PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - In the
hallway of a featureless building at the edge of Kosovo's provincial
capital, a row of young women sit slumped on chairs, their faces blank,
their eyes dull and dark-ringed.
Most are in their teens or early
20s, but their haggard faces make them look a decade older.
These are Kosovo's sex slaves, women
smuggled across the borders of the heavily-fortified Serbian province,
where bars, dance halls and secret brothels have sprung up amid the
ruins of war.
The women resting in the United
Nations police building today have been rescued from captivity after
weeks or months of enforced prostitution under the control of ruthless
traffickers and local pimps. The man responsible for their safe return
is Gordon Moon, a tall, strapping 40-year-old detective from Orillia,
and now head of the Trafficking and Prostitution Investigation Unit of
the U.N. international police force, CIVPOL.
``Trafficking became huge business
in Kosovo because there was no real enforcement,'' he says. ``But in
January there was a new regulation that gave us the tools we needed to
fight it in an effective way. Now the men who are doing this have
something to lose.''
At the end of the NATO air
strikes against Yugoslav forces in June, 1999, peacekeepers and U.N.
administrators were faced with an overwhelming task of stabilizing and
rebuilding Kosovo. But with the justice and policing system destroyed,
it was almost impossible to control the rise in crime on Europe's wild
southern frontier.
Profiteers quickly saw their chance
to expand their trafficking operations into a zone where thousands of
well-paid soldiers and international personnel, as well as returning
locals, were prospective clients.
During the nine months that Moon has
been in charge of anti-trafficking operations, he's launched dozens of
raids that have rescued 270 women. But he admits the women are being
replaced with lightning speed. ``If a couple of women manage to escape,
a bar-owner can get more within a day or two,'' he says. ``Supply is not
a big deal for them.''
Availability of new prostitutes may
not be a problem, but a recent crackdown on criminals has brought
harsher penalties and put several out of business.
Up until last month, criminals
caught by the anti-trafficking squad faced just a few days in jail and a
minor interruption of business. But Bernard Kouchner, a physician and
former head of the U.N. administration in Kosovo, introduced new
trafficking regulations that have turned sentences of days into years,
and allowed the police to permanently close the bars and brothels.
In the month since the new
regulations came into effect, more than 10 men arrested for trafficking
are awaiting trial, and some of the most notorious hotspots are empty
and shuttered.
But the traffickers are relentless
enterprisers. Charging about $110 an hour, or about $735 a night, for
the women's services, those with enough muscle and determination can
become millionaires. Although it's not possible to estimate total
profits accurately, figures suggest that Kosovo's 75 bars, dance halls
and brothels take in more than $1.5 million a week.
Little of the money, if any,
trickles down to the women who are forced to take on as many as 10
clients a night.
``Most of them are working in
appalling conditions, not even fed properly,'' says Moon. ``They're
lured into the racket by promises that they can make hundreds a week as
waitresses, dancers or even children's nannies. But the reality is very
different.''
Although the occasional trafficker
gives the women basic necessities, the police have found, most treat
them worse than farm animals.` `There are such disgustingly filthy
conditions that it's difficult to imagine how they live,'' says Moon.
``They get only scraps to eat, and they wear the same clothes every day.
There's no running water, and they can't wash. They have no medical
treatment and they're suffering from all kinds of diseases. Most live
way below starvation level.''
In one horrifying case, Moon's
operations team found a teenage girl who had been locked in a cell-like
room for 15 days, serving 10 clients a night.
Some others have been found in chains. One recently-rescued woman
was injecting herself with penicillin for a sexually transmitted
disease, because she was denied medical help.
Nevertheless, the men who buy the
captive women's services are prepared to pay double for unprotected sex,
a factor that medical workers worry will spread the diseases rapidly
through the province, as well as the home countries of the international
clients.
The police, as well as aid workers
who hear the women's stories, are repelled that foreigners who are in
Kosovo to protect and rebuild it have victimized these vulnerable
captives.
Moon and his squad have urged the
military and international officials to make all trafficking sites off
limits to their staff. Some have agreed, but others are reluctant to
make such restrictions. ``It's really amazing to me that people from
countries that are supposed to be setting an example here, should engage
in such behaviour,'' says Moon, whose OPP career included combatting
prostitution and serious crime.
In spite of the anti-trafficking
squad's recent successes, and a team of 20 experienced investigators,
they know they are still fighting an uphill battle against large and
powerful interests.
``We're aware of the history of this
region, and how much hatred there is between Serbs and Albanians,'' says
Moon. ``But in organized crime they co-operate without any problems.
It's big business, and it's completely unaffected by the political
situation.''
Most of the women are smuggled into
Kosovo from Belgrade, Moon says. And the kingpins of the trafficking
racket are Serbs who were allies of the ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan
Milosevic.
``The new president (Vojislav
Kostunica) is doing everything he can to convince the international
community he's on the right track. But there are still a lot of
Milosevic allies in powerful positions, and so far there hasn't been any
change in the organized crime situation.''
Working with ethnic Albanian allies,
the Serbs buy women from East European traffickers, paying an average of
$2,200 each.
``Sixty five per cent of the women
are from Moldova, which is a terribly poor country,'' says Moon. ``About
15 per cent are Romanian, the rest are Ukrainian,
Bulgarian and Hungarian. They're all young and vulnerable, and most
weren't prostitutes to start with.''
In Serbia, the women are raped and
beaten, then sold to traffickers. How many are murdered, or die from
illness and exhaustion, is unknown. Those who are rescued have the
chance to return home. Moon and his staff help to protect the women
until they're put onto planes for their home countries.
Moon's dramatic career in Kosovo is
very far from the OPP Orillia headquarters where he will return next
month to take up his old job as a detective constable in the
photographic and video surveillance unit
It will be only the second time in
nine months that he's seen his wife and three children, aged 14, 11 and
10.
``That's the most difficult part for
me,'' he says with a smile. ``But here I'm satisfied that we've done
some groundbreaking work. And there's lots
more to be done.''