YouCanFreeUs – The fight against modern slavery
When Sujo John was brought face to face with the brutal conditions of Mumbai’s red light districts, he realised that he could not stay silent. On 11 May 2019, he will be in Luxembourg to present the work of his foundation YouCanFreeUs to fight modern slavery and help victims of human trafficking recover and find new hope.
Originally from Calcutta, India, Sujo John moved to New York in 2001 to pursue a career in business. However, he kept close links with his home country and wanted to make a contribution to its development. When working on a slum school project in Mumbai eight years later, he happened to visit the red light district there – Asia’s second largest prostitution area with 3,000 buildings and 100,000 sex workers. “I will never forget the darkness I experienced that day,” says Sujo John. “The women were kept in cells and cages. It was pure horror.” The images that he had seen refused to leave him, and little by little they gave birth to a vision: to rescue these girls and help restore them. That was the start of YouCanFreeUs Foundation.
Slavery – a problem of our time
Many of us think about slavery as a phenomenon of the past, and associate it with the Roman Empire, for example, or America in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, this is far from the truth. According to International Labour Organisation (ILO), 40.3 million people across the globe are today enslaved, a figure that includes people in forced labour or forced marriage as well as victims of sex trafficking. 71% of them are girls and women, and 1 out of 4 victims are children. With an estimated global annual profit of $150 billion, modern day slavery is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.
“Modern slavery affects almost every country on earth and is one of the darkest evils of our time,” says Sujo John. “I founded YouCanFreeUs without really knowing what we should do or how to do it, but I was driven by my conviction that the girls living under the conditions I had seen had to be rescued.”
The road to recovery
Sujo John and his associates started to learn about the issue of slavery and develop a road to recovery for sex trafficking victims, spanning from rescue operations to physical and psychological rehabilitation, training and reintegration into society. YouCanFreeUs currently has three safe houses and two training centres in India.
“The rescued girls stay with us during two years to be rehabilitated,” Sujo John explains. “Most of them are severely physically and emotionally battered. We provide different forms of counselling, including individual, group and art therapy, to help them heal. We also teach them life skills so that they can learn to provide for themselves when they leave our sheltered accommodation. Many of the women are illiterate so they have to start from scratch.”
A number of the girls coming to YouCanFreeUs are pregnant, a condition that does not stop traffickers from exploiting them. “Firstly, there are clients that have a sick demand for seeing expecting prostitutes. Secondly, when babies are born traffickers wait for them go grow a bit and then sell them,” says Sujo John. “We have a passion for rescuing pregnant women and helping them create a new life for themselves and their children.”
A global action
In addition to the work in India, YouCanFreeUs carries out similar rescue and rehabilitation work among sex workers in Poland. The foundation also works preventively in 25 prisons across the country, mentoring young inmates to help them avoid being lured into prostitution by traffickers as soon as they are released.
YouCanFreeUs has additional resource hubs in the US, the UK, Canada and Norway. The foundation works globally to raise awareness about trafficking and slavery and has recently developed a curriculum for teaching children about the issue of trafficking and how to be careful and put boundaries in place. YouCanFreeUs also addresses slavery in the market place to encourage corporations to treat workers well and eliminate slavery in their supply chain.
“Our main achievement to date is that we have rescued and rehabilitated several hundred lives,” says Sujo John. But the needs are still enormous. “Our generation has a mandate to end the evil of modern slavery, and I hope that people reading this will be compelled to join our fight. You can be a champion for those who have given up hope and be part of bringing freedom to men and women, boys and girls around the world.”
Sujo John will present the work of the YouCanFreeUs Foundation in Luxembourg on 11 May 2019. Anyone interested in knowing more about modern slavery and the work to free and rehabilitate its victims are welcome to join the seminar at 18:30 at the Hope Center, 72, rue du Dernier Sol, L-2543 in Luxembourg-Bonnevoie. The presentation is hosted by Oasis Church Luxembourg.
Article by Lena Martensson
Awareness and Advocacy Event
There are 40.3 million people in MODERN SLAVERY
Join Sujo John, founder of YouCanFreeUs an international human rights organization that is fighting slavery around the world.
The conversation will include information on:
- Global Slavery and its Impact
- Sex trafficking
- Slavery in the Supply Chain (Labor exploitation)
- What can you do to take a stand against modern slavery?