Posted on 05/06/2004 8:07:25 AM PDT by konijn
Didn't the term "hooker" come from the "ladies" that followed Gen. Hooker's army around during the Civil War? Or is that
just folklore.
Did you ever wonder about that? Did you ever talk to or try to date a muslim female a get a bunch of dirty looks from every one of your muslim friends? Even though you maybe their friend, you are first an infidel.
Now, it is my experience that muslim women would love to date a westerner. It is just that she still has to live in "her world."
"Relatively few women are abducted, bundled into the back of a car and driven off to be sold. According to the IOM, just over eight per cent of women trafficked from Moldova to Kosovo reported being forcibly abducted; most had chosen to work abroad - almost 60 per cent having been promised work in Italy - although the work and location they were promised was very different from what awaited them."
It appears that the means has shifted away from kidnapping toward subterfuge.
I have spent extensive amounts of time in Albania as well as the Albnaian-populated areas of Macedonia and Kosovo. Interfaith dating and marriage is common. And as Gerald posted earlier, you cannot tell who is what by the names. I had an Albanian translator who was Muslim with a Greek first name, Italian sounding last name, and a Christian boyfriend.
And anyone who has been to Tirana knows you sure cannot tell religion by the way the young women dress--what little of it they wear! I am personally acquainted with three Americans who got married to Muslim Albanian women--to the great acclaim of their families & friends. You cannot take experiences with religious attitudes from elsewhere and extrapolate into Albania--it is different.
Be careful about attaching religious labels to this behavior. The abductors from those Christian areas are mostly also Christian and the UN customers are primarily Christian. Plus as reported in the actual Amnesty International document found here , the trafficking mostly comes thru Serbia--another Christian country:
"Women are trafficked into Kosovo predominantly from Moldova, Bulgaria and Ukraine, the majority of them via Serbia."
These people are simply criminals--to include the so called Christians. More from the report:
Trafficking routes "That night two Serbian men came there and took two other girls and me away. All of us entered [Yugoslavia] illegally firstly by car, and then crossing a river on foot, until we met two other men who were waiting for us. These men took us to a house to spend the night, and the next day somebody else took us to a different house. I do not know the name of the city where we were staying. It was a woman that took us away this time."(59)
More than half (52 per cent) of women who come to Kosovo are trafficked via Serbia, with 22 per cent coming via Macedonia.(60) Women are also trafficked into Kosovo from Albania. According to the UNMIK Border Police, around 10 women a week are trafficked through Prishtinë/Pritina airport, all of whom have apparently lawful contracts of employment.(61)
Serbia's geographical location, a decade of war and sanctions and the flourishing of organized crime(62) has made Serbia a central hub in the trafficking of women from central and eastern Europe into Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and onward into western Europe via Italy or Greece.
Sold "just like a cloth" Women are taken, usually in small groups, to "trading houses" in hotels and private apartments around Belgrade, Panèevo and Novi Sad, and also in Montenegro. There they are paraded in front of potential buyers, often being forced to strip before being sold to their new "owner". "First they would put us to get undressed, and to be only in underwear, to look at us and see how we are looking. If you are looking OK, and they [like you], they will buy you. We were like a rag, just like a cloth."(63)
"They put us in a line, standing up, and then they sit in an armchair and look at us, choosing one of us." "You will not know who bought you. They will just come and tell you that you must get ready because you [have to] leave."(64)
A journalist who visited a "trading house" near Belgrade confirmed these reports. He also observed a man bidding for a woman while talking to the purchaser via mobile phone. (65
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.