Human Trafficking in [Czech Republic Street Children in [Czech Republic] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Czech Republic] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the first ten years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2009
The Czech Republic is a source,
transit, and destination country for women from Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia,
Romania, Belarus, Moldova, Bulgaria, Mongolia, and Brazil trafficked to the
Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Germany for the
purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. The Czech Republic is a
destination for men and women trafficked from Ukraine, Russia, Moldova,
Belarus, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Brazil for the purpose of labor
exploitation. Roma women are trafficked within the country and abroad for
forced prostitution. - U.S. State
Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country
report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in the ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Six charged
in organ trafficking case at Brno hospital Between 2003 and 2004, five
employees of the tissue bank at the Brno-Bohunice
hospital, together with one outsider, sold 7 million crowns worth of skin
graft to a Dutch company. The Organized Crime Squad of the Czech police have
now finished investigating the case and charged the persons involved with
illegal organ trafficking. It took the Czech police three and
a half years to close the case of illegal organ trafficking at a hospital in
Brno, Moravia. Two skin tissue specialists, three other staff members and one
of their relatives have been charged with illegal organ trafficking, a crime
punishable in the Czech Republic only since 2002. The police operation, code
named "Human", the first of its kind in the country, targeted
illegal sales of skin graft to a Dutch company. Human trafficking campaign ends womensphere.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/human-trafficking-campaign-ends-czech-republic/ www.praguepost.com/articles/2008/01/23/human-trafficking-campaign-ends.php Although some details may not be known,
the general picture of sex trafficking in the Czech Republic follows a
pattern, according to IOM information.
Women forced into prostitution are often lured here by seemingly
legitimate jobs such as cleaning or babysitting. After they arrive they have
their personal papers taken away and their will broken by rape, beatings and
threats. They are then told that they have a debt to repay and are sold from
trafficker to trafficker, thereby increasing the amount owed to impossible
levels. THE TRUE STORY OF A TRAFFICKED
WOMAN - After
Lithuania joined the European Union, in May 2004, Marja
traveled across Italy. After about two weeks, due to unexpected expenses, she
ran out of money. This is when her friend, also originally from Lithuania,
offered her a well-paid job in Prague. They traveled to the Czech Republic in
another friend's car. Since they were now both EU citizens, crossing the
borders was smooth and easy. Late in the evening they reached a town, whose
name Marja didn't notice at the time. They were
both tired and decided to stay overnight. In the morning, Marja discovered that the doors to her room were locked
and that her papers and mobile phone were missing. A stranger entered her
room, a man, who told her in Russian that she owed a lot of money for the
transport and accommodation. There was a customer already waiting for her
downstairs. When Marja realized that she was
expected to work as a prostitute, she pointedly refused. On that day she was,
for the first time, brutally beaten and raped numerous times. In the following weeks, death
threats to both her and her family in Lithuania, beatings and food
deprivation, for even the slightest misbehavior, became part of Marja's life. She can't say for exactly how long this
went on. She started following the orders of the nightclub owner. She even
pretended to be happy. As she puts it, all that she felt inside was the
desire to survive and to not be hit anymore. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs GOVERNMENT
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - In 2002, the government provided some funding to local
NGOs that provide assistance to trafficking victims and those at risk of
being trafficking. With funding from
the U.S. Department of State, the NGO La Strada
implemented an awareness-raising program for Czech law enforcement officers
on the needs of trafficking victims and to develop an information database on
trafficking. INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - There are some reports of the internal trafficking of Czech
children from areas of low employment near border regions with Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – Local
sex trafficking victims were generally young women between 18 and 29 years of
age from areas of high unemployment. Romani women were at the highest risk of
being trafficked internally, often by a friend or relative. Girls raised in
state‑run homes, such as orphanages, were also at particular risk.
According to government authorities, women already working as prostitutes
were also particularly vulnerable to traffickers. Trafficked women were
frequently offered jobs as models, maids, waitresses, and dancers through
employment agencies and then forced into prostitution. Once in a destination
country, traffickers ensured victims' compliance by confiscating their travel
documents and using isolation, drug and alcohol dependence, violence, threats
of violence toward the victim or her family, and the threat of arrest and
deportation. Police reported that traffickers increasingly relied on violence
to secure their victims' cooperation. Labor trafficking remained a
significant issue; the interior ministry reported that it was the most common
form of trafficking in the country. The International Organization for
Migration (IOM) and the NGO La Strada released a
study during the year documenting victims from a wide variety of countries,
including the former Soviet Union, South Asia, Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2003 [60] The Committee welcomes: (a) The
establishment in spring of 2002 of a trilateral Czech-German-Polish working
group to address, inter alia, trafficking in human beings, in particular the
sexual exploitation of children for prostitution occurring in these areas. Human trafficking campaign ends womensphere.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/human-trafficking-campaign-ends-czech-republic/ www.praguepost.com/articles/2008/01/23/human-trafficking-campaign-ends.php Although some details may not be
known, the general picture of sex trafficking in the Czech Republic follows a
pattern, according to IOM information.
Women forced into prostitution are often lured here by seemingly legitimate
jobs such as cleaning or babysitting. After they arrive they have their
personal papers taken away and their will broken by rape, beatings and
threats. They are then told that they have a debt to repay and are sold from
trafficker to trafficker, thereby increasing the amount owed to impossible
levels. THE TRUE STORY OF A TRAFFICKED
WOMAN - After
Lithuania joined the European Union, in May 2004, Marja
traveled across Italy. After about two weeks, due to unexpected expenses, she
ran out of money. This is when her friend, also originally from Lithuania,
offered her a well-paid job in Prague. They traveled to the Czech Republic in
another friend's car. Since they were now both EU citizens, crossing the
borders was smooth and easy. Late in the evening they reached a town, whose
name Marja didn't notice at the time. They were
both tired and decided to stay overnight. In the morning, Marja discovered that the doors to her room were locked
and that her papers and mobile phone were missing. A stranger entered her
room, a man, who told her in Russian that she owed a lot of money for the
transport and accommodation. There was a customer already waiting for her
downstairs. When Marja realized that she was
expected to work as a prostitute, she pointedly refused. On that day she was,
for the first time, brutally beaten and raped numerous times. In the following weeks, death
threats to both her and her family in Lithuania, beatings and food
deprivation, for even the slightest misbehavior, became part of Marja's life. She can't say for exactly how long this
went on. She started following the orders of the nightclub owner. She even
pretended to be happy. As she puts it, all that she felt inside was the
desire to survive and to not be hit anymore. Czech
police accuse 11 Asians of human trafficking The traffickers promised the girls
the work of hostesses and barmaids, the Prima and Nova commercial television
channels said. Each of them had to pay
up to 10,000 dollars for the "mediation" of work. They were forced
into prostitution on arrival in the Czech Republic. Six charged
in organ trafficking case at Brno hospital Between 2003 and 2004, five
employees of the tissue bank at the Brno-Bohunice
hospital, together with one outsider, sold 7 million crowns worth of skin
graft to a Dutch company. The Organized Crime Squad of the Czech police have
now finished investigating the case and charged the persons involved with
illegal organ trafficking. It took the Czech police three and a half
years to close the case of illegal organ trafficking at a hospital in Brno,
Moravia. Two skin tissue specialists, three other staff members and one of
their relatives have been charged with illegal organ trafficking, a crime
punishable in the Czech Republic only since 2002. The police operation, code
named "Human", the first of its kind in the country, targeted
illegal sales of skin graft to a Dutch company. NATASHAS
- The New Global Sex Trade SMUGGLER'S PREY - Every day, scores of young women throughout the former East Bloc are lured by job offers that lead to a hellish journey of sexual slavery and violence. Despite the barrage of warnings on radio and TV, in newspapers and on billboards, desperate women continue to line up with their naiveté and applications in hand, hoping that, this time, they might just be in luck. Czech police detain Vietnamese human trafficking gang www.thanhniennews.com/overseas/?catid=12&newsid=16664 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Czech police have detained four
male and two female Vietnamese in Vietnamese women trafficked, rescued in Czech Republic www.thanhniennews.com/society/?catid=3&newsid=9776 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] They had to pay US$5,000 to $7,500
each, tricked into thinking that they were coming to Czech on legitimate
terms to well-paid jobs, but instead were forced into prostitution. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 1 Civil Liberties: 1 Status: Free Stop
Violence Against Women – Country Page U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Human
Trafficking - fighting an invisible crime With rising standards of living and
entry into the European Union, the Czech Republic is increasingly becoming a
destination for trafficked people. Victims usually originate in less stable
and less prosperous regions further east. Petra Burcikova
has the details: "Most of the victims that end
up trafficked in the Czech Republic come from the former Soviet Union, mostly
Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, some of them from Russia, quite many from
Bulgaria, quite a few from Slovakia as well, and in the past two years, we
have, for the first time, had clients from Asia, from China and Vietnam.
Recently we also had a few clients from Central Asia." U.S.
Diplomat Leads Charge Against Human Trafficking Today marks the second day of
Miller's three-day visit to the Czech Republic. The ambassador said that
early in its transition from communism to a market economy, the Czech
Republic was what he calls a "source country" for slaves -- women
and children forced into prostitution, and men into factory and farm labor in
other countries. But he said that has changed. "As the Czech economy has
grown, the nature of the problem has changed," Miller said. "Today
if we look at trafficking in persons, or slavery, in the Czech Republic, we
are talking about the Czech Republic as a destination country. People coming
from Eurasia, Eastern Europe to the Czech Republic, engaging, being forced,
into the various types of slavery. Although, talking with the NGOs, it is
clear that the leading form of slavery in the Czech Republic is sex
slavery." web.mvcr.cz/archiv2008/aktualit/sdeleni/2003/pril1.doc PROFILE OF A CZECH VICTIM
TRAFFICKED ABROAD -
According to the La Strada data, it often concerns
very young inexperienced women. Most are between 18 and 22 years of age, in
majority low educated (elementary school, secretarial training, or high
school graduates). Trafficked victims often come from socially pathological
background - dysfunctional, broken or fragmentary families, frequently with
the background of domestic violence (alcoholism, abuse). Alcohol or drug
addiction raises the vulnerability of potential victims. Harnessed by their
addictions, young girls choose prostitution to support their drug habits.
Drug addiction also reinforces the girls' dependency on their pimps. This is
tied to the well-known issue of girls from orphanages who leave the
institution at 18 without having a place to go. They are not adequately
prepared for life and lack basic social and other skills. The merchants
sometimes directly target orphanages, waiting for the girls to leave. Government
receives report criticising Slovak Romanies' situation The Czech government has received
a report criticising the living conditions of Slovak
Romanies and comparing them to a humanitarian
crisis, the public Czech Television said today. According to the survey, the situation of
Slovak Romanies has worsened after the introduction
of social reforms. Forced prostitution, hunger and poverty reign among Slovak
Romanies, the report says. Report on human trafficking praises Czechs www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/0624/opinpv.php At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
The In the Czech Republic human
trafficking is linked to street prostitution and forced sex work in the
country's more than 200 brothels. The victims are primarily from the poorest
ex-Soviet states, such as Ukraine and Moldova. U.S. Embassy political officer and
trafficking expert Ben Rockwell did castigate the country on two points,
however. First, sentencing in the Czech Republic, as in many countries, is
too light, according to Rockwell. And despite excellent police work, he said,
far too few traffickers are actually charged. Out of the five persons
convicted of human trafficking last year, four were sentenced to jail time,
but all of the sentences were suspended. Klara Skrivankova: fighting
trade in human lives CAN YOU GIVE ME EXAMPLE OF HOW,
SAY, A TEENAGE GIRL FROM UKRAINE IS LURED TO PRAGUE AND MADE TO WORK IN THE
SEX INDUSTRY? TELL ME HOW IT HAPPENS - "Well most of the time it's through some kind of
job offer. It can be either directly in the village, let's say somewhere in
Ukraine, where of course the situation is very hard and the possibility of
finding a job is basically zero. Either there or in some official place the
woman or the girl gets a job offer. It can be a job offer that explicitly
says that it involves the sex industry, but it can also be for example a job
picking mushrooms. So it's basically a job offer. And then it proceeds
through facilitation of transport, getting visas, which are usually taken
care of by the traffickers. When the woman gets to the Czech Republic she
finds out straight away that either the conditions are completely different
or the work itself is completely different than what was promised. So that's the
very basic scenario." WHAT KIND OF CONDITIONS ARE THESE
WOMEN KEPT IN? -
"The conditions can be very different, ranging from very hard physical
violence to more psychological manipulation and pressure, or debt bondage, or
threats. So the conditions vary. But usually the people are in quite a
vulnerable position because they are foreigners, because sometimes they don't
have papers, they're illegal here, and also because they don't know the
environment. They are purposely kept in isolation, so the only contact they
have is with the group with which they are kept it. It can range from one
extreme to the other." Human Trafficking Casts Shadow on Globalization yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=1448 In 1996, Sasha
was 26 and worked as a waitress in a small town in the Czech Republic to
support herself, her daughter and her alcoholic husband. After a childhood
rife with sexual abuse and multiple rapes, already on her third marriage, and
watching her country struggle to emerge from a collapsed economy, she felt
trapped in a cycle of abuse and poverty. She was approached at work by a
Czech man who promised her a lucrative job in Germany. Believing that she
would be able to save money to ease her family's situation, she accepted the
offer and left for the West, along with three other girls. Her fears began
when her contact refused to return her passport after crossing the border,
and were confirmed when she got to her destination - a sleazy bar on the
outskirts of a German city. Once there, she was gang raped repeatedly to
obtain her compliance, and eventually taken to Amsterdam's red light district
where she was forced to become one of the many women behind the windows,
making as much as US$80,000 tax free for her traffickers in her first year. Child-prostitution claims disputed www.praguepost.com/P03/2003/Art/1106/news2.php At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
KARO -- which receives funds from
the European Union and subsidies from the German state of Saxony and which
has monitored the issue since 1996 -- said it has observed about 500 girls
and boys who are in prostitution, most from west, north and south Romany
girls kidnapped, sold abroad According to the reports, which
have been substantiated by Roma community leaders and international human
rights observers, several young Slovak Roma women have recently been
kidnapped and then sold to Czech underworld figures. The captives are then
smuggled into western countries, where they are forced into prostitution. Following a story in late July in
the Czech press agency ČTK, the Slovak weekly magazine Moment reported the
case of Silvia Kováčová, an 18 year-old Roma
girl from the small village of Hencovce in eastern
Slovakia, who had been kidnapped by a family friend in mid July. She was
driven to the nearby town of Vranov by the friend,
who said they were going to inquire about an available flower-selling job for
the girl. However, the car met with three
large men en route. "When we got there, I asked about the work selling
the flowers," Kováčová said. "But
they all just started to laugh... one of them then sprayed something in my
face which knocked me out. When I woke up we were outside Bratislava." Kováčová was then smuggled into the Czech
Republic by the kidnappers and was eventually sold at a gas station to a
local pimp in the Czech town of Teplice for the
cash sum of 200 Deutsche marks ($93). All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking &
Modern-day Slavery – |
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Human Trafficking in [Czech Republic Street Children in [Czech Republic] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Czech Republic] [other countries]