Human Trafficker Gives Rare Video Interview

If you've had an interest in the issue of human trafficking and modern-day slavery for any period of time, you probably have wondered, "How can one human being actually enslave another? What's going through his or her head?" Now, here's your chance to know. A South African NGO has filmed a former human trafficker who lured girls and women from Thailand to South Africa with the promise of high-paying jobs and then forced them into prostitution. Check out his story in his own words, with more after the jump. Warning: contains graphic descriptions of violence.

This man might not be your stereotypical trafficker, in part because he seems to have had a change of heart about what he was doing, but his descriptions of the trafficking process are incredibly complex. It starts with false promises, includes enforcement of corrupt police and the graphic physical and psychological abuse that goes on. It's a very brutal reality described in the starkest of terms.

One of the most interesting parts of the interview was that they were able to anticipate law enforcement raids and simply move the girls to another place. Finding human trafficking victims is incredibly difficult for this exact reason. I have to wonder if this ability to detect and then evade inspection by the police is a common phenomenon among traffickers, or if it was this man in particular who was just highly skilled.

Interviews with human traffickers are rare and hard to get, for the obvious reasons of their criminal activity and the difficulty in identifying and accessing this group. However, as abolitionists we could learn huge amounts of information from talking not just with the victims of this crime, but also with the perpetrators. I hope the information in this interview helps those working against human trafficking on the ground and inspires more NGOs to try and tap into this challenging by useful informational source.