SPEAK UP

Baniashanta: One of the Worst Places on Earth

AT OUR MAY 7TH BENEFIT FUNDRAISER IN PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, I WILL BE SPEAKING ABOUT OUR PLANS TO WORK IN BANGLADESH ON ISSUES OF CHILD PROSTITUTION AND SEX TRAFFICKING.  HERE IS A REPRINT OF AN EARLIER ARTICLE ABOUT THESE ISSUES. 

BANIASHANTA. Some places are almost too sad for words, and the Banishanta brothel area in southwestern Bangladesh is one of those terrible places.  Situated on the muddy banks of the River Posur near Mongla, Bangladesh's busiest seaport, the brothel is a row of shacks which house at least 200 Bangladeshi women and the children born to them in prostitution.  These women, and likely many young girls, sell their services to dockworkers, sailors and hordes of other men who stream to Banishanta for sex on the cheap.  In the most densely populated and one of the poorest countries on earth, this is what semi-legalized prostitution has come to: scores of young women living in meager shacks on a polluted riverbank, reduced to selling themselves day and night for a few dollars to a never-ending stream of lustful men.  Sadly, Banishanta is not the only place like this on earth.  But in an age where life is cheap and sex is a commodity, Banishanta, and places like it, are the inevitable result.  

 THE MUDDY SHACKS OF THE BANIASHANTA BROTHEL

In December I visited Bangladesh on an exploratory trip for Speak Up to connect with a group of organizations who are playing a part in bringing justice to the most vulnerable and exploited people in the country, particularly girls born into brothels or trafficked into prostitution. 

News from Bangkok

Hi Friends of Speak Up - I haven't written much here lately, but wanted to fill you in on some of the latest news from our projects here in Bangkok.

Over the past year we've done a lot to help refugees to Thailand with their casework.  During the past few months we've set up a support program to help 10 Nepali refugee families get monthly financial support.  We've just started a process that we hope will get as many of these refugees as possible resettled into the United States where many Speak Up friends and supporters in the Los Angeles area could serve as their hosts and sponsors and help them adjust to life in the USA.  This is a long and uncertain path, but I'm inspired to think that one day we'll have an international team helping refugees here in Bangkok and there in the US, serving the practical needs of my refugee friends and clients who are desperately seeking a country that wants them and a place to call home.

Over the past two months I have been persona non grata at the Immigration Detention Center where I had been regularly visiting detainees for 6 months.  The reasons are kind of political and complex, but essentially they don't want lawyers visiting refugee clients.  As I wait for Speak Up to become officially registered in Thailand (a long process of its own), which will allow me access once again, I have relied on a team of students and interns and other volunteers to visit my detained clients.  There are more than 40 people we try to work with in the IDC.  My inability to see my clients has been a bit frustrating for me, but also neat to see other people get involved, particularly Thai law students as they help pick up the slack.  One of my greatest pleasures here in Bangkok is talking with Thai law students about ways they can serve the poor and disadvantaged as advocates.  We hope that starting with advocating for refugees we will be able to open up a number of service opportunities for aspiring Thai lawyers.  Injustice will have some serious opposition once we unleash a wave of idealistic and motivated new lawyers for the poor!

We've had some interns from other countries work with us this past summer a bit.  Abi, a third-year law student in Virginia this fall, was here this summer and coordinated most of our work with detained refugees over about 6-8 weeks.  This fall we will also be joined by another US law-student-to-be, Jessica, who will work with us for a few months during her gap year between college and beginning law studies in the fall of 2011 in the US.  And Darshini, recent university graduate from Singapore, was here this summer for several weeks and will be rejoining us for several months this fall, predominantly to work with Sri Lankan refugees.  As a fluent Tamil speaker, Darshini is a big hit with the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee community as a great translator and friend to the many Tamil refugees who often feel like no one with power or education or influence really hears them in their native language.  It's been great to have these interns and friends help me out here in Thailand, and I hope that they are just the start of many students and interns from around the world blessing us with their time and talents.

I've been working at the Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Law teaching a class on US law in English for the past two months, and just last week gave my mid-term exam.  I love teaching and helping students with their English, and this class has also given me more opportunities to meet students who want to get involved in our work.  We just opened up our new office near Chula, and this will be an ideal location to have students come by for help with their English and also to get involved.  Next week I have several new students coming by to plan refugee visits with me.  I love how this is coming together, mixing my interests in teaching and law and English and justice into one coherent whole.  There really is little better than seeing people get excited about serving those in need, and I hope that this is just the start. 

On a personal note, I need to have knee surgery again, and it appears that, due to problems with my insurance paying for the procedure in Thailand, I will need to return to the US sometime in the next month for arthroscopic knee surgery once again.  This has become quite painful recently, and needs to be taken care of quickly.  Trying to figure out how it works in the schedule - timing is not ideal.

Thanks to all who support our work in practical ways.  And it's been great to have many visitors who have passed through Bangkok the last months.  Thailand is an accessible, beautiful and fun country to visit, and we welcome all visitors to come and say hi while visiting Thailand.

Troy Anderson

International Justice Center

We've finally found a space near Chulalongkorn University for our office which we are calling the International Justice Center.  It will have working space, a lounge for students and interns, and an area to meet with clients.  It's pretty humble, and right now it's still being worked on to remove the previous orange dot color scheme, but once it's open we'll have a great place to do our casework and work with law students.

Grand Opening Party coming soon - stay tuned.

Thanks to all my supporters and donors who are helping this to happen.  One day we'll have Justice Centers all over the world - this is just the start.

And thanks to the Chula law students who have helped me get this all straightened out. 

Ideas

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

I've been thinking a lot about this quote as I've been preparing to talk at Speak Up's annual fundraising dinner and auction this coming Saturday in Pasadena, California.  At Speak Up we have a vision, a Great Idea as I like to call it, of building an international network of justice centers that do practical casework and advocacy for the poor while training local students and lawyers to be advocates for those in need. 

Our work is small and relatively unknown today, but I think that this Great Idea, our core vision, will bring tremendous results over the coming years.  Starting with our casework today - helping urban refugees in Bangkok, partnering with the Thai police on investigations of trafficking of minors into prostitution, catalyzing a team to help the Chao Lay in their land rights case - we intend to grow into an organization that speaks up for the poor all over the world and which trains indigenous advocates to do the work of justice in their own country and community.  When pursued with courage, humility and excellence, our two main goals - practical casework and training local advocates - have the power to unleash an unstoppable army of advocates for the poor. 

I'm excited to be coming back to the US for our fundraising dinner to share with potential supporters about our Great Idea that will one day transform the lives of millions of the poor. 

A Day to Remember

"Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God."

Inscription on the Tomb of the Unknowns

Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA, USA

 

 

 

"I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom."

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States, Nov. 1864

 

The Land of Smiles - May 2010 Update

Thailand's PR gurus got it right: "The Land of Smiles" is about the best nickname you could give a country to project an image of friendly welcome and unparalleled hospitality.  And that really is what you get here in Thailand: smiles, friendliness and great service, and a host of beaches, resorts and places to visit from the mundane to the exotic.

 

But as you are no-doubt aware, this peaceful, welcoming image has taken a serious blow over the past two months.  Deep political and ideological divides, particularly between the nation's poor and its more urbanized elites, resulted in unprecedented protests and conflict in May, culminating in an explosion of violence and arson on May 19th.  While the protests have now formally ended, having been forcefully broken up by the Thai military and police, strong tensions still remain, and Thailand is gripped by worry about what might come next.  Underneath the smiles are real worries and tears for a country that is coming to grips with violence and division that most people didn't think or want to believe existed.  Beneath the smiles lie real problems, particularly for Thailand's urban and rural poor.

 

This is a good time for Speak Up to be here in Thailand.  The elite law students I am hoping to train come from a very different Thailand than do the poor I want them to serve, and many wealthy Thais have open disdain for the predominantly poor red-shirt protesters.  Thailand needs development; it needs a bridge between the rich and poor; and it needs people of goodwill to stretch beyond their boundaries and lay down their lives for the good of others.  That is why we are here - to try to serve the poor, and  to try to train people in power to do the same.  We are ideally placed to do our part for Thailand. 

 

In the face of the chaos and curfews and government shutdowns the past few weeks, we continue to plug away with our work in Bangkok.  Thailand is still the perfect place to have our international headquarters - it allows us to serve the poor from the heart of Thailand, and it gives us a central location from which to one day work around Asia.  The land of smiles is Speak Up's home, and here's some of what we have been doing lately to make it even more so:

 

(1) We have completed the work to become registered as an NGO, and now are waiting for the bureaucracy to make it official;

 

(2) I have begun working with Thai law students and will start teaching at Chulalongkorn Faculty of Law in June;

 

(3) We have begun our first Refugee Sponsorship Program;

 

(4) Undaunted by recent events, our first legal intern, an American law student, will be joining us this summer; and

 

(5) Since we've been using a spare room as our office for the past 8 months, we're excited to be on the verge of opening a real office soon, hopefully in July.

 

At the heart of a country struggling to address a profound rich-poor divide, we at Speak Up are in our own ongoing quest to address issues of poverty and justice.  Behind the scenes and under the radar, we are quietly laying the groundwork for what I am convinced will one day be a strong international organization with the capacity to serve the poor around the world.  Thanks for your interest and tangible support that allows us to make this vision a reality, starting right here in Bangkok, the heart of the Land of Smiles.

 

 

Troy Anderson

International Director

 

 

P.S. Bangkok is 100% safe to visit.  I'm hoping that this summer the hordes of sex-tourists who regularly visit Thailand won't think so, but that in their place people of goodwill will come visit the country.  Why not come and visit beautiful Thailand and see for yourself why the pessimists are wrong and I'm right - this is a great place to be!

Home for the Refugees

When I was a kid I tried to outsmart my friends by listing as many countries as I could think of.  For some reason I was always fascinated by Burma, was first inspired by the world's desperate need when I read of the famines in Ethiopia, and later found my first political heroes reading about the Solidarity movement in Poland.  One of my dreams as a kid - besides playing in the NFL - was to travel the world and do something to learn about and help people all over the world.  I had all sorts of homes growing up - in Yemen and Syria and Norway and the Dominican Republic and the US - and somewhere in all those travels I found a kind of solace in knowing that the world was my home.  And I dreamed of seeing all of that world. 

 

Today, in small but growing ways, I am starting to live out that dream (not the NFL part - that dream died on the freshman football team) through my work with Speak Up.  I've spent a majority of my work time the past several weeks trying to help refugees and other people in detention at Bangkok's Immigration Detention Center.  The IDC has become one of my new homes in Bangkok.  I go there 3-4 times a week, visiting various inmates, mostly Sri Lankans, who are being held there for some supposed immigration violation.

 

Because Thailand has not signed the International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, even people who are granted refugee status through the United Nations are still considered to be illegal immigrants in Thailand. With no legal status, and very little money and resources, these people are at the whim of local immigration authorities.  Many are locked up at the IDC, some for years on end, as their refugee status is determined and they wait and wait for some country in which to be resettled.  Due to recent roundups of these refugees, the IDC is full of Sri Lankan refugees, most of them having fled their home country in the past 2-4 years due to the earlier 25 year civil war between the Sinhalese-majority government and the Tamil minority.  Though the war has officially ended, these refugees are understandably reluctant to return home, knowing that the official end to a brutal conflict does not mean that the problems they faced when they fled have necessarily been resolved.  The same holds true for my Nepali clients, a group of mostly single men who fled their country's civil war and now have nowhere to call home.  So the Nepali and Sri Lankan refugees - and many more, from Vietnam and Ethiopia and Somalia and Iraq and Pakistan and other countries - sit in Bangkok and wait and wait for a new home.

 

So some days I get to talk with Nepalis on the outside of the IDC; meet with Sri Lankans on the inside; and later make calls to help some other Ethiopian and Vietnamese and Pakistani friends.  It's a world tour of places I have yet to visit.  An unusual but meaningful fulfillment of my childhood dreams. 

 

My refugee clients - now my friends - come from all over the world.  And I hope and plan to build Speak Up into a broader international organization to help more and more of these people all over the planet.  I want to have a team and contacts in Sri Lanka be able to provide safe return for my Sri Lankan friends who make the difficult choice to return home if they can't get refugee status.  I'd like to have a team and office in Nepal to help the young women there, like some of my Nepali friends in Bangkok, who were trafficked to India to be exploited in Mumbai's brothels.  I want to return to the first country whose poverty shocked me as a child - Ethiopia - and help women avoid being fooled my trafficking rings who promise them jobs in the west, only to steal their money and abandon them in Thailand. 

 

All these places and issues are interconnected, and working with refugees and trafficking victims here in Thailand lets Speak Up touch on some of the world's most profound issues of social injustice.

 

My near daily visits to the IDC are a far cry from what I hope to see in the future.  I bring some food and toiletries to a refugee, try to give them some thoughts on how their case might develop, and promise them that I will do what is in my power to get the UN and a resettlement country interested in expediting their case.  Other than that, I try to raise some money and awareness and hope for the day that more and more people will join me in speaking up for the refugees, my newest friends that are trapped in an international maze of politics and law and bureaucracy and have nowhere to call home. 

 

Speaking up to help ensure a home and freedom for refugees.  That's what Speak Up is all about. 

Just the Beginning

A few hours ago I received word that a Speak Up client and friend - a man about my Dad's age who has been fleeing persecution from his government for many, many years - cleared US Customs with his immigrant visa and is now finally reunited with his wife and family.  I spent many days over the last two weeks going between the US Embassy, the China Airlines office and various Thai Immigration offices and courtrooms trying to get it all straightened out.  After a lot of worry - my worries certainly paling in comparison to his - it all finally worked out.  I can't go into all the details, but an international team of lawyers, students, pastors and friends pulled together to make it happen.  The taste of freedom and justice for a simple man who just wants to have a safe place to call home must be sweet indeed!

 

A fun angle to all of this was having a few of my Chula Law students help me as translators with Thai Immigration and Court authorities during the process.  It was great to have them get a small taste of what being a true advocate can really mean.  It's not just about sitting in an expensive office at $200 an hour writing briefs for corporate clients.  It's about riding in the paddy wagon to the Immigration Court with a terrified refugee client to remind him that someone with at least a little bit of influence is on his side; it's about humbly, but firmly, challenging a judge's ruling and arguing for a client to set the facts straight and save him from an unjust sentence of a year in jail; and it's about doing all the behind the scenes calls and paperwork to make the system work.  One day, we're going to see a bunch of young, zealous Thai lawyers graduate from local law schools hungry to fight injustice.  It's just a small start, but so much fun to have a few of my students get a taste of the right side of being a successful attorney.

 

And this is just the beginning.  Over the past two weeks as I've focused on this case, I've also been learning more about the 30,000 Vietnamese minor girls held in forced prostitution in Cambodia.  And I've learned more about the hundreds - thousands? - of Sri Lankan refugees scattered around Asia with no country to call home, no countries wanting to take them, and languishing in various detention cells and jails for no greater crime than having fled their country.  And as I've been talking to the Thai Anti Human-Trafficking Police about our findings on Uzbek and other Central Asian women trafficked to Thailand, I'm learning that the place we thought was the hub of it all is just the tip of the Central Asian trafficking iceberg.  Violent exploitation and injustice is everywhere if you open your eyes to see it.

 

So, even as I have my own little private celebration in the Speak Up office (for now, the spare bedroom in my apartment) for the triumph with our refugee client, and even as I long for a weekend to rest my weary knee, I know that this is just the start of what we are going to do.  I don't know who will join me in the work.  I don't know where all the money will come from.  And I don't know how we will pull off what seems at times to be impossible - the defeat of the exploitation of the poor. 

 

But we will not rest on this success.  Celebrate it, yes.  But today's success is just the beginning. 

Got Perseverance?

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States (1872-1933)

 

We all have those days or weeks when the results we long for seem so far away, so nearly impossible to achieve, that we just want to pack it in.  In the spirit of fighting that temptation, I offer here the words of Calvin Coolidge, one of the greatest quotes I've found regarding perseverance and persistence. 

Yesterday I had a small taste of that horrible, taunting desire to quit.  My right knee has been in significant pain for several years, never really recovering from surgery in the fall of 2007.  Yesterday's MRI showed that I have a re-torn meniscus and a partially torn ACL - at least I know now why I've been in such pain! The worst part of all this, besides the pain and the financial problems of international insurance, is trying to figure out how a 6-week recovery, hobbling around Bangkok on crutches, will fit into what I am trying to do here.  I spend time every day going all over Bangkok meeting clients and embassy and government officials, and it seems to me that the last thing I need is to be hobbled and limping around Bangkok in the heat of the summer on crutches.  This has been frustrating, and humbling, and I'm not sure how this will all fit into my schedule.

But I will persevere.  One thing that this has reinforced to me is the need for some law students, and lawyers, and other interns and volunteers and workers, to join me.  I am hoping that some Thai law students will work with me in March and April as interns, and then beyond that as perhaps our first employees here.  I am reminded of my own limitations and the need for good people to tackle the work with me here. 

So, if you have inquired before or are thinking about it for the first time, we could use some bright and eager people to work in the Bangkok office.  The pay would be low or minimal for now; the work unpredictable; and we don't have much of a name yet to make it much of a resume builder.  But if you want to get in on the ground floor with us; and if you want to serve the needy, particularly refugees and women caught up in the sex industry; and if you can handle the at-times thankless job of serving people who cannot pay you back; then you might want to contact me. 

Got perseverance and a desire to serve as an advocate for the poor?  Give me a call or email. 

Refugee Home?

It's been a busy last week trying to help one of our client's get his paperwork in order so he can be released from Immigration Detention and freed to travel to the US for reunification with his family.  It's a long story, and given its sensitivities I cannot give many details, but suffice it to say that it's a real struggle to figure out how to help people who are simply looking for a new start in a new country.  Our latest client is a humble, kind man who just wants a home.  Hopefully for him, that new life will start this week in the United States.  More info to come when I have time to write.