The National Service for Combating Organised Crime in Bulgaria has discovered 13 cases of pregnant women being trafficked into Greece and their babies sold for adoption. The women were all promised money or were blackmailed into going. Most of the women were underage and when they arrived were given none of the money promised or much less than arranged. They were also forced to work while in Greece in order to meet expenses. The price the traffickers charged for the children in Greece was 15 000 Euros. Five men were detained by the police. Eighteen other such cases have been discovered by the Bulgarian police since March 2004.

The Japanese National Police Agency reported yesterday that in 2005 they made arrests in 81 cases of the trafficking of foreign women. This is an increase from 25 the previous year. In all 117 women, of whom 44 were from Indonesia, were released from slavery situations, mainly in prostitution. Human rights groups estimate, however that thousands of women are still being trafficked into Japan from poorer parts of Asia. With the passing of anti-trafficking provisions to the Japanese penal code last year, and a reduction of the number of “entertainment visas” issued annually, the Japanese authorities are clearly making some progress in the fight against human trafficking, but there is still a major problem in the country with trafficking into prostitution controlled by Japanese Yakuza mafia gangs.

Wahyu Susilo, coordinator of the NGO Migrant Care has said that weak labour and recruitment laws in Indonesia has lead to criminals being able to traffic people out of rural areas into slavery in the cities or abroad.
“Groups of women from Java and West Nusa Tenggara are trafficked to Riau almost every week under the noses of the security authorities,” Wahyu said and called for the law on labour recruitment to be revised to fight trafficking. He also claimed that the police could rescue thousands of child labourers and people in forced prostitution if they cracked down on the entertainment industry in Jakarta, Tanjungpinang and Batam.
Husein Alaydrus, chairman of the Indonesian Labour Exporters Association also claimed that the present 2004 Labour Export and Protection Law, despite carrying heavy sentences, did not protect people. “Brokers go about freely in rural areas recruiting job seekers and supplying them to whoever offers the highest price. This makes it difficult for authorities to monitor their employers,” he said. Mr Alaydrus said that they way forward was to ban labour brokers and allow labour exporters to recruit people directly, in cooperation with local manpower and transmigration offices. To read a full article on this subject, please click here.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has launched an anti-trafficking project in India, with the co-operation of the Indian government and $2 million of funding from the US government. The project will aim at raising awareness about human trafficking amongst law enforcement officers in the states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Goa and Andhra Pradesh. It is hoped that the training provided will increase the capacity of the authorities to investigate and successfully prosecute traffickers. Better prosecution was one of the issues highlighted in last year’s US State Department Trafficking in Persons report regarding India. The US pointed particularly to the lack of prosecutions in Kolkata (West Bengal) and Mumbai (Maharashtra), two cities which have a major problem with the trafficking of women and children into prostitution and forced labour. In 2004 Chennai had 91 trafficking convictions, but there were only 11 in Mumbai and 15 in Kolkata.

The trafficking of people into forced prostitution is a real problem in Wales, according to police and health workers. Since the conviction of Gjergj Mungiovi-Cuka and Akil Likcani for sex trafficking in the Cardiff area last year, police have been investigating other such criminal acts. Giles York, assistant chief constable of South Wales Police, said: “I have covert operations running, testing the stereotypical places to see if there is prostitution happening there, to see if there are people being exploited there.”
Consultant clinical psychologist Richard Pates, who runs an outreach programme for prostitutes in Cardiff said “It’s very hard to quantify the numbers, because it is obviously a hidden trade, it’s a hidden profession.
“But if I asked our outreach worker to take you out today, she would have no trouble in introducing you to 20 women that would probably have been trafficked, so it is not difficult to find women if you know where you are looking.
“It is a real problem in this city and in Wales.”
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