Spotlight on trafficking syndicates ahead of 2010 | West Cape News

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Beverley Houston

As the world’s media focuses its attention on the Fifa World Cup 2010 Final Draw in Cape Town on December 4, few will be aware of the impact the tournament may have on the lives of vulnerable women and children targeted by trafficking syndicates.

National Trafficking Awareness Day, which takes place two days before the draw, on December 2, hopes to raise some awareness about the global problem.

“The huge influx of people over this period will drive demand. Of equal concern is the amount of school age children who will be trafficked during this time. We have already come across cases of children going missing in schools and we expect this to escalate over the 2010 period,” said Natalie Bulling, coordinator for Red Light Human Trafficking, an initiative started with the intention of combating and creating awareness about the disturbing prevalence of human trafficking in Southern Africa.

Concerns have been raised by Red Light and other organisations operating in this field, that more than 100 000 people could be trafficked into the country during the World Cup.

Currently South Africa has no legislation to cover human trafficking; as a result, a lot of cases slip through the radar. “The absence of legislation has impacted on the data-collection, investigation and prosecution of people involved with in-country and cross border trafficking,” said Julayga Alfred, Director of Activists Networking against the Exploitation of Child Domestic Workers (Anex CDW).

A global report on trafficking has identified South Africa as source, transit and destination country for the trafficking of women, men and children. The Trafficking in Person’s (TIP) report has put South Africa on the Tier Two Watch list, for the fourth consecutive year for its failure to show increasing efforts to address trafficking. More than 175 countries are included in the report, the most comprehensive worldwide research on the efforts of governments to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons. Ranging from Tier One to Three, the Tier Two Watch list places South Africa in a danger zone in terms of compliance with laws to prevent trafficking.

Director of child rights organisation Molo Songololo, Patric Solomons, said children have been identified as the most vulnerable during the World Cup.

“The vulnerable status of children places them at particular risk of being exploited by their elders in the hope of economic gain. Pull factors specifically related to the 2010 Fifa World Cup are mostly linked to poorer communities’ perceptions regarding the socio-economic benefits of the event,” said Solomons.

The United Nations estimates that child trafficking generates $US7 to $10 billion annually for traffickers, citing trafficking in persons as the second most lucrative crime around the world next to the drug trade.

Solomons said the importance of large-scale awareness campaigns during the World Cup, which is expected to generate more than $4-billion, the highest revenue in World Cup history, is of the utmost importance. - West Cape News

http://westcapenews.com/?p=1220

88 people caught for human trafficking, Dewan Rakyat told | My Sinchew

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2009-11-30 17:28

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 30 (Bernama) -- Since the Anti-Human Trafficking Act 2007 came into force in February 2008, 88 individuals were caught, 39 were charged in court for offences related to the scourge resulting in five convictions, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

He said the authorities had also conducted probes on allegations of government employees involved in human trafficking of Myanmar refugees.

"So far one case is being prosecuted in regard to this issue," he said in his written reply to a question from Lim Lip Eng (DAP-Segambut) in the Dewan Rakyat today.

He added that the government viewed human trafficking seriously and had taken various steps besides introducing the act to combat the scourge.

These included the setting up of an Anti-Human Trafficking Council, drawing up of a five-year strategic action plan on the matter and expediting investigations where foreigners were involved in crimes unless it was serious crimes like murder or drug trafficking.

The government also had forged cooperation with regional and international agencies to tackle human trafficking more effectively, especially in regard to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, said Hishammuddin, adding that the Attorney-General's Chambers had also set up a legal committee to pore through the Act so that any ambiguties in it could be amended.

Meanwhile, Deputy Science, Technology and Innovations Minister Fadillah Yusof said generally, employees at the Malaysian Nuclear Agency were not given any special guarantees or financial incentives besides those normally provided to civil servants.

However, he said certain employees at the agency classified as radiation workers were eligible for extra 14 days annual leave.

"Those handling research work at the reactor there are also given a special allowance of RM150 a month as they had to undergo special training to be qualified to do this work," he said when replying to a question from Mohsin Fadzli Samsuri (PKR-Bagan Serai), who wanted to know about the welfare of the workers at the agency.

Fadillah added that stringent health checks were also conducted at regular intervals to ensure workers at the agency were not exposed to radiation.
MySinchew 2009.11.30

http://www.mysinchew.com/node/32168

Indonesian sex slave breaks silence - CNN.com

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By Arwa Damon
November 19, 2009 8:16 a.m. EST

This report includes graphic content.

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- "People see me as a strong woman," Sunarsih says, "but I was broken inside. I was always crying but I don't want other people to see my cry."

Sunarsih is not this woman's real name. She doesn't want her identity revealed. No one, not even her family, knows what happened to her.

Her story starts 15 years ago, when she was just 17 years old.

"My family was very poor, I had to drop out of school," she explains. "Then I met many successful migrant workers and their stories enticed me."

Sunarsih's situation is not uncommon. Across impoverished villages in Indonesia, becoming a migrant worker is a woman's only chance for a better life.

But for some, the pursuit of their dreams quickly becomes a nightmare.

Sunarsih went to what she thought was a legitimate company. She received training in the basics of housekeeping, a passport for the first time.

"The company announced that an Arab employer was looking for a virgin, brown-skinned, tall housemaid," she remembers. "I was chosen among hundreds. I was so happy, it was like a dream come true. I was so proud. My friends told me how lucky I was to be chosen that quickly."

But two weeks after the Arab man took her to his home in Saudi Arabia, she said the horrors began.

"He was not my real employer. My real employer was his disabled father. The lower part of his body was paralyzed," she shuddered. "He would ask me to give him a massage using a vibrator on his penis."

At first she said no.

"He got very mad at me, he said that he wouldn't pay me," she recalled. "I didn't have the power to refuse. I didn't know where to escape."

She says his nine sons also molested her by groping her body and made her massage them and cook while they were naked.

Finally, one day she found the gate to the house unlocked, pretended to take out the garbage, and ran away. Eventually she ended up in a shelter run by Indonesians. She thought she had been saved; little did she know that the real nightmare was about to begin.

"They tricked me. I ran from a crocodile's mouth and ended up in a lion's mouth," she said.

She says she was sold to a pimp for about $1,300, made to work as a sex slave. At first she tried to fight back.

"The clients would just call him (the pimp) whenever they wanted a girl," she remembered. "They asked me to do anything, from the ordinary to the loathsome."

For more than a year she was brutally raped and sodomized.

"I felt like I was dying. It would have been better for me to commit suicide," she said in an even voice, despite a few tears betraying her pain. "I was humiliated. They treated me like an animal. But the pimp said that the clients paid a very high price for me."

She managed to escape when Saudi police raided the operation. She was jailed for six months and then deported.

Shame and the social stigma kept her from telling her family.

UNICEF estimates that around 100,000 women and children are trafficked as sex slaves both inside and outside of Indonesia.

Normawati is a one-woman NGO trying to help out migrant workers.

"Many of them go abroad with the proper documents, legally. But then they run into problems and land themselves into an illegal status," she explains. "Then they meet people on the streets who say they can help, they promise to take the migrant to an embassy, while in fact they sell them."

Protecting these women is the respective governments' responsibility, she said.

Reputable companies are equipping their migrant workers with the basics in self defense, aware of the potential problems they could face.

Fadlum Umar, the director of PT Amri, a hiring agency which processes some 2,000 migrant workers a month, said her company takes this problem very seriously. Her company has local offices that the women can turn to if they end up in a precarious situation.

"As soon as I get information on a sexual abuse case we fly the migrant worker home immediately," she tells us. "We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual abuse on the part of the employer."

Sunarsih never reported her case to the police. The company that employed her has since disappeared for reasons unknown.

She remains defiant in the face of what she endured, but can't escape.

"I am nearly 40 now," she said, "and I still don't know what true happiness is."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/17/indonesia.sex.slave/index.html

Anti-Slavery - 04092009 Trafficker jailed

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A Hungarian man, who forced his girlfriend into prostitution in London, has been jailed for five years for trafficking offences.

Bertalan Lakatos, 27, first travelled to Austria and Netherlands with his 35-year-old girlfriend and forced her to work as a prostitute after the pair fell into financial trouble. He eventually brought her to the UK where he she continued to work as a prostitute on the streets of London.

For more than two years he regularly beat and raped his girlfriend, as well as taking all of her earnings. He was arrested in April last year after she finally reported him to the police.

Following an investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police Human Trafficking Team, Lakatos was sentenced to five years in jail after being found guilty of two sex trafficking charges, two charges of controlling prostitution and a charge of actual bodily harm.

Detective Inspector Steve Wilkinson, head of the Met’s Human Trafficking Team, said: “We hope that this result will encourage any other victims to come forward and speak with police who may have felt that they couldn't do so before.

“It is only by the bravery and courage of those who have experienced such a horrendous crime coming forward that we are able to secure results. In doing so, the Met's Human Trafficking Team has successfully brought to justice someone who strives to violate and exploit others for their own greed.”

Klara Skrivankova, Trafficking Programme Co-ordinator at Anti-Slavery International, said: “I am pleased to see yet another success of the Human Trafficking Team. This shows that specialised anti-trafficking policing is needed to ensure that traffickers are brought to justice. In future, we need to see more teams like this working across the country.”

04 November 2009

http://www.antislavery.org/english/press_and_news/news_and_press_releases_2009/040909_trafficker_jailed.aspx

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Statement against Human Trafficking, modern day slavery

Cover of Faith

Adopted by Mennonite Church USA Delegate Assembly, Columbus, Ohio July 4, 2009

The request for this statement comes from the Mennonite Women USA Board of Directors (spring 2009). Members include: Rebecca Sommers, Ruth Lapp Guengerich, Gail Harder, Jean Kilheffer Hess, Gail Shetler, Mary Clemens Meyer, Cora L. Brown, Barb Voth, Regina Shands Stoltzfus, Twila King Yoder, Carolyn Holderread Heggen.

Preamble: To join with other Christian denominations in a united voice against the evil of human trafficking, we present this statement of our opposition to all forms of human slavery.

Definition: Trafficking in persons includes the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of:

* Sex trafficking – in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person forced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years; or
* Labor Trafficking – in which a person is subjected to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. (from Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 2000)
* Any other forms of human trafficking

Is human trafficking happening today?

* Human trafficking is the third largest criminal industry in the world (with the first and second being drug trafficking and arms trafficking).
* 12-30 million persons are victims worldwide.
* 12-18 thousand persons in the United States
* 2.2 million children are sold into sexual slavery each year.
* 80% of victims are female with a disproportionately high number women of color.
* 50% of victims are children under the age of 18.

Why is a statement by Mennonite Church USA against human trafficking needed?

* A statement can be used to assist Mennonite Church USA members and agencies in advocacy for laws which protect victims.
* A statement provides education for Mennonite Church USA members. Victims of human trafficking look like many of the people we see everyday. As Christians who see Christ in every person we meet, we need to know the signs of those who may be victimized.
* A statement compels us to effectively support those who have been enslaved in finding healing in their lives.

This is our faith:

We believe that God has created human beings in the divine image (Genesis 1:26-31). God formed them from the dust of the earth and gave them a special dignity among all the works of creation. Human beings have been made for relationship with God, to live in peace with each other, and to take care of the rest of creation. (Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, Article 6)

When we care for people who are oppressed and stop violence against them, we show that we are people of God. The prophets repeatedly call on people of faith to stop oppressing those who are poor and vulnerable (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zechariah, Malachi, etc). Jesus urged us to care for one another and offer healing to the hurting (e.g., woman with the issue of blood, Samaritan woman, Canaanite woman).

All violence is fundamentally incompatible with the reign of Jesus Christ in God’s kingdom of love. Therefore, as followers of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, we must directly confront the reality of violence in and around us. Jesus calls us not to resist evil with violence and to forgive rather than to seek revenge. We want to find ways to reject all forms of violence in our relationships and endeavors, and to increase our efforts to live out the nonviolent way of Jesus. (And No One Shall Make Them Afraid, 1997, statement on violence)
This is our hope:

God is actively creating a world in which all can thrive. All will be able to “…sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” No one will labor in vain, or bear children for calamity. All will receive God’s blessing. (Micah 4:4, Is. 65:23)

God invites us to join this creative work and follow Jesus in carrying out his mission: to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to those who are oppressed. (Luke 4:18)
This is how we, as God strengthens us, choose to express our love:

As the scripture in Judges 19 responds to heinous violence against a woman, we also will “Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.”

Consider it: Become educated; learn what is happening in our communities and worldwide and our own responsibility as consumers. Repent of all activities connected with the evil of trafficking. This includes use of pornographic material and purchase of products created through known labor trafficking.

Take counsel: Consult with others working against this evil. Be aware of safe procedures when seeking help for any suspected victims.

Speak out: As a body of Christ, we join our voices against all forms of human slavery. We commit to advocate for laws that protect victims and hold offenders accountable. We commit to taking personal responsibility as consumers, and to care for and seek healing for those who have been enslaved.

Our faith, hope, and love give us courage to participate in God's work of redemption, healing and justice.

Statement prepared by:

Rhoda Keener, Mennonite Women USA
Susan Mark Landis, Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership Peace and Justice
Linda Gehman Peachey, Mennonite Central Committee, Women’s Advocacy

http://www.mennoniteusa.org/Home/Convention/Delegates/Resolutions/HumanTrafficking/tabid/1210/Default.aspx

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On the hunt for China's child snatchers

Image by Planet Love via Flickr

Over 2,000 trafficked children have been rescued since China's government began a crackdown on the trade in stolen children earlier this year.

But as the BBC's Damian Grammaticas reports from Beijing, many thousands of children are being snatched off the streets to be sold every year and most are never recovered.

The footage from the CCTV security camera is soft and blurred, but a man can be seen walking down a street carrying a child away in the night.

He glances over his shoulder, wary. This is a child kidnapper in the act of committing his crime.

The man has snatched the boy off the street in Dongguan in southern China where he was playing.

Another camera films the abductor as he gets tired, pauses, puts the boy down, then picks him up and sets off again.

His air is unhurried. There are many passersby, but nobody questions him.

There are thousands of cases like this in China every year - children, often boys, stolen to be sold for profit.

Detective work

In another case a camera mounted in a bus station catches a man luring a boy into his trap.

The man is sitting, holding a baby turtle in his hand.

A young boy comes up to him, his sister by his side, to look at the animal. But it is the boy, three-and-a-half-year-old Luo Run, who is the target, not the girl.

He was abducted and spirited hundreds of miles away by a gang of traffickers.

In Luo Run's case the police were able to identify the man who snatched him.

Trailing the gang took them to the mountains of southern Fujian province.

There, posing as buyers looking for a child, detectives arranged a meeting with the so-called snakehead, the gangster who had sold the boy on.

The demand for children is driven by a deep-seated preference in southern China for sons, boys to keep the family name alive who have a duty to care for aged parents.

And some parents are prepared to buy a stolen child if they can not have a boy of their own.

It is thought China's One Child Policy exacerbates the problem. Couples the law applies to who have a girl first cannot then legally have another child, so many turn to the traffickers to procure a boy.

Arresting the snakehead who had sold Luo Run led detectives to trace and free not only him, but also more than a dozen children, all of whom had been stolen and traded to families in the area.

The children were all taken back to Guangdong province where they had come from and were reunited with their parents.

Abductions rising

Luo Run's parents are poor migrant labourers who live in a tiny flat in a workers' block in Guangzhou.

They say their son ended up with a well-off elderly couple who were desperate for a son of their own and showered the boy with toys. When he was rescued it took him days to accept his real parents again. Now they never let him out of their sight.

"When my son went missing, it was like my heart was being cut into pieces. It was the darkest time of my life, words cannot describe it," Luo Run's father Luo An Xin says.

"When my son came back, everything suddenly became clear, and it filled my heart with joy."

Happy as it is, Luo Run's rescue is an exception.

Nobody knows how many children are being kidnapped every year. But parents say it is thousands, and most are never recovered.

Even China's Supreme People's Court has said the numbers of stolen children are rising.

This week it sentenced two men to death for kidnapping and trading 15 children. It may be a sign that China's government wants to send a signal that it is cracking down on the trade.

Desperate search

On the streets of southern China's teeming factory towns the children of migrant labourers, playing unsupervised, are easy prey for the traffickers.

Two thousand stolen children have been recovered by Chinese police in a special operation launched this year, but often China's authorities can be callous in their response to the problem.

Some parents say local officials often do not want to deal with cases of stolen children. They say they have been warned to keep quiet and not campaign publicly to find their children lest they disturb social order.

Peng Gaofeng's two-year-old son Le Le was abducted right outside his shop. Le Le was a cheeky, vivacious boy, doted on by his parents.

Security camera footage shows a man walking away holding the boy. But it is too blurred to show the face of the man.

Peng Gaofeng agrees to meet us, but only discreetly in a local restaurant.

He has travelled across southern China looking for his son. He has put up posters and been on television.

But since he began his public campaign to find Le Le and other children, he says he has been monitored by police and warned against making too much fuss.

"If there were just one or two cases it would be a minor thing for the police. But there are thousands of us who've lost our kids. It's a massive issue," Peng Gaofeng says.

"By campaigning openly we undermine the image the government wants to project that this is a harmonious society."

For some officials finding Peng Gaofeng's child appears less important than preserving the facade of order.

So all he has now are some pictures of his son, and the security camera footage showing Le Le, vanishing into the night.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8383424.stm

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Rescued - seven foreign human trafficking victims, Sabah, Malaysia.

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Published on: Friday, November 27, 2009

Kota Kinabalu: Police rescued seven foreign women, believed to be victims of human trafficking, from a house in Tawau on Nov. 24.

Acting on a tip-off, an anti-vice raid by a team from the Crime Investigation Department at State police headquarters, zeroed in on a double-storey wooden house where the women, aged between 19 and 30, were being kept.

State Officer-in-Charge of Crime Investigation, SAC II Zainal Abidin Kasim, said the team also arrested four other foreigners, including three men aged between 21 and 30 and a 24-year-old woman.

"We arrested them under the Anti-Trafficking In Persons Act 2007 (ATIP 2007). The four suspects acted as their (victims) guardians and have used these seven women for the purpose of exploitation," he said, Thursday.

He said police also seized a Proton Wira car belonging to the suspects.

"We suspect they have been using the car to transport the victims to locations to carry out immoral services. For the time being, we have placed the women in a safe house where we will keep them for a maximum of three months.

"They are now under the Interim Protection Order (IPO) care. We will provide counselling and record their statements before sending them back," he said.

Police have so far solved six cases under the Act and rescued 26 women throughout the State this year.

Suspects would be investigated under Section 12 of the ATIP 2007, which provides for imprisonment of up to 15 years and a fine, if convicted.

Zainal Abidin advised the public to act as a watchdog for the police and provide information should there be any exploitation cases in their respective area.

"Exploitation here means all forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery, servitude, any illegal activity (example: trading in persons being a child) or the removal of human organs. We urge the public to work together with the police to eradicate such activities," he said.

http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=69132

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Bulgaria fights uphill battle against trafficking | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 28.11.2009

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28.11.2009

Bulgaria has long struggled with corruption that has allowed human trafficking and organized crime to spread beyond its borders. But experts say the police and judiciary are starting to fight these problems.

Slavery isn't a word that comes to mind as you stroll along Sofia's fashionable boulevards. But Bulgaria has long been a haven for traffickers who target the country's poorest people, using violence and threats to force their victims into labor, prostitution and crime rings in the West.

According to Risk Monitor, an NGO working to prevent organized crime and corruption in the country, trafficking may have become more visible with the collapse of communism 20 years ago. But it has a history that reaches back to the days of the regime.

"During communism in Bulgaria, it was impossible to say for ideological reasons that trafficking, exploitation or prostitution was happening - these things were very well hidden by the state," said Iva Pushkarova of Risk Monitor. "The communist state itself supported the trafficking of human begins - not entirely for sexual exploitation, but for labor."

When the communist government was ousted in 1989, organized criminal groups took over the trade in forced human labor.

"These criminal organizations were created by the state during communism," Puskarova said. "They just separated themselves from the state after the fall of communism."

Lured abroad under false pretences

Because of her work, Pushkarova has become familiar with the stories of many women and girls who have been forced into crime or prostitution by human traffickers - girls like Rosaria, who was married off to a man 10 years her elder when she was only 16. Her husband took her to Italy, where he said she would work in a restaurant.

"He took me to the owner of a restaurant, and during this meeting, the owner gave my husband a lot of money," she recalled. "I didn't understand why. They said I would live in the restaurant because it was safer than walking home every night. I was taken to a room and I started to understand I was sold as a prostitute."

Rosaria was not the only Bulgarian girl being held captive in the rooms above the restaurant. She said that when she told the others that she wanted to escape, they told her it was too dangerous. The owner of the restaurant had the support of the local police.

Eventually, one of the girls gave Rosaria a pamphlet from an organization which rescues and protects people who have been trafficked. Rosaria hid the pamphlet until she could convince a client to let her use his mobile phone.

Two weeks later, the owner of the restaurant found out that the Bulgarian police were searching for Rosaria, and threw her out. She found the local police station and returned home to Bulgaria.

In many cases, though, it's not safe for victims to return home after they've been rescued. And those who do, often struggle to overcome the trauma they've experienced, said Svetlin Markov of Animus. The organization in Sofia runs a crisis center, a 24-hour hotline and reintegration programs for survivors.

"We try to help empower women to be more confident about the future, to be more confident in society, and to see that even though they were victims of trafficking in this society, there are individuals who can help," Markov said.

Lack of government commitment

But Markov said that, for the Bulgarian government, trafficking simply isn't a priority. That's reflected in a lack of funding for Animus, meaning the crisis center can only accommodate survivors for one month. After that, they need to find their own accommodation. It's an almost impossible task, as they have no money and there are no shelters.

"Under the anti-trafficking law in Bulgaria, the national commissioner is responsible for setting up shelters, but for almost six years, there haven't been any working shelters in Bulgaria," Markov said. "Our crisis unit is an exception."

Raising funds to fight trafficking is a difficult task in a country which saw its EU funds stopped last year because of corruption and poor administration. Both Markov and Pushkarova said funding, improved social policy and education were the keys to preventing trafficking.

"You need to address the roots of the problem and the roots of the problem are social," Pushkarova said. "They come from being completely uneducated, to being marginalised from society, to being unemployed for a very long time."

She said that while there's a long road ahead, there have also been some improvements.

"My research shows that the Bulgarian judiciary and police have done an enormous amount of work in the last year," she said. "We are on the brink of a great wave of successful court proceedings, and at present, we're in the midst of social change."

Author: Saroja Coelho (dc)
Editor: Sabina Casagrande

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4931501,00.html

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MEPs launch new bid to protect victims of modern slave trade (Hodge Hill Liberal Democrats)

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2.40.25pm GMT Wed 25th Nov 2009

Liz Lynne hopes the new Declaration calling for action to protect victims will help police make successful prosecutions of suspected traffickers. She supported the police's Blue Blindfold campaign to report suspected trafficking

Liberal Democrat MEP Liz Lynne has launched a new bid in the European Parliament to step up action against human trafficking gangs and to protect the victims of the modern day slave trade.

The MEP for the West Midlands region has teamed up with three other Euro MPs to launch a Written Declaration in the Parliament calling for Britain and other EU Member States to allow victims of trafficking gangs or forced labour to have access to temporary residence permits while they rebuild their lives and see if they can help prosecute the criminals that exploited them.

The Declaration, which calls on countries to opt in to Council Directive 2004/81/EC of 29 April 2004, also urges coordinated schemes to help victims who want to go back to their home country.

The MEPs are also urging all EU countries to sign up to and ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking of Human Beings.

Liz Lynne said: "I believe a new EU Parliament Declaration is needed to encourage further international action against human trafficking and the modern slave trade, which the UN estimates affects 12.3 million people worldwide. There are credible estimates that between 600 000 to 800 000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year and many are forced into prostitution.

"I hope as many MEPs as possible will sign up to this Declaration to show that this Parliament will not tolerate a modern slave trade or forced labour in Europe, or indeed anywhere else. We need 369 signatures from MEPs in order to adopt the declaration and get a debate held.

"The Council of Europe Convention on Trafficking concentrates more on the victim and every EU state needs to ratify it. We need more co-ordinated international action against this evil and an increased focus on helping the victims, not less.

"EU member states must also implement Directive 2004/81 on residence permits for the victims of trafficking; the UK has still not opted into this - that way convictions for trafficking will be easier to obtain."

Liz Lynne has campaigned against human trafficking for many years, as shadow rapporteur for a European Parliament report, the author of written declaration and parliamentary questions on the issue.

ENDS

http://www.hodgehill.libdems.org.uk/news/000097/meps_launch_new_bid_to_protect_victims_of_modern_slave_trade.html

Sex Slavery Not Foreign to Memphis, Mid-South

Image by M.V. Jantzen via Flickr

By LINDA RAITERI | Special to The Daily News

Among the charges filed against North Carolina mother Antoinette Nicole Davis after her daughter’s body was found in a wooded area Nov. 16 was human trafficking – that she had sold her child into prostitution.

Searchers found Shaniya Davis, 5, alongside a highway outside Sanford, N.C., after she had been kidnapped, taken to a motel and raped by her mother’s boyfriend.

If true, that young girl’s slavery ended with her death, but thanks to Memphis FBI Special Agent Tracey Harris and others, a much brighter future awaits another girl named Soledad, who recently was reunited with family members after a harrowing stint as a child sex slave in Memphis and other Mid-South cities.
Life in captivity

The story of Soledad’s freedom began on Oct. 13, 2006, when local and federal law enforcers shut down six Memphis brothels. The 12-year-old girl no longer would be forced into sex with as many as 60 men a day.

Before becoming a slave, Soledad had lived with her mother, father and sister in a dirt-floored hut several miles outside of Oaxaca, Mexico, when a trusted family friend encouraged the parents to allow their daughter to work in Nashville.

Christina Perfecto had returned to Mexico from her new home in Nashville around 2005, promising Soledad’s parents their child would have a better life if she went to work in the restaurant Perfecto’s boyfriend owned in the States. The parents eventually acquiesced.

During Soledad’s first day in Nashville, she was viciously raped by Perfecto’s boyfriend, Juan Mendez, then told she would be working as a prostitute, Harris said.

The child was placed in the so-called “circuit,” where she would be moved from bordellos from Lexington, Ky., to Gadsden or Birmingham, Ala., to Nashville and Memphis.

On her first day in Lexington, Soledad was forced to have sex with 60 men. Sometimes she worked out of a trailer set up near construction sites.

“The johns range in age from very young to very old, and it is typically $30 for 15 minutes (of sex),” Harris said. “And of all the money (Soledad) made, she was never allowed to keep a dime.”

Soledad depended completely on Perfecto and Mendez for food, shelter and what little clothing she had.

The two threatened to kill her family if she didn’t comply. Her only language was a local Mayan dialect; she could communicate with no one, Harris said. The traffickers did, however, send some money to her family in Mexico. Harris said all Soledad wanted was to go home.
Quiet desperation

Dubbed “white slavery” in the 1880s, human trafficking is a lucrative business.

With global profits of more than $91.2 billion a year, human trafficking is second only to the illicit drug trade, according to “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery ” by Siddharth Kara.

No local estimates were available, but sex traffickers racked up profits of $35.7 billion in 2007 alone, Kara wrote in his book.

“We don’t know how much of this is going on locally,” said Jonathan Skrmetti, trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Memphis office. “We had a domestic servitude case where a Milwaukee couple – two doctors – was convicted of forcing a Philippine woman to work for them. They kept her in the basement for 19 years. The neighbors didn’t even know about her.”

Human trafficking most often takes the form of forced labor. Immigrants are especially vulnerable, but as another recent Memphis case demonstrates – Leonard “Anton” Fox contracted out the pimping of 12- to 17-year-old girls from foster homes and local apartment complexes – exploitation respects no boundaries.

Fox, who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in February to finding and recruiting underage girls for his sex trafficking business, faces from 10 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced in May.

“These are things that the FBI was not aware were happening here in Shelby County,” Harris said during a recent meeting of the League of Women Voters.

There are an estimated 18,000 victims of human trafficking in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, and about 29 million worldwide.

They may be legal or illegal immigrants, or native born. Some work as exotic dancers, street peddlers or domestic staff. Some work in nail salons or child care facilities, in construction, landscaping, restaurants, luxury hotels or factories.

Women and young girls from Central America and Asia comprise the majority of slaves in cases the FBI has cracked.

Although most young men are funneled into migrant farming, restaurant and other service industries, the agency has reported increasing numbers of them in the commercial sex industry. Still, the United Nations Labor Organization estimates 56 percent of forced labor victims are women and girls.
Raising the alarm

It often takes a community to derail even one case of slavery.

In the case of Mendez and Perfecto’s crimes, someone tipped off the Memphis Police Department, which in turn cooperated with its counterpart in Nashville, U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, to bring Mendez, Perfecto and 12 others to trial.

Mendez was sentenced in federal court to 50 years in prison. Perfecto, also a victim of trafficking, has not yet been sentenced.

Three Memphis men were sentenced in February 2008 in connection with the prostitution ring after pleading guilty in January 2007.

One was sentenced to 60 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release, according to information from the Justice Department. The second was sentenced to 41 months in prison with 10 years of supervised release, and the third got 16 months and three years of supervision. Six others pleaded guilty as well.

Associated Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, YWCA of the Mid-South and the Baltimore-based World Relief organization assisted the victims and witnesses. Catholic Charities even arranged a Mass for the victims.

Meanwhile, Soledad, who recently was reunited with her family when they were brought to the United States on a special visa, is doing well and plans to become an attorney to help other victims of trafficking, Harris said.

Experts agree that economic instability and a lack of support systems are major factors in the worldwide increase in human trafficking.

With growing international awareness of slavery has come an increase in the number of non-governmental agencies working to eliminate it. Among them is Triad Ladder of Hope in Greensboro, N.C.

In response to the recent death of the 5-year-old North Carolina girl, the organization’s executive director, Danielle Mitchell, said, “The reason we have children for sale for sex is because we have people that are willing to buy them.”
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Enslaved hooker's dead baby found during bust of sex trafficking ring

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

BY John Marzulli, Kerry Burke and Jonathan Lemire
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Thursday, November 26th 2009, 4:00 AM

A bust of a sex trafficking ring in Brooklyn led to a ghastly find - an enslaved hooker's baby entombed in concrete.

Feds and cops raided a Sunset Park flophouse late Tuesday and arrested the brothel's ringleaders and found a 10-gallon Rubbermaid container filled with cement.

X-rays revealed the body of a two-month-old boy sealed inside, officials said.

Domingo Salazar, 33, and Norma Mendez, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court last night on sex trafficking charges and could face additional counts, law enforcement sources said.

The couple, illegal immigrants from Mexico, forced a young woman into prostitution, viciously abused her and barred her from getting medical care for the infant when he fell ill last January, investigators said.

When the baby died, Salazar and Mendez allegedly forced the mom to dispose of the body in the container, which sat in the 40th St. apartment until yesterday.

"It's horrific," said Carmen Burgos, 45. who works nearby. "I can't have kids and I can't believe they did this to a baby. They couldn't be in their right minds."

The duo launched the prostitution ring out of their 40th St. apartment in April 2007, according to a federal affidavit.

Two months earlier, Salazar met the young woman in Mexico, got her pregnant, and smuggled her into the United States - telling her galpal Mendez was his sister, sources said.

She gave birth to Salazar's son soon after arriving in New York in November 2007, officials said. He still insisted she repay the $2,500 smuggling fee.

"She was working in a candy store but then she was forced to sell sex," said Special Agent in Charge James Hayes Jr. of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "She was in bad shape."

The woman was driven to customers across the city, made to service up to 25 clients a night and forced to turn over all her earnings, officials said.

Salazar and Mendez frequently abused the woman, punching her in the stomach, slashing her in the arm, hitting her in the head with a brick and bashing her in the face with a wooden board, officials said.

After investigators received a tip about the brothel, the woman, whose name was not released, was rescued from the 40th St. home and is now recovering.

"The girl was always in a short skirt and covered in bruises," said a neighbor. "You'd see different men coming in and out."

Investigators believe Salazar and Mendez also forced other immigrant women into prostitution but they have not been located. The accused pimps face 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

"The trafficking of human beings and sex slavery are unconscionable in this day and age and will not be tolerated," said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell.

jlemire@nydailynews.com

With Scott Shifrel

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/11/26/2009-11-26_dead_baby_found_in_brothel_bust_horror.html

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China executes two men convicted of child trafficking

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China has executed two men convicted of abducting and selling children, state media has reported.

Hu Minghua, 55, and Su Binde, 27 were earlier found guilty of kidnapping and selling 15 children, mostly young boys, Xinhua news agency said.

It said only six of the children, most of them aged between three and six, had been returned to their families.

Last month Chinese police said they had recovered more than 2,000 children in a six-month campaign against trafficking.

In the latest case, it is unclear whom the children were being sold to.

But the BBC's Damien Grammaticas in Beijing says China's "one-child" policy - combined with a preference for sons - is party responsible for the rise in child trafficking within the country.

Boys in China can be bought for about $5,000 (£3,036) each. They are prized as they continue the family name and traditionally care for elderly parents, our correspondent adds.

Crackdown

Hu Minghua and Su Binde were executed on Thursday, Xinhua said.

Hu had been convicted of snatching and selling nine children in 1999-2005, while Su had been found guilty for kidnapping and selling six children in 2005-06.

Many of the children are snatched while playing on the street or waiting at bus and train stations.

Their parents are often poor migrant workers unable to keep a constant watch over the children.

In its attempt to try to curb the trade, China has this year handed down a total of 1,700 convictions.

Since April, 2,008 children have been rescued across the country, and some have already been reunited with their parents, officials say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8383116.stm

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Human trafficking fuels violence against women

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25 November 2009 - As the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, UNODC is drawing attention to how human trafficking fuels violence against women.

In its Global Report on Trafficking in Persons UNODC revealed that two thirds of the identified victims of trafficking were women.

In his message for the day, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that whether the crime against women is rape, domestic violence, genital mutilation or trafficking for sexual exploitation, it is inexcusable and must be stopped.

Human trafficking is, indeed, one of the worst forms of violence against women and girls. Traffickers may use violence to intimidate and subdue the victims. Once recruited, the women usually find themselves in situations with severely curtailed freedoms. Many times they suffer extreme physical and mental abuse, including through rape, imprisonment, forced abortions and physical brutality at the hands of their so-called "owners". The victims become isolated, losing ties with their former lives and families.

With a better understanding of why women in particular are vulnerable to trafficking and how traffickers operate, and by providing the necessary legal and technical assistance to ensure that effective countermeasures are in place, this crime can be stopped.

Violence against women does not only concern women. It concerns everyone, and the work to combat it must be done by all. Women around the world are the linchpin keeping families, communities and nations together. Eliminating gender discrimination and gender-based violence will enhance the dignity and human rights of women and girls and help prevent their being trafficked.

Addressing human trafficking cuts across all fundamental issues. It is about human rights, peace and security, development and family health. In the most basic sense, it is about preserving the fabric of society. We all have a role to play, either in raising awareness, building partnerships, providing information, protecting victims or bringing the criminals to justice.

In 2008, Secretary-General Ban launched the UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, which aims to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls in all parts of the world. UNiTE calls on Governments, civil society, women's organizations, young people, the private sector, the media and the entire United Nations system to join forces in addressing the global pandemic of violence against women and girls.

This year, as part of the UNiTE campaign, the Secretary-General started the UNiTE Network of Men Leaders to End Violence against Women. The Network consists of men - young and old - who have pledged to work to end violence against women and girls. These men will add their voices to the growing global chorus for action, and each has pledged to take concrete steps in his community of influence and create partnerships with women to end this violence.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2009/November/human-trafficking-fuels-violence-against-women.html

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BBC News - 'Fat for cosmetics' murder suspects arrested in Peru

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Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before killing them and extracting their fat.

The liquidised product fetched $15,000 (£9,000) a litre and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.

At least five other suspects, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.

Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in Peru's Huanuco and Pasco regions.

One of those arrested told police the ringleader had been killing people for their fat for more than three decades.

The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.

Human tissue

At a news conference in the capital, police showed reporters two bottles containing human body fat and images of one of the alleged victims.

One of the alleged killings is reported to have taken place in mid-September, with the person's body tissue removed for sale.

Cmdr Angel Toledo told Reuters news agency some of the suspects had "declared and stated how they murdered people with the aim being to extract their fat in rudimentary labs and sell it".

Police said they suspect the fat was sold to cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies in Europe, but have not confirmed any such connection.
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The group allegedly sold body fat to be used in cosmetics in Europe

Human fat is used in modern cosmetic procedures but in most cases it is the patient's own fat that is used and under strict legal guidelines.

Medical authorities have expressed scepticism about a black market for human fat, partly because of the wide availability of fat for use in surgical procedures.

'Detailed confession'

Gen Felix Burga, head of Peru's police criminal division, said there were indications that "an international network trafficking human fat" was operating from Peru.

The first person was arrested earlier this month in a bus station in Lima, carrying a shipment of the fat.

The Associated Press news agency quoted Col Jorge Mejia as saying one of the suspects had described to police in detail how the victims were killed and their fat removed.

The suspect said the fat was then sold to intermediaries in Lima and that the gang's leader, Hilario Cudena, had been carrying out such murders for decades, AP reported.

The alleged buyers of the fat are also being hunted by police.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8369674.stm

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Forced labour and rape, the new face of slavery in America | World news | The Observer

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In the Midwestern heartland, police are encountering a new social evil: trafficking, often involving women and children who are forced to work as prostitutes or unpaid labour; and the outcomes can be brutal.

* Paul Harris in Dayton, Ohio
* The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009

Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery.

Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan.

"It is not only a crime. It is an abomination," said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue. In Ohio a human trafficking commission has just been set up to study the problem, while in the northern Ohio city of Toledo a special FBI task force is tackling the issue. For many local law enforcement officials, it is a bewildering new world.

In one recent incident a 16-year-old Mexican girl was found to have been trafficked across the US border. Doctors noticed the heavily pregnant girl showed clear signs of physical abuse when she was brought into a hospital in Dayton to give birth. The police were called but the couple who had brought her had already fled. When the girl's story emerged, it became clear she had been kept against her will in the nearby city of Springfield and used for labour and sex. "I thought slavery ended a few centuries ago. But here it is alive and well," said Springfield's sheriff, Gene Kelly.

He emphasised the risks to the girl's baby after it had been born if the doctors had not been so alert: "Like the mother, the baby could have ended up a victim for years to come. Who knows? Future labour? Future person to traffic?"

Ohio anti-trafficking campaigner Phil Cenedella, founder of Combating Trafficking Anywhere, believes that the baby was destined to be sold off by her captors. "They would have put the kid on the black market. It is crazy that this is happening." Human trafficking – defined as forcing someone against their will to work for no reward – has been dubbed modern slavery. At the Dayton conference, it was discussed as a growing social problem, not in some far-off foreign land, but among the cornfields of Ohio.

"The problems are broader than we realised," said Ohio's attorney general, Richard Cordray. "What we want to do is find and disrupt these networks."

One of the country's leading anti-trafficking advocates is Theresa Flores, a former victim. Flores puts a different kind of face on human trafficking in America. She is white, middle-class and blond and looks the epitome of a suburban American woman. She grew up in a wealthy suburb of Detroit in Michigan and did well at school. Yet Flores tells a nightmarish story of two years being drugged, raped and sold for sex.

Flores, whose ordeal was turned into a book called The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's Story of Modern Day Slavery, was attacked and raped when she was 15. Her assailant used the threat of photographs he had taken during her rape to force her into having sex with strangers. She became the effective prisoner of a drugs gang that used her as a prostitute and kept her earnings, or gave her away free to gang members as a "reward". "People don't think that trafficking looks like me or that it can happen to someone who came from a nice neighbourhood. But it does. People need to see outside that box," said Flores.

Flores said that her lowest point came when the gang took her to a seedy motel where she was raped by as many as two dozen men. She woke up alone, abused and with no clothes. "I was told I would die if I told anyone. It happened over and over for two years as I became a sex slave for those men," she said.

Anti-trafficking campaigners point out that cases in the US come in a wide variety of forms involving men, women and children. One major area is that of trafficked labour with people used for domestic work or, more commonly, for back-breaking labour in agricultural industries. But trafficking cases have also occurred in businesses such as restaurants, hair salons and beauty parlours. The overwhelming majority of the rest are sex cases, usually involving young women or children forced into prostitution. The methods used to keep people vary. They include confiscating the passports of those brought in from a foreign country or the threat of extreme violence. Other tactics are to threaten family members if a victim does not comply or, as in Flores's case, to use blackmail.

Trafficking represents a new challenge to law enforcement, especially in regions which have traditionally not thought of it as a major problem. That is especially true where it happens within an immigrant community. Languages are a problem as well as cultural issues and a natural fear that many immigrants – some of them possibly illegal – have of contacting the police.

Kelly believes that is the case in Springfield, a town that is almost the Midwestern archetype. It was once featured in a story in Newsweek magazine entitled "The American Dream". But its 65,000 citizens also face all the problems of a modern America in the grip of a deep recession: an immigration crisis and profoundly changing demographics. The town now hosts several prominent minority communities who make up more than a fifth of its population, including Russians, Chinese, Latinos and Somalis. "There are a lot of people who distrust law enforcement. We need to break down those barriers. Our officers need training, especially in languages," said Kelly. "If you can't speak to people, you can't reach them."

Some commentators and experts have accused victims' advocates and academics of overstating the problem, arguing the problem has been exaggerated and expressing scepticism at the notion that vast organised criminal networks are dealing in human beings for sex or labour. Law enforcement officers also acknowledge that the definitions of trafficking may need refining.

In North Carolina last week the mother of a five-year-old girl was charged with human trafficking after being accused of offering her daughter for sex. The child was later found dead. The crime was horrific, but the distinction between trafficking and simple, sadistic child abuse might not be immediately obvious.

"We have a problem with definition. It is not always straightforward and easy to explain," said Laura Clemmens, a government lawyer in Dayton. "The hard part is bringing it into the light. At the moment these crimes are clouded in secrecy."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/22/people-trafficking-usa-prostitution-ohio

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Human Trafficking Unit Hits Streets - San Antonio News Story - KSAT San Antonio

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Rosenda Rios, KSAT 12 News Reporter

POSTED: Sunday, November 22, 2009
UPDATED: 8:58 am CST November 23, 2009

SAN ANTONIO -- The impact of local human trafficking shocked San Antonio a few weeks ago when we first introduced the problem of teenager girls, being snatched, drugged and forced into performing sexual acts.

Authorities say it's no longer just a problem overseas, but a problem that's now in our own back yard.

In order to help fight the problem, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office created a Human Trafficking Unit a couple of years ago.

Since then, many local agencies have gotten involved such as Catholic Charities to not only help get young victims of prostitution off the streets but get medical help and education.

Detectives Ochoa and Garza, the county's HT Unit, allowed us to ride along with one evening. We discovered the unit will sometimes work regular shifts during the day, then put in extra hours beginning around midnight into the early morning hours, patrolling the city, looking for young victims of human trafficking.

"We're finding more and more of our own citizens being forced into prostitution, " Ochoa said while driving the streets of San Antonio.

Their goal is to be on the look out for underage prostitutes.

Detective Garza has been part of the unit for several years.

"We don't do this to arrest the girls, we do this because we care about them, because they've been mistreated, sometimes even treated like dogs by their pimps, that they don't realize that people care about them and that's our message to them, we want to help get them off the streets," said Garza.

Members of the unit said they have taken a number of minors off the streets but their work is far from over.

"When you see an 11-year-old girl out on the street who knows how much to charge, the positions types of sex, its just heart wrenching," said Ochoa.

On this particular night, the streets were quiet, perhaps it was because the night air had quickly turned cold but even on cold nights, the detective say prostitutes will work the streets.

"What's going on?", asked Detective Ochoa as he and Garza approached a couple of street people sleeping under a Westside bridge.

It was past midnight and the deputies were familiar with this couple, he a known drug addict and the woman, known for prostitution in the past.

Although they both admitted to leading a clean life, they were asked if they had seen any minors working the streets.

Older prostitutes tend to want to help authorities remove teenagers and younger girls and boys from the streets and avoid a life of crime.

But this time the couple had no new information.

Later, the detectives spotted a woman who appeared to be talking to a john in a pickup truck.

The driver drove off quickly and the Human Trafficking Unit began questioning the woman.

Although she denied working the street, she admitted seeing other woman in the area but had no information on minors working as a prostitute. The detectives warned her of the dangers of working the streets and told her to go home to her little girl.

A never-ending job for the County's Human Trafficking Unit.

http://www.ksat.com/news/21694184/detail.html

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South Africa combats sex trade abuse ahead of 2010 World Cup

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By Martin Williams
09:55, November 23, 2009

South Africa's Crime Line organization has stepped up the fight against sex trade abuses known as "human trafficking" as the country gears up to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup, less than 200 days away.

"With 2010 around the corner, we must stop the abuse of women and children," said South African Crime Line Chief Executive Yusuf Abramjee in Johannesburg on Sunday.

Crime Line is a tip-off service where members of the public are encouraged to give the police information anonymously via cellphone text messages.

The anticipated surge in human trafficking during the 2010 FIFA World Cup has prompted a prevention drive by nongovernmental organizations and the police, who say they have already begun tracking possible traffickers.

Abramjee said the Crime Line special focus on human trafficking for the next two weeks would coincide with the annual 16 days of activism campaign against the abuse of women and children, which starts on Nov. 25 and runs until December 10.

"The theme for the 16-days campaign is: ‘Don't look away, Act against Abuse'. This is exactly what Crime Line is constantly urging," said Abramjee.

"Human trafficking is a growing problem worldwide. Women and children are constantly being exploited and abused. It's time to break our silence. If you have any information on human trafficking, send your tip-off to Crime Line now and the police will act."

"Many women and children are also been drawn into prostitution by organized crime syndicates. Let's get the leaders of these syndicates arrested," said Abramjee.

"We encourage the public to continue passing on general information but are zooming-in on human trafficking for the next two weeks. It's no secret that human trafficking increases around big event. And we have FIFA 2010 coming up."

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said last week (November 19) "We need to strengthen the partnership between the police, the public and the media. The Crime Line initiative is a good example of how – if we all work together – we can win."

"Since the launch of Crime Line in June 2007, 853 suspected criminals have been arrested and R32,1 million worth of stolen property, drugs and counterfeit goods has been seized by the SA Police Service," said the minister.

"We are pleased to see more and more members of the public blowing the whistle on crime. We urge them to continue using the Crime Line", the minister said.

"We know who does wrong in our communities – whether they are murderers, rapists, drug dealers, or peddlers, cash heist gangs, fraudsters, buyers of stolen goods, hijackers or robbers, don't protect them."

"The war against criminals needs to be intensified. We will therefore not retreat from our tough stance neither will we be distracted. We will search and find them, if they go to the sea, we will dive in. If they hide in the bushes, we will be offensive in our approach. All these approaches will be policy-driven and within the ambits of the law. This is a re-affirmation we are giving to South Africans," the minister added.

South Africa has recently launched a Red Light 2010 campaign in Johannesburg. The initiative was spearheaded by Johannesburg Child Welfare, together with two local NGOs, the Southern African Network on Trafficking and Abuse of Children and Women Leadership in Southern Africa, a gender-based organization in the Southern African Development Community region.

Child Welfare's assistant director Carol Bews said: "During 2010, there will be a lot of visitors coming to our country. With so many people in South Africa, we will see women and children being trafficked. This campaign intends to give people knowledge about how trafficking happens."

"At this point, the traffickers are probably well in place yet we have not yet got our activities together," Bews said.

The Red Light campaign came in the wake of the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report which recommended that South Africa "address demand for commercial sex acts and protect children from commercial sexual exploitation in advance of the 2010 World Cup".

Johannesburg, South Africa's biggest city, is the capital of Gauteng province. At the Red Light 2010 launch, Kate Mocheki, a social worker at the Gauteng Children's Rights Committee, said the lack of awareness within communities was problematic.

"Crime statistics do not reflect human trafficking as it is not often reported because communities do not understand the nature of the crime," she said.

"There is no understanding of what human trafficking is, hence it is not yet seen as a crime. Yet human trafficking is a growing trend in South Africa," she said.　

Source: Xinhua

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90779/90871/6820607.html

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Smashing The Snakeheads | My Sinchew

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2009-11-21 17:07

Zhao Xianming, a narcotics control officer for Mengla county in Southwest China’s Yunnan province, remembers July 25 clearly.

Around midday that Saturday, he received a call from a senior police officer of Phongsaly province, northern Laos, urging him to stop a bus going from Laos to Mengla.

“I was told that a Laotian woman suspected of trafficking two girls was trying to bypass border check points,” recalls Zhao.

The two victims, cousins aged 14 and 15, had been excited about the prospects of working at a restaurant in a neighbouring province in Laos promised by the Laotian woman, who was married to a Chinese man. They never imagined that they were actually heading for China.

“Thanks to timely communication, the two girls were rescued at the border crossing and handed to the Lao police the same day,” says Zhao.

Mengla is Yunnan’s southernmost county and shares a 677.8-km border with Laos in the south and east. It is separated from Burma on the west by just a river. With 46 land crossings, 14 market places for border residents, as well as five motorways to Laos and Burma border, it is regarded a major passageway to Southeast Asia.

People living on the Laos-China border tend to share the same customs and speak the same language. But differences in economic levels on either side of the border have sparked cross-border migration, and with this has emerged human trafficking.

In the 10 years that he has worked in narcotics control in Mengla, Zhao has been involved in rescuing and returning more than 10 victims of trafficking from Laos.

“Most victims are teenage girls from mountainous areas in northern Laos, who were lured by job or marriage prospects on the other side of the border,” says the Kunming Army Academy graduate who is fluent in the Lao language.

Although economic factors are the driving force in cross-border migration, Zhao also cites the gender ratio that is skewed in favour of men, as a reason.

With more Chinese farmers engaged in growing rubber trees or other cash crops to help the locals weed out poppy production in Laos—which is part of the notorious Golden Triangle—a clandestine cross-border match-making service has emerged. This is reinforced by the growing demand for brides smuggled from Laos, according to Zhao.

Says Wang Wei, police chief in Mengla, since 2000 the police have received 31 reports of trafficking from Laos. Of these, 19 were tracked down to Hunan, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong. Some were even found as far as Suzhou in East China’s Jiangsu province.

Although trafficking along the China-Laos border is not as bad as along the China-Burma and China-Viet Nam border, the opening of the Kunming-Bangkok highway (via Mengla) last year is cause for concern.

“We have to brace ourselves for more cases,” says Hang Lintao, of the Yunnan Public Security Bureau.

A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons released this February by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that almost 20 per cent of all trafficking victims were children. In some parts of the Mekong region including China, it noted, children formed the majority. Sexual exploitation and forced labour are the most common forms of human trafficking, it noted.

The latest report by the United Nations Children’s Fund titled Child Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia: Reversing the Trend warns that child trafficking continues in East and Southeast Asia.

“Poverty does not cause trafficking. The demand for cheap or exploitable labour, child prostitutes, women or girls for marriage and practice of adopting children illegally, all contribute to the trafficking phenomenon,” it said.

The recently-inaugurated liaison office in Mengla is one of a series of steps taken along China’s southwest border to fight cross-border trafficking through the sharing of information and investigating, as well as repatriating the victims.

The China office of Unicef started its pilot project on China-Viet Nam cross-border trafficking in 2001 and since then it has supported the Chinese government in setting up border liaison offices in Dongxing, Pingxiang, Jingxi in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and Ruili, Hekou, Longchuan and Mohan in Yunnan province.

Two ad hoc anti-trafficking operations between Chinese and Vietnamese police in 2005 and 2006 have resulted in the rescue and return of hundreds of victims.

Rehabilitation centres were also established in Dongxing and Ningming in Guangxi, and Kunming in Yunnan, where victims of trafficking are attended to and healed physically and mentally before their transfer back home.

“Trafficking victims used to be regarded as criminal suspects, having crossed borders illegally,” says Wang Daming, child protection specialist with Unicef-China. Now, child protection has been placed at the heart of anti-trafficking efforts.

He Ye, a Yunnan-based anti-trafficking project manager for Save the Children, an international charity for children, sees changes in cross-border trafficking patterns.

Since 2002, Chinese girls from Yunnan looking for jobs or visiting relatives across the border are being trafficked to Malaysia or Thailand and end up being sexually exploited. Meanwhile, girls from Laos and Viet Nam were trafficked to China and sold as brides.

Since 2004, says He, Save the Children has rescued 50 Chinese girls from Thailand and Malaysia, with the help of police and the women’s federation in Yunnan province.

Says Li Ping, director for communications at Save the Children (China): “As child trafficking is taking on varying forms, such as a shift of boys trafficked for adoption to sexual exploitation, a holistic view of rights protection should be taken to address the root cause. No link in the trafficking chain should be missing.”

Due to rapid economic development in the border region, growing migration and improved transport network, women and children are becoming more vulnerable to trafficking.

According to Kirsten di Martino, chief of Child Protection Section with Unicef-China, although media figures of cross-border cases appear quite low, “it is in fact only the tip of the iceberg”, as ‘good mechanisms’ to report and follow any trafficking incidences are lacking.

In 2004, six countries sharing the Mekong River—China, Laos, Viet Nam, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand—signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation Against Trafficking in Persons in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

To better coordinate anti-trafficking efforts, the Chinese police have over the years signed memorandums of understanding with its counterparts in Viet Nam and Burma.

Last year, China’s State Council unveiled a four-year National Plan of Action on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children, mobilising the involvement of more than 30 government departments. Meanwhile, an anti-trafficking office has been set up in the ministry of public security (MPA).

This May, the MPA launched a DNA database for trafficked or missing children, linking 236 DNA laboratories across the country to fight trafficking.

But, Zhao Xianming, the police officer from Mengla county, says it’s crucial to incorporate the DNA information of cross-border trafficking victims into the national database.

He also calls for a clear legal clarification of trafficking and marriages among border residents.

“Rescue efforts would be pointless if the victims choose to reunite with their ‘buyer husbands’,” he says. (By Ma Guihua in Mengla (Yunnan)/ China Daily/ Asia News Network)

10 things you need to know about trafficking

1. Girls are trafficked into many industries besides brothels

Women and girls are being trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation but it is also a fact that many women and girls are trafficked for other purposes.
2. Trafficking is visible; trafficking is accepted

Wherever any of these labour exploitation situations occur, a small to medium percentage of the workforce are likely to be victims of trafficking. They are working in mainstream and visible industries, including restaurants, street scavenging, begging, domestic work, agriculture and factory labour.
3. Dirty jobs fuel trafficking demand

Worldwide, labour known as ‘3D’—dirty, dangerous and degrading—attracts people who are desperate for work. And it is this desperation that feeds the trafficking industry.
4. People smuggling is not considered trafficking

Most trafficking takes place within the framework of migration, where the trafficker/facilitator has initial consent from the victim. Once the victim is coerced or tricked into exploitative labour or the denial of their rights, trafficking has occurred.
5. Trafficking victims most often ‘rescue’ themselves

Victims of trafficking are often portrayed as powerless people who are incapable of changing their situation. However, many of them do challenge or escape their captivity, prosecute or speak out against their traffickers, and find the strength to move forward in freedom and confidence.
6. Adoption is still a trafficking risk

Amidst unconfirmed reports of the sensational and sinister—babies adopted by brothels or trafficked into organ donation—‘babysnatching’ into the homes of childless couples is still a trafficking reality.
7. As many as one in five trafficking survivors fall prey a second time

One reason for this is weak social integration after being trafficked. When a trafficking victim returns home, either through official channels or their own initiative, life can be even worse than when they left.
8. Boys and men are trafficked too

The vulnerabilities of men and boys have rarely been addressed in past anti-trafficking efforts. The misconception has been that men are in control of their migration while women and children are trafficked.
9. Disability is attractive to traffickers

People with disabilities are often worth less to their community and potentially more to traffickers, especially in the begging industry or in brothels.
10. There is no one profile of a trafficker

The profiles of the traffickers are hard to detect and analyse. They often involve people who know the victims well enough to invite trust.

To know more about the realities of trafficking in the region and how you can help, go to World Vision Asia-Pacific at http://wvasiapacific.org. (World Vision Asia-Pacific/ Asia News Network)


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