Miller attacks world slave trade

The director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, John Miller, came to the University Wednesday to declare that slavery exists in the world today — and must be fought.

After projecting powerful images of the horrors of modern-day slavery from a U.N.-sponsored informational film, Miller said slavery has been on the rise in the past 30 to 40 years.

"We are talking about a premier human rights issue of the 21st century," he said to the half-full Dodds Auditorium in the Wilson School.

In his lecture "The Tragedy of Modern-Day Slavery: Combating Trafficking in Persons," Miller discussed a U.S. government study that estimates that 800,000 people are smuggled across international boundaries and forced into labor at their destination each year.

That figure, he said, doesn't take into account slavery within individual nations.

Miller stressed the fact that much of the slavery is gender-based, with women comprising about 80 percent of those affected. Children, he said, were also widely exploited in sexual, industrial and even military slavery.

Other modern slaves, he explained, are involved in agricultural and domestic work.

"Types of slavery have changed [since the height of the slave trade, but] tools of the slave-master remain the same," he said, noting that fraud, deception, beating and other forms of abuse are still common practice.

Despite all the bleak news, Miller did note some promising new developments.

"There are some positive things happening," he said, pointing to tough new anti-trafficking legislation in the United States and increasing pressure on other countries to follow suit.

"The past two years [have seen] almost 70 countries pass anti-trafficking legislation," he said.

Yet Miller made it clear there is much more to be done. He said the world needs to focus on countries that are exporting and importing slaves and to increase awareness about this pressing global concern.

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"This is going to be a long struggle," he said, but "we need to persevere."

Concluding with an appeal for a mass movement in response to the situation, he said, "The more I see of this issue, the more I believe we need a [21st century] abolitionist movement."