RIGHTS-Romania’s Flourishing Sex Trade

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Aug 29 2000 (IPS) - Eastern Europe is a major supplier of women for a flourishing international sex-slave trade, according to official statistics.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates that about 300,000 women from the Balkan countries are trafficked annually into the 15 nations that make up the European Union.

The United Nations estimates the worldwide profit for the trade in women to be over seven billion US dollars a year, a figure which shows that the trade is almost as profitable as drug-running and illicit arms sales.

Trafficking in women, for the purpose of forced prostitution, is a growing problem in Romania, one of the poorest Eastern European countries.

The Local press reports, almost daily, about women trapped in debt bondage, forced to work as unpaid prostitutes in Turkey, Italy, the Netherlands and other Western countries, as well as some of the former Communist countries, like Poland or Yugoslavia.

The news that seven women were trafficked in Cambodia, a country almost totally unknown to most Romanians, shocked public opinion in the country.

The women, aged between 18 and 24, were rescued by police in mid-August from a hotel in Phnom Penh where, they say, they were held as sex slaves after being promised jobs as dancers by a Romanian company.

“We have been forced to work as hostesses and (sex workers). The customers paid for us to go out and have sex, but we refused and their money was given back,” said Claudia, 23, after she returned home.

Romania is both a source and a transit country for the trafficking of women and girls. The full extent of the problem is not known, since neither the Government nor NGO’s maintain statistics on this issue.

The only official data available is for the number of individuals prosecuted for sex work and procurement. However NGO’s, working in women’s issues, agree that several thousand women are trafficked to other countries each year.

The International Organisation for Migration representatives in Bucharest report that they process two cases a month involving women trafficked to other countries who wish to return home

Several domestic prostitution rings are active, according to police sources.

“Contrary to popular belief, many of these women know the men who trafficked them,” a local police officer told IPS under the condition of anonymity.

“In a typical case, a man will tell his girlfriend about the possibility of working outside the country, but recruiting methods include promises of marriage.

“The woman is sent off to meet her boyfriend’s contact across the border. The contact then becomes, in effect, the woman’s owner”.

Usually the woman’s passport is taken and she is physically forced to work as a prostitute. Her pimp frequently uses violence, rape, threats, and intimidation to keep her at work.

“There, they have sex with as many as 10 to 15 men per day. Confused, in a new country and with no identification documents, the woman may believe she will be jailed if she goes to the police,” the officer added.

Romanian authorities are facing many difficulties in their fight against the trafficking of women.

The law is vague and outdated and does not address trafficking directly.

Those involved in trafficking may be prosecuted for such offenses as prostitution and procurement, falsifying documents, assisting individuals to cross borders illegally, blackmail, forced labour, or illegal deprivation of freedom.

The efforts of local organisations are also weak and burdened by widespread poverty in a country where 7.6 million Romanians, out of 22 million, live under the threshold of poverty with monthly incomes of less than 30 US dollars.

“Other factors that lead women to fall victim to trafficking include unemployment, weakening of social security networks following the fall of communism and the decline of traditional family life,” says Renate Weber, head of International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) women’s rights project.

“Most of them come from disrupted families and are not able to find a proper job to keep their families up,” Weber added.

Leading Romanian newspapers reported recently about the case of a women arrested by the police after she was found selling sex in a local cemetery. Her husband was found hiding behind one of the crypts.

The woman said that the man had forced her to have sex with lorry drivers to pay for his drinking – and the cemetery was the only place along the main road which was suitable. The woman added she was glad police had arrested them both.

“The low level of consciousness about women’s rights has also made this modern-day form of enslavement possible. Most women here need somebody who will take care of them, who will coordinate their activities, and usually these people can be traffickers as well,” Aurora Liseandru a psychologist concerned with women’s issue says.

RIGHTS-Romania’s Flourishing Sex Trade

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Aug 28 2000 (IPS) - Eastern Europe is a major supplier of women for a flourishing international sex-slave trade, according to official statistics.
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