Spy Game star Robert Redford took a break from the world of cinema, Thursday, to give his support to a Nepali activist who rescues young girls from sexual slavery in India.
“I honestly believe trafficking can be stopped, it should be stopped” Robert said.
In a joint interview with Maili Lama, the actor-director explained that his lifelong interest in human-rights had led him to back the cause. Maili knows from personal experience the treatment many Nepalese women suffer at the hands of the traffickers – as a young girl she herself was smuggled out of her homeland and sold to a Bombay brothel. Now, at 25, she works to free and educate those sold into slavery.
The 64-year-old actor went on to applaud the footwear manufacturer Reebok for its support of Maili’s campaign. The company awarded the 25-year-old, and two other activists under the age of 30, the 2002 Reebok Human Rights Award on Thursday, as part of the Cultural Olympiad taking place around the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
The Reebok Human Rights Foundation grants each recipient of the award $50,000 to further their work. Speaking through an interpreter, Maili said she would use the money to care for and educate victims of human trafficking.
“It going to help me tremendously to rescue the girls,” she said.
The other recipients were Kavwumbu Hakachima, 27, a campaigner against child abuse in Zambia, and Malika Asha Sanders, 27, a civil rights activist from Selma, Alabama.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
