Lydia Cacho, an brave Mexican journalist about human trading.

A brave woman stands up against the sex industry.

In Gesprek op 2 on the 2th of October 2011, Chris Kijne talks with  the good looking Mexican Lydia Cacho about her furious battle against modern sex slavery. She is not safe anymore herself after a death threat.

Her book Esclavas del poder (Slaves of power) centers around women- and child slavery. Kijne asks her how big the problem is. Cacho doesn’t want to frighten anybody, so she says it is about 1.4 millions of people who are involved, but there are also figures of 25 millions, including forced marriages.

‘How did you find out?’ Kijne asks.

Cacho is a journalist in Mexico for 23 years and seven years ago she started to make a map of the Mexican maffia, who was first selling drugs, but now human beings, because that is cheaper.

The worst country involved is always your own country, she says, but in Japan there is the incredible power of the Yakuza. They even kidnapped an US girl and the police denies the issue. She herself went undercover to the nightclub area, as the red light district in Japan is called, and asked a boy if he wanted to accompagny her to her hotel, which he did, since he was in the hands of the Yakuza. Japanese men go to geisha bars and meet with comfort girls. Cacho says Japan is not an exception. It is similar in Brasil.

One of the reasons of the growth of this kind of slavery is because it is an isolated phenomenom. Since this is one of the ways the sex industry works, it promotes violence.

She makes a link to globalization. Since the nineties the Russians started to produce pornography, childpornography has grown and the victims become still younger.

She makes a link with feminism also, which is at a backclash now. Men are still very sexist. In Spain women are murdered more often because they want to divorce. 
The idea of sexual liberation promotes prostitution, Cacho says. Maybe 1 or 2 percent of the women working as an prostitute are doing that freely but everybody else is a slave.

This is not possible without the complicity of states, all states. In Holland a Nigerian man was trading 115 women. That is impossible without the help of state officials. There are double standdaards. In Turkey the government earns money by it.

Legalisation is not a solution since men cannot control their impulses. She would rather change the point of view and discuss the role of the sex industry.

Kijne fears that rape will increase, but Cacho says that would prove that men are violent. Sweden is an exception. Prosecution of clients is important. Men have to learn intimacy. Young boys already have to learn to be better human beings. The hopeful thing about her furious battle is that women who have experienced slavery now teach in schools about it and men who have seen it and know the consequences, understand the cruelty. 

Impressive!