a heart for justice.

Just read these. they’re slightly unbelieveable.. but probably an underestimation of the actual reality of this issue.

A woman or Child is raped or killed on average every six seconds in Angeles City, Philippines.

Angeles City (A.C.), north of the Philippines capital Manila, is one of the largest sex tourist destinations in the world.

Angeles City is also the Philippine’s second largest destination point (after Manila) for internal trafficking, & is one of the main recruitment points used by trafficking networks.

An estimated 150,000 girls work in Angeles City, Philippines as prostitutes – of that about 30,000 are girls as young as six years of age. Despite the fact that prostitution is illegal in Angeles not one person has been convicted of this crime.

The prostitution trade is controlled by foreign gangs who rake in millions while the girls suffer on a bowl of rice a day. Young girls are forced to work up to twenty hours a day and are expected to sevice up to 100 customers a week. Most of the gangs that run the prostitution trade are foreigners. They pay off corrupt police, military and city hall officials. The girls are locked away to sleep watched over by armed security gaurds who carry batons, electric prods and shotguns.

The buildings are surrounded by razor wire as used in prisons. The average life expectancy of a bar girl is 25 The gangs control prostitution, drugs, extortion, gun running, paedophile movies and a host of other criminal activities. Anyone who speaks out is quickly disposed of by the gangs.

In the last twenty years in Angeles City, Philippines more than 300,000 women and children have died in the prostitution death camps of Angeles.

Despite the atrocities that are happening in Angeles there is very little said in the outside world. Their operations include prostitution, paedopillia, money laundering, gun running, kidnap, snuff movies, extortion, drugs and a range of other criminal activities.

These are the first of many revealing and horrific insights i am finding as i research more and more about the philippines. If you want to read some more, go to these links:

http://www.petitiononline.com/44441212/petition.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/19/angeles.philippines/index.html

some stories on here are NOT easy to read, and although I will not water down this subject, I also do not want to force stories in your face which you’d otherwise rather not read. I really would encourage you to read further though, just to get a glimpse of the personal devastation this industry is building.

I’ve been researching this area in the Philippines as there’s a possibility that we could be spending 4 or so weeks there working with a prostitute rescue shelter, meeting the women, hearing their stories and then trying to somehow capture all of that on page through our writing and our photographs. My heart is so in this. I’ll keep you up to date with how that goes and whether it becomes definite or not.

so today as i was researching the philippines, and especially the sex trade and prostitution circles, i was shocked at what i found. shocked at how freely available this information was online and how uncensored and indiscreet so much of it is.

i stumbled across some man’s blog who is retired and living in thailand where, as he explains, “Like all others in my situation – single, financially ok, retired and living here, I love and enjoy carousing with the lovely Thai ladies.” He then goes on to describe WHY he is so partial towards visiting Angeles City, Philippines every 3 months, for a “change of scenery”…

“Although the town in the fun area is basically a slumlike ambience,
the traffic is minimal and all the action is within easy walking distance
if you stay at a centrally located hotel on or near Fields Avenue.
The women, Filipina ladies to me, in general are more fun than the current crop of Thai ladies.
(These are all relating to general averages, with obvious exceptions to every rule).
They seem to still have the childlike sense of fun that I find diminishing rapidly in the Thai bar girls.
In a physical sense, most have good sized breasts that are not collapsed like a majority of young Thai girls.
I find them on average more shapely,
although Thai girls are usually prettier than the AC girls over all.
As mentioned they seem to be much more flirtatious and joking at present,
a real sense of childlike fun.”

I have no words for that. That these women’s worth and value and lives have been reduced to so little, that they are shown anything BUT respect, love and care, that they are subjectified simply to a piece of meat to satisfy one man’s lust for one night of enterntainment for him.  The girls in the picture above (his photo) are all vacantly smiling.. but after reading into the sex trade and abuse which happens behind these one night stands, you have to look into their faces and wonder what torture, abuse, and degrading treatment has been used to submit these girls into
smiling out of fear.
it breaks my heart. its an overly used conception, but somehow it grounds what can often just been seen as distant facts and figures..

imagine if one of these girls was your sister.
your best friend.
your daughter.
your wife.
your girlfriend.
the girl who wanted to have a family.
the girl who wanted to get an education to be educated enough to help others.

would you want her to be one of the 2.5 million abused and dehumanised victims of this? would you want her to blur into the background of a mass of statistics? would you want her night after night to be beaten and raped, passed around a cycle of men hungry only for 30 sexually pleasing minutes with an insignificant woman?

another snippet from a guy who went in undercover to the bars in angeles:

“flocks of young girls wearing next to nothing and dancing on the stage for white men like myself to ogle at. Paradoxically, their faces were most revealing. Some of them looked acutely embarrassed, their eyes focused in the middle distance while their bodies did the minimum-sway dance. Some of them grab a friend and giggled a lot as they tried their sexy moves. If i caught any of their eyes, they would either giggle and look away or just look away.“

what continues to terrify me about the first blog I found, and so much of the other research i’ve been doing, is just how crazily available it is. this blog came up on page 3 of google images. PAGE 3. it wasn’t even difficult to find. it terrifies me that the social worth of these woman and the growing openess about it all is so unashamedly proclaimed.. not in regret, but to BOAST about the cheapest prices they’ve found for the best sex. The sex trade has finally become so common that the people who pay into it are not even discreet or ashamed about this issue anymore.. but that its actually just becoming some sick competition. I have no words to express how unbelievable that is.

The more i read into this issue, the more my heart breaks and feels overwhelmed at the mass of this problem.. i had no idea of the mass devastation, suffering and abuse which is right in front of our faces. It’s so easy to want to back away and feel as though there is no way that we, as individuals, could ever possibly begin to change this. But God is gathering a people who will say yes to Him, who will go where people have said No before, and will carry words and actions of hope, life and love to the most oppressed and enslaved people. It is my only comfort that I know a God who is bigger than all of this, even when it seems indescribably huge.

Pray that God would speak courage and a passion for justice and His people into my heart! I simply cannot begin to do anything about this by myself, or even have the confidence to share about it with people.. but finally im understanding what this verse means:

“Jesus looked hard at them and said,
“No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself.
Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.”