RIGHTS-EUROPE: Arrests Point to Large-Scale Trafficking

By Pavol Stracansky Reprint | | Print |

Pavol Stracansky

BRATISLAVA, Jul 13 2004 (IPS) - The recent arrest of 25 people in Slovakia and the Czech Republic accused of selling women into prostitution has highlighted the problems central Europe faces with trafficking in women, according to experts working to stop the trade.

Czech and Slovak police made the arrests in a series of coordinated raids in late June. Police said that as many as 230 women had been tricked into signing up for what they believed had been a respectable modelling agency and then offered as prostitutes on the Internet across the world.

Police said that the arrested persons had been involved in organising modelling castings at the Eli agency. They were attracting young women with promises of easy money and free travel around the world as hostesses.

But the women were later told that providing sexual services was part of the deal. They were threatened with bills of around 1500 dollars for cosmetics and photographers if they did not comply – a large sum of money in a country where the average monthly wage is 400 dollars.

The girls were then – offered" on the Internet to clients in Hungary, Austria, Italy, Greece, Japan, the United States, Switzerland, Denmark and Britain, among other countries.

Experts studying forced prostitution and women trafficking say the case is just a part of a thriving trade.

ôCases like this prove that trafficking is happening in Slovakia, and not only in the modelling business, and that it involves hundreds of young women," Zuzana Vatralova, head of mission at the International Organisation for Migration in Bratislava told IPS.

International organisations say that trade in people trafficking is worth billions of dollars annually and is growing. The group behind the prostitution ring in Slovakia and the Czech Republic were earning close to a million dollars a month, according to police estimates.

In its fourth annual ‘Trafficking in Persons’ report monitoring 140 countries released last month, the U.S. State Department said that 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked annually across international borders, 80 per cent of them women. Of those women, the report said, 70 per cent were sexually exploited.

Central Europe has been identified by the United Nations and the European Union as a transit area in trafficking routes from as far east as China and South Asia through Russia and Ukraine into western Europe. Others are brought from the Middle East and the Balkans into western Europe.

But countries within central and eastern Europe have also in recent years been identified more and more as source states for trafficked women and children.

Those often trafficked and forced into prostitution have been kidnapped by mafia gangs – gangs from Russia and the Balkans are frequently identified as the most active in global people trafficking.

In some cases women were found to have been ôsold" by poor families in places like India or other countries in south and central Asia who see the money as a way of saving other family members from starvation.

Many non-governmental organisations say poverty, poor or poorly-enforced legislation and the second-class status of females in some countries is fuelling the trade.

ôIn Slovakia for example nearly all the victims of trafficking travelled abroad under the false promise of a well paid job," Vatralova told IPS. ôThe main factor is a bad socio-economic situation and a high unemployment rate in many regions combined with low wages."

Police in the Czech Republic and Slovakia say they are now devoting more resources to fighting trafficking.

The Slovak Interior Ministry at the start of this year increased the numbers of anti-trafficking police. The ministry has created a new department to counter trafficking.

Last year Slovak police arrested people traffickers who had been working with six trafficking networks and also solved three cases of child trafficking and 54 cases of individual trafficking, according to the ‘Trafficking in Persons’ report.

In the Czech Republic last month an EU-backed programme was launched under which officers from EU states will help their Czech counterparts identify and tackle trafficking.

But NGOs say that more needs to be done to help fight trafficking. Petra Kutalkova, prevention manager at La Strada, an NGO which works with victims of trafficking, called for more work to be done on raising police and public awareness and understanding of the issue.

"Victims of trafficking will never approach a police officer themselves as they are too scared and most don’t know where they can turn for help. We need even more officers who are sensitive to this issue who can then identify victims and help them," she told local news agencies after the launch of the EU-backed project.