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Sex-Slave Trade Is Thriving

Foreign Affairs News Keywords: INTERPOL, CHRISTINE DOLAN , EUROPE,

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/latest?t=8

Posted on 07/21/2001 07:49:04 PDT by Stand Watch Listen

The Bush administration, working with Congress and the State and Justice departments, is organizing a war against violent international sex-trafficking and slavery rings.

Movement of women and children from one country to another, or within national borders, for sexual exploitation or forced labor is called trafficking. For the first seven months of the Bush administration its abolition has had a high priority. According to Interpol, profits from this trade top $19 billion annually. Congressional sources estimate that 50,000 persons are trafficked into the United States annually and 2 million worldwide. The United Nations puts the number worldwide at 4 million.

Investigative journalist Christine Dolan recently spent several months in Europe looking into this human trafficking for the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She found that not only are women and children being trafficked for sexual purposes, but also infants and toddlers. In her report, A Shattered Innocence: The Millennium Holocaust, she calls for a declaration of war on the mobsters, pimps and other criminals who are responsible.

Dolan applauds the U.S. government for what is being done to resist this exploitation but insists the problem is at the local level where law enforcement is badly in need of training. “They know the local mob, they know their neighborhood, but they don’t have the specialized training to outwit these international criminals,” Dolan says.

The U.S. State Department released its first Annual Trafficking in Persons Report in mid-July, as mandated by Congress last year in the Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act of 2000. This law requires the State Department to expand the annual human-rights reports to cover severe forms of trafficking in persons and to create an interagency task force to coordinate efforts nationally and internationally to stop it.

Curiously, in this first report the State Department claims that only 700,000 people a year are being trafficked as sex slaves or as sweatshop workers, much lower than any other estimate. It does, however, confirm Insight’s reports that many of these victims, whatever their number, are lured by promises of gainful employment in the United States, such as waitress jobs or jobs as dancers or models, only to find themselves kidnapped, raped and sold into prostitution once they arrive (see “Sex-Slave Trade Enters the U.S.,” Nov. 27, 2000).

Last year’s legislation was the first passed in recent years to combat human trafficking. Previously the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecuted traffickers under the old antislavery and peonage laws. The annual report it requires, say Capitol Hill sources, is supposed to monitor the problem while alerting the American people. “This report is one volley in that global fight for freedom of countless people,” says Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., one of the bill’s sponsors.

“International sex trafficking is the new slavery,” Brownback says. “It includes the classic and awful elements associated with historic slavery, such as abduction from family and home, use of false promises, transport to a strange country, loss of freedom and personal dignity, extreme abuse and depravation.”

Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters in February that fighting sex trafficking would be a priority of the DOJ during his tenure. Only 16 cases have been prosecuted in the United States since 1999, and in mid-July the attorney general issued regulations to provide assistance and protection to victims of human trafficking while their cases are investigated and prosecuted. The new rules not only enable federal law-enforcement personnel and immigration officials to protect victims, but they require and outline related training for DOJ and State Department personnel and mandate interdepartmental cooperation.

“The cooperative efforts of federal agencies and law-enforcement officials will help provide victims the tools and services needed to punish traffickers to the fullest extent of the law,” Ashcroft told reporters.

Two cases so far have been prosecuted under the new law and regulations. In March a man named Kill Soo Lee was arrested in American Samoa on a two-count federal complaint charging violations of slavery statutes. Lee held mostly female workers from Vietnam in involuntary servitude at his garment factory. That same month a landlord in Berkeley, Calif., pleaded guilty to trafficking women into the United States and placing them in sexual servitude. In February, Michael Allen Lee was charged with having forced homeless African-American men to work in his Florida fields. That same month José Tekum of Florida was sentenced to nine years in prison for felony counts that included kidnapping, slavery and immigration violations and forcing a Guatemalan women to engage in sex acts and manual labor against her will.

Because the new law requires that official assistance be given to victims on U.S. soil and directs the Justice Department among other agencies to administer this, the DOJ has set up a telephone help-line. Callers may report cases of trafficking or slavery to the National Worker Exploitation Task Force by calling (888) 428-7581 weekdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST.

Secretary of State Colin Powell will chair a Cabinet-level interagency task force on trafficking. A State Department spokesman tells Insight that there will be an office to act as the working group for the task force. The task force has not met yet, but State already is pursuing countertrafficking measures, the spokesman says.

As many as 5,000 aliens trafficked into the United States by organized-crime syndicates will be permitted to remain on a new nonimmigrant visa, provided they assist in the investigation of their perpetrators, are younger than age 15 or can demonstrate that they would suffer severe harm if returned to their country of origin. The Office of Victims of Crime at DOJ is funding a pilot project headed by the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, a private organization offering assistance to victims of trafficking in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush can impose nontrade, nonhumanitarian sanctions against countries that do not comply with minimum standards to eliminate trafficking. The countries that currently have no laws against forced labor and prostitution have four years to enact such laws before being vulnerable to application of sanctions, but the president can waive such sanctions at any time.

The State Department’s annual report on this problem not only includes trafficking data gathered by the State Department from the 185 diplomatic posts worldwide, but updates Congress on progress being made by each country to combat trafficking. It also lists antitrafficking groups that have received federal funds to carry out their work.

The State Department compiled three lists of countries. Tier 1 countries are those that fully comply with minimum standards, as described in the U.S. law, that successfully prosecute trafficking and that provide assistance to victims. These include Austria, Canada, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Tier 2 countries are those that do not fully comply with the minimum standards but are taking steps to bring themselves into compliance. State claims these include Angola, Bangladesh, China, India, Morocco, Thailand and Vietnam. Tier 3 countries do not comply with the minimum standards and are making no effort to do so. They include Albania, Bosnia, Burma, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A full listing is available from the State Department at www.state.gov.

Brownback tells Insight that he will use the information about the trafficking practices of each country to press the issue with their governments and recommend its use to the attorney general as guidance in training U.S law enforcement about the global magnitude of the problem. “The biggest problem we face is to convince people that this is actually taking place,” Brownback says. “So I applaud the attorney general for making it a top priority when he has hundreds of things to work on.”

As a result of her investigation, Dolan recently launched a group called the International Humanitarian Campaign Against the Exploitation of Children, which may be contacted on the Internet at www.helpsavekids.org. It will raise money for training local law enforcement about the problem, get rape counselors for safe houses to counsel trafficked children and raise awareness globally. “This is a transcontinental and transcriminal problem,” says Dolan. “These are criminals with no compassion, no respect for human life.”

How bad are these people? Dolan interviewed a trafficker in Albania named Alberto who said he trafficked for the quick money. He had been doing it for two years and moved his “stock” between Antwerp, Brussels and Belgium. Alberto said young girls bring very high prices. When asked how young, all he would say was, “Very young, very young.”

“People are not like tobacco and drugs, which once sold are used and literally go up in smoke,” says Dolan. “As long as human beings are alive they can be used and abused at every step of the trafficking game, being sold and resold.”

http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/tiprpt/2001/index.cfm?docid=3937

From Trafficing In Persons Report (2001-07):

Tier 3
Albania
Bahrain
Belarus
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Burma
Democratic Republic of Congo
Gabon
Greece
Indonesia
Israel
Kazakhstan
Lebanon
Malaysia
Pakistan
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Sudan Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia