Kosovo UN troops 'fuel sex trade'

BBC ^

[konijn]

Kosovo UN troops 'fuel sex trade'

The presence of peacekeepers in Kosovo is fuelling the sexual exploitation of women and encouraging trafficking, according to Amnesty International. It claims UN and Nato troops in the region are using the trafficked women and girls for sex and some have been involved in trafficking itself.

Amnesty says girls as young as 11 from eastern European countries are being sold into the sex slavery.

The UN and Nato forces said they had not yet seen the report to comment.

Trading houses

Amnesty's report, entitled "So does that mean I have rights? Protecting the human rights of women and girls trafficked for forced prostitution in Kosovo" was published on Thursday.

It is based on interviews with women and girls who have been trafficked from countries such as Moldova, Bulgaria and the Ukraine to service Kosovo's sex industry.

They are said to have been moved illegally across borders and sold in "trading houses" where they are sometimes drugged and "broken in" before being sold from one trafficker to another for prices ranging from 50 to 3,500 euros ($60 - 4,200).

The report includes harrowing testimonies of abduction, deprivation of liberty and denial of freedom of movement, torture and ill-treatment, including psychological threats, beatings and rape.

Instead of getting a proper job the women and girls find themselves trapped, enslaved, forced into prostitution.

The report condemns the role of the international peacekeepers.

Slavery

It says that after 40,000 Kfor troops and hundreds of Unmik personnel were sent to Kosovo in 1999, a "small-scale local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on trafficking run by organised criminal networks".

The number of places in Kosovo where trafficked women and girls may be exploited, such as nightclubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and cafes, has increased from 18 in 1999 to more than 200 in 2003.

The report claims international personnel make up about 20% of the people using trafficked women and girls even though its members comprise only 2% of Kosovo's population.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

"Women and girls as young as 11 are being sold into sexual slavery in Kosovo and international peacekeepers are not only failing to stop it they are actively fuelling this despicable trade by themselves paying for sex from trafficked women.

"It is time for countries to stop treating trafficking as a form of 'illegal migration' and see it as a particularly vicious form of human rights abuse."

One woman told Amnesty International: "I was forced by the boss to serve international soldiers and police officers... I never had a chance of running away and leaving that miserable life, because I was observed every moment by a woman."

Criminals

Another told how German soldiers were instructed by their superiors not to go with prostitutes, but went anyway.

"They told the pimp, that if someone would be coming, he should alert them," she said. "After a while the pimp employed a guardian."

Amnesty says that despite some positive measures by the authorities to combat trafficking, the women and girls are often still treated as criminals - prosecuted for being unlawfully in Kosovo, or charged with prostitution.

Amnesty International is calling on the Kosovo authorities, including Unmik, to:

implement measures to end the trafficking of women and girls to, from and within Kosovo for forced prostitution ensure that measures are taken to protect the victims of trafficking ensure that those trafficked have a right to redress and reparation for the human rights abuses they have suffered Amnesty says Unmik's own figures show that by the end of 2003, 10 of their police officers had been dismissed or repatriated in connection with allegations related to trafficking.

In the year and half to July 2003 some 22-27 KFOR troops were suspected of offences relating to trafficking, the report says.

However, Kfor troops and UN personnel are immune from prosecution in Kosovo and those who have been dismissed relating to such offences have escaped any criminal proceedings in their home countries.

Ms Allen added: "The international community in Kosovo is now adding insult to injury by securing immunity from prosecution for its personnel and apparently hushing up their shameful part in the abuse of trafficked women and girls."

The organisation called on the UN and Nato to implement measures to ensure that any personnel suspected of criminal offences associated with trafficking are brought to justice.

[konijn]

Albania soldiers in rape scandal


The trafficking of women is a continuing problem for Albania
Albanian police say several servicemen have been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a 16-year old girl.
The men are accused of raping the girl before selling her to a gang in Kosovo which forced her into prostitution.

UN staff eventually rescued the girl and helped her to return to Albania.

Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Pellumb Qazimi, who issued a public apology to the girl, has suspended the commander of the base in north-western Albania where the men were stationed.

Some reports say four civilians have also been arrested in connection with the case.

The 16-year-old was first abducted at the Bisht Palle naval base in June and sexually abused by soldiers for two months, according to a police spokesman.

She was then "sold" to Albanian hotel owners, before ending up in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren.

UN officials found her in Kosovo with irregular documents and took her to a rehabilitation centre for trafficked women in Durres.

The teenager has decided to bring charges against her abusers, police say.

Crackdown

Human trafficking and the forced prostitution of women continue to plague post-communist Albania.

Attempts by the authorities to address the problems, in an effort to join eventually join Nato and the European Union, have so far been in vain.

Criminal gangs take advantage of police corruption, a weak judicial system and lax border controls to exploit young women.

A new report, co-written by the UN and the 55-nation Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), has estimated that 120,000 women and children are trafficked into the EU each year, most of them through the Balkans.

[2banana]

Let me see if I understand this:

Christan girls are being abducted from eastern european countries (Moldova, Bulgaria and the Ukraine) and are being to forced to work in the sex industries in mostly Muslim countries (Kosovo and Albania). The main customers are UN personnel.

1. If the situation was reversed, would it be headlines news around the world?
2. The UN is one of the most corrupt organizations that man has ever invented.

[GeraldP]

>>>Criminal gangs take advantage of police corruption, a weak judicial system and lax border controls ...

... and corrupt, autocratic, a**holes who cling to power at the cost of keeping the impoverished nation perpetually substandard.

[cyborg]

This has been going on for years. TIME magazine did an expose about it years ago. It still goes unnoticed.

[gathersnomoss]

I guess the UN had to find other funding options after the Iraq Food for Fuel funds dried up.

[katana]

I'd be interested to know if there has been a war in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age where the presence of troops didn't lead to an increase in the "sex trade". There's a reason why it's called the "World's Oldest Profession".

[joan]

"If the situation was reversed, would it be headlines news around the world?"

If it was unfounded allegations of Serb soldiers taking advantage of 11-year-olds forced into prostitution then it would be declared 'genocide' by the Hague and the mainstream media.

The number of places in Kosovo where trafficked women and girls may be exploited, such as nightclubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and cafes, has increased from 18 in 1999 to more than 200 in 2003.

Was the 1999 figure before of after NATO's war? I wonder if it was 0 when Milosevic was in power.

[2banana]

Maybe if these poor and enslaved girls are forced to make a naked human pyramid, maybe the world will take notice (or at least Bill Clinton).

[GeraldP]

>>>Christan girls ...Muslim countries (Kosovo and Albania).

Wow, this has all the insight of a broken record player.

>>>1. If the situation was reversed, would it be headlines news around the world?

Yeah, let's forget that Albanian pimps export (abduct and exploit) way more women to Italy, Greece and Britain, i.e. Christian countries, than they import from Moldova, Bulgaria etc.

[cyborg]

yep

[Seselj]

This type of thing NEVER happened while the Serbs controlled Kosovo, the brothel would have been flattened with artillery in a second. If the Serbs come back, the problem will stop in a matter of days.

[2banana]

Yeah, let's forget that Albanian pimps export (abduct and exploit) way more women to Italy, Greece and Britain, i.e. Christian countries, than they import from Moldova, Bulgaria etc.

Do have have a source? Since you do not, I will take a guess that these Muslim gangs traffic in Christian girls. If you can show the reverse - ie - mostly Muslim girls being smuggled by mostly Christian gangs - than you may have a point...

[Dr. Frank fan]

I'd be interested to know if there has been a war in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age where the presence of troops didn't lead to an increase in the "sex trade". There's a reason why it's called the "World's Oldest Profession".

Whoa. You seem to be confusing prostitutes ("World's Oldest Profession") with sex slaves.

Not exactly the same thing. You do understand that right?

[GeraldP]

>>>Do have have a source?

How about I will be the source, since I am acquainted with some of the people who have become traffickers. They don't give a sh** about religion, all they care about is money. They could care less whether their victims are Christian or Muslim. As you well know but choose to ignore here, Albania, is slightly majority Muslim, more so in rural areas, where the majority of exploited women are abducted from.

[katana]

Yes I do and I should have read more than the title of the article before posting. My bad.

[2banana]

How about I will be the source, since I am acquainted with some of the people who have become traffickers. They don't give a sh** about religion, all they care about is money. They could care less whether their victims are Christian or Muslim. As you well know but choose to ignore here, Albania, is slightly majority Muslim, more so in rural areas, where the majority of exploited women are abducted from.

That is interesting as I have traveled to many Muslim countries (both in war and peace). Nearly every Muslim male I have encountered (from US college educated to the worst piece of sh*ts) view all non-muslim females as whores and prostitutes. They view having sex with them (or forcing them) as nothing more than "dealing with a insect." Muslims women are not that better off in their lives, but a muslim male would never put a muslim female in a "position" to have sex with infidels.

[DTA]

>>>>>>Yeah, let's forget that Albanian pimps export (abduct and exploit) way more women to Italy, Greece and Britain, i.e. Christian countries, than they import from Moldova, Bulgaria etc.<<<<<<

GeraldP, I have no firm data but based on anectdotal evidence and the names mentioned in the news reports it seems to me that Muslim Albanian thugs export Christian Albanian girls to slavery to "Christian" West.

Am I right?

[JmyBryan]

Maybe they're not stupid enough to take pictures of their disgusting behavior?

[GailA]

MASTER LIST UN FOOD/SEX FOR OIL SCANDALS