Slave free nation

New Zealand could be the first country in the world to become slave-free, says human trafficking expert Matthew Friedman. With 30 years’ experience, Matt has seen the horrors of modern-day slavery but still dares to dream of a truly free world.

I’m so tired of people who are practical and logical and rational, I’m so tired of it,’ says Matthew Friedman, author of Where Were You?, a book based on his decades of experience in counter-human trafficking. Since 1991, Matt has worked in the Asian region designing and managing anti-trafficking programmes, including six years as a regional manager for the United Nations. Matt knows all about the enormous obstacles in the international fight against modern-day slavery.

But he also knows there is hope. After speaking at The Salvation Army’s Just Action conference in 2013, US-born Matt has a vision for our nation: ‘When it comes to New Zealand I’m really clear: let’s say that we want to become the first slave-free country!’

And Matt also has words for the practical, logical voices that say it can’t be done: ‘Yeah, you’re right, there will always be someone in slavery, but we’re striving for something, we’re striving for a vision of a slave-free country. Forget about whether it’s practical or logical, forget about all that. This is the vision statement!

‘Why not New Zealand, why not?!’ he continues, with obvious passion. ‘You’re committed enough, you’re small enough and engaged enough. Let it be New Zealand. Then people like me can go to Australia and the rest of the world, and say, “Look, New Zealand is stepping up. You can do it too.’ ”

White slavers

After a lifetime of fighting the good fight, Matt still has a palpable passion for ending slavery. It’s a destiny that began eerily close to home. Matt recalls in Where Were You? that when his grandmother was 23, she took a boat trip from Germany to the United States. She was to take the train to California to meet her husband who had gone before her, but accidentally got off at Chicago. Frantic, she asked passers-by in German, ‘Am I here? Am I in California?’

A friendly stranger came up to her, speaking in German, and saying that her husband had sent him to escort her to their beautiful new home. ‘As she was leaving with this stranger, another German couple saw what was happening, took her away from this man, and got her back on the train … The German-speaking man was what people used to refer to as a “white slaver”,’ Matt recalls.

‘My grandmother always had a shiver when she talked about it, because it would have been so easy to believe what this person was saying—she so wanted to believe it was true. And that’s what we’re dealing with in trafficking situations—people who have never had a break in life are being told they’ve got this great opportunity, and they so want to believe it.’

Matt’s next significant encounter with trafficking was in New York, where after gaining a degree in psychology, he got a job counselling women in prostitution. ‘I learned how fragile a person’s life can be. There was a girl; she was 15 and doing well in school. All of a sudden, she gets a boyfriend; he turns her onto to drugs, which affects her schooling. The boyfriend and school and drugs affect her relationship with her parents. She’s eventually kicked out, and to raise money for the boyfriend and drugs she becomes indebted to a pimp. Before you know it, she’s being forced into prostitution to pay for her debt.’

Amulya’s legacy

The term ‘human trafficking’ had not yet been invented, but Matt was beginning to recognise a pattern in which people are deceived and coerced into situations of absolute bondage. ‘I had no intention of being in human rights,’ explains Matt.  ‘But it seemed like every time I turned the corner, I met someone in that situation. It wasn’t until I met an 11-year-old girl that I had to surrender to the fact that this was something I was meant to do.’

The young girl he calls ‘Amulya’, although he doesn’t know her real name. As a young man Matt was working for the Indian Government in public health, and was asked to investigate some brothels. ‘At one of the brothels, upon entering the waiting area, a young Nepalese trafficking victim saw me and ran up to me. She wrapped her arms around my waist and said, “Save me, save me, they are doing terrible things to me!” ’ Matt turned to the police officer who accompanied him and said, ‘We need to take this girl out of here now.’ The officer told him that would be impossible, and the girl’s captors would kill them before allowing her to leave.

When Matt returned with more police, the girl was gone. ‘I will never know what happened to that precious child,’ says Matt. He was haunted by her memory, suffering recurring nightmares. ‘I finally surrendered. I accepted the fact that I could no longer turn away.’

The calling

It was only a few years ago that Matt truly began to understand how this sense of destiny was actually a higher calling. ‘I went through a rough period at the UN, when it seemed like everything around me was imploding and there was so much discouragement. One day I felt like I needed to go to church—I hadn’t been to church for years. And there I felt this rejuvenation of my spirit. It allowed me to forgive myself, forgive people and give up my baggage.

‘My relationship with God is very strong. I go to church and read my Bible, and it’s very fulfilling in so many ways. I feel like I don’t strive anymore, and things come easier as a result.’

Matt also acknowledges the huge influence and support of his wife, a reporter he met a few years ago when she interviewed him. They have been married for a year and a half—she is also a dedicated Christian and has joined him in the fight against slavery. His two teenage sons, from a previous marriage, are also passionate anti-trafficking advocates.

Matt is open that being at the forefront of a fledgling human rights movement can take its toll. Latest statistics show that around 50,000 victims of trafficking are assisted annually, a grand total of 0.04 percent of the total estimated number of victims. Meanwhile, profits generated by traffickers are estimated to exceed US$150 billion.

‘I met a guy who was a trafficker in Vietnam, and he said, “I’ll give you my name, address, I’ll give you everything because you’ll never be able to do anything about me,” ’ admits Matt. ‘We’re just handful of people striving against a problem that is so huge.’

But for the victims who are rescued, it is literally a life-saver. ‘The faces and the pictures I have of those who have benefitted is a driving force—it really is,’ concludes Matt. ‘For those people, it has made all the difference.’

A modern abolitionist movement

So, what will it take to change the world? ‘We need a modern-day abolitionist movement,’ states Matt simply—referencing the movement led by William Wilberforce to end slavery in the UK. ‘Our culture has an emphasis on individuality, and that is when these problems fester. The issue of human slavery is big enough and problematic enough that we should all care about it.

‘I can’t understand why a girl under 17 can be commercially raped 7000 times and the world is not up in arms about it,’ he adds.

Matt and his wife are about to embark on an awareness-raising road trip, doing 100 presentations across the US. They aim to give people concrete ideas about what they can do to help—whether that’s giving money, going to see a film about the issue, or telling someone else. ‘If you get 10 million people out there, each doing a couple of things to end trafficking, that’s going to make a big impact.’

Matt recently moved into the private sector, through an organisation he set up called The Mekong Club. Based in Hong Kong, the organisation works with private businesses to train them to recognise trafficking within their organisation. ‘We’re offering a safe space for manufacturers to work with each other to make plans and priorities, and they hand that over to us and we help them make that happen,’ explains Matt.

There have already been great results. Airline Cathay Pacific received training, and as a result added the anti-slavery film Not My Life to their in-flight movies, with very positive feedback. British Telecom held a competition among 10,000 staff to come up with ideas on how to use technology to help anti-trafficking. As a result, they developed cloud technology that links NGOs in Indonesia so they can share vital information.

‘In my heart of hearts, I feel that if the private sector gets involved, we can go from helping 50,000 victims a year, to 300,000, to a million, to a million and a half,’ concludes Matt.

This is exactly how New Zealand can realise the vision of becoming slave-free: ‘If we can get enough people together from different areas—banking, government, manufacturing, business —and together aim for a couple of changes a year, that’s how it’s going to happen. It will eventually create a mass movement.’

Kiwis are already highly-motivated, adds Matt—explaining that around 40 per cent of his staff come from New Zealand. ‘It’s an issue that really resonates with Kiwis.’

Although slavery is a Goliath to slay, Matt has a sense of ‘optimism and re-birth’ about what’s next: ‘You can feel overwhelmed and start asking the question, “Can anything be done?” But there’s a competing thought within me that says, “Well, wait a minute, we’re getting closer. We have to try this idea, and another idea. We haven’t found the breakthrough yet, but we’re constantly getting closer.

‘If you’re walking down the street and someone trips and falls, you naturally reach out to help them up. It’s what human beings do.’ Helping victims of slavery up is the most naturally human thing we can do, concludes Matt.

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by Ingrid Barratt (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 20 February 2016, pp 5-7.
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.

10 things you can do RIGHT NOW to help stop human trafficking

Learn: Read slavery-related websites, watch films and read books about the topic. Take the Slavery Footprint Survey (http://slaveryfootprint.org) and share it.

Share: Talk about what you have learnt with friends, family, at your school, in your church or workplace. Share articles online.

Teach: Teach young children about the techniques used by traffickers—especially on the internet and in malls.

Report: If you see anything that doesn’t seem right, report it to the police—such as an underage girl selling sex on the street, a domestic worker who is not allowed to leave the home, labourers kept together and working extreme hours, a teenage girl with a much older ‘boyfriend’.

Encourage: Encourage our government to review existing laws and procedures on human trafficking. Encourage news media to cover the issue of slavery. Encourage your local school to cover the topic. Encourage police to identify and respond to the issue.

Consume responsibly: Go online and see if the companies you buy from have codes of conduct or policies to address human trafficking (see www.behindthebarcode.org.au). Congratulate those that do, and politely encourage those that don’t. Support the companies that are taking the issue seriously.

Give: Donate to a human trafficking programme. Hold a fundraising event.

Volunteer: Donate your time or expertise to an organisation fighting slavery—either in your local region, or further afield via the internet.

Use your talents: If you are a writer, write a blog. If you are a painter, paint a picture. If you do sports, use it as a platform to raise awareness. If you are musical, write a song. If you like movies, post a short film.

Commit: Commit to doing five actions per year (even more if you are up for it) that will contribute to the fight against slavery.