LETTER FROM CEDAR | APR 2025

Dear CEDAR friends and supporters,

How do you love both the oppressed and the oppressor?

This is a question I have been asking myself since I first worked with girls who were trafficked into the red-light district in Kolkata, India. A number of them had been sold by their parents or close family members, almost all because of poverty. One girl called Ria (pseudonym) came from a family of six daughters. Her parents sold her so that they would have enough money to marry off the other five daughters since their culture required the bride’s family to pay a dowry. The parents were giving up one daughter to ‘save’ the other five, as having a husband meant having access to food and shelter, the basic necessities for survival.

Being sold by close family members because of poverty is not something new. I was in Yangon, Myanmar, visiting one of CEDAR’s long-term partners and got to talk with a boy whom our partner had rescued and was currently taking care of. Htin (pseudonym) was 15 years old and was the middle child in a family of three boys. He was sold by his father to the ethnic armed forces to be a soldier. As I asked him about his life in the youth centre and what his future aspirations might be, I couldn’t help but wonder, what would reconciliation with his family look like?

For trafficking survivors like Ria and Htin to regain dignity and true restoration, it meant that sooner or later, they would have to face the difficult task of reconciling with their families, with those who might have betrayed and sold them in the first place. How do you reconcile with those who have oppressed you? Is that possible?

I remember talking with some of the brothel owners in India’s red-light district. Several owners were themselves victims of human trafficking. They were sold into the sex trade when young, and slowly climbed the ‘social/criminal ladder’ as a way to survive. Eventually, they started buying, owning, and selling girls themselves. The oppressed became the oppressor.

It is easy to have compassion towards victims of human trafficking, but what about the slave owners and perpetrators? What does demonstrating Christlike love and compassion towards them mean, while at the same time upholding justice? This is not an easy question to answer, especially in situations where definitions of victimhood and criminality can be murky.

We see such situations with the rise of forced scamming, ‘scam-demic’. According to UNODC, it has been estimated that 8% of human trafficking victims are now being forced into criminal activities, including cyber-scamming and money laundering. However, it may be difficult to distinguish between those who are forced and those who willingly participate in such scamming activities. Often, the victims may be the criminals, and the criminals may be the victims. There are a lot of grey areas, just as there may not be a black-or-white line between the oppressed and the oppressor.

But God cares about both the oppressed and the oppressor. As Christ followers, we are called to do the same. For me, it starts with seeing and recognising that I myself am often in the role of the oppressor because of the socioeconomic structures and systems I am in. I am not ‘innocent’ in that sense. The market economy I participate in often exacerbates the gap between the rich and the poor, and the resulting poverty leads to discrimination, exploitation, and cycles of violence.

At the same time, I was reminded of what Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian theologian and founder of liberation theology, said about God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’. He said, ‘The poor deserve preference not because they are morally or religiously better than others, but because God is God, in whose eyes “the last are first”. This statement clashes with our narrow understanding of justice; this very preference reminds us, therefore, that God’s ways are not ours.’

We love and serve not because the poor or the victims are ‘morally or religiously better’ than the rich or the perpetrators. We love and serve both the poor and the rich, both the victims and the perpetrators, because this is what Jesus did when He walked this earth and when He died on the cross for the sins of all. Each of us shares a common humanity with the poor and the rich, with the oppressed and the oppressor ─ we are all sinners deeply in need of His grace.

As we enter the season of Lent and Easter, may we experience anew His saving grace, and may this grace propel us to a deeper love, even of those whom we may see as the oppressed and the oppressor.