Steve Quayle News Alerts

June 6, 2002
By Preston Mendenhall

— Up to 4 million people fall victim to human traffickers each year, many of whom are women and girls forced into prostitution, according to an annual U.S. report on the problem. But some findings included in the report, which rates individual countries according their efforts to stamp out trafficking, are at odds with a recent MSNBC.com special investigation into the trade in human beings.

U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE Colin Powell on Wednesday presented the 2002 Trafficking in Persons Report in Washington. The report is compiled annually by the State Department, which is required under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 to provide Congress with a status check of the global problem.
The 2002 report acknowledges that a 1997 study that said 700,000 people were trafficked worldwide every year was out of date. The State Department now says that as many as 4 million people are trafficked each year, based on information gathered by non-governmental organizations working to fight trafficking.
In presenting the report, Powell said most trafficking victims are women and children.
“Traffickers often force them into pornography and prostitution, subjecting them to terrible mental and physical abuse, and putting them at risk from devastating diseases such as HIV/AIDS,” Powell said.
Powell said the report, which examined 89 countries, aimed “to bolster the will of the international community to combat this unconscionable crime.” The State Department said 19 countries fail to meet “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.” Countries must meet certain criteria in the State Department rating, including enacting anti-trafficking laws and punishing smugglers, providing shelters and support for victims and prosecuting corrupt government officials involved in the trade.

TRAFFICKING RANKING
At the bottom of the three-tiered 2002 list were governments that “refuse to acknowledge the trafficking problem within their territory,” including Burma, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Lebanon and Indonesia.
In the second tier — countries making “significant efforts” toward compliance — were 53 countries, including Albania, India, Israel, Singapore and Japan.
First-tier countries were singled out for “fully” complying with the minimum standards set by the State Department. The report said most European countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Switzerland, received high ratings for criminalizing human trafficking and offering support to victims.
The report also said Macedonia, the former Yugoslav republic, deserved a first-tier ranking due to its “serious and sustained efforts” to eliminate trafficking. Macedonia moved from a second tier to a first-tier ranking in one year.
But a four-month investigation by MSNBC.com showed that human trafficking and forced prostitution is thriving in Macedonia.

SEX SLAVES IN MACEDONIA
A dozen women held as sex slaves in Macedonia told stories of repeated rapes and beatings at the hands of their “owners” or by clients who hired them as prostitutes. The women, mostly from former Soviet states and Eastern Europe, said they had been promised well-paid jobs in Western Europe but ended up being forced into sex slavery.

The women were trafficked along well-trodden smuggling routes in the Balkans, passing through Romania or Bulgaria and then through Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia. A further destination for the women is Albania, whose rocky shores are the departure point for powerful boats that speed across the Adriatic Sea to Italy.
Other war-torn Balkan countries, including Yugoslavia’s remaining provinces, Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro — where sex slavery also is rampant — only ranked in the second tier.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, with thousands of NATO peacekeepers and U.N. personnel patrolling a territory the size of West Virginia, ranked in the third tier.
An official from the International Organization for Migration, which provides much of the information included in the report, praised Macedonia’s ranking. “We are pleased to see that there is real progress in this field,” said Tommaso de Cataldo, the deputy head of mission for the organization in Macedonia. “The government has realized that [trafficking] needs to be one of their priorities.”
But a European law enforcement official in Macedonia disagreed, saying that the report overlooked serious deficiencies in the government’s anti-trafficking efforts.
“This is not an honest assessment,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The Macedonians have a long way to go.”
The official noted that the police task force assigned to human trafficking numbers only a handful of officers. “There is no training whatsoever. There is only one shelter for women.”
Women held as sex slaves in Macedonia told MSNBC.com that police are collaborators in the trafficking business. They said women who escaped from brothels found themselves being trafficked again by corrupt law enforcement officials.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/762696.asp