Sex Traffic.

The Purple Teardrop Campaign.

Dumfries and Galloway Domestic Abuse and Violence Against Women Partnership (DAVAWP) organised a free screening at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre as part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence campaign. The evening was arranged to highlight human trafficking, 80% of which involves women and young girls. Victims, usually from poorer countries are enticed to richer one’s, with promises of a good job and somewhere decent to live. Women and girls in particular are targeted by traffickers, offered jobs in hotels or restaurants, but in reality, they are intended for work in the sex industry. When they arrive in this country their passports are taken away, they are raped, often beaten and imprisoned in brothels or massage parlours and forced to have sex with multiple clients every day. The majority of victim’s trafficked into the sex industry are from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. For more information on sex trafficking and ideas on how to stamp it out see The Purple Teardrop Campaign

The Film.

Following a short introduction the mainly female audience watched Sex Traffic a powerful drama originally shown in two-part’s on British television in 2004. It was shot in Eastern Europe, Canada and London and involves the sex trade where young women are transported to various cities and forced into prostitution. The main thrust of the story involves two sisters from Moldova who are tricked into thinking that a better life awaits them in London where they have been promised legitimate work. Instead they are sold into sexual slavery and trafficked through Romania, Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia, Italy and eventually to the sexual under bellow of London. The brutal life of the girls is juxtaposed with corporate business in America involving corruption amongst international peacekeepers and demonstrates how sex is seen as just another lucrative business venture without any feeling for the human misery that it evokes, and as the film so adequately reveals its “just a matter of supply and demand”

Harry Potter filmmaker David Yates pulls no punches in this BAFTA award winning Channel 4 production; John Simm plays the researcher and charity investigator Daniel Appleton and Anamaria Marinca makes her debut as one of the two sisters, Elena Visinesou, a role she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress and went on to make the award winning Romanian feature film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). Tonight’s screening was a great way to exemplify the harrowing nature of the sex trade it exposes and the greed of the so called legitimate businesses involved that are no better than pimps and criminal’s.