Editorial

By Paul Schratz

In less than a year, hundreds of thousands of visitors will be arriving in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

If history repeats itself, the city will also see the underside of the Olympics - a wave of exploitation as so-called sex tourists take advantage of a worldwide commercial trade in defenceless women and children.

The Canadian bishops have issued a statement about this terrible situation, and now the bishops of B.C. and Yukon have released a pastoral letter on it.

The letter, published in The B.C. Catholic and available on line at www.rcav.org, points out that human trafficking is considered by many to be the fastest growing international crime.

Human trafficking destroys people all over the world, and its tentacles reach into our very community, where many of Vancouver's prostitutes are caught up in it. In fact, the words "human trafficking" don't adequately describe the life these people are trapped in, often addicted to drugs, physically and psychologically terrorized, and essentially forced to work as sex slaves.

Fortunately, the problem of human trafficking is starting to gain more media attention, much of it precipitated by the pending winter Olympics. The Globe and Mail is currently running a series of articles on the problems of Vancouver's downtown eastside, and in particular the prostitution and human trafficking that fuels much of that area's woes.

The newspaper is running separate articles examining what it calls the Architecture Solution, the International Development Solution, the Public Policy Solution, and the Education Solution.

As helpful and welcome as all these may be, there remains another solution that needs to be kept in the forefront: The Dignity Solution.

At its root, the tragedy of human trafficking results from the treatment of people as objects and commodities, based on a loss of their God-given dignity as human persons.

The Second Vatican Council described the selling of women and children as an infamy, while Pope John Paul II called it a "shocking offence against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights."

Catholic organizations around the world are combating human trafficking, working at the highest levels of the United Nations, all the way down to the very streets and ports where trafficking proliferates.

The response demanded of this archdiocese is clear. While Catholics are understandably brimming with enthusiasm as they count down the days to the start of the Olympics, this is also a time when we can take a firm stance and do something to help those enslaved by a degrading commercial practice.

We need to tell our government leaders - municipal, provincial and federal - that this critical human rights issue must be addressed well in advance of the arrival of the world on our doorstep. Politicians need to receive phone calls and letters demanding that they do all they can to promote the dignity of the human person, both at home and abroad.

The B.C. and Yukon Bishops' statement says that because of the media's educational potential, they bear "a special responsibility for promoting the God-given dignity of every person." That's why it's also up to us as Catholics to inform the media - news, entertainment, and advertising - that we reject the ongoing exploitation of people in their work, the exploitation of women in advertising, the trivialization of sexuality, attacks on the family, and destructive patterns of consumption.

We also must offer prayer and pastoral support for those caught up in sexual exploitation. Numerous organizations, locally as well as internationally, are coming to the aid of these slaves in search of freedom. Please offer them your time, treasure and talents.

The bishops' document calls on all to "live in solidarity with all those who are exploited."

What better time than this Lenten season to embrace that sentiment. In the words of St. Paul, "now is the acceptable time; ... now is the day of salvation."

For all the victims enslaved in sexual trafficking, that day can't come a moment too soon.