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Viewing cable 04ANKARA6686, TIP IN TURKEY: MEDIA ATTENTION, NOVEMBER 10-30,
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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin |
---|---|---|---|---|
04ANKARA6686 | 2004-12-02 13:19 | 2011-08-24 01:00 | UNCLASSIFIED | Embassy Ankara |
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 12 ANKARA 006686
SIPDIS
DEPARTMENT FOR G/TIP, G, INL, DRL, EUR/PGI, EUR/SE, INL/CTR
DEPARTMENT FOR VALERIE KWOK USAID E&E/ECA
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD PREF TU TIP IN TURKEY
SUBJECT: TIP IN TURKEY: MEDIA ATTENTION, NOVEMBER 10-30,
2004
¶1. (U) In response to G/TIP inquiries, national and
international media sources published the following news
articles about TIP in Turkey. Text of articles originally
published in Turkish is provided through unofficial local
FSN translation.
¶2. (U) Published November 30, 2004 by the International
Office on Migration (IOM) at http://www.iom.int/:
BEGIN TEXT:
The 88th session of the IOM governing body will open on
Tuesday, 30 November 2004, in Conference Room XVII at
the Palais des Nations.
This year's Council session "International Dialogue on
Migration" will focus on Valuing Migration: the costs,
benefits, opportunities and challenges of migration.
In his opening presentation Gervais Appave, IOM's
Director of Migration Policy and Research, will outline
the opportunities and challenges posed by migration
today and in the future. He will emphasize that "It
would, of course, be a mistake to measure the value of
migration solely in economic terms. Migration is linked
not only to national and global economic growth and
prosperity but also to such complex issues as
international security and human rights, public health
and national identity. It has political, social,
cultural and other effects, including the very
important "human dimension", in addition to its
economic effects."
On Tuesday afternoon, the following guest speakers will
take part in the discussions:
- Carolina Barco, Minister of Foreign Affairs of
Colombia;
- Des Browne, Minister of State for Citizenship,
Immigration and Nationality of the United Kingdom;
- Viktor Ivanov, Assistant to the President of the
Russian Federation;
- Riaz H. Khokhar, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan;
and
- Qiao Zonghuai, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of
China.
- N. K. Singh, Member of the Global Commission on
International Migration, chairman of the Management
Development Institute of India will serve as
commentator.
On the second day of the Council, as part of the
Dialogue, a Year in Review session will highlight major
developments in international migration and a workshop
on the Image of Migrants in Society will be held in the
afternoon.
Professor Dr. Rita Sussmuth, Member of the Global
Commission on International Migration, Chair of the
Independent Council of Experts on Immigration and
Integration, appointed by the German Government, will
present an overview of the issue.
During this year's Council session, the Commonwealth of
the Bahamas and the Republic of Estonia will be admitted as IOM's newest
Member States. This will bring the number of IOM Member
States to 107. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (ISESCO), has applied for
observer status.
The Director General, Brunson McKinley will hold a
breakfast with journalists on Thursday 25 November from
09h00 to 10h30 at the Restaurant des Dlgus at the
Palais des Nations.
All Council documents are available on the IOM Website.
Members of the press are welcome to attend the Council
session and discussions.
For more information, contact
Media and Public Information
IOM Geneva
Tel: 41.22.717.9111
11
E-mail: mpi@iom.int.
¶3. (U) Published November 30, 2004 by the International
The IOM Mission in Albania is holding a three-day
workshop for experts working to combat the trafficking
in human beings.
Law enforcement officials, judges, prosecutors, NGO
staff, and others involved in the fight against
trafficking of human beings from Belgium, France,
Greece, Italy, Hungary, Albania, Belarus, Moldova,
Romania, Bulgaria, the Russian Federation, Turkey, and
Ukraine, are attending the event, which began on Monday
in Tirana.
The participants will discuss the elaboration of a Code
of Conduct containing guidelines based on the Italian
experience to efficiently combat the trafficking in
human beings on a joint transnational level.
The workshop is part of the IOM/EU project
"Establishment of the Network of and Joint Training for
Operational Law Enforcement Officers, NGOs and IOs in
Fighting Human Trafficking into the EU Member States
from EU Accession Countries and Countries Bordering the
EU after Enlargement," implemented under the European
Commission Directorate General Justice and Home
Affairs' AGIS Programme 2003, with co-funding granted
by selected EU Member States.
According to IOM's Chief of Mission in Albania,
Maurizio Bussati, Tirana was chosen to host this event
in recognition of substantial progress made by Albania
towards meeting European standards to fight trafficking
an provide assistance to victims.
For more information contact:
Bjorn Clarberg
IOM Brussels
Tel: 32.2.285.00.25
E-mail: Bclarberg@iom.int
Tamara Keating
Tel: 32.2.282.45.79
Albi Greva
IOM Tirana
Tel 355 68 2052542
E-mail: agreva@iomtirana.org.al
END TEXT.
¶4. (U) Published November 23, 2004 by AKI Press Kyrgyzstan:
TITLE: Uzbek Prostitutes Look to New Markets
BEGIN TEXT: The economic crisis at home has forced
prostitutes to expand their horizons.
When Israel deported Gulnora for prostitution last
month she came home to Samarkand by plane. Her journey
to get there one year earlier was rather more
complicated.
First Gulnora - not her real name - was taken by a pimp
from Tashkent to Moscow, and then flown to Egypt. She
and five others were handed over to a Bedouin, who took
them on a long and dangerous ride to Israel by camel.
"Our journey lasted nine days, and we were lucky we
didn't encounter Israeli border troops," she said,
adding that some women making the same journey have
been killed by guards while others have been raped by
their Bedouin guides.
The United Arab Emirates, where Uzbeks make up the
largest group of foreign prostitutes, used to be the
destination of choice for women like Gulnora. Some
travel agencies in Tashkent even offer a visa service
to speed up the process.
But competition there is fierce, and Gulnora is among a
growing number of prostitutes employed by pimps looking
to expand into new markets like Israel, Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Bahrain and Iran.
South Korea - which has strong trade links with
Uzbekistan - is another popular destination, though
customers there are mainly Uzbek men working away from
home so the women say the earnings are not as good.
But the authorities in some of these countries are now
cracking down.
According to a Thai women's group, 228 Uzbek women were
arrested and deported from Thailand last year. In
Israel, which is almost impossible to enter legally,
more than 250 have been sent home in the past year
alone.
Gulnora - who saw up to 15 clients a day and earned
enough in six months to pay back the 5,000 US dollars
she owed her pimp - arrived back in Uzbekistan with
just 10 dollars in her pocket. That money was taken by
customs officers at Tashkent airport.
Nodyra Karimova, head of a non-government group in
Uzbekistan which works to end the trafficking of women
and which helped bring Gulnora home, said more people
are turning to prostitution as the economic crisis in
the country worsens.
To escape poverty, there are even some mothers who
offer their daughters to pimps and ask for them to be
sent abroad to work as prostitutes. An Uzbek women's
centre told of two cases where madams took their own
underage children to work in brothels.
Other women, however, are tricked into going abroad by
promises of jobs as cleaners or cooks. Their passports
are confiscated by the pimps and if they refuse to work
they may be beaten up. When the debt for their journey
overseas is settled, the women are often sold on to
another pimp.
After years of ignoring the problem, Uzbekistan last
year signed an international convention on sexual
exploitation and trafficking of women.
Five madams have been charged, but later released under
President Islam Karimov's annual amnesty. Because of
the amnesty, the pimp of an underage orphan who was
raped, beaten and had her face burned with cigarettes
was allowed out of jail. The girl's aunt, who sold her
for 50 dollars, also went free.
"This happens every year," said Maya Kurbanova, a legal
expert from an Uzbek women's centre. "Ninety per cent
of the pimps are women, and their husbands and brothers
help them from abroad or home. Because it is not
punished, the traffic of women in Uzbekistan continues
to flourish."
Despite the tragic stories, some state officials are
unsympathetic to the plight of Uzbek prostitutes.
The head of the women's affairs committee at the
Samarkand governor's office, Farogat Shakirova, blames
the women themselves for their problems, and denies the
growth of prostitution among Uzbek women is linked to
the country's economic woes.
"They simply don't want to work, so they look for easy
ways to earn a lot of money" said Shakirova. "They are
simply immoral women. When they are abroad, why don't
they work as cleaners in factories like other Uzbek
people do? Even in the difficult [Second World] War
years women starved, but kept their honour and
dignity."
Samarkand human rights activist Salima Kadyrova said
the authorities won't acknowledge the problem because
they themselves are to blame for Uzbekistan's current
crisis.
"The state must not create conditions that allow
prostitution to develop on a massive scale," she said.
"What sort of monstrous society are we creating?" END
TEXT.
¶5. (U) Published November 22, 2004 by Turkish language
Anatolian News Agency:
BEGIN TEXT: A 16-year old girl asked for help from
Jandarma teams claiming that she was forced by her
family to live with somebody.
According to the Provincial Jandarma Command, S.S. (16)
applied to the Nurdagi Jandarma Command in the Esenyurt
district of the Nurdagi sub-province of Gaziantep. She
claimed that her mother Zeynep B. and stepfather
Ibrahim B. forced her to live with Fatih G. Jandarma
detained the mother and the stepfather.
An investigation is ongoing. END TEXT.
¶6. (U) Published November 22, 2004 by Turkish language
Anatolian News Agency:
TITLE: 94 people, including 93 foreigners, were
captured in the last two days along the border in
Edirne.
BEGIN TEXT: The Jandarma, police and border patrol
captured the illegal immigrants who wanted to go to
Greece.
They included 56 Iraqis, 20 Pakistanis, six
Mauritanians, four Bengalis, two Indians, two Somalis,
one Moroccans, on Syrian, one Iranian and one Turk.
Foreigners were sent to the Edirne Police for
deportation.
A judicial investigation is ongoing on the captured
Turk. END TEXT.
¶7. (U) Published November 20, 2004 by the Pakistan daily
Times:
TITLE: 2 men trying to get visa on fake reference
letter held; By Khawaja Naseer
BEGIN TEXT: LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency
(FIA) on Friday arrested two members of a six-member
human trafficking gang who tried to get Iranian visas
on fake reference letters issued on the letterhead of
Punjab Tourism Minister Mian Aslam Iqbal, sources told
Daily Times on Friday.
Mahtab Khan, gang leader, and George Masih got fake
accreditation letters of the minister and applied for
the visa, sources said, adding, that the FIA had
already received several complaints against Mahtab Khan
and Geroge Masih, who had planned to enter Europe
through Iran, Turkey and Italy.
Sources told Daily Times that when the Iranian Embassy
contacted the provincial minister for verification, it
was revealed that the accreditation letters were not
genuine. The embassy then contacted the FIA, which
arrested the culprits from Township. Talking to Daily
Times, Chaudhry Tanveer Ahmad, the FIA regional
director, said investigations were underway and the
agency would arrest the remaining members of the gang
soon.
Talking to Daily Times, the provincial tourism minister
said his private secretary had lodged a case against
the swindlers who procured his fake reference letter.
Sources told Daily Times that it was not the first
attempt by human traffickers to obtain visas on
accreditation letters of ministers or assembly members.
They said that a month ago the FIA arrested another
gang who tried to obtain visas for European countries
on fake letterheads of six Punjab Assembly members. END
TEXT.
¶8. (U) Published November 17, 2004 by Turkish language Zaman
News:
Title: Women Coming for Prostitution Attempted to be
Hidden at the Shelter; Sedat Gunec - Ankara
BEGIN TEXT: Human traffickers attempted to take
advantage of the opportunities granted for the victims
of prostitution in order to get residence permits for
the foreign women they brought to Turkey. Interior
Ministry got activated upon the efforts of traffickers
in placing the women they have brought from eastern
block countries in the shelters established for victims
pulled into prostitution. Deputy Undersecretary Sebati
Buyuran instructed that such initiatives should be
obstructed.
The Interior Ministry put into implementation the
project prepared by the Human Resources Development
Foundation with the purpose of collapsing the
prostitution networks. The foreign women who fall in
the hands of prostitution networks are not immediately
deported if they cooperate with security units. They
are placed at the shelter established in Istanbul. The
victimized women are provided protection services as
well as psychological support. Those who need
treatment are sent to health institutions and treated.
Thus those who are subject to human trafficking are
encouraged to cooperate with the security units so that
security would reach to criminals.
Sub-title: Coordination Among Countries is Aimed
These women are put under strict protection to prevent
them falling in the hands of prostitution barons again
and their safe departure from Turkey is provided.
Contacts are established with the security units of the
victims' countries so that they will not fall in the
hands of human traffickers again. Information
regarding the names of the people and countries thru
which these women are sent to Turkey are conveyed to
the related country.
However, it is found out that human traffickers tried
to use the shelter to get residence permits for the
foreign women they bring to Turkey from eastern block
countries with the purpose of prostitution by
presenting them as victims. Interior Ministry Deputy
Undersecretary Sebati Buyuran drew attention to the
fact that these people claim that they are victims in
order to conduct prostitution and similar acts on a
comfortable and legal platform. The circular he issued
urged (security members) to show utmost sensitivity to
enable only real victim foreign women to use the
shelters. According to this, only Istanbul liaison
point officials will conduct the placement procedures
for the women who are determined to be victims and
those who are granted settlement document for them to
stay in Turkey for a while. Irrelevant people and
officials will not be able to participate in this
transfer process. Information about where and how this
shelter operates will be kept secret. END TEXT.
¶9. (U) Published on BlackTable.com November 17, 2004 by
author Andy Baker:
You are a teenage girl growing up in Estonia. You're
dirt poor. Your prospects are dim. One day, you see a
want ad in your local newspaper: "Agency seeking young
women to work as au pairs. High paying opportunities
throughout the European Union and United States."
Encouraged, you meet a local employment agency
recruiter for a few interviews and what luck! The
agency finds you a job. Not only that, they supply you
with a travel visa and plane tickets. Next thing you
know, you're on your way to Athens to work as a live-in
for a diplomat's family. Life is good.
Only you don't make it to Greece. Rather, you wind up
in some Serbian backwater where you are starved, beaten
and forced into prostitution. Over the next year you
service 10 to 15 men a day, earning your Estonian
syndicate bosses about $50,000. In exchange for your
labors you receive more beatings, enough food to keep
you alive and crappy cigarettes. This is your life.
This is just one out of dozens of true story lines
described in the recently released The Natashas: Inside
the New Global Sex Trade by award-winning,
investigative journalist Victor Malarek. Malarek, who
writes for Toronto's The Globe & Mail and whose
television news show The Fifth Estate is Canada's
answer to 60 Minutes, spent two years researching and
dissecting the $12 billion business of sexual slavery.
He calls human trafficking the human rights issue of
the new millennium. The Black Table spoke with Malarek
recently about child prostitutes and Serbian gangsters.
BT: Have you ever observed a sex slave auction?
VM: Not an auction per se. The worst I've seen is the
what goes down in the brothels in Kosovo, where it's
totally animalistic. The men, 10 and 20 at a time,
literally maul these women.
BT: Your average Russian mobster -- how does he smell?
VM: It's funny, you know, how often the clichs are
borne out by the reality. Eastern European thugs
especially. But with them it's the dress code. They may
live in Greece, Kosovo, Bosnia, Tel Aviv, Rome
Frankfurt, London, you name it, but they all seem to
sport leather jacket and buzz cut. It's an intimidating
look. If you want to be a pimp you have to intimidate
the Johns, too, not just the women. Most smell like
cheap cologne, I guess.
BT: What kind of front do these so-called employment
agencies put up in order to lure "employees"?
VM: Well first, the ads appear to be officially
sanctioned. They're decorated with the American stars
and stripes or the Canadian Maple Leaf or the tri-
colored flags of Germany, Belgium, Italy, the
Netherlands and so on. In countries like Ukraine,
Romania, Russia and the Czech Republic, bogus
recruiters will set up offices adjacent to legitimate
employment agencies. Some go so far as to hold "career
days" at local universities. Of course, not all women
fall victim to the spin of phony employment agencies.
The first link in the chain is just as often a relative
or a boyfriend or some acquaintance in a trusted
position.
BT: Kind Uncle Zootroy lined up a job for you in
Istanbul?
VM: That's right.
BT: Don't some of these women have an idea of what
they're getting into?
VM: There are a number of women who know they're going
to go and strip. And there are a certain number who
even know they're going to be prostitutes. They're
given a story though. And it's almost akin to the movie
Pretty Woman: Hey, you're gonna do one or two, maximum
three men a night. No need to work seven days a week,
five is fine. You're going to be making $5,000 a week
that goes directly into your pocket. You can take the
week off when you're on your period. And you can say no
to any man. What actually happens is a nightmare.
BT: Such as?
VM: Your average trafficked woman does -- is forced to
do -- between five and 30 men a day, usually without a
condom. (Bareback is especially popular Tel Aviv, where
the orthodox clientele are forbidden by their religion
to "waste" their semen.) She is kept under lock and key
usually in an overstuffed apartment. She is accompanied
at all times by a "bodyguard" whose job it is to ensure
two things: That she satisfies clients and that she
doesn't escape. She works 24/7, 30 days a month, period
or no period. She can never say no to a man and cannot
say no to an act.
BT: What about madams? Somewhere along the line you
must have interviewed women who managed to flip or
subvert the power dynamic and, you know, run their own
business.
VM: Not one.
BT: Hmm. The New York Times recently did a story on a
Korean girl in Jersey City who runs her own very
profitable escort service. About all that's bugging her
are stomach ulcers.
VM: OK, no Asian woman runs an escort service without a
Triad (mafioso) behind her. You see, this is the
naivet sometimes of people. They can front whatever
they want to front. And what I have found is that a lot
of formerly-trafficked women have suddenly become
madams, but they do not control the operation. They are
the front. I will defy anyone -- you follow the money
that this madam makes and you will see that a large
portion of it is going somewhere else. Madams and pimps
are field workers.
BT: You mention the "breaking" process in your book.
VM: Yeah, it's a pimp term for the systematic
intimidation and disorientation that the women (I say
women, but we're talking about mostly 15- through 19-
year-olds) are subjected to before they start working
in brothels. First they're put in huge debt bondage,
told that they must work off travel expenses before
they can even think of being let go. They're stripped
of their identification and held in a foreign country
where they don't know the language. They're told that
their families back home are being watched. If they try
to run, their mother or father or brother will be
beaten or killed. They're then starved and roughed up.
You have these apartments in Tel Aviv or in Hamburg and
you have a dozen in an apartment or 50, 150 girls in an
entire building. And the girls are brought in to the
men individually and sometimes in pairs. The men come
in, five, six, seven at a time and gang bang them. They
call it the "test drive." They show them how to move
and what to do. Any girl who tries to fight it, they'll
take her and make an absolute example out of her.
Often, they'll videotape them in these forced gang
bangs and make a porn tape out of it and threaten to
send that back home to their village if they get out of
line. Most of them just give up.
BT: And the ones who manage to break free and get
repatriated?
VM: Well, the sad reality of repatriation is there's
nothing waiting for them. Take Moldova, which I call
the Haiti of Eastern Europe. They go back to Moldova
and there are no treatment programs for them, no
rehabilitation programs; there are no therapies,
there's nothing for them. Often they have all kinds of
STDs. Some of them have HIV. And so they go back to
their villages where they're known as: "The whore [who]
has come back." After a while, some of them commit
suicide.
There are some programs setting up in Kiev and
Bucharest and Moscow for when they do return. But
they're very few and far between because the
governments claim there is little money out there for
rehabilitation. My counterargument to that is the
governments of places like Moldova should confront
countries like Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Israel
and Turkey and say, "When our young women are
repatriated from your country and when we know what has
happened to them, your government should give us money
so we can rehabilitate them."
BT: Sounds doubtful.
VM: Yeah, but you know what? Look at the "comfort
women" from South Korea that are now fighting for some
kind of retribution or reparation for what the Japanese
did to them during the Second World War. Their case is
getting heard, so it's not that outlandish.
BT: In The Natashas, you say there have been four waves
of human sex slave trafficking, the first three
originating respectively in Southeast Asia, Africa and
Latin America. Aside from geography, how does the
current wave differ from the preceding three?
VM: It's far more brutal and far more organized. When
you look at the organized crime syndicates that are
involved, in particular the Russian, Estonian and
Ukrainian mafias, they've realized what the potential
is out there and there seems to be this incredible,
insatiable desire for these kinds of women. It's the
speed of this thing as well. In 1991 the Iron Curtain
crumbles, the wall comes down, democracy sort of rushes
into the former Soviet states and this huge market
suddenly opens up and it's vast.
BT: If I brought this subject up in company, many
people would find it tawdry, maybe even a little bit
banal. Period. Why should anyone care?
VM: I've always been one that gets really upset with
respect to abuse. My whole life has been one that looks
at child abuse issues. That largely is driven by my own
childhood. I grew up in the child welfare system and
protection system in Quebec. I was put in foster homes
and boys homes and I was a first-hand victim and first-
hand observer of major abuse of kids. When I got into
journalism, that's one of the areas I keyed in on. That
sort of stays with me all the time when I look at any
issue.
I think we should care because these are girls and
young women who are being raped. We're not talking
about voluntary choices. These are girls who are being
forced into absolutely hellish existences, all for the
pleasure of men. We look at these young women who are
on the streets and we make these snap judgments. We
think: Whore. But we don't look beyond the stilettos
and miniskirt to ask what lead this person to this
point in their life?
Now, when I look at U.S. State Department statistics,
U.N. statistics, Europol and International Organization
for Migration statistics and the consensus is that
there are 800,000 to 1 million of these young women
trafficked every year, well there's no way in hell that
a million of these young women are lining up for this.
That's all it takes for me to care. I've been a
journalist for 35 years, been in wars and famines and
all kinds of deep shit and I'm not hardened. I take it
personally. I can't sit back because one day, who
knows, it could happen to my daughter or your sister.
You have to protect those in society who can't defend
themselves and that's children and senior citizens.
BT: So you've interviewed hundreds of these trafficked
women. Is there anything weird about being a guy and
covering this subject?
VM: It's a stupid thing but you feel guilty for
mankind, you know? And yeah, in interviewing young
female victims and discovering the world of shit
they've been living in I've sometimes felt guilty as a
man because it's men who are responsible for their
suffering. But it wasn't me.
BT: OK, but you're dealing with young, pretty girls
who're incredibly vulnerable. How do you keep from
feeling in some way like you're crossing a line, being
just one more intruder?
VM: I'm surprised and not surprised when people open up
to me. My wife and several of my friends have said to
me that children and people who have gone through hell
seem to have a sympathetic ear for me. I remember being
in Costa Rica, in a place where young girls had been
rescued off the streets and I was talking to the woman
who was running it, Mara, and she told me a horrific
story about this 9-year-old girl who was made to
service hundreds of men orally and was beaten if she
didn't swallow. As a result of the trauma she could no
longer consume cheeses, milk, eggs, ice cream or any
dairy because it was too much of a reminder. She flat
out refused to speak to anyone. She was very afraid,
but especially terrified of men. She'd gone mute,
essentially.
Later on in the day we were in the main yard which, by
the way, is guarded by a man with an AK-47 because
several times the pimps have tried to charge the safe
house to get these young girls back. [O]ne little girl
came up to me and we started to talk and she had a
beautiful smile. She was a beautiful young lady and she
was speaking to me in Spanish and saying she would like
to learn English and just chatting. Eventually I
noticed Mara was staring at me and I asked her, "Is
anything wrong?" She said, "That's the girl I was
telling you about. She doesn't talk to anybody."
For some reason, people come up and talk to me. They
open up to me.
BT: You're described often as a "crusader" journalist.
Is "crusader" a modifier you embrace?
VM: Eh, I'm one of these guys who charges into places
with a sword. And again it goes back to nobody swung a
sword for me as a kid. And I decided that rather than
be another self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, destined
to be a bad kid, I'd try and change things for myself
and maybe others.
BT: There's a movie on you. Is it any good?
VM: Yeah, I guess. After it came out I got this rep for
being an angry young man, you know? People today ask me
if that's still the case and I say, "No. I'm an angry
middle aged man."
¶10. (U) Published November 12, 2004 by Turkish language
Anatolian News Agency:
BEGIN TEXT: Border patrol and Jandarma captured 126
foreigners as attemptd to illegally cross the border in
Edirne.
Along the border in the Ipsala and Meric sub-provinces,
authorities captured 56 Pakistanis, 53 Iraqis, nine
Somalis, six Afghanis and two Mauritanians.
The foreigners were turned over to the Foreigners
Department of the Edirne Police for deportation. END
TEXT.
¶11. (U) Published November 12, 2004 by Radio Free Europe:
TITLE: World: Child Sex Trade Becoming Lucrative, Pan-
Asian Epidemic; By Antoine Blua
BEGIN TEXT: The United Nations estimates that more than
1 million children around the world enter the global
sex trade every year. The children are tricked or lured
away from their families and are often taken abroad. In
some cases, they are forced to service more than 10
customers per night, and are also used to feed the
exploding popularity of child pornography over the
Internet.
Prague, 12 November 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Police in the
southern Kazakh city of Shymkent said this week that
they have broken a human trafficking ring in which
young girls would have been sold into prostitution.
They say they prevented the sale of eight girls -- the
oldest was 17 -- to the Persian Gulf after receiving a
tip-off last month.
Police spokesman Erkin Inkarov tells RFE/RL that
recruiters had promised the girls well-paid jobs
abroad.
"[They] kept eight girls for sexual exploitation,
[saying to them]: 'Well, if you want to get jobs
abroad, we have an opportunity to employ you there.'
And they started arranging passports [and travel
documents] for them," Inkarov said.
The Central Asian republics are a source, transit
point, and destination country for people trafficked
from other countries in the region. Most of the victims
are trafficked to Russia, the Persian Gulf, Turkey,
East Asia, and Europe.
The issue is of particular concern in Tajikistan, which
is still struggling to recover from its five-year civil
war, which left many people desperate to find better
economic prospects abroad.
Gulchehra Mirzoeva is head of Modar (Mother), a Tajik
nongovernmental organization focusing on women's
rights. She notes that the sex slavery trade also
affects young boys.
"We've spoken to six pimps, [and] one of them said that
Arabs recently asked to send young boys. According to
[the pimp], Arabs prefer young boys between 12 and 14
with blue eyes. Their skin can be either light or dark.
The price of the boys depends on that," Mirzoeva said.
Meeting this week in the capital, Bangkok, officials
from the United Nations and 20 East Asia-Pacific
countries admitted that child trafficking is getting
worse despite changes in laws and government policies.
Gopalan Balagopal, a senior adviser to UNICEF, the
United Nations Children's Fund, spoke to Reuters about
the problem.
"We see that children are continuing to be sexually
exploited. And children are continuing to be
trafficked. There's a whole lot of material on the
Internet which is directly connected to the sexual
exploitation of children," Balagopal said.
Thailand has long had a reputation for its sex trade.
Young girls from Southeast Asia are lured to Thailand
with promises of lucrative jobs, only to end up in
massage parlors and karaoke bars where prostitution is
rampant.
Recently, six teenage girls were found cowered inside
dark, grimy rooms after they were rescued in a brothel
in northern Thailand. The girls, most of whom had been
smuggled across the border from impoverished Myanmar,
were covered in bruises and cigarette burns inflicted
by drunken customers. One girl even had duct tape
across her mouth to stop her from screaming.
Ben Svasti, from the anti-trafficking group Trafcord,
says the case is one of the most horrific memories he
has of his time on the frontlines in the fight against
child trafficking.
"A young child is not yet ready to have sex physically
or mentally. And you're being faced by a customer who
wants to take your virginity. He's probably paid a lot
of money for it. And he's often drunk. And he's brutal.
And that is just the most horrific ordeal for any child
[and] any woman to have to go through," Svasti said.
Thailand's child-trafficking business is believed to
amount to some $2.5 billion a year.
New technologies, including the Internet, digital
cameras, and mobile phones, have increased the spread
of child pornography, the demand for it, and the risks
for children of sexual exploitation.
National laws have not kept pace with these trends.
Most countries in the region do not have laws that
refer specifically to child pornography, and few
criminalize its mere possession.
(Sojida Djakhfarova from RFE/RL's Tajik Service; Merhat
Sharipzhanov, director of RFE/RL's Kazakh Service; and
Reuters contributed to this report.) END TEXT.
¶12. (U) Published November 11, 2004 by Turkish language
Anaolian News Agency:
TITLE: DEATH TOLL RISES TO 11 IN BOAT ACCIDENT IN
AEGEAN
BEGIN TEXT: IZMIR (A.A) - "We recovered body of one
more illegal migrant off Doganbey district in Aegean
Sea," said Seferihisar Sub-Governor Mehmet Godekmerdan
on Friday.
Nine illegal migrants drowned and three others survived
when a boat carrying 20 people capsized and sank off
Doganbey hamlet of Seferihisar town in western city of
Izmir on Wednesday.
Coast Guard teams found one body in open sea yesterday.
There are still 5 missing people.
There were a total of 1 Turkish citizen, 6 Somalians
and 13 Mauritanians aboard the boat. END TEXT.
¶13. (U) Published November 11, 2004 by the Southeast
European Times:
BEGIN TEXT: According to an annual report conducted by
Greek police forces and sent to Europol, authorities
investigated 157 cases of organised crime during 2003.
Fourteen types of crime were recorded, ranging from
relatively minor ones -- such as insider betting and
illegal trading of cultural products -- to extremely
serious ones, including drug smuggling, blackmail,
forgery, child pornography and human trafficking.
Organised crime groups are generally structured
according to nationality, with members of a particular
nationality usually engaging in the same type of crime,
the report found. Of the groups reported in Greece,
none are sufficiently organised to engage in
international operations.
According to the police, Albanian crime groups are the
best-organised and most violent, as well as the most
likely to collaborate with Greeks. They are mainly
involved in cross-border drug smuggling, human
trafficking, thefts, robberies and illegal immigration.
Despite the notoriety of Albanian organised crime,
however, the report found that the number of Albanian
citizens in Greece who are involved in criminal
activity is relatively small. Only 1 out of every 3,000
have been convicted in a criminal case.
Bulgarian crime groups in Greece engage in
counterfeiting, forgery, human trafficking and drug
dealing, the report said. Crime groups from Macedonia,
Turkey, Pakistan, Iran and China are mostly involved in
cases of illegal immigration. Russian and Ukrainian
groups deal mainly in cigarette smuggling and the sex
trade.
Most of the groups' members use modern technology to
expand and broaden their operations and to elude
police. To differing degrees, all groups use physical
brutality to ensure internal cohesion and to intimidate
victims. END TEXT.