The new campaign against human trafficking using Facebook and the Internet aims to attract people's attention and make them understand that modern slavery is happening here and now and maybe in the neighbouring flat or house of flats there are girls victims of trafficking closed and forced to be prostitutes. But what happens then? Would you dare to call the police? "I would," said the activist Judy Boyle, who held a seminar on trafficking in the Greek-American cultural centre.
The founder of No Project Judy Boyle wants to inspire the young people to create, write lyrics, do concerts, paint and create animated videos to attract the public attention on contemporary forms of slavery. It is not necessary to be trained to do anything against modern slavery, said Judy Boyle during the seminar, held to increase the awareness on issues related to trafficking.
The No Project campaign was launched by the New Zealander Judy Boyle five months ago as an independent campaign that focuses on the role of "demand" on the market for white slaves and aims to inform youth on this issue by organizing events with music, arts, and by holding educational seminars at schools, and to distribute the information through social media. In an incredible performance for the people who had come to get informed about human trafficking, Judy Boyle projected a few short videos made by activists engaged in trafficking, but also George Clooney’s production as well as Radiohead's video for child trafficking. She presented animated videos made by students from the technical school in Athens. The videos are presented on MTV and take part in a festival in Los Angeles.
According to Boyle, the art is a tool which the young people can use to commit them themselves to the fight against human trafficking and to create a commitment among the people of their age. In her opinion, nothing will change until the thinking of the new generation in relation to human trafficking changes, despite the work of the police and courts. Boyle said she had spoken with hundreds of students from private schools in Athens so far and that teenagers are really very angry that their parents’ generation has allowed not only the climate change to happen but something like the modern slavery. In the coming months, Boyle is invited to do workshops for the teachers from the schools in Larissa.
Julie Boyle has been involved in anti-trafficking campaigns for ten years and precisely since 2001 when she read a Kathimerini newspaper article about a woman closed for nine months in a flat in the Athens district Kipseli and forced to be a prostitute. There is nothing poetic or metaphorical in slavery, said Boyle, citing her conversation with a teacher from Athens that metaphorically explained how employees are slaves of their employers! But there are no metaphors in human trafficking. It all is severe and there are three criteria that clear any doubts about the harshness of the term "modern slavery," stated Boyle. They are that the victims have no freedom, because they are deprived of their documents, the traffic is made solely for profit and always through violence, which may not be physical but psychological. Human trafficking is a business and people become mere objects of exchange and profit.
"Why do not they go to the police? A woman in Italy – a victim of traffickers, who decided to go to the police to tell what had happened to her, got pictures showing the cut ear of her child." This is just one of the series of shocking stories of people victims of trafficking, which Boyle can tell. Usually these people have no opportunities in the remote areas where they live; they have no job, no education and when someone appears with a picture of a Greek island or another lovely place and promises work, these people immediately decide to leave. Everyone has the right to dream of a better life, everyone wants to do something better for himself/herself and his/her family, said the activist.
The staggering statistics show that there are 27 million slaves all around the world currently, and every minute two children become victims of human trafficking and their lives are worth not more than $ 50. Modern slaves are forced to serve clients in brothels, to undress in porn sites, to serve, to work in agriculture, in construction, in fishing, in factories, in mines, on the cocoa and coffee plantations. Every single person alone can consciously stop buying goods made by the forced labour of children threatened with weapons, called Judy Boyle. The network which facilitates the traffickers involves all those who turn a blind eye to what they saw and do not notify the competent authorities, continued Judy Boyle.
The inspirer of the No Project campaign is determined to gather around herself a team of young people to voluntarily engage and work in favour of the campaign against human trafficking. For more information visit her website: http://thenoproject.org
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