Italian border police are looking for a truck driver who is shown on a widely circulated video whipping female migrants after he found them in the back of his truck near the French border, officials said Wednesday.
Smugglers loaded the 12 Eritrean women on the truck at a rest stop near the French border on Monday while the trucker was having lunch, according to authorities. The women allegedly paid 100-150 euros ($110-1$65) to be transported across the border, but authorities believe the truck driver was unaware of their presence.
Once closed inside the truck, the women apparently started agitating due to the heat, with outdoor temperatures over 30 degrees C (86 F), drawing the driver’s attention, city officials said.
The video made by a witness — who asked not to be identified — shows the man striking at the woman with the hardware end of a cargo strap as they descended one by one. At one point, one of the women stood firm, shielding others so they could pass without being struck. The last woman to exit tried to grab the strap from him.
I read that several times and tried to grasp it from all perspectives, but it just gets worse every time…
Respect for the woman who shielded the others, but there is really no good outcome even if they had succeeded in being trafficked.
I fear that this is only the beginning of what is to come.
“Trafficking” in this case is being used to refer to aiding an undocumented migrant, not like sex trafficking, as far as I can tell.
Trafficing is mostly used as a term for SEX TRAFFICKING.
Agreed.
They’re African women being transported into Europe in the back of a trailer… They won’t land a job anywhere without their paperwork in order. Sorry, but you know damn well what trafficking means.
This just shows how it’s done.
At best they can provide for themselves as sex slaves. At worst, they get beaten up on their way there as in this instance.
That’s absolutely what the governments want you to believe and is definitely happening as a direct result of European and US migration/refugee restrictions. Freedom of movement should be a basic human right.
They have literally used trafficking charges against humanitarian aid workers and academics that were attempting to help refugees at and around the southern border of the US.
The reason human trafficking is possible for the most part is that there’s no legal route for the vast majority of refugees to get to the countries of migration, causing a huge illegal network and the opportunity for increased levels of human trafficking especially against the most vulnerable.
If legal pathways were more accessible this wouldn’t be a problem. I try to find the root cause rather than the bandaid solution. As we’ve seen from the war on drugs, the bandaid solutions don’t work.
Besides, if you had ever read migrant journals or any other type of primary document concerning this type of situation, you’d know that a bunch of people getting ushered into the back of a truck isn’t exactly uncommon. Further, no undocumented migrant has their papers in order. That doesn’t really change much.
You’re using the traditional gaslighting technique of mixing refugees with economic immigrants.
The former need help and we have a moral obligation to help if we can, the latter are just people driven by personal upside maximization, and we have zero moral obligation of helping people who are simply greedy types who were unlucky with the country they were born in.
Personally I think Europe should activelly be going to the places were those who need the most help are (such as refugee camps) to help them and bring them over if they want, whilst cracking down hard on anybody who is trying to illegally enter Europe - as we can only help some people, not all (many if not most of the 8 billion people in the World are poorer than the average European), we should maximize the pain-reduction of giving the help we can give by focusing on helping the worse off first, not the ones with the strength and the money to illegally cross into Europe.
