Escape From Slavery-Then and Now

Blessing arrived in Europe with the promise of getting work as a hairdresser. But after ten days of constant beatings, as well as threats of violence against her family back home, she was forced to work as a prostitute. 

Blessing was expected to earn 200 to 300 euros a night to pay off a debt that her madam has set at over 40,000 euros.  "I often thought about escaping,"  Blessing explains, "but I was afraid of what they would do to my family.  I was trapped."  Her story is typical of some four million people enslaved in the international sex industry.

Nearly 4,000 years ago, a teenager name Joseph was sold by his brothers. he ended up in servitude in a prominent Egyptian home.  Unlike blessing, Joseph was not maltreated by his owner at first. But when he rejected his master's wife, he found himself unjustly accused of attempted rape. He was thrown into jail and put in irons. -Genesis 39:1-20; Psalm 105:17, 18. 

Joseph was a slave of antiquity; Blessing is a slave of the 21st century. But both were victims of the age-old practice of human trafficking, a trade that treats people as commodities for nothing but economic gain. 

Next time: WAR MAKES SLAVERY A BIG BUSINESS

From the Watchtower magazine