Mankind and its misfortunes have their own share of irony — both progress with each generation. The world of human trafficking has seen an evolution; it now encompasses modern slavery as well.
“Not My Life”, a documentary film written and directed by Oscar nominee Robert Bilheimer, becomes a window to this evolution. A stark portrayal of an inconvenient truth, it shows how the flesh trade and slavery flourish in different societies.
Premiered in the city and on television last week by Doordarshan, the 2011 documentary was filmed over four years in five continents. A mirror to child and women trafficking, it depicts how these phenomena are mostly turned a blind-eye to.
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Featured in the film are Ghana’s bonded child labourers, Uganda’s child soldiers, India’s child beggars and ragpickers, Nepal-Cambodia-Eastern Europe’s women trafficked into prostitution, the use of domestic help as slaves in the U.S. and Latin America’s abused children.
In India, the situation is so severe that every eighth minute a child disappears. “These children become slaves. They work in factories and in brothels, and they number in the millions,” said Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, who was present at the screening and is one of the interviewees in the film. Recounting an incident from a rescue operation, whose horror cannot be captured in words, he added, “Once a girl questioned me ‘What is the price of a milk-giving cattle? I answered, ‘Somewhere around 50,000 – 1,00,000’. ‘I got sold for 5000 rupees,’ said that girl.”
Satyarthi continued, “Despite having strong Indian laws against child abuse and slavery, only 0.6 per cent of the cases reported last year in this regard led to conviction.”
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Speaking on the public broadcaster’s decision to screen the film, Doordarshan’s Director General Tripurari Sharan said, “Doordarshan has joined the endeavour to take the film to the remotest corners of the country and overseas, so that it can create the right kind of impact about the horrors of human trafficking.”
The film’s co-producer and well-known wildlife filmmaker Mike Pandey called for awareness as well. “The film emphasises the urgent need for a nationwide collective effort at all levels if we want slavery to end. This alone will ensure a secure future for our children and a life without fear,” he said at the panel discussion also comprising K.B. Kachru of Carlson Family Foundation, and Sumitra Mishra of iPartner India.
Not just concentrating on the victims, the film also interviews traffickers, souteneurs and child-abuse perpetrators, giving a glimpse of their psyche and rationale for the crimes. On the other hand, it also features individuals who have come out of modern slavery and are now striving for a normal life.
“We kept asking, who will speak for those who cannot speak for themselves? In the end we felt that making ‘Not My Life’ was not only our job, but our mission, because far too much silence still surrounds this issue,” said director Robert Bilheimer through a message to the audiences.