[ALBSA-Info] The Times

[Agron Alibali]

              The Times (London)

 February 24, 2000, Thursday




Tara is a student nurse who was kidnapped and sold as
a sex slave for Pounds 1,200

Eve-Ann Prentice

    The escalating number of East European women being
sold to work as
prostitutes in Britain has prompted a Home Office
report. Eve-Ann Prentice is
the first journalist to visit the hideout in  Albania 
for victims on the run
for the traffickers

    Seven pairs of wary, traumatised eyes stare at us
as we enter the living
room at the fugitives' hideout. The young women clutch
one another's arms and
huddle together on a sofa, watching in silence.

    They trust no one from the outside - and nor
should they. Some of the most
violent mafiosi in the world are out there,
periodically scouring the warren of 
filthy streets looking for them. The game was nearly
up two weeks ago when armed
gangsters gathered outside another house that the
women used as a hiding place
in the  Albanian  capital, Tirana. Shots were fired
and only the bravery of
those protecting the fugitives saved the day. They
smuggled the terrified women 
out and moved them to the new hideaway. They could be
discovered again at any
moment.

    The women seem barely old enough to warrant the
mafiosi's efforts; mostly
they are girls in their teens. The reason they are on
the run is because they
are escaped slaves - and the men who bought them want
their property back.

    The runaways are just a tiny minority of the
countless thousands of human
beings bought and sold in a burgeoning trade which has
spread its tentacles from
the far reaches of Eastern Europe to the massage
parlours of London's West
End, and more recently Britain's suburbs. The
merchandise in this flourishing
illicit business comprises innocent girls and young
women who are often
kidnapped from their home towns and villages and
forced into lives of violence
and prostitution. They are usually bought for between
Pounds 500 and Pounds
2,000 and their "owners" then make a fortune by
forcing them to sell sex.

    The escapees' safe house is surrounded by a high
wooden fence and we are
ushered quickly inside. The seven young women huddled
on the sofa are still in a
state of shock. They include Tara, a 19-year-old
former student nurse, Maria, a 
16-year-old schoolgirl, and Elena, a 30-year-old
mother-of-one who is desperate 
to know where her toddler son is and who is looking
after him. All three come
from Moldova; all three were sold into slavery - the
16-year-old Maria
eventually being bought by a 19-year-old drug dealer
who imprisoned her in his
family home with his mother.

    Maria has a flawless peaches-and-cream complexion
and waves of dark brown
hair falling to her shoulders. Initially she shakes
her head and refuses to
speak. But after hearing others tentatively recount
their experiences, she lifts
her head and begins to describe the way she was
bundled into a car and kidnapped
as she walked near her home in the Moldovan capital,
Kishinau, last September.
She has not seen her family since.

    "I was going to my aunt's house when a car drew up
and two men forced me to 
get in. They kept telling me that everything would be
OK, but I was so
frightened because I had heard about cases of girls
being kidnapped and taken to
be used as prostitutes," she says. "I kept asking why
they were doing this but
they just said I should not worry. They did not leave
me alone for a second and 
that first night they put me in a hotel."

    Over the following days, Maria was driven to
Timisoara in Romania, and her
captors and the cars they used were changed several
times. Once in Romania, she 
was put with 13 other young girls and they were driven
on again, this time to a 
town in Serbia; Maria is not sure where but she
recognised the Cyrillic script
on road signs. Here they were locked in a house for
two weeks and each day were 
fed a loaf of bread between them.

    "They were very hard conditions. It was very cold,
so cold, and there were
no beds," she says. "I was too frightened to try to
escape but even if I had
wanted to I would not have been able to.

    "Every day some men came and one or two of the
girls were taken away. I
realised they had been sold." It was here that Maria
had her first experience
of sex, when she was raped by one of her jailers. "I
was such a little girl, of 
16," she whispers. "The men were free to mistreat us
as they wanted."

    Two weeks after being imprisoned, three men came
to take her to Montenegro, 
the tiny mountain republic which, with Serbia, makes
up Yugoslavia. "It was
very, very cold and I had no coat. After four days
someone came and bought me
and seven other girls. We were taken in a small boat
to Shkoder in  Albania. 
After that I was taken to Durres and sold to this boy
of 19. He paid $ 2,700
(Pounds 1,700). He didn't treat me as a human being
and there were now just the 
two of us in this apartment, with his mother living
upstairs. He told me his
name and he spoke often in Italian and kept saying he
was sorry for me. That
didn't stop him using me (as a prostitute), though. I
was so afraid of him; he
abused me every night."

    Maria was rescued after two months, when the youth
said he wanted to take
her to Italy and she was put in a car for yet another
journey. She asked the
driver to help her, but he said he could not.

    Maria now suspects, however, that the driver took
pity on her because police
came to the car when it stopped at one point and she
screamed for help. The girl
who had begun school just five days before being
snatched says she was kept in a
police station for another two months before being
taken to the International
Organisation for Migration a Geneva-based
intergovernmental group. "I cannot say
the police were kind," she says. "They treated me as
if I was a prostitute and I
was forced to sleep on a table because there was no
bed."

    The house which shelters the young women is one of
three in the  Albanian 
capital provided by the International Organisation for
Migration and the
International Catholic Migration Commission. It is
pristinely clean, bright and 
well-furnished, in stark contrast to the jumble of
fetid streets outside. I am
sworn to keep the shelter's location secret, but it
would be hard to describe
the route to its door even if I wanted to. Rich
Kocher, an Americanwhois head of
the IOM mission in  Albania,  and his compatriate Ken
Patterson, director of the
ICMC, drove me through a bewildering tangle of streets
and back roads, sometimes
doubling back and reversing down blind alleys. At one
point we passed a
roadblock manned by sinister-looking men in black
balaclavas bearing automatic
rifles. "They are special police who wear masks to
prevent anyone knowing who
they are," says Patterson. "They could be targets of
organised crime if they
stop and search one of the mafia and find anything."

    The IOM is trying to help Maria to return home to
her parents,
three-year-old brother and 13-year-old sister, but the
organisation first has
to arrange travel documents. Maria is luckier than
most because she was able to 
keep her identity card throughout her months of
captivity. Most sex slaves are
quickly deprived of their passports and other identity
papers and issued with
forgeries when they are transported abroad. This,
along with language
difficulties, makes escape or repatriation should they
escape, doubly difficult.

    "I have telephoned my family," says Maria. "When I
get home I will tell my
parents everything that happened. I never, never
thought of myself as a
prostitute and still do not. What I do think is that a
part of my life has been 
stolen."

    While Maria is speaking, Tara clasps a hand over
her mouth and leaves the
room in tears. She emerges a few minutes later,
red-eyed.

    "I only escaped five days ago and my friend who
was held captive with me has
been killed," she says. "What will I tell her family?"

    Unlike Maria, Tara left Moldova for  Albania  of
her own free will. She
wanted to find a job to pay for her nursing studies.
"In my country it is usual 
to leave for work abroad because there is no work at
home. You even have to pay 
to work in the hospital," she says. She was taken
hostage after applying for a
job as a waitress. "They didn't believe me when I went
for the job and it was
obviously for prostitution work and I said I was not a
prostitute.

    "My friend and I were sold for $ 4,000 for both of
us. My friend tried to
escape, she struggled very, very hard but I was more
afraid and just cried. She 
was mistreated very badly and was soon in a terrible
state. She cried and
shouted all the time and that is maybe why they killed
her," says Tara. The
19-year-old is too upset to describe exactly what
happened to her friend, saying
only, between sobs, that "they took her away and
killed her".

    Tara was taken hostage by a drug dealer who
repeatedly raped her. "Then he
told me his mother was sick and I explained that I was
a nurse. After that he
treated me as a human being and asked me to help his
mother. We understood one
another very well after that because my mother is ill,
too."

    Tara spent ten months with the man who bought her,
she says, until he came
to trust her. "Then one day he let me go out of the
apartment. I lied to him and
he thought I would come back, but I went to the
police. I didn't want to go back
to him because I am not a prostitute. I was also
stressed and tense and couldn't
stop crying and crying. The police didn't arrest him.
He had much money and he
could pay the police because he used to buy and sell
drugs and could afford
it. Everyone is so corrupt."

    The IOM shelters were set up in January and so far
they have shielded about 
15 women. Ken Patterson and Rich Kocher know that they
have touched only the tip
of the human-trafficking iceberg. "If we need to help
thousands, we will try to 
do it," says Kocher.

    Not all the women are kidnapped; some are duped by
promises of jobs abroad. 
It is easy to trick a naive young woman from a
poverty-stricken no-hope town in 
Moldova or Romania into believing that there is an
escape route from desolation 
if they accept the offer of a job as a babysitter or
waitress in Italy, Belgium 
or London. There are also some women who willingly opt
to become prostitutes,
seeing it as their only chance to avoid a life of
grinding poverty, and they
mistakenly believe they will be able at least to store
up the money they make.
The reality is different, they are rarely paid for
their sexual services. Almost
all the women - whether kidnapped, conned or
consenting - are usually raped,
beaten and psychologically tortured for weeks before
being sold on to pimps,
brothel-owners or perverts who can afford to buy a
woman for their own use.

    The sex-slave mafia trade is in women from the
former Soviet republic of
Moldova, Romania, Kosovo, or  Albania,  where the hub
of the trade is centred.
The victims are then often taken by car or
force-marched along remote mountain
paths for days to Tirana or the  Albanian  coast. Many
are dispatched on flimsy 
dinghies across the Adriatic to Italy, from where they
are passed on to the
red-light areas of West European capitals. Others are
forced to work in
 Albania,  Greece, or in the newest market for
sex-traders - Kosovo, with its
hundreds of thousands of international troops. For
some women, their forced
journeys end in death - either at the hands of the
mafiosi if they prove to be
more trouble than they are worth. Or they fail to
survive the rigours of their
transportation.

    Earlier this year the body of a young, scantily
clad woman was washed up on 
the  Albanian  coast. She had rope burns on her
wrists, "not because her captors
had tied her up," says a Western aid worker, "but
because these women lash
themselves to the dinghies when they are taken across
the Adriatic as they are
afraid of falling overboard and drowning. This was one
who didn't make it."

    Many victims are told that their relatives will be
killed if they try to
escape. This makes the courage of the seven women in
their hideout in Tirana all
the more remarkable.

    In the city's dust-choked Skanderbeg Square, the
national museum is fronted 
with a large, epic communist mosaic portraying a woman
striding confidently
forward with a rifle in her strong arms. The scene is
a remnant of the era of
Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist leader from 1946, who kept 
Albania  in isolation for
much of his rule until his death in 1985. The
impoverished country finally held 
democratic elections in 1992, but the shock to its
system of joining the cut and
thrust of capitalism has left hundreds of thousands
without work and living
literally off the scraps which form great mounds of
litter wherever you look.

    A miasma of disease hangs over a canal which runs
through the heart of the
capital and which is used as an open sewer and general
rubbish tip. Huge rats
rummage openly among the debris.

    The Third World atmosphere of Tirana has proved a
fertile breeding ground
for Europe's burgeoning  Albanian  mafia. Corruption
and racketeering reach deep
into  Albanian  society; some police are hand-in-glove
with the gangsters and
are widely believed to take bribes to smooth the path
of the criminals they are 
supposed to catch.

    One group of escaped sex-slaves reached a police
station in Durres, only to 
be imprisoned and repeatedly raped by the police
officers over a two-month
period last year, according to one Western aid worker.
When they became tired of
abusing the girls, they terrorised them and sent them
out to work as
prostitutes.

    However, Patterson says his organisation has begun
to work with other
officers. The IOM-ICMC shelters are part of a $
640,000 project to help women
who have been bought and sold, to return home. The
mission also aims to help
them become reintegrated in societies which often shun
them after they return,
suspecting that they willingly prostituted themselves.

    The aid project was born after a
counter-trafficking workshop sponsored by
the IOM and the British Government's Department for
International Development in
Tirana last September. The scale of the task facing
those trying to help is
monumental; between 250,000 and 500,000 are believed
to be working as
prostitutes in the European Union - "the majority
having reached their
destinations through illegal trafficking networks,"
says the IOM. "Women being
trafficked into prostitution now constitute the
largest single category of
illegal migration to the EU."

    The number of women being seized and forced into
unpaid prostitution is
believed to have increased since Nato-led peacekeeping
troops entered
neighbouring Kosovo last summer. Young Kosovo-
Albanian  girls were also
reported to have been snatched from the refugee camps
set up in  Albania, 
Macedonia and Montenegro during the Kosovo crisis.
"Especially alarming have
been the reports of young refugee women being abducted
from the camps by armed
scafisti (members of  Albanian  organised crime),
forcing these women into
prostitution in Italy and elsewhere in Western
Europe," the IOM said in July,
last year.

    In London, Inspector Paul Holmes, of the Clubs and
Vice unit of the
Metropolitan Police, has seen a mushrooming of the
numbers of Balkan women sold 
into prostitution. About 77 per cent of the "working
girls" arrested in Soho
brothels before Christmas were from the Balkans.

    "The  Albanian  situation has changed things here.
We have labelled it
'trafficking by deception and threats'. In our
experience, 95 per cent of the
women know what they are doing by the time they get
here but they have been told
they will be able to come here, clear debts and make a
profit," he says.

    "They arrive here with forged documentation, their
own documentation is
seized and they are put into virtual imprisonment.
They have to comply with any 
sexual perversion or threats that are made to loved
ones back home. It is
effectively psychological torture. Unfortunately the
law doesn't allow us to
prosecute for psychological imprisonment. We are not
on top of this by a long
chalk," he says.

    The police's big fear is that "turf wars" - fights
between the various gangs
- may break out with so much money at stake. "The
turnover in a busy brothel can
be Pounds 1 million a month," says Mr Holmes.

    The Home Office has meanwhile asked the University
of North London to
investigate the growing problem of prostitutes
smuggled into Britain from
Eastern Europe. A report is due in March.

    Back in Tirana, the mosaic of the warrior woman
outside the national museum 
is testament to a bygone Balkan era - an ironic
contrast with the wretched lives
of the women who are bought and sold.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com