Prawdziwa twarz korporacyjnej globalizacji

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www.fatdawg.com/slavery2.html

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www.commondreams.org/views01/0305-06.htm

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Women and Children For Sale
The Globalization of Sexual Slavery
by Martin A. Lee

On Feb. 25 the small, impoverished country of Moldova, sandwiched between
Romania and Ukraine, became the first former Soviet republic to vote the
Communist Party back into power since the collapse of the USSR ten years ago.
The outcome of the general election in Moldova signaled a resounding rejection of
economic reforms demanded by the World Bank, which insisted that Moldovan
officials privatize farms, telecommunications, and the energy sector and slash
agricultural subsidies and social services.

In an effort to abide by the terms of its structural adjustment loan, the government
closed 63 village hospitals and imposed other austerity measures. The
consequences have been devastating for Moldova's 4.3 million people, most of
whom live off the land. Agriculture that once supplied wine and tobacco throughout
Russia is at a standstill. Currency values have plummeted. Corruption is rampant.
Foreign investment is nil. With a per capita income averaging $370 in 1999, much
of the population of Moldova currently scrapes by on less than one U.S. dollar a
day.

Higher-priced essentials, greater hardship, shorter lives – this is the price that poor
people must pay to please the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund,
which are able to starve a nation of resources (not only loans but private capital)
by letting out the word that it is not a good adjuster. "Initially a number of countries
resist," says Doug Hellinger of the Development Group on Alternative
Policies, "and then, along the way, governments are put under so much pressure
they give in."

Widespread deprivation in Moldova and other parts of post-Soviet Eastern
European has created golden opportunities for organized criminal gangs involved in
the illegal sexual trafficking of women and children. "Traffickers turn up in a rural
community during a drought or before a harvest, when food is scarce, and
persuade poor couples [to] sell their daughters for small amounts of money,"
explains a recent study ("Lives Together, Worlds Apart") released by the United
Nations Population Fund. Other girls are kidnapped from their homes and
orphanages, while many destitute women are lured to foreign lands by assurances
of work, income, and visas, only to find themselves forced into prostitution and
slave labor.

The U.S. State Department estimates that 700,000 to 2 million women and girls
(some as young as five) are smuggled across borders each year and bought and
sold for sexual purposes. Shocking in scope, this modern-day slave trade is not
only one of the most horrific human rights issues of our time; it is also a significant
health issue, for the global sex market is hastening the spread of AIDS and other
diseases.

Eastern Europe has emerged as a major point of origin for the burgeoning
international black market that auctions women and children as if they are chattel.
Human traffickers have little trouble maneuvering in places like Moldova, where it is
easy to bribe underpaid customs officers and police. "Even the highest ranking
officials in Moldova condone the trade in women and children because the
economic crisis means the state cannot take care of the population," says
Mariana Peterdel, director of the Romanian-based aid organization Salvati Copii.

Desperate for a chance to improve their lot, young women have been leaving
Moldova in droves. But instead of securing promised jobs as nannies or waitresses
in a prosperous country, many are beaten, raped, held under lock and key, and
resold from one brothel owner to the next. Trapped in abusive situations from
which escape is difficult and risky, these enslaved sex workers are told they will
not receive any wages until they pay off the purchase price incurred when their
employers bought them. According to Human Rights Watch, the practice of "debt
bondage" among sexual traffickers is routine, and women often find that their so-
called debts only increase and can never be fully repaid.

Katje, a nineteen-year-old Moldovan woman, is one of the lucky ones. She was
recently rescued from a seedy brothel in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, where
Albanian gangsters dominate the lucrative sex trade. (One Albanian crime gang
branded its women with tattoos to prevent them from being poached by other
traffickers.) When Katje (not her real name) wasn't with up to ten men a night, she
was kept against her will in a dark cellar with several other women sex slaves,
sleeping on the floor or on tables. For an entire month, they never saw daylight. "I
never thought this was possible. These people are animals," she said of her former
captors.

Kosovo, with its war-battered infrastructure, is fertile turf for overlapping mafia
networks that earn huge profits from trafficking in weapons, drugs, and girls. The
illicit trade in women and children is the fastest growing branch of organized crime,
according to the International Organization for Migration, which estimates that the
annual worldwide turnover from sex industry trafficking ranges from $6 billion to
$12 billion.

The influx of international peacekeepers, NATO officers, and development officials
provides a steady supply of customers in "liberated" Kosovo, where a pimp who
keeps 15 girls and works them six nights a week can easily bring in more than a
quarter million tax-free U.S. dollars a month. Peddling narcotics pales in
comparison to the money made on women because once a drug is sold, it's gone,
a brothel owner told the Canadian magazine Macleans, but a girl "can be sold over
and over before she collapses, goes mad, commits suicide, or dies of disease."

The Balkans – in particular Bosnia and Kosovo – serve as a kind of training ground
for women from Eastern Europe, many of whom are subsequently transported to
bordellos in Western Europe, Israel, Hong Kong, North America, and points
beyond.

The State Department believes that each year 50,000 to 100,000 women and
children are smuggled into the United States and forced to practice prostitution or
bonded sweatshop labor. Trafficked women are reluctant to seek help from the
police because they know they're in the country illegally. Their rights are violated
with impunity, as law enforcement authorities have failed to respond adequately to
the problem of sexual slavery.

U.S. officials often treat trafficked women as criminals rather than victims of
abuse, thereby compounding the trauma they suffered while in captivity. When
trafficking rings in the United States have been broken up, key female witnesses
are usually deported before they can testify against those who had enslaved them.
(Women are sent back to Moldova on a weekly basis.) The Immigration and
Naturalization Service is legally required to deal with such women in the same way
as other undocumented workers who have broken the law.

Prosecuting sexual traffickers in the United States is therefore highly problematic.
Few of these cases result in convictions, and the punishment rarely matches the
severity of the crime. A man who had forced Russian and Ukrainian women to
work as prostitutes at his massage parlor in Bethesda, Maryland, to cite but one
example, was merely fined after a plea bargain stipulated that he could not run a
future business in Montgomery County. If he had sold heroin, rather than women,
he would almost certainly have received a much tougher sentence.

To improve its own human rights performance, the U.S. government should expand
the definition of sexual trafficking to include businesses that promote mail-
order "marriages," which are often fronts for prostitution. In addition, Human Rights
Watch urges that trafficking victims be given access to legal assistance,
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