On May 8, the Sunnyvale Mercury News published an article entitled “Sunnyvale officer sentenced in human trafficking scheme”.

The very first sentence comes to create confusion:

A former police officer was sentenced to 366 days in federal prison for smuggling women into the country from South Korea, charging them tens of thousands of dollars in bogus immigration fees, and forcing them to pay off debts by working as prostitutes.

The Palermo Protocol (which is easily accessible to anyone interested) definition states that “Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;

So why does a police officer who transports women to the US for the purpose of sexual exploitation get sentenced for smuggling? Was this really the case, or did the mass media representative not look beyond what seemed interesting for a story?

A latter paragraph is even more interesting:

Prosecutors said Miller helped two brothels avoid police raids, tracked down prostitutes trying to escape, and collected tens of thousands of dollars from illegal immigrants. He was linked to two Korean “hostess” bars and was paid in cash and sex.

The story leads into a discussion about prostitution and illegal migration. Sexual exploitation and prostitution are two separate issues because of which the Palermo Protocol was never able to define “sexual exploitation”. Perhaps the UN should have turned to the Associated Press for assistance with the sexual exploitation vs. prostitution debate. Perhaps the AP knows more then we think.

In the end, the author of the article tells us that the “Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow said Miller jeopardized his colleagues when he tipped off brothels[…]”, and this is why his sentence was of 366 days. The story has ended, and as a reader I am left with nothing – I don’t understand what happened: trafficking, smuggling, illegal migration, or prostitution. Nor do I see whatever happened to the victims, when this case happened, and if the San Jose community became more aware about the problem of trafficking because of this article.

I was wondering if other readers get any messages at all from this article… asides from the one that the mass media is very confused.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Trafficking in Human Beings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.