What is it about?
Several organizations have pointed out China's policy of returning North Koreans to their country without prior screening processes. This lack of protection makes women more at risk of being trafficked. Testimonial first-person accounts of victimization shed light on an issue that continues to date. Victims' voices, muted sometimes under the cloud of anonymity, come to the fore as they seek redress for their rights violations by using life writing as a rhetorical weapon.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
My work is highly interdsiciplinary and tries to address the turn towards first-person storytelling in current activism for human rights. In the case of victims of human trafficking, shame and PTSD may account for substantially fewer cases of women speaking out. This is precisely why attention must be paid to the testimonies that do come to light.
Perspectives
Within the larger framework of testimonial narratives, humanitarian discourse, and NGOs intent on raising awareness of ongoing violations on a global scale, much remains obscure. The voices of girls and women tend to be heavily mediated, particularly when their first language is not English. My work, here as elsewhere, focuses on a trend in contemporary culture for young women from the Global South to tell their own story, in their own terms, without relying so much on mediators. Their life-writing project is, though collaborative, a testimonial project, asking readers/audiences to bear witness to rights violations committed against a collective of which they are representative.
Dr Ana Belén Martínez García
Universidad de Navarra
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Denouncing Human Trafficking in China: North Korean Women's Memoirs as Evidence, State Crime Journal, January 2019, Pluto Journals,
DOI: 10.13169/statecrime.8.1.0059.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
