Trafficking of Haitian children may spark Dominican Republic sanctions - Haiti - MiamiHerald.com

  Posted on Monday, 01.17.11

BY GERARDO REYES

greyes@ElNuevoHerald.com

Frustrated by the Dominican Republic's lack of commitment in the fight against trafficking of Haitian children, the United States could impose sanctions against that country, the State Department's head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons said.


''The problem is that in Dominican Republic we haven't seen cases against anybody,'' said Luis CdeBaca.

''We tell the countries we deal with that it would be good not only to arrest the traffickers, but the officials who serve as accomplices as well. But in Dominican Republic we don't even have the first one, and that's where the frustration is.''

He explained that since he traveled last summer to Santo Domingo to investigate the trafficking situation and the exploitation of children, no major progress has been seen.

''We haven't really seen a big change from the Dominican Republic,'' CdeBaca said.

''If nothing happens and the problem continues ... we could then advise the president as far as sanctions are concerned.''

The Dominican government could face the suspension of economic and military aid; blocking of some exports to the United States; and opposition in votes at organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, CdeBaca said.

The Dominican Republic has until June to implement the State Department's recommendations, according to CdeBaca.

DESTINATION
The recommendations appear in the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, in which the Dominican Republic was classified at level three, the lowest tier. Together with Cuba, they are the only countries in the Western Hemisphere that are categorized as being the ``source [and] destination of men, women and children subjected to trafficking, especially in forced labor and forced prostitution,'' the report says.

``You have seen [the situation],'' CdeBaca said, referring to a series of stories published by The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald in October and November on the trafficking of Haitian children with the complicity of Dominican authorities.

The series showed that many of the children are forced to beg on the streets in Dominican cities or become prostitutes in Bocachica, an international tourism resort in the south of the country.

Some of the girls have sex with traffickers as a way to pay for the crossing.

Responding to CdeBaca's statement, the office of the Dominican Republic's president sent a statement pointing out the efforts made through interdiction and education to prevent trafficking and exploitation of children.

CASES CITED
The statement cites two cases in which the country's authorities arrested traffickers.

The most recent operative took place on Jan. 13, when officers of the army's intelligence department intercepted two vehicles transporting 56 undocumented people -- 41 men, 12 women and three children.

The officers detained Julio César Peña Regalado and Brito Santiago Fernando,

``well-known traffickers of persons in the area,'' the statement says.

``All cases that have to do with trafficking of persons have been brought to justice, none have had impunity and those persons involved have been punished under laws implemented in Dominican Republic,'' the documents says.

Nongovernment organizations operating in the north border area of both countries say that the trafficking of children increased after Haiti's devastating quake last year.

Hundreds of children have crossed the border illegally, but as of November not a single person had been indicted for trafficking of minors, Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald reporters found. The situation is known to the State Department.

``Corruption is a major part of the problem of modern slavery and trafficking,'' CdeBaca said.

IGNORED LAW
He said the Dominican government has not implemented a law it passed seven years ago against trafficking.

``Haiti needs laws and Dominican Republic has them but doesn't use them,'' CdeBaca said.

The State Department's report covering the period from April 2009 to April 2010 says that ``the government has not made any discernible progress in persecuting and punishing traffickers during the period analyzed.''

CdeBaca said the government needs to make progress not only in trying the traffickers and their accomplices but also in protecting the victims.

The Dominican Republic is his office's biggest worry in the Western Hemisphere, he said.

Source: Miamiherald.com

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/17/2020371/trafficking-of-haitian-children.html#ixzz1BUgZQD1G

Parents descend on Beijing to hunt for China's stolen children - Asia, World - The Independent

Desperate families claim trafficking gangs are selling baby boys for up to £4,000

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

GETTY IMAGES A girl rescued from child traffickers in Guiyang last year

They came from across China to protest under the watchful gaze of the police, brandishing handmade placards with pictures of their missing children. In a sign of growing discontent, the parents' rare demonstration in the centre of Beijing was aimed at pressuring the authorities to do more to investigate the cases of tens of thousands of children snatched and sold every year.

"My wife and I can't sit at home waiting for the police, we keep looking. The longer you wait, the more hopeless you get," said the father of one boy Liu Jingjun, who went missing this year.

Many of China's missing boys are sold to childless couples who turn to criminal gangs to supply the treasured male heir while the girls are trafficked to become prostitutes or brides in rural areas. China's One Child Policy has led to an alarming shift in the gender divide with a major shortage of girls.

Baby boys can sell for as much as £4,000, while girls are sometimes sold for just £300, according to some child welfare groups. Some end up working in brick kilns in the heartland, others as beggars in the booming cities of the east coast. Scandals have occasionally erupted over the sale of abducted children to orphanages for adoption abroad.

The parents protesting in Beijing met through a website called "Baby Come Home" which lists more than 2,000 missing children and led to an informal network of desperate adults. Some were reluctant to give their names in Beijing because of the police presence and many returned home after authorities told them to end the protest.

The authorities responded to the problem in April last year with a high-profile public crackdown on trafficking. Officials say this has led to the break-up of nearly 2,400 criminal gangs and seen nearly 16,000 people detained.

But the US State Department's trafficking report for 2010 said that despite significant efforts, the government did not comply with the "minimum standards" for eliminating trafficking. It said there were continued reports of children being forced into prostitution.

China does not give figures, but an estimate based on reports for a British television documentary suggested that up to 70,000 children were snatched from the streets every year in China.

In a country where the social welfare net is still being constructed, having a child provides security in old age. A preference for males is common in China's rural regions, and families sometimes abort baby girls because they are limited to one or two children by family-planning laws.

But this preference has caused a potentially disastrous gender imbalance in the world's most populous country. In some regions, the male-female ratio can be as high as 130 males for every 100 females, compared to an average ratio of 107-to-100 in industrialised countries.

Daughters become members of their husband's family when they marry and move away, prompting the saying: "Raising a daughter is like watering someone else's fields", whereas boys grow into men who can till the fields and work as migrant labourers in the cities.

The gender gap has created a situation where there are not enough women of marrying-age for China's single men – and organised gangs have moved in to fill the gap.

Police say they have freed more than 10,000 abducted women including 1,100 foreigners, mostly from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Mongolia, since April last year as the widening gender gap fuels bride trafficking and prostitution.

One mother from Datong in Shanxi province lost her daughter Wang Min back in 1997 and has been searching for her ever since. "My daughter was only eight when she disappeared, she'd be 21 now," says her mother, her voice cracking as she spoke. "I went to the police immediately after she disappeared, but since I cannot provide any evidence to the police, they cannot really give any practical help. All I can do is travel to places when I hear of a clue.

"I have another child now, but I still miss Wang Min, I miss her a lot. Maybe I won't even recognise her now if she passed me in the street, but I will never give up hope of finding her," she said.

Li Ni's son disappeared in February 2009 in Xi'an. "A lot of parents have already travelled to nearly all the provinces in China, using all the money in the family," she said.

"I am so desperate to find my son and I will continue to look for him using whatever means necessary, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many hardships I have to endure."

"I believe those who abducted our kids, they are still human beings, they still have feelings just like you or me. I know of one kidnapper who took a kid for a long time, then saw the pain he was causing the parents on the media, so he brought him back because of the pressure from his heart," she said.

"Maybe one day my son will also come back to me in this way, and I will fight for him until that day."

Parents descend on Beijing to hunt for China's stolen children - Asia, World - The Independent

Source: The Independent

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