Slavery and human trafficking claims 'not investigated properly' | World news | The Guardian

Slavery and human trafficking claims 'not investigated properly' | World news | The Guardian:

Is your manicurist a sex slave? Nail salons a front for human trafficking? | Mail Online

Source: Mail Online

With manicures costing as little as £10 — and taking no more than half an hour — they offer the perfect affordable pick-me-up.

However, behind the bright lights and spotless surfaces of the salons, there is an altogether darker story.

Experts believe many staff — very often Vietnamese — are smuggled into Britain illegally by organised gangs of human traffickers. They are made to work as virtual slaves during the day and then, sometimes, as prostitutes or drug farmers by night.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2396774/Is-manicurist-sex-slave-Nail-salons-human-trafficking.html#ixzz2xqkUcGMu

William Wilberforce's heirs are ready to tackle the great evil of the age - Telegraph

Source: Telegraph


"The picture of slavery in modern Britain exists in fragments, scattered around the news pages, so horrific and anachronistic that you can barely discern a pattern. The first problem is terminological. If Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson had spent the 1780s mumbling about “human trafficking”, it’s unlikely that anyone would have paid attention. It was Barack Obama who said last year that it was time to call modern slavery by its name. If girls are being forced into domestic service and beaten if they try to leave, it’s slavery. If Lithuanian workers are being kept in debt bondage working on a Kent chicken farm, that’s slavery." 

Continue here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10259927/William-Wilberforces-heirs-are-ready-to-tackle-the-great-evil-of-the-age.html

How Britain's nail bars are propped up by victims of human trafficking forced to work for slave wages | Mail Online

Vietnamese migrants are propping up Britain's beauty industry after being put to work as slaves in nail bars, police have claimed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2396560/How-Britains-nail-bars-propped-victims-human-trafficking-forced-work-slave-wages.html#ixzz2cRB4qrWY

Modern slavery: it happens here » Spectator Blogs

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/03/modern-slavery-it-happens-here/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=modern-slavery-it-happens-here

Source: Spectator Blogs

Christian Guy 11 March 2013 10:01

Slowly but surely, British court cases are revealing a once great
 nation of abolitionists to be a shadow of its former self.  We
often celebrate the nineteenth century anti-slavery movement
and its precious victory.  We hail their achievement and honour
 our Parliament’s noblest hour.

But like weeds in a neglected garden, slavery has returned.  Its
roots remained intact – inherent in humanity’s darkest
weaknesses.  Today, it is aggressive and hidden.  It lives in
 the shadows of Britain’s cities, towns and villages.  And as
this morning’s Centre for Social Justice report reveals, too
 often it thrives uncontested.

In the hands of international bureaucrats the problem has
 become better known as ‘human trafficking’.  But just like
 ‘collateral damage’, these words mask the terror, injustice
and nature of abuse inflicted on those who are its victims.

Across and within UK borders, vile child and sexual
 exploitation, forced labour and domestic servitude
trap people in terrible torture.  Enslaved in cauldrons
of abuse, many are threatened with rape, death or brutal
 attacks on their families back home at the slightest hint
of rebellion.  There are growing numbers of British-born
victims too.  School girls moved around the UK at weekends
 – raped numerous times a night – and back in the
classroom on Monday.  This is a modern day underworld.

Behind closed doors, these victims are voiceless and
petrified.  Most, of course, are not free to walk away.
 And those who can often don’t, fearing immediate
arrest or deportation. And those who do escape receive
inadequate support.

We are losing the battle.  Ministers and officials are
 clueless about the scale of this exploitation, largely
 because the national identification system is not
trusted by those who are supposed to use it. Police
officers, social workers, health professionals and
prison governors regularly fail to recognise slavery
 victims when they come face-to-face with them.
 Police officers arresting a female victim who had
escaped from a brothel because she didn’t have a
passport is one such example of this.

And when someone does manage to pick the right
fight against the criminals rather than the victims,
our messy legislative framework stops them in their
 tracks.

It is the blind leading the blind.  This breeds political
 complacency and cosiness.  Many in authority
defend the status quo and argue all is well.  But
palpably it is not. And it is irresponsible to pretend
otherwise.

William Wilberforce once famously stood up in
the House of Commons and said: ‘You may choose
to look the other way, but you can never say again
 that you did not know.’  How pertinent those
words remain in 2013.  So who is prepared to stand
up and say the same today?

Christian Guy is Managing Director of the Centre 
for Social Justice.

Related articles

• Minister rejects call for anti-slavery tsar after hard-hitting report

Why Amsterdam's legal brothels are a lesson for Britain about telling the truth on sex gangs and race | This is Money

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article-2237170/Why-Amsterdams-legal-brothels-lesson-Britain-telling-truth-sex-gangs-race.html

Source: This is Money

By SUE REID

PUBLISHED: 20:42 EST, 22 November 2012 | UPDATED: 12:53 EST, 23 November 2012

Seven girls laugh together at the supper table. One talks of her sister, a fashion model signed with a famous London agency. Another mentions her married brother, an artist in the north of England. A third — 17 with blonde hair tucked under an Alice band — says she plans to become a beautician on a cruise ship.

At the small house, the blinds are closed so no one can peep in. Two terriers and a bull mastiff bark ferociously if there is a footstep outside the bolted front door.

For these middle-class girls, groomed into sex slavery by street gangs, have been rescued and are living in a safe house a few miles from De Wallen, the notorious red-light area of Holland’s capital, Amsterdam.

Too ashamed to tell parents or teachers, the girls are cynically isolated from their old lives and swept into prostitution

They are the lucky ones. Thousands of other young Dutch girls, some only 11 or 12 years old, are still in the power of the prowling gangs after a controversial social experiment to legalise brothels.

In a chilling parallel to the scandal sweeping Britain’s towns and cities, where a multitude of girls have been lured into sex-for-sale rings run by gangs, the Dutch pimps search out girls at school gates and in cafes, posing as ‘boyfriends’ promising romance, fast car rides and restaurant meals.

The men ply their victims with vodka and drugs. They tell them lies: that they love them and their families don’t care for them. Then, the trap set, they rape them with other gang members, often taking photos of the attack to blackmail the girl into submission.

Befuddled, frightened, and too ashamed to tell parents or teachers, the girls are cynically isolated from their old lives and swept into prostitution.  

So dangerous are the gangs that the girls at the safe house never venture out alone, and when they have a coffee together in the back garden they are not allowed to talk about their past in case neighbours overhear. 

Holland's newly legal sex industry was quickly infiltrated by street-grooming gangs with one target: the under-age virgin who can be sold for sex

‘You never know who has big ears,’ says Anita de Wit, 48, the mother of three who set up the safe house last month. It is thought to be the first of its kind in the world. ‘The gangs can kill, and will try to get these girls back because they earn them money. We do not want them coming here to harm them. ’

Anything-goes Amsterdam has long been hailed as a sex mecca. The red-light district attracts thousands of customers, many of them tourists, who walk through alleys where half-naked prostitutes prance in the windows of some 300 brothels illuminated with scarlet bulbs.

A century ago, the brothels were banned to stop the exploitation of women by criminal gangs of Dutch men. But gradually the sex establishments crept back, with the authorities turning a blind eye.

In 2000, after pressure from prostitutes (demanding recognition as sex workers with employment rights) and Holland’s liberal intelligentsia (championing the choice of women to do what they wished with their bodies), the brothels were legalised. The working girls got permits, medical care, and now there are 5,000 in the red-light district.

But things went badly wrong. Holland’s newly legal sex industry was quickly infiltrated by street-grooming gangs with one target: the under-age girl virgin who can be sold for sex.

The men in the gangs are dubbed — incongruously — ‘lover boys’, because of their distinct modus operandi of making girls fall in love with them before forcing them into prostitution at private flats or houses all over Holland, and in the window brothels. The lover boy phenomenon has appalled Dutch society, not least because of the sheer numbers of girls involved. 

This week a report into our own sex gangs was criticised for discounting the link between Asian gangs and the sexual exploitation of white and mixed race girls

As Lodewijk Asscher, 38, a leading politician, says: ‘Hard-line criminal behaviour is happening behind those windows. Girls are physically abused if they don’t work hard enough. It is slavery, which was abolished a long time ago in the Netherlands.’

He has championed new rules in Amsterdam’s red-light district from January. Prostitutes will sign a register and the minimum age for sex workers will be raised from 18 to 21, to try to stop girls being forced to work by the gangs.

Holland hopes the rot will be halted. Last year, 242 lover boy crimes were investigated by police, half of them involving the forced prostitution of girls under 18. Campaigner Anita de Wit says this is a fraction — ‘one per cent’ — of the true number. ‘There are thousands of girls being preyed on by male gangs in Holland,’ she says.

Anita visits schools to warn girls exactly what a lover boy looks like, and makes no bones of the fact that most of the gangs are operated by Dutch-born Moroccan and Turkish men.

‘I am not politically correct. I am not afraid of being called a racist, which would be untrue. I tell the girls that lover boys are young, dark-skinned and very good looking. They will have lots of money and bling as well as a big car. They will give out cigarettes and vodka. They will tell a girl that she is beautiful.

‘The gangs know who to pick out: the girl with the confidence problems, with the glasses, or who looks overweight. They flatter her and seem like the “knight in shining armour”. She is drawn to her new boyfriend like a magnet.’

With the new minimum age and register of prostitutes, the winds of change are blowing in Amsterdam's red-light industry

Anita’s bluntness is a far cry from the approach in Britain, where political correctness has stopped police and social workers telling girls the same home truths: that in many towns, particularly in the north of England, the handsome men chatting them up at the school gate are very likely to be of Pakistani descent. They, too, ply the girls with alcohol and gifts, pretending to be genuine boyfriends.

This week a report into our own sex gangs — by Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England — was criticised (by the NSPCC, among others) for discounting the evident link between Asian gangs and the sexual exploitation of white and mixed race girls. Berelowitz chose to downplay the race factor, despite official figures showing a worrying percentage of men involved in this type of sex crime are of this heritage.

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has just visited Holland to see the work of Anita de Wit and her charity ‘Say No to Lover Boys Now’, which believes that girls should be warned where the danger lies — for their own sakes.

He has complained that the British authorities treat the subject as taboo because of fears of being branded racist. ‘That is wrong. These gangs of men should be treated as criminals whatever their race,’ he says.

In Holland, as in Britain, the abusers are drawn from a tiny minority of their communities — which are appalled by their crimes. But the lover boys seem to see white girls as worthless, to be abused without a second thought.

Anita began her campaign when her own daughter, Angelique, then aged 15, was lured into a sex gang after meeting a 21-year-old Moroccan boy at a coffee bar near her school. 

In Holland, as in Britain, the abusers are drawn from a tiny minority of their communities - which are appalled by their crimes

Anita was divorced and running a restaurant in a village outside Amsterdam when it all began. It was eight in the evening and Angelique came into the restaurant with three male friends. She said one of them was her new boyfriend, Mohammed. ‘He had long curly hair, was very handsome and polite to me,’ remembers Anita.

‘Angelique asked if she could take the three boys back home for a coffee, and I said yes. I was due back at eleven that night and I thought my other two children — Angelique’s younger brother, who was 13, and her older sister — would be there.’

But when Anita got home, she found that every bottle in the drinks cabinet was empty. Angelique was lying in bed drunk. Mohammed and his two pals had disappeared. Although Anita did not know it then, Angelique had been raped by two of the men. The other man had taken her son to play football in the park to get him out of the house. Angelique’s older sister was, in fact, staying with friends.

‘I was horrified,’ says Anita. ‘Angelique lied, saying she had just had too much to drink. I was annoyed she had been drinking at all. I said I did not want Mohammed at my house ever again. We had a row. But that is the classic technique used by the lover boys — they deliberately engineer a rift between the girl and her parents.’

From then on, Angelique’s behaviour changed. She went missing from school. If she did go to class, Mohammed and the lover boys would be waiting to pick her up in a big car with dark windows and false number plates. Her teachers complained to Anita, but Angelique was in love with Mohammed and at war with the teachers and her mother.

She would disappear from home for hours, often coming back only late at night. Sometimes, she would go missing for days, saying she had been with friends.

In fact, Angelique had been sleeping with a host of Moroccan men and earning money for her ‘boyfriend’, Mohammed. ‘Her mobile phone would ring continuously, all day and through the night, too. She would even take it into the loo with her.

‘When I looked at it later, there were violent texts saying: “If you don’t come out now, you are for it and your family, too,”’ recalls Anita today.

After several months, Anita rang the police for help. Her daughter was taken to the family court where a judge placed her under a curfew at home. She had to report to her mother every two hours. ‘Angelique would come in say hello, and then run out of the house again,’ says Anita. ‘The judge said she had to leave her mobile phone downstairs at night. But the gang just gave her another one, and the men kept ringing her. They gave her cannabis and she became dependent on them for it.’

The judge, in desperation, sent Angelique to a youth prison where, for 11 months, she used her phone card to keep in touch with Mohammed, but gradually the relationship fizzled out.  

When, at last, she was moved to an open centre for troubled youngsters, Anita hoped for the best. But her daughter met another lover boy there. He was called Rashid and was a stooge planted to recruit girls by the gangs. He persuaded her to escape from the centre and together they hitch-hiked to Rotterdam.

There, Angelique found that Rashid was also part of a sex gang. She was put in a seedy house and again made to work as a prostitute.

‘She was forced to swallow 14 ecstasy tablets a day and take the date-rape drug, GHB. The gang beat her with a baseball bat if she refused to sleep with the men who were brought to her. They dyed her brown hair with kitchen bleach because they said men would pay more for blondes. She’s never told me how many men she had to go with,’ says Anita. After six weeks, Angelique escaped. She ran to a shop and called her mother, who brought her home.

Yet — incredibly enough — even then the lover boys came after her. She visited the city centre with a girlfriend and a stranger, a young Moroccan, asked her out for a date. He promised Angelique that he was a proper boyfriend, that he loved her: but he was grooming her, too.

The Moroccan plied her with drugs, and asked her to live with him in a flat near the red-light district. When Angelique, by now 18, agreed, he said he was in debt and put her to work in the De Wallen window brothels.

‘I went to see her in the windows,’ says Anita. ‘I had to keep in touch with my daughter. It was only in January of last year that she realised she had been exploited by the gang and returned home at last.’

Angelique’s story is terrifying. But, at the safe house, there are equally disturbing tales. There is Eline, who was an 18-year-old virgin when she met a Turkish lover boy at a New Year party at her local youth club.

Eline thought she was in love with him, but within a few weeks the rest of his group had gang-raped her on a patch of waste land, photographed their crime, and were threatening to tell her parents if she did not sleep with other men to earn them money.  

I hear about Beatrice, who met her lover boy as she rode her bike to a new school. She was 12 years old. He was leaning against his car outside; with a big gold chain round his neck, he looked like an actor in a rap video.

He was back a few days later, and told her she was pretty. The fourth time they met, she agreed to go for a drive. He took her to a house where he raped her. He told her she was now his prostitute, his property, and that their relationship was perfectly normal.

By 14, Beatrice had slept with dozens of men and, unbeknown to her civil servant parents, was even coerced into acting as an agent for her lover boy’s gang by introducing them to other girls.

The girls in the safe house, who are aged between 15 and 25, have now escaped from the horrors of their past. They are learning to live again. And with the new minimum age and register of prostitutes, the winds of change are blowing in Amsterdam’s red-light industry.

But Eline shakes her head a little sadly as she says: ‘The lover boys are always one step ahead. They are making a fortune from these young girls. It is everyone’s duty to tell the truth about what is happening — particularly to potential victims.’

It is a sobering lesson not only that political correctness must not prevent people voicing their fears about grooming gangs, but also that Holland’s liberal approach to sex has backfired disastrously on many of these damaged victims.

 

Britain is turning its back on slavery and the abolitionist ethos | openDemocracy

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/nicholas-mcgeehan/britain-is-turning-its-back-on-slavery-and-abolitionist-ethos

Source: OurKingdom power and liberty in Britain

Nicholas McGeehan, 8 March 2012

About the author

Nicholas McGeehan is a PhD candidate in the law department at the European University Institute in Florence, working under the research title 'The Marginalisation of Slavery in International Law'. He is also the founder and director of an NGO for migrant workers' rights in the UAE, Mafiwasta.

The British struggle to abolish slavery has been described as one of the most ambitious and brilliantly organised citizens' movements of all time, but in recent years there has been an inadvertent repudiation of the abolitionist ethos. Britain’s laws once again facilitate enslavement at home, while the warm welcome afforded to the rulers and branding vehicles of the United Arab Emirates means we are turning our back on slavery abroad.

Last week’s decision by home secretary Theresa May to remove the right of overseas domestic workers to change employers has been criticised in the strongest possible terms by anti-slavery campaigners, who rightly accused the government of, in effect, licensing slavery. A system of sponsorship-based employment will exacerbate the inequality of the power relationship between overseas domestic workers and their employers, and in doing so it will significantly increase the likelihood of the enslavement of thousands of young women who already constitute one of the most vulnerable sections of British society. Of the 326 migrant domestic workers who registered with Kalayaan, a London-based NGO, in 2011, 54% experienced psychological abuse, 18% physical and 7% sexual abuse. 76% were not allowed a day off, 53% worked 16 hours-a-day and 60% were paid under £50 per week.

Kalayaan have protested that the decision makes ‘no sense’ in view of David Cameron’s public support for anti-trafficking initiatives in October 2011, but one could argue that there is no contradiction between the new legislation and the type of exploitation which the British government is prepared to confront. Cameron declared ^↑ that ‘the government are fully committed to combating human trafficking by tackling organised crime groups and protecting the victims of this modern day slavery.’ In doing so he perpetuated the misconception that modern day slavery is the preserve of highly organised transnational criminals, who are typically depicted as having the ability to ferry vulnerable young women across borders at will. This is a most convenient simplification of a complex issue, which on the one hand, allows states to tighten up immigration controls under the auspices of humanitarian protection, and, on the other, enables them to gloss over their own role in the facilitation of serious exploitation. One could even argue that it is the propagation of this simplistic trafficking narrative which has led, albeit indirectly and inadvertently, to a repudiation of the abolitionist ethos in the UK, more than two hundred years after slavery’s legal abolition in 1807.

When the celebrated abolitionist Thomas Clarkson collected the signatures of over 10,000 Manchester residents for a petition against the slave trade in 1787, and organised the boycott of slave-produced sugar a few years later, he led a campaign which rejected parochialism and which was founded in the belief that the mobilization of public support in Britain could help to end the global trade in slaves. Clarkson would be aghast to know that in 2011 residents of Manchester are singing the praises of the deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, a country whose policies facilitate the trafficking and enslavement of millions of young men and women and whose influence is increasingly writ large on the British cultural landscape. Manchester City fans now chant the name of their benefactor Sheikh Mansour ^↑ Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi to the tune of the slave song ‘kumbaya’ in the Etihad Stadium, renamed after the national airline of the UAE. Dubai long ago renamed Arsenal’s Highbury stadium after its own airline Emirates, and last year, in the same week as David Cameron declared his commitment to anti-trafficking initiatives, Dubai announced its introduction to the London skyline by providing £36 million ^↑ for a project which will see the ‘Emirates Air Line’ ferry passengers in cable cars across the Thames between two new underground stops, Emirates Greenwich Peninsula and Emirates Royal Docks.

As Christopher Davidson, a leading expert on Gulf politics, has pointed out there is no financial gain ^↑ to be had from these ventures. Where the British state is concerned, the UAE’s interest in its institutions has a foreign policy ^↑ dimension - the fear of being invaded ^↑ for their oil - but where the British people are concerned, the UAE relentless self-promotion also serves to deflect attention from the brutality which underpins its domestic rule, thereby militating against the type of outrage which Thomas Clarkson and his ilk so brilliantly exploited.

The system which regulates the recruitment and employment of some 4 million migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (and which includes a system of sponsorship-based employment eerily similar to that just adopted by the UK government) is significantly more exploitative than the visa system which the European Court of Human Rights found to be facilitating human trafficking and enslavement ^↑ in Cyprus in 2010. Moreover, in the UAE, the Government is industry, making the country closer in character to a sovereign federation of corporations, than a corporatist state. Its leaders act like businessmen too, in the sense that they are acutely aware of the power ofbrands ^↑ and the ability of public relations to promote them. The UAE throws millions of petrodollars at PR executives whose job is to promote a sanitised, family-friendly version of the UAE. By way of example, consider the following. In 2006, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktum of Dubai and his brother were accused of the enslavement ^↑ of thousands of child camel jockeys, some as young as three in a Miami federal district court. Presumably mindful of the irreparable damage which can result from an association with child slavery, the Al Maktums retained the services of a strategic public relations firm in California, whose website ^↑ still proclaims the role they played in subsequent events: ‘When a lawsuit alleged human rights violations by a foreign government’s leaders, [...] turned a potential catastrophe into a public relations benefit. Working closely with the government’s lawyers and lobbyists, we proposed new programs that won praise from human rights advocates and were held up as model programs for the region.’ The Al Maktums made no attempt to claim they were innocent of the charges – the races were shown live on national television with the Al Maktums and the Al Nahyans watching their multi-million dollar steeds from an opulent grandstand - they simply spun the story on its head and declared themselves thesaviours of the children ^↑ for having the decency to send them back to Bangladesh and Pakistan with $1000 in compensation. It should come as no surprise to learn that the UAE is one of the biggest, and certainly the most public, funder of United Nations anti-trafficking initiatives.

Last week the British government was accused of turning the clock back fifteen years to a time when domestic workers were deported for experiencing abuse. The new UK legislation on migrant domestic workers is regressive and ill-informed, and NGOs would be well advised to challenge it in the courts. In 2010 the European Court of Human Rights held that immigration laws which either encourage or facilitate trafficking in persons constitute a violation of state’s assumed obligations to suppress slavery, servitude and forced labour. UK courts cannot overturn acts of Parliament, but they can read legislation in such a way as to give effect to the European Court and even if the Human Rights Act ^↑ is replaced, a new UK bill of rights is unlikely to impinge on the ability of UK courts to ensure that the laws of the land are compatible with the right of individuals not to be held in a condition of slavery. However, it ought to be recalled that the fight to end slavery is, a global one, and in allowing the ruling elite of the UAE to pose as progressive leaders on the British stage, we have abandoned the principles of the abolitionist movement and turned the clock back two hundred years to a time when slavery was a reputable branch of commerce.

Related articles

• Lesson Plan | What Is Modern Slavery? Investigating Human Trafficking - NYTimes.com (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• World's first sex trafficking opera to premiere in UK - News - Classical - The Independent (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

Trafficked people being treated as criminals by officials, inquiry says | Law | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/nov/27/human-trafficking-crime-victims

Women, men and children trafficked into Britain not seen as victims of crime whose rights have been breached – report

Severin Carrell,Scotland correspondent

• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 November 2011 16.40 EST
• Article history

Inquiry calls on the government to introduce legislation and criminal justice policies which will tackle trafficking as a specific crime and support its victims. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

The victims of human trafficking, including women forced into the sex industry or trapped as unpaid domestic servants, are being unfairly treated as criminals and illegal immigrants, an inquiry has found.

The investigation by Lady Helena Kennedy QC has concluded that the police and immigration authorities fail to see the thousands of women, men and children trafficked into Britain as the innocent victims oforganised crime whose own basic rights have been breached.

Kennedy's report to the Scottish office of the Equality and Human RightsCommission (EHRC), published on Monday after an 18-month inquiry, calls on the UK and Scottish governments to introduce legislation and criminal justice policies which will tackle trafficking as a specific crime and support its victims.

She said trafficked people frequently end up being forced to work inprostitution, domestic service, fruit and vegetable picking, food processing, benefit fraud and cannabis cultivation. But the issue is chiefly treated by the authorities as an illegal immigration, sexual offences or crime enforcement matter.

Victims were treated as part of the problem, or their needs and rights sidelined, as detectives focus on the brothel owner or the smuggler, since trafficking victims often emerged in raids for drugs, prostitution or immigration offences. By contrast, a British citizen who had been raped or seriously wounded in a normal setting would be given much greater support.

That had the effect of producing ill-thought out responses to trafficking as a specific crime in itself, largely because responsibility was split between different parts of the system: the UK Border Agency, and the police.

In Scotland, for instance, there were two different legal definitions for trafficking. The Gangmaster Licensing Authority, which investigates forced labour in agriculture, food processing and fisheries, did excellent work but was legally barred from investigating trafficking in other industries where it also occurred, Kennedy said.

In one of 10 formal findings, the EHRC report stated: "Human trafficking legislation in Scotland and in the UK has developed in a piecemeal fashion and is not based on a thorough consideration of how legislation should best deal with the problem.

"This has left human trafficking legislation in Scotland and the UK inconsistent, both internally and in comparison with international law, and has served to limit its scope and impact."

It said the Home Office should lead a new review into the identification and treatment of trafficked people, to ensure the UK had "an independent and transparent identification system which recognises that human trafficking is invasive of the dignity and rights of its victims".

Kennedy found there was a significant "intelligence gap" in the police and enforcement agencies about the scale and nature of trafficking.

"The cultures of the different parts of this world of enforcement are incredibly different. We found that people who are serious victims get treated as if they are criminals," she said.

The commission has recommended much greater research and training on trafficking for law enforcement agencies; much greater integration and intelligence-sharing between different agencies at UK and devolved levels; an anti-trafficking campaign to raise public awareness and among the emergency services; a new human trafficking act in Scotland; and greater efforts to tackle trafficking within the business community and labour markets.

Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary, said the devolved government in Edinburgh would closely consider the commission's findings along with two earlier reports into child trafficking by the Scottish children's commissioner, Tam Baillie, and on migration and trafficking by a committee at the Scottish parliament.

"Human trafficking is a particularly horrific and brutal violation of human rights. It has absolutely no place in modern Scotland and the consequences it brings for trafficking victims and the communities touched by these crimes are incredibly damaging," he said.

"We have a collective responsibility to tackling the problem here in Scotland. [The] key to eradicating it is partnership working – whether that is working at a local level or working with international partners to provide a solution."

Related articles

• OSCE Special Representative highlights role of parliamentarians in combating human trafficking(trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Call for new law on trafficking(bbc.co.uk)
• IRIN Asia | VIETNAM: Trafficked workers exploited in China | Vietnam | Human Rights | Migration (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Children lost from care in human trafficking cases, says council | Law | The Guardian (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• The business of human trafficking | Guardian Sustainable Business | guardian.co.uk (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

Britain's sex trade needs tackling | Denis MacShane | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

FROM GUARDIAN.CO.UK

By opting out of an EU directive on sex slave trafficking, we continue to ignore the plight of vulnerable girls and women

• 
• • Denis MacShane
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 September 2010 17.05 BST
  • Article history

A powerful three-part Channel 4 series on sex slave trafficking promised more than it delivered. Its timing was excellent: the three-hour film was shown in the week the Guardian revealed the government's decision to opt out of the new EU directive on sex slave trafficking. Twenty years ago a Tory government opted out of EU directives protecting workers. Today David Cameron and Nick Clegg are opting out of a directive aimed at protecting teenagers and young women from being trafficked into the UK's burgeoning brothel and massage parlour industry.

With luck the C4 documentary should alert public opinion to this depressing aspect of globalisation and the new patriarchalism which obliges young women to "have sex with 10 to 15 men a day against their will" as one detective constable told the film-makers. Shot and edited with consummate skill with a breathy linking commentary read by Helen Mirren in the style of Laurence Olivier declaiming the World at War script, the programme eschewed analysis in favour of showing police work in close-up detail. Two small west country forces co-operated fully with C4. The officers came over as decent, good men with female officers on the margin to help arrest women pimps and their victims.

But a huge amount of police time and work, including a trip to Thailand for Devon and Cornwall officers, results in a meagre haul. Minor Chinese and Thai pimps get prison sentences of between 12 and 18 months. At the same time there were court cases against Albanian and Slovakian pimps which resulted in longer prison sentences and details of the most brutal cruelty against trafficked women. There is no shortage of cases in all major cities, though it is not clear why the Devon and Cornwall or Gloucestershire chief constables agreed to co-operate with C4 rather than the Met where more dramatic examples of trafficking abound. But the documentary noted that the Home Office is winding down the Pentameter operations against trafficking. Mirren concluded: "You will find brothels and victims in every English town. Those individuals who use these brothels should think about what they are doing and stop using these services."

Thanks, Helen. Actually it is British men – not genderless "individuals" – who insist on a right to put money down and insert their penises into women's bodies. Serving this demand has led to massive increase in the supply of prostituted women. There is a sterile debate over numbers which C4 sensibly ignored. Getting the figures is impossible. The United Nations' International Labour Organisation says there are 2.45 million women trafficked into sex slavery worldwide. The Red Cross and other global outfits also insist that millions of women are traded. The idea Britain has only a few is laughable, despite a report in the Guardian by Nick Davies claiming that sex slave trafficking was hugely exaggerated. ACPO produced a report recently which talked of 4,000 trafficked women but British NGOs who work with the victims of sex slave trafficking criticised the methodology of ACPO's work and said the figure was much higher.

An organisation called the English Collective of Prostitutes, which has spokespersons but no details of membership or finances, is always available for Newsnight or the Guardian to pooh-pooh the problem of trafficking into or within Britain. Its solution is to legalise prostitution. Where this has been tried as in Nevada, the death and injury rate of prostituted women rises and students at universities in the US state believe it is impossible to rape a prostituted woman.

The C4 film avoided this debate or any effort to examine the ideology of male oppression that lies behind the extraordinary growth in sex trafficking. Detectives held up adverts in the Southampton Echo placed by one of the pimps in which "fresh" bodies were on offer for the delight of Southampton men. There was no challenge to the newspaper editors who are complicit in the sex slave industry by carrying adverts for sexual services.

After one raid, a detective talks to a punter and politely asks him to stay in touch. But there is no arrest even though a brave group of Labour women ministers and MPs changed the law to make it a crime to pay for sex with a victim who has been coerced in any way into working as a prostitute. Another detective described how a trafficked woman's "customer insisted on putting bits of metal into his condom causing her injury". So why wasn't the man arrested and charged? The C4 policemen donned armour and dramatically crashed their way into brothels. But no British male was arrested.

It is only by dealing with the demand side that any real progress will be made in reducing the inflow of trafficked women. The low-life, high-income foreign pimps arrested in the film have thousands ready to replace them because trafficking women is hugely profitable.

One of the last acts of Tony Blair's government was to sign and ratify the Council of Europe's convention on trafficking which I campaigned for in the Commons. The Home Office originally fought the convention, as Whitehall is today trying to derail the EU directive. Later under Gordon Brown the law was changed to make men open to naming and shaming if they paid for sex with a woman who had been trafficked or coerced into working in the sex trade. It is up to the police to apply the law and to editors to stop being accomplices of sex slavery by publishing the industry's adverts. It would be good if the liberal male media establishment could rethink their denigration of campaigners against sex slave trafficking.

The C4 documentary deserves loads of prizes. It was compelling television. But we need analysis, policy and police work to squeeze the demand side.

Britain's sex trade needs tackling | Denis MacShane | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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Police in Romania arrest leaders of child-trafficking operation in UK - Times Online

From Times Online
April 8, 2010

David Charter in Brussels

The leaders of a child-trafficking operation that put hundreds of beggars on the streets of Britain were targeted in a series of raids today in a remote Romanian town where opulent mansions have sprung up since the country joined the European Union.

Roma children aged from 7 to 15 were bought or taken, possibly by force, from their parents in rural Romania and trained to beg and steal, making millions of pounds a year in Britain for their gangmasters at the height of the scam, police believe.

The alleged child-trafficking ring based in Tandarei, in southern Romania, was said to be responsible for sending at least 168 children to London, from where they would also travel to other towns and cities.

Gangmasters would take care of the children’s travel documents and accommodation in Britain, where they would often sleep in cramped conditions and be forced to hand over the money they obtained.

The dawn raids were part of a wider crackdown on traffickers active in Britain, Italy and Spain since Romania became a member of the EU in 2007.

Police who broke up a gang operating in Milan estimated that Romanian children were making €12,000 (£10,500) a month each on the streets and through the theft of credit cards and mobile phones.

“The network was recruiting children and forcing them to beg and commit petty thefts in Great Britain,” said a police official in Bucharest.

“They were taken from their families in Tandarei and they were forced into shoplifting and pickpocketing. We will have to see if the children were given willingly by their parents for the exchange of money or if they were taken by force.”

Some of the children are understood to be in care in Britain while others have been sent back to Romania. Police sources say that some families were prepared to give up their children for as little as €200 each.

After a year of planning at least 17 people were arrested after the raids on 33 homes in Tandarei by a small army of organised crime investigators, assisted by 26 Metropolitan Police officers and two observers from Interpol. The identities or roles of those held was not disclosed.

Firearms, jewellery, luxury cars and large sums of money were found at the homes of suspects, according to local media, which said that 320 Romanian officers were involved in the operation.

Tandarei, with its population of 12,000 people, 150km east of Bucharest, has undergone a seemingly miraculous economic boom in the past few years.

A town previously known for grim blocks of flats and traditional single-story stone buildings now has about 50 luxury homes and more and more BMWs and Audis are seen on the streets.

Asked last autumn about the newfound wealth of some residents, Vasile Sava, the mayor, said: “How can I know where they get the money from? Nobody is telling us how they made the money abroad, legally or illegally.”

Tandarei was identified as the home town of 15 children found living in three homes in Manchester last November who had been forced to carry out cashpoint distraction thefts.

Scotland Yard teamed up with Romanian police in a £1 million investigation funded by the EU to track down the criminals behind people-trafficking. They would not confirm if yesterday’s arrests were linked to the Manchester operation.

“Of course, it is not all Romanians who are here who are causing this problem,” said a British police spokesman. “The aim is to bring people to justice for human trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable members of the Roma community.

“We will be seeking to disrupt organised crime networks in any way, prosecuting key individuals here and in Romania.”

Police in Romania arrest leaders of child-trafficking operation in UK - Times Online