Superstition and Modern-Day Slavery

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Superstition and Modern-Day Slavery

by Amanda Kloer

category: Human Trafficking Awareness

Published November 13, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT

Friday the 13th is the most superstitious day of the year -- supposedly a jinxed day which brings bad luck and misfortune. In Western cultures, superstition is usually laughed off as silly old wive tales about cats, ladders, and unfortunate mirror accidents. But for many people around the world, superstitions are ingrained parts of faith, culture, and society which have the power to make them more vulnerable to human trafficking or help them survive the trauma of modern-day slavery.

Recently, Spanish authorities apprehended a human trafficking ring based in Nigeria which was enslaving women in the commercial sex industry in Europe. To keep the women from trying to escape, the traffickers took their victims' hair and fingernails and performed voodoo rituals to bind their victims spiritually and physically. They told the women the curse meant would drive them mad or destroy their souls if they tried to disobey the traffickers. This ceremony and the religious and superstitious implications it had prevented the women from trying to leave their trafficking situations.

But it's not just voodoo that comes with cultural superstitions; traffickers have used superstitious and religious ceremonies as part of other faiths to scare and manipulate victims as well.

Traffickers who buy or kidnap Buddhist children have used their cultural belief that ill fortune in life is the result of sins in a past life to keep them docile. When the children are convinced that their situation of slavery is happening as a punishment for a wrong in a past life, they are more likely to continue serving what is presented to them as a just punishment. Similarly, traffickers who have brought Catholic women and girls from Latin America into the U.S. have used the church's value of virginity before marriage as a tool to keep their victims enslaved. They claim that once a woman has been sold for sex or raped, she is no longer pure and won't be accepted back into her church or family.

Superstition, faith, and religion, which overlap more often than not, can also be a source of strength for trafficking victims and a means of escape. Some traffickers have been known to let victims out to attend religious services. For example. in one famous case in the U.S. several skilled Indian workers trafficked into a factory in Oklahoma. A couple of them attended a local church, where an observant pastor noticed some suspicious activity and asked the men if they needed help. With the pastor's help, all the men were eventually freed and the trafficker prosecuted. Additionally, human trafficking survivors around the world have claimed that a reliance on prayer, faith, or cultural religious beliefs helped them survive or heal form their trauma.

Sure we can all be dismissive of the idea that you should avoid black cats or wrap your mirrors really carefully when you're moving, but superstition and its overlap with faith and religion means a great deal more to vulnerable people around the world. Like so many forces, it can be used as a tool of good or of evil. And in the hands of human traffickers, you can certainly guess what it's being used as.

Photo credit: eric greer