Child prostitutes rescued in US

Taken from BBC News, 23 February 2009

US authorities have rescued nearly 50 child prostitutes - some as young as 13 - in a nationwide operation against the trafficking of children for sex.

More than 570 suspects were arrested during the action, which took place over three nights.
FBI agents and local police forces were involved in the operations which spanned some 29 cities.

Officials say a 16-year-old girl who recruits children as prostitutes is being sought as a priority.

Special Agent Melissa Morrow, of Washington's FBI, said adult prostitutes who were among those arrested tipped authorities off about the girl.

"She is currently 16 and started when she was 13," Agent Morrow said.

"Now she is out there recruiting other juveniles as well," she said, adding that finding her was "at the top of our list", the Associated Press news agency reported.

Cycle of violence
The ages of teenage prostitutes rescued in Operation Cross Country III ranged from 13 to 17.

The FBI said 571 people were arrested on suspicion of the trafficking children for prostitution and solicitation.

"We continue to pursue those who exploit our nation's children," said FBI Director Robert S Mueller III.

"We may not be able to return their innocence but we can remove them from this cycle of abuse and violence."

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

Taken from The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008
Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.


An amphibious assault vehicle leaves the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to the human rights group Reprieve. Photograph: Zack Baddor/AP

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.

"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time.

Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."

The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."

A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".

The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.

CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

French court jails aid workers sent back from Chad

Taken from Yahoo News
by Reuters - Monday, January 28 2008
(Reporting by Thierry Leveque; writing by Francois Murphy; Editing by Anna Willard)

CRETEIL, France (Reuters) - Six French activists sentenced in Chad to eight years' hard labour for trying to kidnap dozens of children had their sentences converted into French jail terms of the same length by a court on Monday.

The six members of the aid group Zoe's Ark were arrested in Chad in October and found guilty last month of trying to kidnap 103 African children. They were later flown back to France under a cooperation agreement between the two countries.

The group said they were rescuing orphans from Sudan's Darfur region, a conflict zone across Chad's eastern border, and they intended to fly them to Europe for fostering there.

Most of the children were found to have come from families in Chadian border villages who were persuaded to give up their offspring in exchange for promises of education.

French law does not recognise hard labour and the court in the Paris suburb of Creteil converted their sentences into normal prison terms of eight years at a hearing that did not examine the merits of the case against them in Chad.

The court said that, under French law, the case amounted to "illegal confinement of minors under the age of 15".

Defence lawyers said before the hearing opened earlier this month that the Chadian sentences were not valid because they were imposed in what they described as an undemocratic state after a trial they said was not fair.

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Well done to the French courts for delivering a reasonably tough sentence and exposing these Child Traffickers.

This group of Traffickers said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under five in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law - Yet they did so without the consent of any international body and the UN have said that many of the children were from Chad, not Sudan, and there is no evidence that they are orphans.

Sex Slave Victim Wins Abuse Claim

Taken from The Age, Australia, May 29, 2007
Natalie Craig

A FORMER child sex slave has become the first person in Australia to be compensated as a victim of sex trafficking.

Thai woman Jetsadophorn Chaladone, known as "Ning", yesterday told The Age of the success of her compensation claim for the sexual abuse she suffered at a Sydney brothel in 1995, aged 13. Ning, now 25, said she hoped her story would raise awareness about sex slavery.

She was trafficked to Australia with the consent of her father, expecting to work as a nanny. She was instead put to work in a brothel. She said she was told she owed a "debt" to her traffickers of about $35,000, which she would pay off by having sex with 650 men.

She was not allowed to leave the "safe house" where she and other prostitutes slept, and had no money and no contacts in Australia.

Ning said she had sex with as many as 100 men in 10 days, before immigration officials found her during a routine compliance raid.

She also made mention in her compensation claim of a "beating room" where unco-operative workers were taken.

The owners of this Surry Hills brothel and their trafficking accomplices were never investigated for their crimes against Ning. This was despite pressure on NSW police by Sydney immigration officials, as shown through records of correspondence in 1995, obtained through freedom of information.

"It still hurts to talk about it," Ning said through a translator of her experience. "I have been depressed … sometimes I feel like I don't have any reason to go on."

The compensation was awarded last month but Ning is only making her case public now as she previously felt too uncomfortable to discuss the details.

Her psychological scars have been heavy and enduring. The NSW Victims Compensation Tribunal stated in its reason for award that Ning "suffered from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and moderate to severe depressive disorder" as a consequence of the abuse in Sydney.

Melbourne filmmaker Luigi Acquisto helped Ning lodge her claim by arranging a psychiatric examination in Thailand, engaging the help of Melbourne human rights lawyer Fiona McLeod, SC, and arranging for her to travel to Australia.

He said he first heard about Ning's case back in 1995 when he was researching a documentary about sex trafficking, and was appalled that nothing had been done.

"If the brothel had been prosecuted, the Attorney-General of NSW could now claim the money paid to Ning back from them," Mr Acquisto said.

"But this compensation is vitally important. Relevant compensation can pull victims out the cycle of poverty … give them some status within their community so they can lead a normal life."

Ning has not disclosed the sum she was awarded, although it is modest in Australian terms. She said she would use the money to educate herself and her five-year-old son, to renovate her two-bedroom house and set up a business in her home in Kalasin province in north-east Thailand.

Ms McLeod, who helped Ning to lodge a claim, said she was heartened by the precedent the case had set. "I am hopeful that the success of the compensation claim will at least educate other trafficking victims about the possibility of making claims," she said.

There has been no statistical research on the number of sex slaves in Australia. Federal Government figures suggest that the number of women trafficked to Australia each year is well below 100, while Project Respect, a sex industry lobby, has conducted surveys to suggest the number is at least 300.

There have been only two successful prosecutions for sex slavery since the introduction of anti-slavery laws in 1999.

Brunswick brothel owner Wei Tang was sentenced to a minimum of six years' jail last June for keeping five Thai women as sex slaves.

Last July, Sydney brothel owners Somsri Yotchomchin and Johan Sieders were each found
guilty of engaging in sexual servitude.

Ms McLeod said the failure of several other prosecutions related to the Australian visa system for sex slaves and a lack of education about the nuances of the crime.

She said it was important to emphasise that the issue was one of slavery, in which women, men and children suffer.

"The fact that Ning was a child when this happened makes it more devastating, but there are many adults who don't have a like choice because of poverty … whether you're a child or an adult you don't have a voice," she said.

"And it's up to the rest of us to protect them."

Ms McLeod met Ning for the first time last week, when Ning visited her city chambers to thank her for her work.

"I'd like to thank you for everything you have done for me," Ning said.

Ms McLeod responded tearfully: "This case has already given me tremendous satisfaction … I would not want my daughter to go through what you went through."

Useful Links
http://antislavery.org.au
http://projectrespect.org.au
http://goodshepherd.com.au/justice

Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn To Sex Trade In Syria

Taken from The New York Times, May 29, 2007
By KATHERINE ZOEPF

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.

“So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped,” said Sister Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which helps Iraqi refugees.

She said the convent had surveyed Iraqi refugees living in Masaken Barzeh, on the outskirts of Damascus, and found 119 female-headed households in one small neighborhood. Some of the women, seeking work outside the home for the first time and living in a country with high unemployment, find that their only marketable asset is their bodies.

“I met three sisters-in-law recently who were living together and all prostituting themselves,” Sister Marie-Claude said. “They would go out on alternate nights — each woman took her turn — and then divide the money to feed all the children.”

For more than three years after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi prostitution in Syria, like any prostitution, was a forbidden topic for Syria’s government. Like drug abuse, the sex trade tends to be referred to in the local news media as acts against public decency. But Dietrun Günther, an official at the United Nations refugee agency’s Damascus office, said the government was finally breaking its silence.

“We’re especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they’re being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases,” Ms. Günther said. “We’ve had special talks with the Syrian government about prostitution.” She called the officials’ new openness “a great step.”

Mouna Asaad, a Syrian women’s rights lawyer, said the government had been blindsided by the scale of the arriving Iraqi refugee population. Syria does not require visas for citizens of Arab countries, and its government had pledged to assist needy Iraqis. But this country of 19 million was ill equipped to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of them, Ms. Asaad said.

“Sometimes you see whole families living this way, the girls pimped by the mother or aunt,” she said. “But prostitution isn’t the only problem. Our schools are overcrowded, and the prices of services, food and transportation have all risen. We don’t have the proper infrastructure to deal with this. We don’t have shelters or health centers that these women can go to. And because of the situation in Iraq, Syria is careful not to deport these women.”

Most of the semi-organized prostitution takes place on the outskirts of the capital, in nightclubs known as casinos — a local euphemism, because no gambling occurs.

At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, there is even a floor show with an Iraqi theme.

One recent evening, waiters brought out trays of snacks: French fries and grilled chicken hearts wrapped in foil folded into diamond shapes. A 10-piece band warmed up, and an M.C. gave the traditionally overwrought introduction in Arabic: “I give you the honey of all stages, the stealer of all hearts, the most golden throat, the glamorous artist: Maria!”

Maria, a buxom young woman, climbed onto the stage and began an anguished-sounding ballad.

“After Iraq I have no homeland,” she sang. “I’m ready to go crawling on my knees back to Iraq.” Four other women, all wearing variations on leopard print, gyrated on stage, swinging their hair in wild circles. The stage lights had been fitted with colored gel filters that lent the women’s skin a greenish cast.

Al Rawabi’s customers watched Maria calmly, leaning back in their chairs and drinking Johnnie Walker Black. The large room smelled strongly of sweat mingled with the apple tobacco from scores of water pipes. When Maria finished singing, no one clapped.

She picked up the microphone again and began what she called a salute to Iraq, naming many of the Iraqi women in the club and, indicating one of the women in leopard print who had danced with her, “most especially my best friend, Sahar.”

After the dancers filed offstage and scattered around the room to talk to customers, Sahar told a visitor she was from the Dora district of Baghdad but had left “because of the troubles.” Now, she said she would leave the club with him for $200.

Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night’s wage for an Iraqi prostitute working in Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs earn much less.

In Maraba, Umm Hiba would not say how much money her daughter took home at the end of a night. Noticing her reluctance, the club’s manager, who introduced himself as Hassan, broke in proudly.

“We make sure that each girl has a minimum of 500 lira at the end of each night, no matter how bad business is,” he said, mentioning a sum of about $10. “We are sympathetic to the situation of the Iraqi people. And we try to give some extra help to the girls whose families are in special difficulties.”

Umm Hiba shook her head. “It’s true that the managers here are good, that they’re helping us and not stealing the girls’ money,” she said. “But I’m so angry.

“Do you think we’re happy that these men from the gulf are seeing our daughters’ naked bodies?”

Most so-called casinos do not appear to directly broker arrangements between prostitutes and their customers. Zafer, a waiter at the club where Hiba works, said that the club earned money through sales of food and alcohol and that the dancers were encouraged to sit with male customers and order drinks to increase revenues.

Zafer, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, refused to discuss specific women and girls at the club, but said that most of them did sell sexual favors. “They have an hourly rate,” he said. “And they have regular customers.”

Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.

From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the Saudi border.

Syria, where it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost weekend destination for groups of Saudi men.

And though some women of other nationalities, including Russians and Moroccans, still work as prostitutes in Damascus, Abeer, a 23-year-old from Baghdad working at the same club as Hiba, explained that the arriving Iraqis had pushed many of them out of business.

“From what I’ve seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis,” she said. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.”

"You Should Be Ashamed," "You're A Disgrace," And "This Is An Insult To Us."

Protester disrupts Britain's slave trade abolition service

Taken from Yahoo News, Tue Mar 27, 2007
By Robin Millard

A shouting protester got within metres of Queen Elizabeth II at a service on Tuesday marking the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade, demanding she apologise personally.



Toyin Agbetu, a human rights campaigner, ran in front of the altar at London's Westminster Abbey - packed with dignitaries - shouting "you should be ashamed," "you're a disgrace," and "this is an insult to us."

He condemned African Christians who attended the national service.

The 2,000-strong congregation included Prime Minister Tony Blair and government ministers as well as the descendants of both slaves and leading abolitionists.

The lone protester was restrained by security guards, and once outside, was arrested and led away in handcuffs by the police.

The anniversary has left political and religious leaders wrestling with how Britain should deal with its past role in the slave trade.

Blair has expressed "deep sorrow" for Britain's involvement in the slave trade but stopped short of a full apology.

Agbetu yelled: "We should not be here, this is an insult to us. I want all the Christians who are Africans to walk out."

He said Queen Elizabeth needed to apologise on behalf of her ancestors.

"You don't have the decency, Mr Blair, to make an apology and the word sorry, and you, the queen...

"The queen has to say sorry. It was Elizabeth I. She commanded John Hawkins (a pioneer of the English slave trade) to take his ship. The monarch and the government and the church are all in there patting themselves on the back.

"This nation has never apologised, there was no mention of the African freedom fighters. This is just a memorial of William Wilberforce."

Wilberforce was the driving parliamentarian behind the landmark change in the British law which abolished the slave trade.

Agbetu, 39, is the founder of Ligali, a British-based human rights group which sets out to "challenge the misrepresentation of African people and culture in the British media."

Major General David Burden, the receiver general of Westminster Abbey, insisted the queen, 80, and her husband Prince Philip, 85, had been safe.

The protester, who had a ticket, had been through security checks and scanners, he said.

"The queen was protected by her own protection officers," said Burden.

"We allow them to speak for a little and then encourage them to leave. We wish it hadn't happened but we're not embarrassed at all."

The service included a sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and an address from Lady Kate Davson, a great-great-great grand-daughter of Wilberforce, who read one of her ancestor's speeches.

"Slavery is one of the largest pieces of our wounded history, our worldwide wounded history, and...(has) to be confronted in order to get peace in our world," she said.

Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, called slavery an offence to human dignity and freedom.

"We, who are the heirs of the slave-owning and slave-trading nations of the past, have to face the fact that our historic prosperity was built in large part on this atrocity," he said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, finance minister Gordon Brown and London Mayor Ken Livingstone - who has apologised for slavery on behalf of the city - attended.

Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth laid flowers on the memorials to Wilberforce and all those affected by slavery.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed on March 25, 1807, imposing a 100-pound fine for every slave found aboard a British ship.

The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery itself throughout the British Empire. However, some slaves did not gain their final freedom until 1838.

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Useful Readings:

1. Church should consider slave trade reparations, says Archibishop of Canterbury
Daily Mail. UK, 26th March 2007

2. Bishop: 'Why I am NOT saying sorry for slavery'
Daily Mail, UK, 25th March 2007, By MICHAEL NAZIR-ALI, Bishop of Rochester

5,000 Child Sex Slaves In UK

Taken from The Independent, UK, 25 February 2007
By Sophie Goodchild and Jonathan Thompson

More than 5,000 children are being forced to work as sex slaves in the UK, including thousands trafficked to this country by criminal gangs, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

An important study of global slavery exposes Britain as a major transit point for the movement of child slaves around the world. Commissioned by social research charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the report paints a shocking picture of an international web of gangmasters exploiting children as young as five, as well as vulnerable women. Many are threatened with violence, then sold into the sex trade or forced to become domestic servants, says the report, to be published tomorrow.

The human trafficking trade now generates an estimated £5bn a year worldwide, making it the second biggest international criminal industry after the drugs trade. Children's charities in Britain say there has been a "dramatic" rise in referrals of trafficked children to sexual exploitation services.

An investigation by The Independent on Sunday has found that gangs, especially those from Romania and Lithuania as well as Africa, are increasingly targeting Britain because markets in other European countries such as Spain and Italy are saturated.

Tony Blair pledged in January this year that he would sign up to a European convention to "stamp out" the "evil" of slavery, which was supposedly abolished 200 years ago next month.

His move was in response to fierce lobbying by MPs and human rights charities.

But the report finds that the UK's response to trafficking is too biased towards law enforcement at the expense of victim protection. It also reveals that many victims are deported to their home country where they face assault from gangs and the threat of being retrafficked. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is urging ministers to draw up policies that treat those in slavery as victims, not as immigration cases.

From this month, police forces are being issued with specially adapted iPods. Officers will be able to play to women too afraid to testify against their abusers messages in their own language, reassuring them they will not be arrested.

Child protection charities also warn of the second-class status in the system of trafficked children. At least 48 children sold into slavery in Britain are missing, because of lapses in care by officials, according to a recent report by the Ecpat UK, which campaigns against the sexual exploitation of children. Ecpat's director, Christine Beddoe, said: "Child trafficking is a contemporary form of slavery but trafficked children are labelled 'undeserving' because they are seen as immigration cases."

Child trafficking is one of the worst violations of children's rights, believes Unicef. "There remains no specialised safe house for trafficked children or adequate care and support for victims," said Sarah Epstein of Unicef UK.

MPs are calling on law enforcement agencies to increase their efforts to catch human traffickers by setting up a central database of the DNA samples, gun profiles and fingerprints of those involved in the trade.

Anthony Steen MP, chairman of the All Party Group on Trafficking of Women and Children, said trafficked women and children are still not receiving the protection they deserved.

"Despite his promise Tony Blair has still not signed up to the convention. In the meantime, these girls who are victims of these gangs are having to look over their shoulders," said the Conservative MP for Totnes.

The Rowntree study was carried out by the University of Hull along with Anti-Slavery International and the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation.

Sri Lankans Forced Into Labor In Iraq

Taken from Yahoo News, Sat Feb 17 2007
By KRISHAN FRANCIS, Associated Press Writer

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - In Sri Lanka's war-torn north and east, where killings happen every day and work is nearly nonexistent, it doesn't take much to entice a man to leave.

So when an employment agency offered a steady paycheck for laboring amid Dubai's soaring glass and steel towers, 17 young Sri Lankan men paid their fee to the job brokers — $2,000, a small fortune on this tropical island — and signed up.

But instead of going to work, they were locked in a room guarded by a man with a pistol. They had been sold to another agency, they were told, for $1,200 apiece.

It took them two weeks to realize where they were in IRAQ.

"We knew Iraq was dangerous, and Sri Lanka was dangerous, but at least we thought our parents will get to see our corpses if we die here," said Krishnan Piraitheepan 32, shortly after returning to Sri Lanka this month with the help of the International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based intergovernmental organization.

Thousands of Sri Lankans, and tens of thousands of other people from such poverty-battered countries as the Philippines, India and Nepal, go to the oil-rich Middle East every year to work.

Their pay, usually $200-$400 a month, can be many times what they would earn at home, even after the agency fees that can leave families deeply indebted.

So they become maids in Kuwait, and drivers in Saudi Arabia. They work as nannies in Dubai and Bahrain.

Some, like the 17 Sri Lankans, end up in Iraq.

While there are no reliable statistics on forced labor in Iraq, government officials and aid groups warn the Sri Lankans' case highlights the potential for abuse. The situation is further distorted because a number of countries that are major labor suppliers to the Middle East, including Sri Lanka, ban their citizens from traveling to Iraq.

"This case should be an eye-opener to all of us, especially the governments and the job agencies," said Priyantha Kulatunge, an IOM official helping oversee the group's return.
Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of the Oakland-Calif.-based corporate watchdog CorpWatch, estimates only a small percentage of the 30,000-50,000 migrant workers in Iraq are there against their will — but many more may not have realized what it means to work in a war zone.

"Many people have claimed to be trafficked," Chatterjee said. "Probably many were, probably others discovered a situation that was dangerous."

He worries more about workers' inability to leave. With some employers still holding employee passports — a practice the U.S. Defense Department has forbidden for its contractors since mid-2006 — leaving a job can be extremely difficult.
___
When the Sri Lankans arrived in Dubai in mid-December, they were met by a representative of Arabian Express, the Colombo-based company that arranged their jobs.

The man told them they would be working elsewhere in Dubai, and put them on another plane. There was a sign on arrival saying they had landed at Irbil Airport.

"I had no idea what country Irbil is in. The only city that I knew in Iraq was Baghdad," said Karunapandy Jeyaruban, 24, who had left his wife and infant son for what he thought would be a construction job.

The men were taken to a house and put into a room. Their passports were confiscated. An armed guard was posted.

When they asked about work, they were ignored. When two men insisted, they were pistol-whipped.

But when a handful of the men spent a few days building a grocery store, and others were sent to clean a home, each group heard the same strange story: They were in Iraq.

It turned out they were in northern Iraq, in the semiautonomous Kurdish area. The violence is more muted than in southern Iraq — but still occurs regularly.

When the men discovered what had happened, they were furious.

"We protested because we had been promised work as carpenters, but were told that we had been bought for $1,200 each ... and that we can't leave," said Jeyaruban.

Arabian Express insists it doesn't know how the men ended up in Iraq.

Its agent waited for the Sri Lankans at Dubai's airport but they never arrived, said Fazal Marzook, the managing director. "I suspect that they met some other people who may have brainwashed them, promising higher salaries in Iraq."

But the Sri Lankans' story is not uncommon. Since 2003, the IOM has evacuated more than 6,000 foreigners "in difficult situations" from Iraq.

Others have been less fortunate.

In 2004, a dozen Nepalese workers, some of whom did not know they were being sent to Iraq, were taken hostage by militants and killed in videotaped executions.

At the time, Nepal had already banned its citizens from working in Iraq, but an estimated 17,000 Nepalese were believed to be there, mostly as laborers, cooks or security guards. Today, officials estimate 3,000 Nepalese are still working in Iraq.

Vincent Houver, the International Organization for Migration's regional coordinator based in Jordan, said anecdotal evidence suggests most new migrants are going to the Kurdish region.

Yazaqr Anwar, a residency official in the Kurdish region, said about 30,000 foreign workers live there.

Many are lured by promises of well-paying jobs, but some go unwittingly.

The increasing violence has pushed up prices for migrant labor, "encouraging smuggling activities and abuse by some recruitment agencies," the IOM warned in a statement.

The IOM also has received reports of "significant groups" of foreign workers stranded in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, Houver said.
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For the Sri Lankans, the knowledge they were in Iraq changed little. They had no access to telephones and no passports. They were terrified to flee.

After three weeks, though, they decided they had to escape.

The house was under construction, and some walls were just plastic sheeting. So one man sliced through it, and the rest followed him into the streets of Irbil.

Eventually they found a U.N. office, and officials there handed them to the IOM, which got their passports back and flew them home.

Back in Sri Lanka, it's easy to see why they left.

While much of this country remains idyllic, the northern and eastern regions — home to all 17 men — have been savaged by two decades of fighting between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels, who want a homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. More than 3,600 people have been killed in the 18 months since a 2002 cease-fire collapsed.

Most of the 17 men know of dead bodies, of neighbors who disappeared. And, as Tamils, they also have faced constant government scrutiny, with roadblocks and random arrests.

So when Arabian Express offered two years of work at $500-$600 a month, they jumped.

"Every day at least two people are shot ... so my family wanted me to leave," said Nadaraja Vanitharajah, 22, again living in his village of Thandikulam, not far from the front lines.

His story would surprise few here: Injured by a land mine, he dropped out of high-school and sold vegetables until he was attacked by men from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority.

At that point, simply getting by seemed too dangerous. So his women relatives gathered their gold wedding jewelry and brought it to him.

"We pawned all the family jewelry to get the money," said Vanitharajah. Now, he's out $2,000 and has no work. "The lenders could come anytime. I don't know what to do."
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Associated Press correspondents Frank Jordans in Geneva, Sarah DiLorenzo in New York and Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal, contributed to this report.