[ALBSA-Info] Insight the news, 14.1.2002

[Agron Alibali]

Insight on the News 
January 14, 2002, Monday 
FAIR COMMENT; Pg. 44 

 Sex-Slave Trade Has Become a Crisis of Global Proportions 

Christine Dolan 


Four million human beings, including children, annually are being kidnapped, raped and sold for sex across the globe, according to the May 2, 2000, Report on the Communication From the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament. The report states: "According to all indicators the number of victims is on the increase and the flows from Central and Eastern European countries dramatically have increased, in addition to the already-existing flow from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia." 

Homayra Sellier, president of Innocence in Danger, a Switzerland-based foundation that protects children, tells me, "The world needs to wake up to this horror. This is a global phenomenon of sexual abuse of children and women. This is a business. Predators and pedophiles are treating human beings as commodities bought and sold for sex. This situation is out of control. The ages of the children are frightening." 

During an undercover investigation throughout Europe and into the Balkans in 2000, I interviewed many young victims who were trapped in the trafficking industry. Sitting in an Albanian safe house, Gabriella, a 24 year-old Romanian woman, has seen this horror firsthand. Like many Eastern European women, she was desperately seeking a job five years ago when she became ensnared in sex trafficking; within a few days, her life had spun out of control. 

In 1996 Gabriella tried to get a job as a nurse in Romania, but that did not work out, she says. Then she worked in a disco, but that closed after four months. So she taught kindergarten, but could not survive on the pay of $20 a month with a baby and a marriage on the rocks. So, when a family doctor suggested that she go to Greece to work in "agriculture" to earn more money, Gabriella immediately signed a three-month contract, she says. She left her son, Daniel, with relatives. 

The doctor took her to a hotel in Bulgaria where he said they were to meet some people. Instead, he sold her to a Moldavian man for 3,000 deutsche marks ($1,384.97). Escaping never entered her mind. She had no money and the Moldavian confiscated her illegal passport. During the first five weeks in Bulgaria, Gabriella says she was raped repeatedly. 

The Moldavian pimp then sold her to a man named Max, a 59-year-old bar owner in Velesti, Macedonia. Max - the father of four girls and a boy ranging in ages from 13 to 24 - and his wife, Mia, run a brothel. They have two houses - one for their own use and one for their clients. 

For four years, from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m., Gabriella and 11 young girls and women from Romania, Moldova, Russia and Bulgaria were forced to service Max's mafia friends and clients, which included NATO military and civilian personnel. The girls danced for them, drank with them, did drugs with them and had sex with them. If the victims refused, Max would beat them violently. He would pound them with his fists if they were late for clients or demanded to use condoms. Max never paid the girls and women. Gabriella says, "We were slaves. Max is an evil man - an evil man." 

As Gabriella handed me a photo, she claimed that the man pictured in it was "an American GI from New Jersey. He was a very nice man. He never wanted sex." Gabriella told him her story and according to Gabriella, the American said, "I am so sorry," and gave her $100. Gabriella gave that money to another man named Michel, who said that he could buy her from Max and promised to help Gabriella get back to Romania. 

Instead, Michel sold Gabriella to "Gazmen" and "Altinds," two 26-year-old Albanians. They took Gabriella and two other young girls to a house in Fier, Albania. "They used chains. I cannot describe the horrible things they did." Three weeks later, the police raided the house. Gabriella was arrested because she did not have a passport. She told her story to the police. They turned her over to administrators of a safe house, where she waits to get the documents needed for her to return home to her son. "For the first time, I feel safe. Too much guns and violence. The children are too young, too young. I have seen myself," she says tearfully. 

According to Jan Austad of Interpol in Lyon, France, "No one really knows the true sex-trafficking figures - not the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe i but there is a definite increase in prostitution in Europe , as well as child pornography and child prostitution." 

British Inspector Paul Holmes, who is an international-trafficking expert based in London, tells me this situation is "a global phenomenon which started in Eastern European countries with the fall of communism, and this tidal wave has gradually reached the shores of the United Kingdom. I t is changing the landscape of Europe." 

According Casa Alianza, a human-rights agency that protects street children in Mexico and Central America, there is an exponential growth in the trafficking of children in this region. 

"Five years ago, the trafficking of Central America's children to be sold in brothels or to sex tourists was not really a consideration," states Bruce Harris, the Latin American regional director for Casa Alianza (the Latin American branch of the New York-based Covenant House). "Today, trafficking is a major hazard to thousands of children, particularly prepubescent girls, who are being trafficked from poverty-stricken regions of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador into hundreds of brothels in Guatemala and southern Mexico." 

According to a June 2001 U.S. State Department report, 23 countries -including U.S. allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Turkey and South Korea - are not doing enough to address trafficking. Other countries not doing enough include: Albania, Bahrain, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Greece, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yugoslavia. 

Although Congress passed an antitrafficking bill in October 2000, it only recently announced the State Department's Office to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons on Nov. 15. The bill stipulates that U.S. aid (except humanitarian aid) will be cut off to countries that do not combat trafficking by the end of 2003. A senior congressional aide familiar with the bill bluntly stated in July 2000, "We all know that cutting off aid is never going to happen." 

The European Union passed a bill earlier this year increasing the penalty for trafficking. But if law enforcement cannot get witnesses, and if state penalties are not enforced, nothing will change. After Sept. 11, the British Parliament shelved its antitrafficking bill until late 2002 or early 2003. 

A U.S.- and British-led investigation of child pornography in 1998 netted more than 1,000 images of unidentified child victims on the Internet. Many of the images depict trafficked victims, yet parents and relatives of missing and victimized children, except in rare instances, have been denied access to them after petitioning police, judges and government officials. I interviewed several parents of rape victims who have confirmed that their children's images are in these closely held police collections. It is imperative that a one-stop international depository of pornographic Internet images of children for the purpose of comparison and identification be established. 

If those who publicly claim that they are truly committed to stopping the horrors of trafficking, now is the time to understand the urgency of the matter. 

Today, HIV/AIDS is spreading to areas where rapes linked to sex-trafficking are taking place. In September 2000, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda says there is a direct correlation between the gang rapes that occurred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the subsequent increase in HIV/AIDS. In August 2000, the Finnish government publicly announced that HIV/AIDS was on the rise due to the return of peacekeeping forces. Casa Alianza infiltrated bars and brothels in Tapachula, Chiapas (Mexico) and interviewed Honduran girls who were sold to the brothels for between $100 and $200. The girls were told they would be waitresses and left their hurricane-ravaged country in the hope of sending money to support their starving families. According to Harris, "The only thing they will take home is HIV, the virus that causes AIDS." 

"Due to AIDS, younger and younger victims - some as young as preteens - are sold for large fees," says Inspector Holmes. According to Holmes, even "infants" are targeted victims. "Arab clients willingly pay $5,000 for one night with a virgin," says a Parisian madam who has been in the business for decades but who refuses to supply children. 

According to an Afghan woman who lives in Switzerland, the trafficking of children already has begun in the Afghan refugee camps. "This is a horrible situation." Twenty percent of the children in the refugee camps are younger than age 5. 

Shaking his head, Serge Garde, a French journalist, in a recent interview states, "You would think that we would all understand the consequences of turning our heads away to an issue like this." Next year the U.N. Special Rappouteur's Office on children will be allocating limited financial resources to investigating the trafficking of children in Paraguay and Brazil. "It is outrageous that the focus is not now on the Afghan-refugee camps. Everyone who is involved in trafficking knows that refugee camps are predators' playgrounds. Global moral outrage needs to rise to the occasion. If not now, when?" asks Sellier. 

Christine Dolan is a veteran broadcast and Print journalist and the author of Shattered Innocence - The Holocaust Millennium, a report of her undercover investigation of the global exploitation of children. She can be reached at www.helpsavekids.org. 

GRAPHIC: Photos (color), A) Smiling for the johns: Gabriella(center) dances with other young women at a brothel in Macedonia.; B) Taking care of business: Hugs and cuddles belie rape, brutality and sexual slavery, say insiders., Photos Contributed By Christine Dolan 


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