Marx once said, "As soon as it is profitable, capital becomes fearless." If there is a 50% profit, it will take risks;For the sake of 100% profit, it will ignore all laws and regulations;With a 300% profit, it will even go to crime, even at the risk of being hanged. ”
And the population black market is such a lucrative industry, even more than 300% of the profiteering.
According to statistics, in 2021 alone, human trafficking criminal organizations illegally obtained at least $150 billion in illegal income. If we look at these revenues as GDP, then this figure can rank 58th out of 197 countries in the world, surpassing Morocco, which has a GDP of $142.8 billion.
Since 2005, human trafficking has grown to become the third largest underground in the world, after drug and arms smuggling. As Marx said: "Capital comes into the world, dripping with blood and filth from head to toe." ”
Human trafficking not only breeds a large number of criminal activities, such as slavery, sexual exploitation, organ trafficking, etc., but also some unimaginable evil acts are also under the control of this organization.
At a Middle Eastern airport in May 2000, a chilling incident occurred. During a routine security check, a customs officer was attracted to a baby girl in the arms of a woman.
The baby girl looks very cute, but the strange thing is that despite the noise around her, she does not cry, does not make a fuss, does not move, and is lifeless. Out of an abundance of caution, the staff called in the police and carefully examined the baby girl.
It turned out that the baby girl was dead, and her body was stuffed with poison pills, and the picture was shocking. The woman was not the mother of the baby girl, but a trafficker who stole the baby girl, killed her and used her body as a drug container.
Such heinous crimes are not unique. Whether it is a victim of baby girls or criminals who kill people and sell drugs, they are the tip of the iceberg of the population black market. But the tip of the iceberg is terrifying enough.
What is the scale of the population black market?
Since 2009, ILO reports have indicated that between 10 million and 27 million people worldwide are affected by slavery. However, by 2021, that number had doubled to 50 million, and the network of transnational human trafficking spread to 124 countries around the world.
Against this backdrop, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Eastern Europe have become the hardest hit areas of human trafficking, especially in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines, where the Mekong River flows, and these places have become almost synonymous with the black market for people.
The main reason for this is poverty and corruption. Of the six Southeast Asian countries, only Thailand has survived as a buffer zone between Britain and France.
The remaining five countries, including the Philippines, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, all experienced a long period of colonial rule, namely the 333-year rule of Spain, the transformation of Qing Dynasty vassals into British colonies, and the fact that Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia remained under French rule.
By the time of World War II, all of these places were occupied by Japan.
The history of colonialism has left the peoples of Southeast Asia deeply traumatized. Even after the end of World War II and the wave of national liberation swept the world, although Southeast Asian countries were able to become independent, they were still threatened by Western hegemony.
The United States has taken advantage of its geographical location in Southeast Asia bordering China to include it in its "Asia-Pacific Strategy" plan in an attempt to contain China by wooing Southeast Asian countries.
Under pressure, coercion and inducement, the United States has directly established a group of bases in Southeast Asia centered on the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines and the Clark Air Base on Luzon Island, seriously violating the sovereignty of other countries.
The United States wreaked havoc in the Vietnam War, not only carpet bombing, but also biochemical **, which brought heavy ** and deep trauma to Vietnam.
Under such circumstances, Vietnam's industry, economy and people's livelihood could not develop normally, and people's lives were seriously affected. This situation is also common in other countries in Southeast Asia, who have fallen victim to Western hegemony, where nation-building has been hampered and the whole is poor and backward.
Laos and Cambodia are among the least developed countries in the world and still depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
In Myanmar, nearly half of the population is pushed into poverty, and 14 million people are in dire need of assistance. Manila, the capital of the Philippines, is the world's largest slum, with 4 million people living in cramped conditions and scavenging garbage for their livelihood.
To make matters worse, these countries lack a hero who can stabilize the situation and lead the country out of the predicament completely, and instead fall into a vicious circle of "cancer in Southeast Asia".
The "cancer of Southeast Asia" here refers to the situation of moral turpitude and corruption in some countries in Southeast Asia. For example, in Vietnam, in the 60s of the last century, it was mired in war, and some Vietnamese soldiers began to use military resources to smuggle, regardless of the life and death of the people, and only cared about their own greed for money.
Transparency International is a world-renowned non-governmental organization that scores countries' political integrity on a 100-point scale every year. In the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, Myanmar and Cambodia scored well below the 43-point average**, which shows the level of corruption.
Thailand scored a slightly higher score, but it was only 36, reflecting the high level of corruption. This shows that in many Southeast Asian countries, most of them have the main goal of pursuing self-interest, providing protection for criminal organizations and seeking personal gain from them.
A young man was once subjected to ** in northern Myanmar, stripped of nothing and locked up in a dark hut. The criminal gang tortured him, forced him to record a distress cry**, and demanded a hefty ransom from his family.
Every moment feels like being in hell. One day, the door of the small dark room suddenly opened, and the sun poured in. When he saw a man in a police uniform, he cried tears of joy, thinking that he had finally been rescued.
The Burmese policeman, however, greedily counted the bills and looked coldly at their lambs to the slaughter.
In the Mekong River basin of Southeast Asia, criminal syndicates are rampant due to poverty and corruption. Once known as the "drug paradise", it is now the hardest hit area of human trafficking in the world.
However, human trafficking in Southeast Asia is far darker than we think. First, the issue of sexual exploitation is prominent. Thailand is one of the most developed countries in the world in the sex industry, with the largest *** Pattaya in Asia, and a large number of sex workers, including prostitutes, shemales and rental services.
According to estimates by H**Ocscope, a global black market research firm, Thailand's trade industry is worth US$6.4 billion a year, accounting for 3% of the country's total GDP.
This phenomenon has led to the fact that although Thailand** legally prohibits all ** venues and activities, in fact, it closely combines sexual services, shemale culture and tourism, and vigorously promotes it to attract foreign tourists.
As a result of this act, a large number of Thai women are trafficked to the West for sexual services due to corruption and lack of regulation. Official figures show that an adult Thai woman is usually "sold for" around $2,000, but traffickers can only earn $320 per order, and the rest is handed over to the Royal Thai Navy and police.
In order to obtain more benefits, many Thai ** voluntarily become human trafficking organizations**.
Human trafficking is a growing problem in Southeast Asia, with the Philippines becoming the second largest victim after Thailand. The capital, Manila, is full of illegal sex workers, especially with a younger age.
Many brothels will even use webcast assault to entice customers to experience it for themselves. To make matters worse, human trafficking organizations in the Philippines have close ties to Japan*** and have maintained a steady deal for a long time.
A large number of teenage girls are trafficked to Japan to satisfy their twisted desires. In addition to this, labor exploitation is also a serious problem. Although we think that after the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the dehumanization of black slaves** has become a thing of the past, but the reality is that "modern slavery" has never disappeared, but has intensified in the dark corners where the sun does not shine.
One of the most iconic is the "fisherman" in Southeast Asia.
In 2016, four Associated Press journalists were honored with the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in journalism, for their bravery in exposing slave labor in the fishing industry. According to their reports, Thai fishing companies used high salaries as bait to lure many poor young people from Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia to Thailand, and then resold them to illegal fishing boat owners for about $1,000.
The trafficked fishermen were kept in dark, damp iron cages, where they were fed only scraps and were often subjected to verbal abuse and beatings. They work up to 20 hours a day, all year round, and when they are unable to continue working, their owners even forcibly inject them with stimulants to force them to continue working until they die of exhaustion or commit suicide in despair.
And when the fishermen died, their bodies were mercilessly thrown into the sea to feed the fish.
Although Thailand is famous for its abundant seafood, there is the blood and tears of countless people behind it. According to research, sexual exploitation and labour exploitation are the two largest segments of the fishing industry, accounting for 50 percent and 38 percent respectively.
However, what is even more terrifying is that there are other, darker purposes, such as the trafficking of human blood. In a recent case, Myanmar and Thailand** successfully teamed up to crack a shocking case involving trafficking in human blood.
Based on the Kokang Qingshui River and luring "high-paying jobs" as bait, criminal gangs lure young Chinese to Myanmar and forcibly collect and sell their plasma and serum.
At least five young people have reportedly died as a result. On the other hand, illicit organ trading is prevalent in Southeast Asia. Millions of people are waiting for an organ transplant every year, but the number of organ donations is far below demand, resulting in a severe shortage of organs**.
According to the *** table released by Madical Transcription in the United States, **constantly**. Illegal intermediaries will go to poor, backward, and information-constrained areas to buy the kidneys of local people at low prices, and then resell them to terminally ill patients.
For example, the village of Hauks, near Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, is a "one-kidney village". Almost all the adults in the village have horrific scars on their abdomen, and the black intermediary cheated them out of their kidneys for $700.
The more egregious criminal organizations directly carry out kidnapping, emptying all the internal organs of the victims.
The TV series "Worth" has a shocking beginning, showing the cruelty of the criminal syndicate. They tied people to lying boards and auctioned off their organs. After the auction, it is immediately sent to the underground dissection room, where it is sold and cut.
What is even more outrageous is that in order to ensure the freshness of the organs, some gangs do not even give anesthetics, and directly harvest organs alive, leaving the victims to die in excruciating pain.
This is not enough, the trade in human bones in Southeast Asia and India has developed to meet the special fetishes of niche collectors and the teaching, research needs of medical schools.
A well-jointed hand bone sells for about $200 on the market, a skull with teeth is worth $1,200, and a complete human skeleton can even sell for more than $3,000.
In the demographic black market in Southeast Asia, the victims are exploited as if they had never existed in this world, leaving no trace.
In our lives, in addition to the above common criminal methods, there is also a more cruel human black market behavior - the direct purchase and sale of human lives. The movie "Human Skin Inn" is based on this, depicting an underground torture club, in which the victims are kidnapped and hung on the dark web for auction, just to satisfy the ** abuse of people with money, power and distorted ideas.
Shockingly, the film is based on a true dark web incident, a brutal phenomenon that does exist in the real world. It may be hard to imagine that in today's society, criminal activities such as sexual exploitation, slave trafficking, and organ trafficking are still raging around the world, and tens of millions of people suffer as a result.
The reality is brutal, but we can't ignore it. Although we as ordinary people cannot avoid the occurrence of crimes, we must at least be vigilant and pay attention to safety, and leave no chance for criminals.