Guest Speaker: Matt Friedman – Mekong Club

I thought Matt’s talk was really interesting and it certainly inspired me to help out this growing issue of modern slavery. He talked about Human Trafficking today and how many people did not understand how much of it their is. I was certainly one of them. I had learnt about it before but when I saw all of the numbers in front of me I was definitely shocked. I learnt that although many people think that modern slavery is mainly prostitution it is actually not. Prostitution only takes up 25% of the modern slavery total. The other 75% are those doing forced labour. He also talked about the way in which people Traffic Humans. They do this by tricking them and deceiving them into thinking they are getting something good (“almost too good to be true!”) Then once they reach the factory, brothel, boat etc, they cannot leave because the owners scare them with threats and torture methods. Once these people become sick, injured or useless, they just throw them out onto the streets. One question I still have is why the name Mekong Club? Where did it come from? How did it originate?