Heavy traffic
MANILA, Philippines - The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) states that human trafficking is “an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them.” Before you think that this description is limited to female drug mules in Latin America (for reference, watch 2004’s Maria Full of Grace, about a Colombian teen who flies to New York with 62 pellets of cocaine in her stomach), this extreme form of abuse also involves men and children.
In Enslaved: An MTV Exit Special, a compelling new documentary film hosted by Jared Leto, actor and frontman of Thirty Seconds to Mars, tells the stories of real people affected by the human trafficking trade in our neck of the woods, Asia. There’s Janet, a young Filipina woman shipped to Malaysia and forced into sex work. There’s also Vannak, a young Cambodian man sold as a laborer onboard a fishing vessel; and Siti, an Indonesian woman who works against her will as a domestic helper in Malaysia.
The project, part of an award-winning multimedia initiative to raise awareness for the cause, examines the roles played by everyone in the chain. To date, MTV Exit has produced an impressive catalogue of powerful TV programming presented by familiar names, such as Angelina Jolie and Lucy Liu to help bring down the number of human trafficking cases in the world. Enslaved may be heavy fare, but unlike Jersey Shore, this half-hour special will most likely expand your mind.
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‘Enslaved: An MTV Exit Special’ premieres today, Sept. 17, at 1:30 p.m. with replays on Thursday, Sept. 22, at 12:30 a.m.; and Saturday, Sept. 24, at 7 p.m. For more information see www.mtvexit.org.
