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1-http://www.en.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/12/12bodies 2-http://www.en.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/12/11natasha 1}}}>Begin EASTERN EUROPE EXPORTS FLESH TO THE EU A business of bodies by FRAN�OIS LONCLE The Netherlands pragmatically legalised prostitution in October 2000: opening one of the 700 sexhuisen (sex houses) now requires municipal authorisation. The Netherlands' 10,000 prostitutes, all EU nationals of legal age, enjoy full recognition as employees. According to Wijnand Stevens of the justice ministry, "one of the main legislative goals is to normalise voluntary prostitution while stepping up the fight against forced prostitution" � a sad comment since 50% of Dutch prostitutes acknowledge that they were forced into the work. Illegal foreign nationals usually work as street prostitutes, further increasing their vulnerability. Sweden, since January 1999, has been penalising clients, giving them fines and six-month prison terms. The country's 2,500 prostitutes have adapted to these measures by leaving the streets and soliciting by telephone and internet. Prostitution also faces legal restrictions in Denmark and Greece. The German government in May 2001 introduced legislation defining prostitutes as "providers of sexual services", making them eligible for medical cover and social benefits. French prostitutes have made similar claims, seeking recognition of their "fundamental right to bodily self-determination" since their first demonstration in Lyon in 1975. Such demands serve the interests of pimps rather than allow prostitutes to free themselves from the influence of organised crime. A prostitute does not own her body as it remains subject to her pimp's will and her client's desire. As Jean-Marie Rouart has pointed out, hookers aren't free (1). For sociologist Marie-Victoire Louis, legalising prostitution is clearly "a victory for the logic of the market". Legalisation is a way of getting rid of the problem. The 72 abolitionist countries include Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal, while Belgium, Spain and the UK have taken intermediate positions. With the adoption of the Marthe Richard laws in 1946, which led to the closing of French brothels, and the signing of the UN Convention in 1960, France remains firmly in the abolitionist camp. French law is hypocritical: it condemns pimps, but ignores clients; prostitutes face punishment, but are denied social rights. Prevention and social rehabilitation measures are insufficient even though crack-downs on pimps have intensified since 1994 with the creation of two new offences that carry hefty penalties: 20 years' imprisonment for those convicted of pimping in organised rings and life imprisonment for pimping involving torture. According to the UN, 4m women are bought and sold worldwide every year. This includes 7,000 Nepalese women forced to work in brothels in Delhi and Bombay. Two-thirds of Cambodia's 55,000 prostitutes are forcibly recruited. The Empower organisation estimates that sex tourism in Thailand brings in annual revenues of $1bn. And according to some estimates, some 200,000 east European women fall into the hands of European pimps every year; Larysa Kobelyanska of the Kiev women's league claims that 100,000 Ukrainian women have fallen victim to criminal gangs. According to Interpol, a prostitute earns on average $96,000 a year for her pimp (1) Pascale Kremer, "Les travailleurs du sexe continuent leur combat", Le Monde, 3 July 2000. Translated by Luke Sandford ALL RIGHTS RESERVED � 1997-2001 Le Monde diplomatique End<{{{1 2}}}>Begin EASTERN EUROPE EXPORTS FLESH TO THE EU The Natasha trade There are thousands of desperately poor women from eastern Europe working as prostitutes in western Europe, often controlled by gangs of criminals making enormous profits. But the EU has no coherent strategy to help these women, or internationally agreed laws to deal with their recruiters, their pimps and their punters. by FRAN�OIS LONCLE * Irina was 18 when she left her home in Chisinau, capital of Moldavia, lured by the promise of a job as a waitress in Milan. She boarded a train with an "escort" who accompanied her across Moldavia and Romania. Her passport was then confiscated, and she crossed borders clandestinely or with the collusion of customs officers, ending in Albania. Irina, sold and resold, fell into the hands of an Albanian pimp who "conditioned" her by raping her repeatedly. When she refused to work on the streets, she was beaten and sold to another pimp, who also brutalised and raped her. She was then taken to Italy in a scafo, a canoe undetectable by radar. There the Italian police questioned her and sent her to a reception centre. Irina is one of many Natashas, as east European prostitutes are called, and her fate is that of thousands of women from the region, a key recruiting centre for prostitutes, along with Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. According to Interpol's Bjorn Clarberg, "sexual commerce between the two parts of Europe has exploded". The trade has gone global. Its organised crime connections mean that procuring makes huge profits (see box). The collapse of the Soviet empire and the break-up of Yugoslavia have exacerbated a problem caused by poverty. Though there are occasional volunteers, most women are abducted, abused or seduced; they hope to earn enough to return home and support their families. Three-quarters have never worked as prostitutes before. The trade in Europe relies on a distribution network of source countries (Russia, Ukraine and Romania), transit countries (Albania and the former Yugoslavian republics) and target countries (Italy, Germany and France). Trafficking has grown enormously and the business is booming. According to Gerard Stoudmann of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, prostitution is "a far less dangerous business than drugs trafficking since there is no international legal framework to combat it". Another key recruiting centre is Moscow, which supplies German, Polish and Asian markets (1). According to Eleonora Loutchnikova, a spokesman for Moscow's city hall, some 330 Russian companies do prostitution-related business, sending 50,000 women abroad every year. In Poland foreign prostitutes are concentrated on the main roads to Germany, as they are in the Czech Republic where Ukrainian and Russian women work. According to Animus, a Bulgarian women's association, 10,000 women have fallen into the hands of pimps in Bulgaria. They sometimes face extreme conditions: two young women froze to death in January 2000 attempting to cross the border into Greece, where they were to work as bar hostesses. Reduced to slavery For Romanian and Moldavian women, the journey often begins in Timisoara (Romania) where local pimps recruit them. Their next stop is either Brcko's Arizona Market, the largest centre for contraband in Bosnia-Herzegovina, or the Serbian city of Novi Sad. Romanian traffickers auction women from Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia. Stripped naked on display, they are sold for 1,000 German marks ($460) by Serbian pimps, who move them closer to the Albanian border. Nicoleta, 17, a Moldavian student, was beaten and raped by a Serbian pimp before being auctioned in an abandoned Belgrade warehouse. Sold to another Serbian, she worked for two months in a brothel in Podgorica (Montenegro) before being sold for $2,500 to an even more brutal Albanian. The Swedish justice minister met one young woman in Sarajevo who had been sold 18 times. In Kosovo, according to Pasquale Lupoli, head of the local office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), brothels have mushroomed with the influx of 50,000 KFOR soldiers, employees of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo and personnel from various NGOS. Women from Moldavia, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria are sold at auction to Kosovar pimps who pay $1-2,500. "These women have been reduced to slavery," says Colonel Vincenzo Coppola, commander of a special unit of the Italian carabinieri, which rescued 23 women from brothels in Pristina and Prizren (2). Last year only 460 women were rescued from Bosnia's 350 brothels although 10,000 women entered the country illegally. According to Stoudmann, former Yugoslavia is a major centre for organised crime, which has "infiltrated the structures of government up to the highest levels". For Julia Harston, a UN representative in Sarajevo, Bosnia is "a destination, a transit country and a starting point for the trade in women". Trafficking is "remarkably organised, without distinction of nationality, ethnicity or religion," observes the commissioner of the International Police Task Force, General Vincent Coeurderoy. The Macedonian village of Velezde, which has seven brothels, is a regional centre for prostitution, dominated by the Albanian mafia (3). Pimps like Bojko Dilaler can earn more than $18,000 a month there. Albania is another leader in the trade. Christian Amiard, head of France's Central Office for the Treatment of Human Beings (OCRTEH) says: "There are slave camps where young women are raped and whipped into shape". If they resist, their pimps use torture, including burning, electrocution and amputation. Tana de Zulueta, an Italian senator and member of anti-mafia parliamentary committee, contends that "the Albanians have created a prostitution cartel" by setting up shop with other criminal organisations and diversifying their activities. The Italian police broke up a powerful gang in the Abruzzi region that forced young east European women into prostitution and was also active in the drugs trade. According to Italy's ministry of social affairs, the country has 50,000 prostitutes, half of them foreign nationals. The police say that prostitution generates revenues of at least $83m a month. East European prostitution was noticed in France in November 1999 when Ginka, 19, a Bulgarian, was found dead on a Parisian boulevard, stabbed 23 times. East European prostitutes have arrived in huge numbers over the past three years; according to Amiard, east Europeans account for more than half of France's foreign prostitutes, who in turn represent at least half of all French prostitutes. In Nice, these women are mainly Croatian, Russian and Latvian; in Strasbourg, they are Czech and Bulgarian; in Toulouse, they are Albanian. In Nice, the police broke up a Bulgarian ring that had netted $27,400 a month; the funds were converted into money orders and sent back to Bulgaria to be invested in real estate. Half of the 7,000 prostitutes working in Paris are foreign nationals, including 300 Albanians. Claude Boucher, a spokesman for Bus des femmes, a French women's organisation, says that an east European prostitute must have 15- 30 clients a day to bring in $400-800 for her pimp, and avoid being beaten. Profiting from Schengen Albanian rings often set up in Belgium, especially in Brussels (where they battle with Kurds and Turks to gain control of slaughterhouses that are then converted into brothels), and in Antwerp, which has about 450 east European prostitutes. From there Albanians oversee Albanian, Kosovar and Moldavian prostitutes working in Paris and other large French cities. The networks that exploit Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak and Bulgarian women pass mainly through Germany. One group of prostitutes and pimps stays in a hotel in Kehl, across the Rhine from Strasbourg, where the local police are powerless to intervene since no crime is being committed on German soil. Every day the women cross the Pont de l'Europe to work in Strasbourg, where the number of prostitutes has doubled in five years. To combat this, Strasbourg banned parking on certain streets in August 2000. London authorities have increased street lighting and imposed traffic restrictions in red-light districts like Tooting and King's Cross to discourage punters. These efforts have only shifted prostitution into other areas, underlining the predicament of western countries grappling with an overwhelming problem. Prostitution also thrives courtesy of the Schengen passport-free zone, exacerbated by legislative disparities between the member countries and poorly coordinated legal proceedings. An ill prepared western Europe is still split between regulators and abolitionists (see box). The former see prostitution as a necessary evil that must be controlled for social, moral and public health reasons. The abolitionists see prostitution as incompatible with the human dignity provisions of the United Nations 1949 convention against prostitution. Although European nations are unable to reconcile these divergent views, they do agree individual prostitution is not an offence. Prostitution reveals fundamental inequalities between men and women, rich and poor, North and South, East and West. Yet public opinion in France seems to reflect the indifference of government officials. As Martine Costes of the Metanoya advocacy organisation has noted, the French are disturbed more by for-profit organ removal and surrogate motherhood than by the sex trade. According to a May 2000 survey by the public opinion firm Sofres, 52% of French people consider prostitution inevitable and believe that acts as a "defence against rape". This argument ignores tragic reality: 80% of prostitutes reportedly suffered childhood sexual abuse. Prostitution is not a profession; it is the exploitation of women by men. Jacques Millard of the Mouvement du Nid anti-prostitution association says we must turn our attention to the victims of prostitution, and end the idea that prostitution is inevitable. Europe must create a broad-based strategy to prevent and rehabilitate. A European observatory for prostitution should be set up, modelled on the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction. This would produce more information on a complex, misunderstood problem, and define the necessary measures. As Jack Straw, former British home secretary, noted, "the only ones who have anything to fear from increased European cooperation are those criminals who exploit disparities in the laws". The priority should be to standardise national legislation and criminal procedures by providing a common definition of the crimes and bringing legal penalties into line. Pimps currently face minimum prison terms of six months in Germany, two years in Ireland, four years in Denmark and five years in France. Besides specific programmes fighting the exploitation of women and minors (such as the EU's Stop and Daphne programmes) the EU is using both Eurojust and Europol to fight criminal networks, relying on joint investigative teams. Last April a joint German, Ukrainian and Austrian police operation broke a ring that had been exploiting Belarussian women, confined to brothels in Saxony and Thuringia (Germany) before being sold to establishments in Austria. Despite pressure from pro-regulation countries, in December 2000 an important step towards international cooperation was taken in Palermo, Sicily, when representatives from 124 nations signed the UN Convention against transnational organised crime. Although only 80 countries (including France) endorsed the supplementary protocol on the sex trade, according to Senator de Zulueta this protocol represents a new way of recommending that victims of prostitution be granted residence permits. The European Commission is considering implementing such a policy, in effect in Belgium since 1995 and in Italy since 1998. Belgian rehabilitation organisations such as Payoke in Antwerp, Pag-Asa in Brussels and Serya in Liege, have provided training and benefits to 700 prostitutes taking part in studies. Residence permits granted by Italian authorities allow these women to claim social service benefits, pursue study or seek employment. Livia Turco, the former Italian social solidarity minister, says that "600 such permits were granted in 2000". Need for protection Police investigations in France do not usually require prostitutes to file charges against their pimps. Although this policy avoids reprisals, foreign prostitutes remain vulnerable since they are illegal immigrants who may face deportation. Hence the need to give them official victim status to protect and rehabilitate them. This is not easy. Nicole Castioni, now a deputy in Geneva's regional parliament, worked for five years in Paris's red-light district. Yolande Grenson, director of the Pandora organisation, worked as a prostitute for 17 years in Belgium. How many other women are trapped by inadequate laws and personnel? There is a need for social programmes providing counselling, accommodation and assistance and involving governmental agencies and community organisations. Such partnerships may be essential since prostitutes often fear those in authority. French provincial agencies set up in 1960 working to prevent prostitution have been a failure; only five are still operating. According to Mireille Ballestrazzi of France's criminal investigations department, community associations have a useful role. It is time to reactivate the French provincial committees which allow for coherent local action by bringing together representatives from public services and organisations. The French government has so far assigned responsibility for rehabilitation to community organisations. Although their means are limited, French groups such as Cabiria in Lyon, Penelope in Strasbourg and Le Pas in Dijon have proved generous, practical and effective. But they have increased responsibilities with the arrival of large numbers of people from foreign (and non-French-speaking) cultures. The ALC (Accompagnement Lieux d'accueil Carrefour Educatif et social) association in the Alpes-Maritimes had to hire a Russian mediator. Subsidies for community organisations must be maintained and increased by state health services contracts, as French senator Dinah Derycke, a member of the socialist party, has proposed. She also recommends increasing the number of shelters and community-based operations, coupled with financial aid, training programmes, career opportunities and a moratorium on tax-collection proceedings. Other initiatives, notably in Italy, may well inspire French efforts. In the Casa Regina Pacis in San Foca, a tiny seaside resort in Apulia, the parish priest, Don Cesare Lodeserto, provides lodging for 60 east European women rescued from their pimps. Don Oreste Benzi, a priest in Rimini, has helped rehabilitate more than 1,000 prostitutes. In autumn 2000 the Italian government launched a television campaign to heighten public awareness. According to Turco, this unique European experiment had two main aims: potential clients were clearly warned of the violence inflicted on prostitutes, and prostitutes were offered a way out via a 24-hour toll-free phone number, which received 47,000 calls in under two months. A thousand foreign women have taken part in the rehabilitation programme. The Italian government also committed itself to subsidising the professional training of repatriated Nigerians; women at its centre in Benin City learn computer and catering skills. This shows the importance of programmes that focus on the prostitutes' countries of origin. It applies especially to preventive measures. In Hungary the IOM used brochures and videos as part of its public awareness campai gn. In response to ads attracting Bulgarians with false promises of jobs, the Bulgarian government published a list of those companies authorised to recruit for work abroad. But it is not enough to warn women of the risks they face; men must be informed too. Whether traffickers, pimps or punters, they all exploit women. If pimps deserve punishment, should clients be penalised as well, as they are in Sweden? Should they receive counselling, as they do in Canada? Should they attend classes, as in California? Our approach must begin in school, where students in sex education classes should be taught about the cruel realities of prostitution. Young people must realise that prostitution is a serious human rights violation and that the human body is inalienable. There are no happy prostitutes. * Journalist (1) Most of Berlin's 7,000 prostitutes come from eastern Europe. (2) Agence France-Presse, 24 April 2000 and Peter Finn, �Sex Slavery Flourishes in Kosovo�, Washington Post, 24 April 2000. (3) International efforts remain haphazard: police are sometimes stationed in bars; two Danes were deported after being charged with being clients of prostitutes; some American officers have been forced to resign; an investigation was launched into German KFOR soldiers who frequented brothels where teenage prostitutes worked. Translated by Luke Sandford ALL RIGHTS RESERVED � 1997-2001 Le Monde diplomatique End<{{{2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. 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