There is no human trafficking in T&T. Or, if there is, it's quite sporadic and never carried out by any organised criminal ring. But human trafficking here is mainly a media invention.
Now you may consider this assertion obviously absurd. After all, T&T has an actual Counter Trafficking Unit in the Police Service, who just last week called on citizens to help them do their jobs. And both the United Nations and the US State Department report that human trafficking happens here, with the latter in its 2015 report describing T&T as "a destination, transit, and possible source country for adults and children subjected to sex trafficking, and forced labour."
Last year, however, this same US State Department noted that the T&T authorities had "investigated 22 cases of trafficking and charged 12 defendants...including three current or former government officials." I totally missed that story and I can't find any details on the Internet: but no doubt someone with a better memory or more tech-savvy than me will enlighten me.
However, even if the US reports are accurate, the only way to claim that human trafficking occurs in T&T is to re-define the term as loosely as feminists define "sexual assault." A Guardian report of September 25 said "Northern Division police believe they may have uncovered a human trafficking ring after raiding an illegal brothel" (a legal brothel, presumably, being an establishment that has paid its monthly bribe).
Four women in their 20s were found in the house–a Trinidadian, a Guyanese, and two Venezuelans. The first two told the police that they were held captive by a group of men. But, the report continued, "While investigators initially believed that all four might have been victims of human trafficking, the Guyanese and Trinidadian became suspects after...the Venezuelan women...claimed that the two other women supervised the operation and would ensure that the house was clean, that they were fed, and that they did not try to escape."
But it's quite possible that the Venezuelans are lying, too. As British journalist Nick Ross points out in his book Crime: How to Solve It, "If you were raided by police while working in a brothel, if you were an illegal immigrant, if you may have to go to court and if your mother might find out, what would you say when asked if you were duped or under duress?"
The fact is, human trafficking can only be trafficking if the people are forced into it. Otherwise, it's just illegal immigration. In its call for public assistance, the CTU listed some signs by which citizens could identify human traffickers. These included: (1) homes or buildings which appear overly secured with frequent presence of vehicles at odd hours (like the Prime Minister's residence?); (2) foreign nationals, particularly young women, going to and from the premises (as distinct from national nationals?); (3) residents of such homes typically keeping to themselves with young women almost always escorted in and out by someone (like UWI students?).
But all these indicators only reflect prostitution, not trafficking. And, as historian Nils Johan Ringdal writes in Love for Sale: "It is absurd to speak of human trafficking as Philippine nationals fly to Japan to serve clients who pay ten times more than at home...And while it is true that immigrants in prostitution, as in other fields, tend to earn less than native-born workers, the inaccurate notion of such coercion being ubiquitous must be credited to the hyperbole of activists, rather than the facts of social anthropology."
No doubt the sex worker situation in Trinidad is somewhat different: the Columbians and Venezuelans, being white-skinned, probably earn more than local girls. It is also probable that this is why they come to Trinidad, rather than being forced into prostitution by some international sex merchants. Ross notes, "When a London borough had a big clampdown on brothels, only one out of hundreds of women interviewed claimed to have been trafficked–and bear in mind there is no agreement on what 'sex trafficking' or even 'coercion' is."
Yet, it is not the South American prostitutes who are the root of this human trafficking myth here in T&T. Instead, the trafficking talk actually started in the mid-2000s when, in the midst of the kidnappings for ransom surge, TV6 began running a series on missing people. But the profiles of these people, in my view, made them unlikely candidates for trafficking or even kidnapping. And, up to 2008, the Police Service was pointing out that over 90 per cent of the missing people had been accounted for and "there is no evidence available to suggest that persons are being trafficked out of the country."
I asked the TV6 reporter for a complete list of these people so I could do a statistical breakdown, but I never got an answer. That reporter was Sasha Mohammed, close friend of a UNC politician and, after the 2010 general election, the prime minister's social events adviser for $30,000 a month. And that is how T&T actually got on the UN and US human trafficking watch lists.
Kevin Baldeosingh is a professional writer, author of three novels, and co-author of a History textbook.