The porn industry in India is one such industry that is not talked about by anyone, although it happens to be a major part of our nation. Furthermore, It’s unobscured to anyone that the porn industry drives the demand for the Human trafficking network. With the advancements made in the field of mass media in our daily life, primarily the internet, porn and porn industry has become an integral part of people’s lives. Today, people get access to it through the internet. In fact, they can access it with only a click.
The porn industry has become more popular with the advent of the internet and the industry has been fishing in a lot of money. It is now readily available on the internet. Many stores also sell takeaway DVDs at a very high price. This has resulted in a highly profitable industry. The display of such adult content on television or the internet is looked down upon in society. This kind of duplicity has been common in India. In fact, porn is also blamed for the rising count of rapes in India.
According to a 2011 IMRB Survey, one out of every five mobile users in India uses their 3G internet for accessing porn. In fact, over 47 percent of students discuss porn every day, according to a public school survey by Max Hospital in Delhi. These numbers speak volumes about how much the porn industry impacts the lives of people.
Over the years, the education of children regarding sex has always been held as being necessary. However, what people don’t talk about is the toll it takes on certain women and children who end up being the victims of human trafficking. According to Miss Rawal, who is a professional in Delhi said, “Porn belittles women more than anything in the world. Treating females purely as an object for personal sexual satisfaction is all porn ever evinces. I hope it is declared illicit at least in Indian society.”
How Porn and Human Trafficking are Related?
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines human trafficking as any situation where an individual is forced, coerced, abducted, deceived, or abused. If any of these qualifiers are present, the situation will be considered human trafficking. Human trafficking takes place on many fronts in the porn industry; although due to the way in which porn is produced and distributed, it can be extremely hard to identify the presence of such trafficking along with its source.
Survivors of sex trafficking are often subjected to many kinds of abuses and more than one form of exploitation. In order to control it, traffickers take incriminating photos of their victims to their family members to shame them more. They also attempt to sell the content by uploading it to mainstream porn sites. In addition, victims are also exploited through prostitution.
In many other cases, victims are exploited solely for the purpose of producing pornographic content. Many NGOs have been responsible for finding victims of trafficking. These missions have also provided evidence of the existence of such heinous acts. In a very recent rescue known as Operation SCOPE, investigators have seen this type of trafficking first-hand, and they have managed to provide the police with evidence of pornographic content being sold by traffickers.
In the mainstream porn entertainment industry as well, the recruitment and employment of actors have been the result of deception, threats, and drug abuse.
According to research conducted by the Internet Watch Foundation, 95 percent of the nearly 133,000 URLs assessed were hosted on platforms that allow people to create and upload porn.
If a pornographic video of a survivor or victim of trafficking is uploaded to any website, both the uploader and the website profit from it, even though the content is freely available. According to recently collected data, 90 percent of the free porn websites and nearly 100 percent of porn websites that require payment get the content from outside sources. Even if the users are able to upload any sort of porn content for free, the website owners will be able to profit just from the traffic flow that is generated to the website.
The line between legal pornography and human trafficking is very different from each other. There is a thin line between them which gets complicated. Most of the popular porn sites today have been seen featuring illegal content. They even go as far as featuring videos of rape victims.
A recent campaign was launched against Pornhub, which happens to be the largest porn website in the world. Many have joined this movement and advocated that the website be shut down. Pornhub features many cases of human trafficking, including the rape of a 14-year-old girl. They also display child sexual abuse.
Globally, the porn industry is a $97 billion industry where the US accounts for 12 billion of it. In 2017, the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) was able to trace certain online child sexual abuse material to over 70 countries in the same year and more than 60 countries in the year 2018. Top porn entertainment companies, like Pornhub, advertised and received a huge amount of content from countries all over the world. Every year, Pornhub manages to release a report that shows the statistics from the top 20 countries. Human trafficking in the porn industry is something that cannot just be isolated to just one location. Sadly, pornography of trafficking survivors have been spread all over the world and are available with only a click.
Human trafficking in the porn industry is very different from the prostitution industry. It is something that is happening every day, but it is not dealt with in a proper way. There are many NGOs that work to find and help such victims of human trafficking. The millions of people who are fighting for the closing of the Pornhub website are also trying to help in their own way. Many women and children are tortured for this. The porn industry isn’t kind to any actors nor are the human traffickers. However, with the help of some NGOs, we can hope to reduce this kind of trafficking.
