Stop!

Become the change you long to see, urges Steve Chalke

Gladiatorial games were popular in ancient Rome. The gladiators, the vast majority of whom were slaves, and many of them what we would refer to as trafficked people, were often forced to fight to the death as entertainment for the bloodthirsty crowds. But in early January A.D. 403 all that was about to change.

Telemachus, a young monk from what we know as Turkey, was deeply disturbed by the barbarity of the ‘games’. He could not understand how Emperor Honorius, who sponsored the contests, claimed to be a Christian, as did tens of thousands of regular spectators. For Telemachus talking about this evil was not enough – he was prepared to stand up and cry, ‘Stop!’.

The ‘Little Monk’, as Ronald Regan once referred to him in a famous White House speech, decided to travel to Rome to make his protest. On his arrival he found the city in festive mood with a gladiatorial circus in full swing. He joined the 80,000 strong crowd gathered in the Coliseum, but found himself unable to sit and watch. Rising from his seat, he began to shout ‘Stop, stop, in the name of Christ, stop!’ and make his way down, through the crowds, to the floor of the stadium.

At first the crowd responded to the scrawny young monk weaving between the combatants in the arena as a kind of comedy extra. They laughed and applauded his antics. However, as they began to digest the impact of his words and his serious intent, their mood changed – they hissed, booed and bellowed at him loudly. Eventually, they began to hurl stones and other rubbish at him to the point where two of the gladiators, keen for their own sakes to keep the crowd on their side, joined them by lunging at him with their batons and swords.
When the frenzy was over, Telemachus lay dead in the middle of the arena. The crowd fell silent. Then, after a minute or so, the horror of what they had just been part of began to sink in and they rose from their seats and left the stadium. It was as though the young monk’s last cry was still echoing around the giant arena.

Just days later, Emperor Honorius issued an edict that ended all gladiatorial games. And, although scholars still argue over whether he would have bowed to the voice of this single abolitionist, without doubt the ‘Little Monk’ was a catalyst for change. His bravery in taking on the system galvanised the silent majority into action. Never again would any gladiator die in the Coliseum or elsewhere in the empire.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, human trafficking is now one of the biggest challenges to human rights that our world faces, and the fastest growing source of organised crime. The US State department estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked into forced labour and prostitution every year. And, if we include the number of people trafficked within their own country, it is reckoned that the figure could be as high as 2 million people annually. Approximately 80 per cent of those trafficked are women and girls, and up to 50 per cent are children.

It’s easy to be blinded by statistics – the numbers are so large that it is hard for us to take in their significance. But each case that adds to the statistics is, at heart, a human story; each figure represents another stolen life, another tale of injustice and abuse, another bereaved parent or orphaned child.
In 2006, the Stop The Traffik campaign asked ordinary people across the UK and the rest of the world to shout ‘stop’. Our goal was to raise one million signatures, calling on individual governments and the United Nations to work together to prevent the sale of people, prosecute the traffickers and protect the victims.

In February 2008 Stop The Traffik delivered an unprecedented 1.5 million signatures from every continent of the world, to the United Nations GIFT (Global Initiative Fighting Trafficking) conference, in front of 1000 world leaders. This petition created a platform enabling Stop The Traffik to put a whole range of achievable anti-trafficking initiatives on the table, and to launch the Stop The Traffik Freedom Fund, a major new global fund, designed to finance projects across the world.

In 2001 when we launched the Faithworks Movement, our primary goal was to challenge the Government to notice the incredible contribution made by faith-based projects in communities across the UK. I remain as passionate today that as Christians we must be the voice of truth and righteousness on a national and political as well as local scale. I leave you with this challenge: who do you need to shout ‘stop’ to, today?

To find out more about ‘Stop the Traffik’ visit www.stopthetraffik.org

Steve Chalke is the founder of Faithworks, Oasis and the church.co.uk network. He is also chair of the Stop The Traffik Coalition and has recently been appointed as a UN special advisor with responsibility for fighting against people trafficking.