brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

DHAKA – Bangladeshi Mohammed Ibrahim sells cash for a living, and the money makes him happy.

Ibrahim, who runs a stall near a busy bus station in Dhaka, is one of 200 money vendors in the capital who sells crisp new notes and newly minted coins at a premium to scores of customers every day. He also exchanges torn and old notes.

“I’m happy to make money out of money,” said Ibrahim, sitting behind huge stacks of crisp taka notes and bags of coins.

“People always want fresh notes and shining coins, and usually do not hesitate to pay extra for them.”

Apart from the occasional hobbyist who collects money, most of Ibrahim’s customers are ordinary Bangladeshis seeking clean money for their old frayed notes, but who are unwilling to stand for hours in long queues at the central bank to exchange them.

The vendors charge these customers 12 percent of the value of the notes to exchange them.

“I have been doing this business for about 20 years. It is tough, but a good business,” Ibrahim added, saying the vendors often have to fight off thieves and sometimes rogue policemen who try and steal their money.

Demand for new money also goes up ahead of festivals, such as the Muslim Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, when new notes and coins are usually given as gifts.

Money vendor Jewel, 32, said his income was enough to feed his eight-member family and educate his children. “I am a happy man,” he added.

Unwitting couriers lured with cash, agents say.

The Mexican vacation was supposed to be free for dozens of Columbus-area residents. But they paid the price when they went to prison for smuggling drugs home in their sneakers.

Most were in their early 20s, recruited by members of an international drug ring that shipped cocaine from the Central American country of Belize to Columbus by way of Houston.

The lure was an all-expenses-paid vacation to Chetumal, Mexico, and $1,000 in cash when they returned.

The trip sold itself, said Internal Revenue Service agent Bernard Clark. “All the kids started jumping on board.”

Some of the couriers didn’t know until they got to Mexico what they were being asked to do, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robyn Jones Hahnert. Others were told before they left home.

When they returned to Port Columbus, they wore the shoes with cocaine hidden in the soles.

Investigators got a break when the ringleaders became bolder and greedier.

The trips became more frequent. Shipments that started with a pound or so of cocaine in each shoe doubled to more than 2 pounds apiece. And the shoes eventually caught the eye of U.S. customs agents.

“They had women wearing men’s size 12 shoes,” Jones Hahnert said. She likened them to “Bozo the clown shoes.”

More than 30 couriers ended up serving a few months to a few years in federal prison. Others charged in the case included people who recruited the couriers and kept an eye on them once they had the cocaine, and people who sold the drugs in the Columbus area.

But for 10 years, the three brothers thought to be the ringleaders of the operation remained at large.

Now, thanks to a U.S. marshal who never gave up on the case, two of the three are in custody, accused of smuggling 74 kilos — nearly 163 pounds — of cocaine into Columbus, Jones Hahnert said.

All are natives of Belize and took refuge there when they learned they were being sought, Jones Hahnert said.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — A waterborne disease spread through animal urine has killed nine people and sickened more than 1,600 in storm-stricken Nicaragua, health officials said Monday.

The disease, leptospirosis, was spread by flooding caused by a month of intense rains and category-5 Hurricane Felix, which hit northeastern Nicaragua last month, President Daniel Ortega said Sunday.

As of midday Monday, nine people had died of the disease and 1,606 people had fallen ill, Lt. Col. Guillermo Lopez, deputy chief of the country’s Civil Defense Department, told reporters.

The highest number of cases, 745, appeared in the northwestern city of Somotillo, Lopez said.

The infectious disease is usually contracted through cuts in the skin. It is spread because the urine of rats, cows and pigs ends up in pools of standing water during stormy weather.

Symptoms include high fevers, vomiting, nosebleeds and intense muscle aches, especially in the knees and calves.

The bird’s nest industry in Thailand is a conduit for money laundering and could be funnelling more than Bt100 million a year, according a study by the Thailand Research Fund.

Kasem Jandam, who conducted a research project on the bird’s nest business in southern Thailand, found illegal collecting of bird’s nests at sites on 66 islands located off the Gulf of Thailand and in the Andaman Sea.

He said these areas were is outside the 104 islands that were deemed as legal concession areas for the collecting of bird’s nests in Thailand under the 1942 Swiftlet Bird’s Nest Tax Act.

The government could be losing tax revenue of more than Bt100 million baht per year per site in eight provinces in southern Thailand including Prachuap Khiri Khan, Chumphon, Surat Thani, Phatthalung, Phangnga, Krabi, Trang and Satun.

IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT Labour minister Newton Kulundu’s faux pas at the launch of a report hosted by the US embassy last week got more media attention than the contents of the report being launched.

The minister accused the United States and the United Kingdom of being “the greatest violators of human rights, democracy and transparency” while the visibly perturbed US ambassador, Micheal Ranneberger, looked on.

Mr Kulundu forgot one basic principal of diplomacy – do not spit in the face of your host, even if you do not agree with him.

But this lapse in judgment on the part of the minister is not a good enough reason for the media to deflect attention from the contents of the shocking report.

The report, Trafficking in Persons from a Labour Perspective: The Kenyan experience, published by the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, highlights a problem that seems to have escalated in the last few years – the buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of exploitation.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that at any given time, 12 million women, men and children worldwide are coerced into bonded labour, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery. This modern form of slavery is the second-most lucrative business for international crime syndicates, after trafficking in weapons.

A study by the Kenyan Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) has found that Kenya is a major source, transit and destination country for trafficked women, men and children who are forced into unpaid work or forced prostitution.

Kenyan victims are trafficked to other countries mostly through bogus employment agencies that deceive victims into going abroad for work. Unsuspecting victims are then sent to Europe, Australia, North America or the Middle East/Gulf region, where they end up as bonded labour or prostitutes. Some African countries, such as South Africa and Bostswana, are also recipients of these modern-day slaves.

But while the international aspect of the trade receives the most attention, it is worth noting that internal trafficking of women and children in particular is a growing problem in Eastern Africa.

Counter-trafficking activists believe that many children from Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda are trafficked to Kenya’s coastal areas for sexual exploitation in the growing sex tourism industry.

It is estimated that in the coastal town of Mtwapa alone, between 10,000 and 20,000 children are trafficked for the purpose of sex tourism.

A recent Unicef report shows that while Italian, German and Swiss men form the bulk of the foreign tourists who sexually exploit children at the coast, a large proportion – 39 per cent – of the perpetrators are local Kenyan men.

Many of the children being exploited are not from the coast region but are imported from rural areas from around the country.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time at the Kenyan coast to know that child prostitution and sex tourism are rampant there. In Mombasa and Malindi, it is common to see aging white men well into their 70s and 80s with girls young enough to be their granddaughters.

Locals tolerate this type of sexual exploitation because, as one put it to me recently, “nothing gets a family out of poverty faster than a daughter who has a white boyfriend.”

In many cases, girls are encouraged by none other than their parents and relatives to look for older white men who will not only pay the girl for her services, but her family as well.

The Unicef report also found that witchdoctors are commonly engaged by sex workers to ensure a steady supply of foreign tourists who can support them. (The allure of the foreign tourist is greater than that of a local tourist as he is often able to pay more, and is likely to be a seasonal client, thereby allowing the women and girls to have more than one “boyfriend” in a given year.)

Many of the girls (and some boys) are the source of income to impoverished parents living in deprived rural areas. Others make a lot of money for middlemen and traffickers who supply children and women to tourists looking for sex while on holiday.

The sad thing is that despite the passing of the Sexual Offences Bill and the publication of damning reports that confirm that Kenya is fast becoming a preferred destination for sex tourists, no one has either been arrested or deported for engaging in sex tourism or paedophilia.

Tourism may be a leading revenue earner for Kenya, but it is about time we vetted the tourists who come into this country.

Known paedophiles and sex tourists must not be given a visa to enter the country. Their records must be entered into every immigration and security database in the world, including Interpol. Parents, relatives and middlemen forcing children into servitude or prostitution must be arrested and prosecuted.

More importantly, we must create the economic and social conditions that prevent parents, relatives, middlemen and traffickers from condemning our children to lives of sexual slavery.