The concept of “trafficking” is (like “rape”, “child prostitution” and other similarly charged ones) often misused in an attempt to worsen the perception of some acts which are clearly not within the definition of “trafficking”.
The Cuban government, which itself is not immune to lying, often uses the word “trafficking” to refer to those who help people escape from Cuba. They attempt to associate them with a worse crime but the result is that the word “trafficking” is diluted and loses the strong connotation it had at first. It is similar to what the US government does in trying to associate conducts it does not like with terrorism or someone accusing me in this thread of being pro child prostitution. Smear by association.
I remember I was in a small Cuban village with a (non-Cuban) friend and we came across a sort of bulletin board outside a small building which could have been some government office. There was a large poster listing a number of offenses and their punishments. Helping people escape from Cuba was called “trafficking with people” and harsh punishments were listed. “Trafficking with food” was also listed (black market). The poster had some quaint drawings to illustrate the several points and I really wanted to take it with me. We discussed it for a few moments but in the end I was convinced that it was too risky to take it. The last thing I needed was to land in a Cuban jail accused of anti government activities. I wish at least I could have taken a photo but I did not have a camera with me.
I think you and others have established quite clearly in this thread that president Bush’s cites about prostitution in Cuba are nothing more than lies in an attempt to gain votes from the Cubans in Florida who hate Castro with such passion that they will say and believe anything about him.
Thailand is a country where there is more prostitution of all kinds, including children. What does president Bush have to say about Thailand? In today’s news:
Sorry, the first phrase in the quote is mine and belongs outside the quote:
Thailand is a country where there is more prostitution of all kinds, including children. What does president Bush have to say about Thailand? In today’s news:
No mention about the Thai government not doing enough to stop the sexual abuse of minors even though it is well known.
Why did Bush in his UN speech just a while ago gave so much emphasis to human traficking when he should have been “begging” for help for Iraq ? I doubt it was just to raise this Cuba thing…
Sorry to hijack… but why the sudden emphasis on this issue ?
Well, the anouncement about sanctions on Cuba was done in the White House for the benefit of a domestic audience.
Whatever he said at the UN was for a different audience but there are things with which you cannot go wrong: Condemn terrorism, trafficking, poverty, etc and say you are for peace, economic development, mom and apple pie. You can’t go wrong.
It was the timing thou Sailor… its not like its the issue “du jour”… especially mixed in with a speech asking for help for Iraq… thou he didnt ask for help practically. Iraq certainly wasnt into slave labour that we know…
Thailand is actually a model country for dealing with a problem of underage prostitution. They have really cracked down on it in the past half-decade or so. For decades it was the place to go for sexual services from minors, but that has changed. The Thai authorities started doing some “zero-tolerance” type activities in conjunction with some re-arranging of the service towards providing more for natives than for tourists. A tourist gets something like a mandatory full year in prison for seeking services from a minor. At the same time, due to cultural pressures, a native can still secure these services relatively easily, but tourists are mostly locked out. They are at tier two in the State Department’s report, probably due to these efforts. They still have underage prostitution, but they are facing the problem as best they can given the tremendous internal demand for these services. They are working to eliminate themselves as a destination for foreign pedophiles, and I guess that is good enough. It would take a culture shift to eliminate child prostitution completely in Thailand.
A brief bit of info on the Thai history with underage prostitution may be useful here. Firstly, as odd as it may seem, a very large component of the market for sex services(particularly underage services) in Thailand is actually the native population. Thailand has a centuries-old culture wherein sex services are accepted and there is very little shame in either seeing, or being, a provider. Add in Buddhism, which teaches that if a member of the family can work to help support the family then it is noble for them to do so, and you get the men working in the fields, and the women working in the brothels. It also means that when a child reaches an age where they could bring some support to the family by prostituting themselves, that they will do so because it is noble to help your family and there is nothing wrong with prostitution. It may take a while to bend a western head around this concept, I know it did for me, but it is part of the culture in Thailand.
Anyway, the Thai authorities are in a fairly unique situation. Firstly, they themselves, being raised in the culture, don’t really have a problem with young people prostituting themselves or working in the sex industry. Plus the high demand from internal customers makes the political issue a sticky one internally. The major forces in the shift towards stamping out the underage sex industry in Thailand have been external political pressures from the US and other western nations as well as(and personally I think this was the biggest) AIDS. Thailand has something like six hundred thousand people living with AIDS. Thailand has a 1.8% HIV prevalancy rate(three times that of the US)(Source: CIA World FactBook 2001 estimate). This is actually down from 1999 estimates which placed it at 2.15%(Source: NationMaster a ranking database of various statistics of world nations)The sex services sector was experiencing serious problems with AIDS rates in providers. Scuttlebut in the adult sex community estimated that 50% of the providers were infected. Throw this factor in with the high internal demand for sex services and Thailand was facing a serious problem. Last time I checked they were still a popular place to go, but they are facing serious competition from former soviet-bloc countries who are now desperate for cash. The Thai reputation as being a risky transaction AIDS-wise has hurt them as a destination on the sex tourism circuit.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that Thailand HAS dealt fairly successfully with the child prostitution problem. They have driven it underground where it can still service the native demand, but have cleaned up the public portions of it significantly. They are still fairly popular as far as adult prostitution goes, but child prostitution is much diminished. Part of this is due to the market’s aversion to the risk of AIDS and part of it is due to the government’s actions. Oddly enough, driving the pedophiles out of Thailand may have increased the problem in other countries, such as Cuba.
Mtgman, I do not dispute any of the information you provide. My point is that the whole Cuba issue is political and if president Bush wanted to pick on Thailand he would have as much reason as he has to pick on Cuba. The fact is that he chooses to pick on Cuba and not on Thailand for political reasons which benefit him and he could not care less about the people of Cuba or Thailand. He cares about looking good himself.
And that is the BS upon which this entire thread is predicated. In recognition of exactly the progress mtgman spoke about, Thailand earned itself a Tier 2 rating in the State Department Trafficing in Persons Report. Other potential Tier 2 countries did the same, including Greece. Tier 2 countries are not subject to sanctions. Tier 3 countries are, absent some circumstances. Cuba is a Tier 3 country which did not take steps following the end of the reporting period to bring itself into compliance. Burma is also such a country and had sanctions assessed against it, your assertions that the president “is not interested in that” to the contrary. You can read his determination here.
As proof that the US government is not lying we get a statement from. . . the US government! Wonderful.
All the evidence presented in this thread supports my assertion that President Bush is lying. Again.
I agree with the US government that credible NGOs should be allowed to investigate the problem. I also agree with the government of Cuba that the designation is an injustice and is politically motivated.
Furthermore, The Dominican Republic and other countries are worse than Cuba. Why is it legal for Americans to go there and spend their money in those countries? Why is President Bush singling out Cuba? Why?
** Except for the fact that it’s a) true, or at very least subject to dispute and interpretation and b) has been the official position of the State Department since, at the very least, 1999. You know, when that non-Bush guy was president.
Interestingly, sailor, it is OK to click on links in these threads and find further information.
Definitely subject to dispute. This thread is proof.
It is wrong now, it was wrong then and it was wrong whenever it started. Lying is always wrong. The ends do not justify the lies.
Yep. I remember him. He was a liar too. No sympathy for him from me. I was hoping a new president would change that but we just got bigger lies with worse consequences.
And, BTW, I am on the side of those who demand more respect for Human Rights in Cuba. In all of Cuba. Including Guantanamo.
I am not sure the whole Cuba issue is political. There are real issues there. They are being exaggerated, IMHO, possibly as a result of inadequate real intelligence about the situation because of the hostility between Cuba and the US and the lack of information exchange which would allow a fair evaluation. It is my position that the real issues involving sexual exploitation of minors are being misrepresented as being “encouraged” by the government of Cuba. Some overlap where the state owned infrastructure(EVERYTHING) facilitates such exploitation is to be expected and it is all I believe is present. The market is not above using state infrastructure to facilitate its transactions. This does not make the state a party to those transactions unless the infrastructure was provided with an intent to facilitate the transactions(which it was not).
In an interesting aside, my wife and I were discussing this thread and the issue of state-sponsored prostitution. She came to the interesting conclusion that the state of Nevada supports and encourages prostitution. Her reasoning was as follows. Nevada has some areas where prostitution is legal.(as does Cuba) Nevada has laws against living off the proceeds of a prostitute(as does Cuba). She agreed with me that the Cuban government doesn’t have its hand in the pie, but decided that Nevada did. So what was the difference? Nevada taxes the income and proceeds of prostitutes as well as getting income from licensing. The site above indicates that licensing fees for a brothel in Nevada run from an annual $100,000 in Storey County to an annual $200 in Lander County. The US Federal government taxes the income of these prostitutes as well. So that is two governmental entities in the US with clear monetary benefits from legal prostitution. The benefits the Cuban government receives from legal prostitution are much less direct, only measurable in potential increases in tourism dollars due to tourists attracted by the availability of prostitutes. Of course the US and Nevada both recieve this benefit as well. We both giggled a bit at these conclusions, and had to marvel at the oddness of the world we live in.
Anyway, back on topic. The cynic in me agrees that Bush is picking and choosing his targets in public speeches(although the actual actions taken seem more even-handed, as subsequent cites have shown) and his remarks on the subject quoted in the OP are pretty clearly political fodder. Playing to his audience.
A slightly more optimistic viewpoint would not condem him for this lack of data about the President’s public position on Burma or other Tier 3 countries. I’ve never felt comfortable assigning motives based on lack of data. For all I know Bush cares deeply about Burma, Greece, Sudan, et al. and the singling of Cuba out in that speech was an artifact of a speechwriter eliminating the names of countries most of Bush’s audience wouldn’t care about. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, just that he didn’t speak about it in that instance. december used to do that. He’d pan some news report for mentioning an Israeli atrocity without some balancing mention of a Palestinian atrocity. It was fallacious then, it is fallacious now.
I can’t find myself in disagreement with much in the State Department’s report section on Cuba aside from their characterization of the GoC as “encouraging” sexual exploitation of minors. Cuba does traffick minors for agricultural labor and this is done by the government. That factoid alone is enough to place them in Tier 3 of the State Department’s report. They, according to the rules of the report, are also scored down for non-cooperation with the US officials. The follow-up cite that manhattan provided shows that no real actions were taken against Cuba. Basically the US has done all they can sanctions-wise already. US citizens who were found to have traveled to Cuba were already facing fines and other penalties before this report was published.
So, when we throw all these things in the balance, a report which(reasonably fairly) damns Cuba and other countries. A President who echos the report, but drops the “other countries” bit, for reasons unknown, but strongly suspected to be pandering to his audience. Then the whole thing(as far as Cuba is concerned) is shown to be a farce by the fact that they aren’t going to treat Cuba one iota differently after the publication of the report and the damning speeches by the President than they did before. I gotta chalk this one up to political posturing.
I think it bears repeating here that the GoC had absolutely no obligation, or even incentive(positive or negative, carrot or stick), to bring themselves into compliance with the act. They are not a party to the act or its provisions, nor are they a candidate for additional economic sanctions. They’re at rock bottom already. Take a look at this excerpt from the report.
Honestly, do you think any of that scares Cuba? They don’t recieve any non-humanitarian, non-trade-related assistance. They already face US opposition to such assistance from international bodies. So what, exactly, was the actual factual outcome of all this? The President made all kinds of remarks about Cuba, including “Cuba must change” and then proceeded with exactly the status quo. WTF? The only explanation that makes sense to me is that he was posturing for political gain.
Well, except that the speech was about Cuba, not about trafficking in persons. It was political, no question. But this OP isn’t about whether it was political; it is about a tiny fraction of a political speech alleged to be a lie.
**Mostly, exactly squat – the package was exactly as dumb as past ones. Sure, a tiny bit less hard currency might flow into Cuba with the travel restrictions, but even that’s iffy, as the hotels are pretty much full with tourists carring convertible hard currency as is. If one is optimistic, the relaxed refugee rules and dissemination of the new rules in Cuba might lead to a few fewer deaths among those fleeing the country – that would certainly be good, even if the number is small.
But as regards the central assertion in this OP, the increased enforcement of travel restrictions will have the effect of reducing the number of Americans traveling to Cuba for purposes of sex, whether with an adult prostitute or a child. As you say, with the sanctions already in place there’s pretty much nothing the U.S. government can do about non-U.S. citizens going to Cuba for that purpose. It can do something about Americans going to Cuba for that purpose, and the President’s announced initiative will do that.
I disagree. As I said earlier, it is virtually trivial for a US sex tourist to avoid the detection of authorities. The market will provide. Safe, discreet, travel to Cuba to circumvent the new enforcement will arise. In fact, it is already in place. The US is already damn near the asymptotic limits of the restrictions they can place on travel to Cuba. They must now spend a ton of effort and money for every tiny fraction of a percent they decrease US-based sex tourism to Cuba. It is a market problem, it can NOT be legislated away.
Ok, with regards to the allegations of lying by the President. I think we would be well served by going back to the source material, here is a full transcript of Bush’s speech.
The “modern form of slavery” bit is too vague to be meaningfully discussed. Still, this is a clear statement that the Cuban government encourages the illicit sex trade. Now, if he his applying US laws when he says “illicit” then he may have an arguement. Obviously the US considers consensual adult prostitution “illicit”. If he is defining “encourages” as “some state infrastructure is used to facilitate private sex transactions” then he’s got an arguement as well. This is almost a tautology in a communist society, and as such is meaningless. Both of those arguements are stupid though and are meaningless posturing. Imposing a third-party set of standards on another country and declaring their behavior “illicit” is just stupid. It is a violation of sovreignty. Cuba has legalized prostitution from age 16 up. In fact, Cuba’s legal structure around prostitution is not all that different from Nevada’s legal structure around prostitution. The differences are age of consent, licensing of providers, and some of the rules about third party involvement. Oh, and the ownership of the infrastructure, but that should be considered a given when considering a differerence between a capitalist nation and a communist nation.
If Bush’s statement means anything at all like what you, manhattan, posited in the early bit of this thread then we can continue our debate.
It is my position that he is, at best, simply wrong. With all due respect, there is not a level of transparency into the activities of Cuban law enforcement which would allow such a judgement. The glimpses we catch occasionally, like the protection project report you cited earlier, an age of consent.com page which details an adventure where Cuban authorities busted a tourist who was with a minor(even though he thought she was legal), and [this fascinating story](http://www.c-a-s-e.net/2003 News Articles/Canadian and Cuban Laws in Conflict.htm) of a Canadian who was arrested and convicted just recently under Cuban anti child postitution law(the fascinating thing is that he wouldn’t have been convicted in Canada. Apparently the age of consent in Canada is 14 and he had consensual sex with a 15 year old in Cuba. His conviction wouldn’t have happened in Canada, but did in Cuba) paint a very different picture than the one you paint above where the Cuban authorities turn a blind eye to these offenses. Here are three reports, from a country where reports at all are scarce, which show the Cuban government takes these crimes seriously(two reporting convictions, one reporting an arrest). If you have evidence that these incidents are a small minority and they are a small minority in spite of the ability of the Cuban government to do more then it would establish your case that the Cuban government turns a blind eye. It still wouldn’t establish “encourage[ment]” of these offenses though. For that I think we have to go back to the assertions I posited earlier.
It happens, yes. That doesn’t mean the government is complicit in it. It certainly doesn’t mean the government is encouraging it.
Mtgman, you and I agree there is no evidence linking the Castro regime to the sexual exploitation of children. No convincing evidence has been provided to the contrary. No proof at all that
Now, as to the politics of the issue. The fact is that the the wording of the speech is slippery and vague enough to give him some deniability but the fact is also that his intention is clear: to creat the impression in his listeners and believers that the Cuban government is involved in what it is not. To me that is lying. No other word for it. That is the central issue of the OP. He lied. Again.
Whether he cares or not about Burma is another, separate, issue. The fact is that he lied.
The point about Burma is not that he did not mention it in that speech. The point is that he is anouncing his intention of restricting travel to Cuba even more than it already is while it is still very legal for Americans to travel to Burma, the Dominican Republic and many other countries whic are as bad or wrose than Cuba in this respect. That is my point. I am not picking just on his speech. I am considering his policies as a whole body.
The new curbs he is announcing will do little to nothing to change anything axcept they will win him some votes. If he was really concerned about the children of the world he would not be anouncing this, he would be anouncing other, different, measures. The fact that he is doing this and not other, more effective, things, means to me that he is looking for Cuban-American votes and not for the welfare of the children of the world.
I don’t have any comment about the rest of your post, because I really don’t know the situation in Cuba, but I disagree with the quoted portion. It’s generally accepted that sovereignty isn’t absolute. If a country is violating certain basic human rights, I don’t think criticizing them for it is stupid. If the Cuban government is forcing kids into prostitution, or is aware it’s happening and doesn’t do anything about it, it’s legitimate to criticize them for it.
Captain Amazing: Yeah, I was kind of sloppy there. I went into more detail earlier, in my response to your first post actually, so I felt ok with being a little looser this time. Evaluating Cuba’s standards against some theoretical minimums is fine and good. Criticism based on failure to meet these theoretical minimums is fine as well. Evaluating them against the US’s standards and with no effort to evaluate their standards as independent entities, just describing their behavior as “illicit”, because they don’t live up to your particular set of standards is stupid. It leaves no objective reference points for a thinking person to do their own evaluation. Sovereignty is not absolute, but neither should it be surrendered on the basis of a unilateral determination. The US doesn’t just have to say “they don’t meet our standards”, they need to prove the Cuban government’s standards are violative of basic human rights.
Captain Amazing, consider for instance that pretty much all advanced, democratic, nations have outlawed the death penalty and it is also unacceptable to Amnesty International and other human rights NGOs. There is much more international consensus against the death penalty than there is against setting the age of sexual consent at 16. The USA is also in the minority in outlawing prostitution.
And, in today’s news. . . like communists, pro-child-prostitution liars are everywhere. They have infiltrated even in the Senate of the USA.
He must be very much a pro-child-prostitution-liar. Where have you gone Senator McCarthy? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Right. The US (like Cuba) has the death penalty, which other nations see as a human rights violation. And, those other nations have taken actions to express their displeasure. Most Western European nations, for example, won’t extradite someone to the US who could be subject to the death penalty. This isn’t a violation of US sovereignty, just like our sanctions against Cuba because we don’t like their actions isn’t a violation of Cuban sovereignty.