The Fight for Human Dignity

On a plane home from Orlando yesterday, I opportunely sat next to a women who is a friend of Sochua Mu Leiper, the former Minister of Women's and Veteran's Affairs for the Royal Government of Cambodia. She held that position until resiging in 2003 to join the political opposition. Sochua feels that her primary purpose is fight the sex industry and trafficking of young girls in Cambodia, a problem simply out of control there. In fact, in one month period last year, 5 of her colleagues struggling against the slave trade were assassinated by crime bosses who were upset with what they were doing to their business. Sochua is constantly in danger of assassination.

Here is a profile of Sochua from Oprah's magazine last year. If you can stomach reading anything produced by Oprah, the article is amazing and the discussion of the sex trafficking will make your heart ache.

A friend of mine attending an international Christian law school in South Korea was in Cambodia a two weeks to ago to help start a university in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and she roamed the red light districts researching and digesting the sights and smells of the underworld. Anyway, she may be headed back soon and I have put her in contact now with Sochua through the woman I met on the plane yesterday. Perhaps, a relationship will be able to be established for future fights against this blight on civilization that we know as slave trafficking.

William Wilberforce was able to defeat the slave trade after 30 years of lobbying and pushing leigslation in parliament in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Despite a multitude of failures, he persisted and with the help of brothers in arms he eventually was able to turn the tide against the horrible practice. Today's slave trafficking is essentially the same issue that he was fighting, just in a new form. It is our obligation as people who believe in justice and that men and women are created in the image of God to fight this as strongly as we fight for the unborn and stand up for the poor, the widow, and the orphan.