That was a Profile in Courage considering that they (ESPN) are the main broadcaster (for the World Cup),” said Skinner. “I thought their reporting was solid, bold and it didn’t try to dress it up.”
ESPN’s Outside the Lines spent months investigating the relationship between the growth of human trafficking and the World Cup in South Africa. On June 6, the network launched the first of a three-part series presenting in-depth reporting which found, for example, newly arrived Chinese nationals with suspect immigration documents working as prostitutes near the stadium in Cape Town. Police report to ESPN that agencies are using deception and force to bring girls from Asia and China to South Africa and that there are twice as many foreign nationals working as prostitutes in Johannesburg as had been previously, many of them younger and younger in age. One vice officer says he was told by a prostitute, “We all need to make money off the FIFA world cups.” In the series, Cape Town City Councillor JP Smith tells ESPN, “Where we’re starting to see a lot of foreign nationals is in brothels in residential suburbs and they were not here a year ago. This is a new phenomena, a very new phenomena.”
Girls and women are transported by syndicates often with promises of jobs, according to the Outside the Lines report. American Tonya Stanfield, founder of Justice, an anti-trafficking organization told ESPN reporters that the girls are tricked, transported and trapped.
All this attention is a fitting segue to a United Nations panel discussion today (June 16) presented by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University on the news media’s role in exposing human trafficking. The panel coincides with the United Nations events commemorating the 10th anniversary of the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, which includes prohibitions against human trafficking, also known as the Palermo Convention. Panelists include Mike McGraw, who won a Pulitzer for Human Trafficking in America, Guy Jacobson, who produced the documentary Children for Sale about the child sex trade. The panel discussion is free and open to the public.
Hamman said she has been investigating human trafficking in South Africa for about a year and is encouraged as she watched the story get picked up by press around the globe, and she hopes that once the last match is decided and the crowds clear out, concern about the victims of international trafficking will remain. “Media is media, hype wins at the end of the day, and I hope that after the World Cup is over, the discussion around finding a solution rather than hiding the problem will continue, with more clarity,” said Hamman, who is now working on a documentary about the subject with Changing Direction Films.
**Editor’s Note: To learn about another side of human trafficking connected to the soccer world, check out tonight’s episode of Vanguard on Current TV. Preview clips here and here.
Photos 1 and 2 by Melanie Hamman, photo 3 by Jason Bagley via Flickr.