Film Premiere put Spotlight on Sex Trafficking in USA

A city that is famous for its imagination in film making was the location on January 17th addressing a subject that experts believe is so horrific it goes beyond the boundaries of most people's imagination; sex trafficking in the US. Cargo: Innocence Lost, a new docudrama exposing human trafficking in this country by award-winning film director Michael Cory Davis was premiered at Celebrity Center International in Hollywood, followed by a panel of human trafficking experts.

[ClickPress, Fri Jan 19 2007] A city that is famous for its imagination in film making was the location on January 17th addressing a subject that experts believe is so horrific it goes beyond the boundaries of most people's imagination; sex trafficking in the US. Cargo: Innocence Lost, a new docudrama exposing human trafficking in this country by award-winning film director Michael Cory Davis was premiered at Celebrity Center International followed by a panel of human trafficking experts.

Cargo follows the dark underworld of sex trafficking, providing an insight into this $9.5 billion a year criminal industry worldwide. The film’s basis is brought to life through interviews with some of the country's top officials on the subject, victims themselves and victims' advocates.

The panel discussion was led by human trafficking experts and law enforcement representatives dealing with this issue, such as Special Agent Peter Kaupp of the FBI, Lt. Velez from Metro Task Force of the LAPD, Robert Schoch of the Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency, Anne Dunn from Human Trafficking Task Force Coalition, Deputy Sheriff Rick Castro from the Sheriff's Office in San Diego, and Marisa Ugarte from Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition.

“It is happening right here in our neighborhood,” said Davis, the film director. “It is up to us to do something about these crimes and stop the fragrant human rights violations.”

According to a United Nations 2005 news report, an estimated 27 million people are serving as slaves around the world, and every year 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked across international borders, half of whom are children.

Official estimates of the number of people trafficked into the United States each year range from 14,500 to 50,000. Eighty percent of the cases in California occur in Los Angeles, San Diego or San Francisco, according to a 2005 report from the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley.

To tackle with the problem in Los Angeles, one of the central locations of the criminal industry, $450,000 federal grant has been appropriated to the region for the purposes of training police officers how to better recognize signs of human trafficking in their day-to-day duties. Following that, National Human Trafficking Awareness Day was proclaimed last week.

The event, which was held at the Church of Scientology International Celebrity Centre Garden Pavilion in Los Angeles, was co-organized by a number of Southern California groups united in the fight against human trafficking, including Los Angeles City Commission on the Status of Women Human Trafficking Coalition, San Diego Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition, Youth for Human Rights International, the Human Rights Department of the Church of Scientology International, Artists for Human Rights, Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, Rescue and Restore Southern Region Coalition and the Salvation Army.

President of the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance, Mary Shuttleworth said, “Human trafficking is only possible because people are uninformed about modern-day slavery and about their basic human rights. This is why we are promoting a series of public service announcements depicting all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Released in June 2006, these emotion-packed PSAs have now aired to more than 130 million people in 60 countries. The fourth in the series, “No Slavery,” is a heart-rending message that promotes that we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that slavery is still alive today. For further information contact: youthhumanrights@aol.com.

Bookmark this release: Del.icio.us - Digg - Furl - Blinklist - Reddit