Campus Engagement 1

Last night a couple of students from our class got together at Sara's house for a screening of the Whistle Blower. I had no idea what the movie was about and the fact that I did not even know about this 'U.N' scandal, prior to this screening is just a testament of how little attention the media, especially in the U.S pays to sex trafficking crimes. The Whistleblower is a movie that covers the actual events regarding Kathryn Bolkovac's sex trafficking investigation which involved several U.N 'peace keepers' who were on duty in Bosnia. Kathryn was assigned to be the head of a gender department within the U.N and was allowed to interview several women in Bosnia who had placed complaints of sexual and physical violence. She quickly finds out that the women are often ignored and their cases are often shoved to the back of the case line and mostly never solved. Through her various investigations, she uncovers that many of her fellow co-workers are not only buying girls and women but are also receiving payouts from brothel owners in exchange for security against criminal prosecution. I had many angry feelings through this movie. I felt that this movie does play into the victimization of the human trafficked girl. Throughout the film the viewers were constantly reminded that these 'naive' girls were only in this situations because they were tricked with false promises of 'honest' work. All of these girls were young and light skinned. It makes me wonder how the audience would have reacted to cases involving trafficked girls that were in brothels in order to survive. This movie does not go into details about why it is women, not only in Bosnia, are the majority in the sex trafficking industry and why it is they can make money off their bodies. We do not explore notions of gendered labor in the movie either, although a woman does state that when men are killed at war, 'prostitution' numbers go higher, although this shed a small light regarding trafficking problems, the audience is just left with that small sentence of a golden clue in trying to discuss systemic correlations to trafficking. I was also very upset at the fact that non of the U.N official were officially charged with any crimes. I wish the movie would have taken that fact and stated that this 'issue' is a global one, and that if men from the U.N and especially from the U.S were willing to participate in sex trafficking, then this mean that this was trafficking was a problem occurring world wide. Its not often that a movie like this hits the cinema screen, especially because sex trafficking or 'prostitution' is usually in the peripheral vision of most block buster hits, and although this movie has its flaws, I at least hope that its audience will be as enraged as i am and that through critical thinking, we can start to make connections with trafficking and how we participate and are connected with it as members of this world.