Our Selfishness- RESPONSE

While reading this report I had many reactions to it, mostly anger. The first thing that struck me was the fact that the Buddhist Monks are allowing this to happen under their noses. I know Buddhists as amazing and spiritual people, some of the last to OK the exploiting of the next leaders of our world. Consequently, this is something I do not understand.
Next, I was quite intrigued about the idea of changing your name to relieve yourself from the, what shall I call it, horrors of your life. I wonder why Lin Lin and Thin Thin are such popular names. I wouldn’t be surprised if it meant something like ‘Hope’ or ‘Joy’ so when someone said their name the girls would be reminded that there is still beauty in the world.
What also struck me was the idea that men will not wear condoms. I cannot think of a reason why they wouldn’t other then because they are, and excuse my french, total assholes.
Lastly, I would like to state how selfish our government must be to purposely not help these girls so they continue being paid the big bucks to ‘help’. If this is true, I want  the government and our police officials to step back and think about why they’re really in the position they are in. If their reason is money, I hope to G-d they pick a new job because money will NEVER over shadow lives as long as their is love in this universe.

Our Selfishness- NOTES

In Burmese the military is struggling with the child prostitution problem and thus is trying their best to shield the problem from the public’s eyes. The following is what they wish for you not to see:

> 13 and 14 year old girls being paraded, modeled, marketed, at a nightclub while men stare and pick their next rape victim
>these girls, staring at the floor pulling on their short pleather hemlines and pulling up their low cut shirts, trying to hide what little cleavage their young bodies have
>girls being sold at 100$ a night, like meat
>why is this all happening? the Burmese government, mostly Buddhist Monks, have decided to tolerate such horrors as what is stated above “for now”.
>the high sex trafficking rate in Burma is so high due to the ongoing plummeting of the economy
>when girls are taken into prostitution they most often call themselves by a name not their own. The thought process behind this is that if (for example) Jackie committed a wrong doing under the name of Jenny, it would not truly be Jackie. The most popular names girls change their names to are Lin Lin and Thin Thin
>One girl spoken to in particular, Lin Lin, told the reporter that she chose to go into sex trafficking to support her mother, father, and younger brother. She states “it was not a hard decision to make”
    +the irony behind this is during the day she is studying to become an advocate of     the law
>Another girl, Thin Thin, says she was originally a hairdresser, but sleeping with foreign men (called sex tourists) got her 3 times more money
>because of this sexual epidemic, around 360,000 people in Burmese are living and thus dying from HIV as of 2005
    +this means that 1 in 3 sex workers are infected with HIV
>Many girls say they want the men to wear condoms, and even supply them with such, but rarely do they men accept the protection
>Other nearby countries with similar problems to the ones listed above include China, France, India, and Thailand
>one of the scariest possible facts being estimated at this date is the military may not being doing much about this world wide problem because they get paid so much to stop it. thus as the problem continues to grows and they continue to work (or not for that matter) their wallets get bigger still while innocent girls struggle on the streets to live.