Within the framework of the World Day for Prayer and Reflection against Trafficking in Persons, which is commemorated every February 8, the Archbishop of San Juan de Cuy Search for better opportunities, they are captured by mafia networks, and called a greater commitment to eradicate this scourge.
With a column entitled “The kidnapping of the invisible” And published in the Argentine newspaper La Nación, El Prelate said: “I have seen ranks of more than 200 people hoping to do an interview and deliver curriculum for three jobs offered.”
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“This desire, at times desperate, is used by mafia networks”; denounced. “They are disguised as good people who promise to study or work in another province or state, drawing a reality that will never come,” he described.
“Next, the promise of study and work is replaced by reduction chains to servitude or slave work, child and adolescent prostitution, pornography, organ trafficking. They can be offered as merchandise on routes, luxury hotels, dedicated to begging in the streets or means of transport, ”he listed.
“They have them very well controlled with threats to kill someone from the family if they escape. And when it is not enough, they go to the kidnapping to the volley at the exit of the school, the university, the bowling alley. They appear in the news for a while, and then become invisible, disposable, ”said Mons. Lozano.
The same mafias, he warned, “also handle the illegality of weapons and drugs,” criminal action “favored by an economic model of exploitation and oppression, where the ‘equal opportunities’ is only applicable to a few” and the vast majority of the victims are women: girls, teenagers, young.
In that sense, the Archbishop raised the need for “a prophetic voice that denounces these abuses” and that can, in turn “join the proximity and accompaniment to the victims – very few – who manage to escape hell.”
Replicating the position of Pope Francis on the subject, Mons. Lozano said: “They are criminal organizations that profit from this, enslaving men, women and children, work and sexually, for organ trade, to make them beg them or commit crimes.”
Within that framework, he urged to pay attention “to the silent screams that, from the dark invaded by the rancid stench of tobacco, drugs and alcohol, cry out justice, freedom and dignity.”
“We do not have to give space to the indifference that invisible, nor to the anesthesia that does not suffer as the pain of sisters and brothers,” he urged.
He also presented the obligation of the states to “take care of all citizens, as well as promote truth and justice”, while regretting the “lack of political decision to go thoroughly.”
“Those who have the power look the other way,” he denounced, “and many have been achieved by corruption or intimidated with violence,” he lamented.
“The gangsters threaten, extort, kill without objections. They are wild animals with blood -stained hands and dry hearts. They act as if they were good fathers and mothers, and hide these criminal activities, ”he said.
As a pastor of the Catholic Church, Mons. Lozano recalled that “it is our vocation and mission the inoperance sustained by impunity and corruption. ”
In his message, he called the commitment to “fight to build a society in which each person is respected in their rights and dignity.”
In Argentina, between 2021 and 2024, the Prosecutor for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons (Protex) received a total of 5,776 complaints through line 145, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Since the entry into force, the Law of Prevention and Sanction of Trafficking in Persons and Assistance to its Victims, in April 2008, more than 3,700 preliminary investigations began (at a rate of 221 per year) and also worked on more of 16,600 complaints received through line 145, indicates the portal of said Ministry.
Since then, 490 convictions were achieved, in which 976 people who harmed at least 2305 victims, 78.6% of them, women were convicted.
Of the 490 sentences, 74.3% were for sexual exploitation and 24.5% for labor exploitation. The remaining 1.2% was for another exploitation purpose.
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.