The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (120): The Crime of Carrying Condoms

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The NYPD can arrest you for carrying condoms … Trans and carrying condoms? You must be a prostitute, and condoms are the proof! Wearing a tight t-shirt and carrying condoms? You must be a prostitute, and condoms are the proof! A sex worker who is trying to keep herself safe in her work? You are actually a prostitute, so go to jail, or at the very least get your condoms taken away so your work is more dangerous. The condoms-as-evidence policy serves absolutely no one. (source)

Here’s an excerpt of the supporting deposition:

More absurd human rights violations here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (81): Sex Tourism

Pattaya, Thailand, 1991, a sex tourist checks a prostitute’s breasts – photo by Patrick Zachmann

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More on prostitution and modern slavery. More iconic images here.

Political Graffiti (154): Sex Slave

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More on modern slavery, human trafficking and prostitution. More political graffiti.

Human Rights Maps (100): Crime Rates in San Francisco

Usually, maps about violations of people’s security rights or property rights are like this or this: informative but rather boring as well. Here’s a novel approach to statistical maps:

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More on prostitution here and here. More on private property rights and on the war on drugs. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Nonsense (11): Male Prostitute Feels Like Rosa Parks

Another case in which the language of human rights is shockingly abused:

Markus [is] America’s first legal male prostitute. [He] is the newest hire at the Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Tonopah Nevada, a business that recently got the go-ahead to hire a few good men. He likened his decision to rise up and become a gigolo to the civil rights struggles of the ’60s. “It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.” (source)

Indeed, the struggle of African Americans against centuries of slavery, lynchings, racism, segregation and discrimination is very much like the problems of male prostitutes who can only now practice their trade in full respect of the law…

Other posts in this series.

Human Rights Facts (35): The Recession and Organ Trade

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One more way in which the recession affects human rights. From William Saletan:

Will the global recession push more people to sell their organs? Apparently, the answer is yes. … You don’t normally think of selling your body’s parts or products. But bad times can make you think hard. One reason you might not have thought of selling something from your body is that the idea felt unnatural or somehow made you uncomfortable. But for $5,000, with bills to pay and no other income prospects, you decide you can get over those feelings.

In an older post I mentioned some of the negative effects of the current economic recession on human rights. One of the human rights likely to be effected is the right not to suffer poverty. The recession will cause an increase in poverty (see here and here), and people will be forced to use extreme tactics to counter this problem, especially if they can’t benefit from a social safety net. Not only can they decide to sell their organs (this would still be called a “donation”); they may also be tempted to participate in risky medical tests, rent their skin for commercial tattoo’s, sell their body for sex, become a surrogate mother  etc.

What to do about it? Again William Saletan:

What’s driving the market is scarcity. Americans, Britons, Israelis, Japanese, and South Koreans are going abroad for organs mostly because too few of their countrymen have agreed to donate organs when they die. Some have religious objections. Others are squeamish. Many figure that if they don’t supply the organs, somebody else will.

They’re right. Somebody else will supply the organs. But that somebody won’t be a corpse. He’ll be a fisherman or an out-of-work laborer who needs cash and can’t find another way to get it. The middlemen will open him up, take his kidney, pay him a fraction of the proceeds, and abandon him, because follow-up care is just another expense. If he recovers well enough to keep working, he’ll be lucky.

The surest way to stop him from selling his kidney is to make it worthless, by flooding the market with free organs. If you haven’t filled out a donor card, do it now. Because if the dying can’t get organs from the dead, they’ll buy them from the living.

More on the organ trade here and here. And there’s even a poem about it here.

Economic Human Rights (15): Modern Slavery

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Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.

Slavery is illegal everywhere and yet it still exists everywhere. Experts estimate that today there are 27 million people enslaved around the world (source). Outright “plantation slavery” doesn’t exist anymore. Slavery today is hidden and has taken on many different and subtler forms like sex trafficking, bonded labor or debt bondage, forced domestic labor, forced agricultural labor etc. It takes place outside of the public’s view, in brothels, homes, fields, restaurants… There is still a strong racist element in modern slavery, but it’s not exclusively racist. Sex slavery for example is not. Domestic slavery also is not necessarily racist.

Types of modern slavery

1. Bonded labor or debt bondage

Poverty … forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is much grimmer. Thanks to inflated interest rates and fresh debts incurred while being fed and housed, the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations. (source)

2. Sex slavery

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Women and girls are promised jobs and income abroad but on arrival their passports are taken away and they are forced to work in the sex industry in order to pay off the debt they owe the “transporters”. Outright kidnapping also occurs. Not all human trafficking is linked to or ends up in slavery, but some does.

Sex slavery is not necessarily an international problem or a problem linked to migration. Fathers, husbands or brothers can also force the women in the family to prostitute themselves locally, sometimes as a means to service debt. Girls are often even sold by their families.

More on women’s rights.

3. Forced labor

This is also linked to human trafficking. People pay “transporters” to take them to another country where they hope to find a job and a better life. Instead, they are forced to work in order to pay their debt. Needless to say that they often work in harsh and hazardous conditions. Organized crime plays an important role in this an in other types of modern slavery.

Another type of forced labor are the labor camps for “criminals” that exist in some countries, such as China (where they are called Loagai).

4. Child labor

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Here’s a separate post on child labor. Child labor is forced labor and hence slavery because children do not choose to work but are forced to because of the poverty of their parents.

5. Domestic slavery

This often occurs in rich countries, and especially in the upper classes of rich countries. Diplomats also sometimes harbor unpaid domestic workers because they find it relatively easy to by-pass immigration checks.

Overview

Slave redemption

“Slave redemption” is an effort to buy the freedom of slaves. But it’s controversial.

When you have people running around buying up slaves, you help create a market demand for more slaves… It’s like paying the burglar for the television set he just stole. … The slave traders end up with more money, buying more guns and hiring more thugs to go out and take more slaves. (source).

Moreover, you end up with people picking up other people who are not slaves and presenting them as slaves in order to receive some money for their “freedom”.