Nicholas Kristof has an excellent NY Times editorial about sex trafficking, where young women are kidnapped and brought into brothels and forced to work as prostitutes. They are regularly tortured and beaten into submission. This is very clearly slavery and this is a blight upon humanity. Read the editorial though some of it is very disturbing:
So what does this have to do with William Wilberforce?
The Obama administration will have a new tool to fight traffickers: the Wilberforce Act, just passed by Congress, which strengthens sanctions on countries that wink at sex slavery.
The Wilberforce Act, named after William Wilberforce, is based upon his lifelong quest against slavery of any kind and to use laws and moral suasion to change the world for the better. About two hundred years after he battled against slavery, his name is invoked for a new fight in a country not even his own. This is the impact one person can make on the world, long after he dies.
If you didn’t see my post on William Wilberforce here it is: Wilberforce post
Kristoff has been writing about sex slavery for some time. What gets less attention is old-fashioned regular slavery, which still exists in parts of Africa today, along with sex slavery. See, for example, Slavery in Modern Africa.
wow, thanks for that very good comment. Didn’t know that.