Filipino Slavery in the Digital Age: Human Trafficking, Prostitution, and Cybercrime

Whether ones skin be black or white, all people are equal; it may be that each is superior in knowledge, wealth, beauty but there is no superiority in human dignity.-Emilio Jacinto

patriotism will always be a virtue amongoppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity. Jose Rizal

There is something faintly disingenuous about the latest line of thinking, pushed by elected and appointed government officials, concerning cybercrime and human trafficking. Ever sincenewsbroke internationally about the absolutely abhorrent practice of child prostitution and abuse via the internet, local pundits and officials have attempted to recast the issue of human trafficking as one of cybercrime; overtly linking the issue to the current Supreme Court TRO on the implementation of the flawed Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (See Note on Critiques of the Cybercrime Prevention Act at the end of this essay). Recently, Senator Grace Poe, a staunch supporter of the Freedom of Information Act, came out in support of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and exhorted the Supreme Court to lift their temporary retraining order:

We passed it in 2012, buts now its pending before the court because of the libel provision. Thats understandable, but now we really need it because cyberpornography is becoming widespread, she said. Philippine Daily Inquirer: Poe: Child porn underscores importance of cybercrime law

Without going to much into detail, the Cybercrime Prevention Act is a law that is fundamentally flawed through its restriction of basic essential human rights, while placing certain unchecked powers in the hands of government. There is little doubt the government needs new tools to survive in a changing world; which bills like the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom attempt to address without the infirmities inherent in the Cybercrime Prevention Act.

With regards to the current form of discourse (as framed by Senator Poe and others), the conflation of human trafficking and child pornography (or cyber-pornography) is a dangerous and disingenuous one. The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 has littleactualbearing on the issue of child prostitution and human trafficking in the Philippines, instead it supposedly combats the modes of dissemination, and backtracks prosecution from there. Yet, the focus on the method of dissemination obscures what is really at the heart of the problem: A decades long inability to combat child prostitution and human trafficking. We have turned our brethren into commodities, salable to the highest, or readiest, bidder. Patriotism as love of neighbor, and country as upholding liberty and inherent human dignity, is in short supply. For years, we have failed to protect Filipinos and create an inclusive environment, anchored on the protection of human rights, that allows them to develop and grow. This is a symptom of that problem.

The Perils of Short-Term Thinking and the Specter of Filipino Slavery

The disingenuousness of the current discourse on child prostitution and cybercrime is found in the intellectually bankrupt linking of the two via the TRO on the Cybercrime Prevention Act. Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa exemplified this way of thinking, when hesaid:

The debate on the Cybercrime Law focuses on the substantial part of it. But the police needs the procedural aspect of the law so that we can run after these pedophiles,

Lets be frank, the Cybercrime law is an expedient method for potentially shutting down (and that is up for serious debate, based on the information technology capabilities our government has demonstrated so far) thecurrent, favoredmethod for disseminating pornography to the Western world (dont forget, the primary market for pornography, whether vanilla or reprehensible is the West). Point of fact, we have a number of existing laws that can be utilized to combat and prosecute human trafficking and child pornography, regardless of the method used to transmit the material: the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 (RA 9775), the Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009 (RA 9995), and the Anti Trafficking in Persons Act, (RA 9208, as amended by RA 10364). All of these, not to mention the usual laws we have on the books regarding pornography, prostitution, and human trafficking, are all useful and necessary in rooting out human trafficking though also in dire need of expansion and strengthening. The linking of the current situation with Cybercrime Prevention Act smells of an implicit attempt to whitewash long-standing failures on the part of government and police forces to truly combat and root out human trafficking throughout the archipelago. Child prostitution and human trafficking are not new problems, only the use of the internet to convey it.

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Filipino Slavery in the Digital Age: Human Trafficking, Prostitution, and Cybercrime