'Slave
trade' thrives in Bosnia
High unemployment makes women easy prey
Thursday,
8 March, 2001
By
Michael Voss in Bosnia
Bosnia
has become the centre of a modern day version of the slave trade. The
authorities believe that many of the warlords and paramilitaries
responsible for the bloodshed of the Balkan wars have now turned their
attention to organised crime and trafficking.
Young
women are lured from the poorest regions of Europe with promises of work
in the West, then sold like cattle and forced into prostitution.
International police forces are trying to stop the trade, but most
traffickers escape unpunished.
Many
young women change hands in secretive deals at a market in rural Bosnia
near the borders with Serbia and Croatia. Arizona market is one of the
biggest black markets in Europe. Operating from row upon row of wooden
huts, traders sell everything from carpets to washing machines and
bootleg CDs to counterfeit designer-label clothes.
Mara
Radovanovic works with a local women's group helping victims of the
trafficking. "When traders come they order the girls to take off
all their clothes and they are standingin the road naked: They are
exposed to be chosen just like cattle". Victimless crime?
From
Arizona market the women are sold to the night clubs and brothels which
have sprung up all over Bosnia. Their customers are a mix of locals and
foreign soldiers serving with the Nato-led peacekeeping force.
Douglas
Coffman, the United Nations spokesman in Bosnia, says that too many
people here believe that going to brothels and supporting prostitution
is really a victimless crime. "They think that the girls are
willing and want to make money because of the tough circumstances back
home," he says. "The fact is many of these women are victims
of human trafficking. "They have been dragged across state borders,
they have been held in virtual slavery, beaten, raped and then, at the
end of that process, become prostitutes."
Police
impotent
The
local police are underpaid, overstretched and no match for the organized
crime gangs running the business. There is a UN police force in Bosnia
but its role limited to supporting the local police.
Detective
Sergeant Maxwell Woodford, the senior UN officer dealing with
trafficking, says that the brothel owners are often tipped off in
advance of police raids. He says that on several occasions that the
police have gone to a bar and they've found it locked and in darkness on
a Saturday night, and it is clear that somehow the bar owner has been
warned.
I
joined Detective Woodford on a raid on a brothel outside Sarajevo where,
for once, the owner had not been forewarned. Two of the young women
there claimed they were tricked into coming to Bosnia. One of them, a
19-year-old from Moldova, says none of the eight girls working there has
ever been paid. She is now in a safe house in Sarajevo run by the
International Office of Migration.
In
the past year the IOM has helped some 250 trafficked women to return
home. The majority came from the poorest parts of Europe - Moldova,
Romania and Ukraine - but the main supply
route is through Serbia. With no shortage of young women desperate to
improve their lives and no sanctions on the unscrupulous gangs that
exploit them, this modern day slave trade will continue to thrive.