As we rounded the corner, I took in a sharp breath. My
chest suddenly felt suffocated like a heavy blanket had been thrown over my
face. This time, it wasn’t from the shock of the humidity. For, when I had left
Swaziland, it was “winter” but when I arrived in Thailand, I was hit with the
heavy air of humidity. This time, though, it wasn’t the humidity that felt
heavy. It was something else.
When I walked those same streets earlier that day,
everything was quiet, calm, with not a hint of evil. But now, tonight, it was
like walking into a completely different realm.
The red light district. Indeed, it is its own dark world.
Before I saw anything, I felt it. The dark wolf-skin blanket
hovering over the strip of clubs. My chest felt like it was being pressed upon,
and my spiritual senses set off alarms. I was walking into a battlefield masked
by music, loud laughter, curtains, and carts and carts of items being sold. All
that to mask the BODIES being sold and the SOULS being bound.
I saw with my eyes, but I tried not to see. All it took
was one – to make my heart come undone.
Our eyes met for maybe a millisecond. I had looked in the
open doors as we continued walking through street, but when I met her eyes, I
wished I hadn’t. She was one of at least a dozen women standing on a stage. She
was holding a pole as if it was her life support, as if nothing else and no one
else would hold her up. She and the other dozen women were wearing ironically
white bikinis. But the only thing pure about the scene was the pure cry for
help hidden beneath their eyes. That
I could see – clear as water droplets in the midst of a storm – their hearts
suffocating for freedom.
There’s a scene in Taken
where the daughter is the last “item” up for bid, and as she’s “unveiled,” she
wobbles around and looks as if she’s a zombie – like she’s not even in her own
body. Multiply that by a dozen women is what it looked like on that stage. They
were zombie-like, lifeless, wobbling, empty.
A once undercover investigator who was a part of busting
brothels and sex-trafficking businesses said, “Sexual abuse is perhaps the very
worst crime against humanity…It strips them of their heart and soul. It murders the person, but leaves their bodies alive” (Daniel
Walker, God in a Brothel). “They appear to be in a trance, or under a dark
magician’s spell,” he explained.
That’s exactly what I saw that night and that’s exactly
what I see in the eyes of women on the streets in Swaziland, too. Each place might
look different, each country, region, street/club masked by different
“reasons,” but the heart of the issue is the same everywhere.
Sex-trafficking - and the sick idea that buying someone,
even for a few minutes, an hour, or a night - is a world-wide problem, a
globally operating network of corruption, lust, greed, and dehumanization.
African women as far south as Zambia were found trafficked to Bangkok, Thailand
where I had visited. Luckily for a few, they are discovered, rescued, and even
able to be transferred back to their home country. But “rescue” is not enough.
Freedom is not just physical, it is psychological, emotional, spiritual. There
must be a holistic approach to rescue/restoration, and the fight to end
sex-trafficking as a whole. Thankfully, there is hope!
Rescue: Freedom International is an organization that
exists to partner with and connect organizations worldwide who are fighting
sex-trafficking. We have been so blessed that they chose us, Hosea’s Heart, as
one of their partners! We are so eager to continue broadening and expanding our
own efforts in Swaziland to impact the global anti sex-trafficking network as a
whole. And the best news yet? YOU can be part of this global initiative, this
global fight, as we celebrate Freedom Week starting July 1st!
Since sex-trafficking is an ORGANIZED, well-connected
corrupted business world-wide (connecting country to country), we MUST then be
a well-connected incorruptible world-wide network (connecting country to
country, org to org, person to person) in order to fight it.
To end the network, we must BECOME the network.
Don’t wait. Whether it’s through your time, talent, or
donation, please join us now.
www.hoseasheart.org
Our network of abolitionists through Rescue: Freedom International