1. The 'job offer' that led to years of sex slavery (The Daily
Telegraph)
2. In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids (The New York
Times)
3. Investigative Report: KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY (IWPR)
Una sintesi in lingua italiana dell'ultimo documento si puo' trovare
su: http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1920
Altri articoli recenti sul problema della "tratta delle bianche" nei
Balcani si possono trovare su:
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=== 1 ===
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$
GWYSBEGGIXKI1QFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=%2F
news%2F2002%2F10%2F21%2Fwbalk21.xml&secureRefresh=true&
_requestid=207679
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)
(Filed: 21/10/2002)
The 'job offer' that led to years of sex slavery
Eve-Ann Prentice in Podgorica reports on attempts to
clamp down on the trade of young women as sex slaves
in the Balkans
Elena was a naive 19-year-old when a man started
flirting with her in the market place of her home town
in Moldova.
She and her mother were near destitute after her
father had left home and she believed the handsome
stranger when he offered her a job as a waitress at a
coastal resort in Montenegro.
Instead, she was taken to the Serbian town of Novi
Sad, where she was drugged, beaten and repeatedly
raped.
After a couple of weeks of relentless abuse, stupefied
by drink and drugs, she was taken to northern
Montenegro, where she was sold as a sex slave.
Elena is just one of countless thousands of young
women, some as young as 14, who every year become
victims of human trafficking.
It is big business for the gangsters who kidnap the
women off the streets of impoverished towns in eastern
Europe and the Balkans, or lure them with false
promises of work, then beat them into becoming unpaid
prostitutes.
Many are taken across the Adriatic to Italy, from
where they are transported to the brothels of
north-western Europe, including Britain.
Some are increasingly being held as captives in
brothels used by the army of foreign aid workers now
working across the region. Elena was luckier than
most.
After three years of being sold from one owner to
another, police raided the bar where she was
imprisoned this summer and she grabbed her chance to
escape. She was taken to a secret shelter for victims
of trafficking on the outskirts of Podgorica in
Montenegro.
Two men were arrested in the bar, including a
policeman, Vladan Bakic, who is awaiting trial. This
weekend, Elena is on her way back home to Moldova,
after spending several weeks at a high-security
shelter run by the International Organisation for
Migration.
Here the lucky few who either escape from their
captors or are rescued in police raids can find
counselling, medical care and help to return home.
Even then, the women often face hostility from their
own families, as they are forever afterwards regarded
as soiled.
Most of the victims of the trade in humans have been
from Moldova, Romania and other countries outside
Montenegro but now an increasing number are from
within the tiny mountain republic which, with Serbia,
makes up what remains of federal Yugoslavia.
"This is because standards of living have become worse
and worse here and all criminal trades flourish in
such an atmosphere," says Zana Pevicevic, who runs the
IOM's operation in Podgorica. Cuddly toys and pop star
posters testify to the youth of the victims at the
shelter.
It is dangerous work for Zana and her two assistants
who run the shelter at a modern, clean and
well-equipped house guarded by security cameras and
with a fast-response alarm system linked to the local
police.
Attitudes to the human trafficking are beginning to
change in Montenegro. There are signs that police
raids have forced the criminal gangs behind the trade
to change their main route - south through Serbia,
Montenegro and Albania - to a more northerly path. The
misery will not be ended, it will only be relocated.
letters.online@...
=== 2 ===
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/international/europe/20MIRA.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, October 20, 2002
In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids
By DAVID BINDER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - An intensive European operation conducted with
American assistance to crack down on the trafficking of women for the
sex trade has had mixed success, American officials say.
Preliminary data show that in 20,558 raids conducted from Sept. 7 to
Sept. 16 across Central and Eastern Europe, 237 victims of trafficking
were identified and 293 traffickers were arrested and charged as
criminals.
But little was done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the focus of the
operation because it is considered a center for international
prostitution and sexual slavery as well as a major transit point to
northern Europe. National and international police officers made just
71 raids on Bosnian nightclubs, hotels and other locations during the
September operation and arrested seven trafficking suspects.
"We are gratified by what was accomplished by some of the
participating countries, but are less satisfied with others who should
have been more involved," said John F. Markey, a United States customs
agent who directs law enforcement assistance programs in the State
Department.
Regionally and globally, the problem is huge. Trafficked women from
poor regions of Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and other Central and
Eastern European countries have been turning up in the United States
as well - in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and even Anchorage.
The International Organization for Migration, an offshoot of the
United Nations, estimates that 700,000 women are transported, mostly
involuntarily, over international borders each year for the sex trade.
As many as 200,000 are taken to or through the Balkans.
The September operation was conducted by the transborder crime center
of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative in Bucharest,
Romania, bringing together regional law enforcement agencies. The
center receives considerable assistance from the United States Customs
Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
Secret Service. The crime center is directed by Brig. Gen. Ferenc
Banfi of Hungary, and the antitrafficking task force is led by a
Romanian, Col. Gabriel Sotirescu.
In addition to Bosnia, the operation enlisted the assistance of
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary,
Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.
The operation focused on Bosnia because, since the war there ended
seven years ago, the presence of thousands of NATO troops and civilian
workers for the United Nations and aid agencies has made it a prime
market for both prostitution and sexual slavery, officials said.
Over the past two years, both NATO soldiers and United Nations
officials, including some Americans, have been implicated in the
exploitation of young women held in sexual bondage.
Because of its porous borders - only about 40 of its 432 official
border crossings are guarded - Bosnia is also a major transit country
for trafficked women, narcotics and contraband being sent to Northern
Europe.
On Thursday, the United Nations Mission in Sarajevo dismissed 11
Bosnian police officers, including members of the antitrafficking
squad, after they were apprehended visiting brothels and abusing
prostitutes. One has been sentenced by a Bosnian court to a month's
imprisonment, the mission announced.
By contrast, Bulgaria posted large numbers during the September
operation: in 2,079 individual raids, 258 people were identified as
traffickers and 64 women as trafficking victims. Some of the women
were taken to shelters run by private groups.
Romania reported 2,597 police raids, in which 47 traffickers were
identified and 1,063 women were identified as being in the sex
industry; 37 were classified as sex slaves.
For the other participating countries, the available performance data
declined sharply, officials said.
Among the functions of the Bucharest center's approximately 30
permanent officers is to receive, evaluate and pass on information on
suspected illegal movements of people, narcotics and contraband goods
to bring about transborder law enforcement operations. More than 100
messages were exchanged during the September operation, Colonel
Sotirescu said.
The center, housed in a palace built under Romania's Communist-era
dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, carried out its first joint action last
summer, focusing on narcotics trafficking across 15 countries from
Central Asia to the Balkans. More such operations are in the works.
Mr. Markey said the lack of cooperation the operation sometimes
encountered could be explained by political turmoil surrounding
elections in some countries, including Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia.
letters@...
=== 3 ===
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 355, Part II, August 2, 2002
KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY
There was hardly any prostitution in Kosovo before the war - now it's
booming
By Jeta Xharra in Pristina
Red neon over the Nairobi bar and an arc of light slicing through a
chink in its heavily-draped window are all that illuminate the
entrance to the striptease club, where Naim, a thin Albanian man in
his twenties, stands looking bored. When he sees me he springs into
action, spreading his scrawny chest across the door. "Sorry, women
are not allowed here," he said.
The doorman, Naim, was soon joined by a colleague who said he had
visited similar nightclubs in Sweden, and considers the provision of
such "entertainment" a measure of Kosovo's recent progress. "The real
excitement here is that guys whose first journey beyond their village
was to Stankovac (a refugee camp in Macedonia) can now see women strip
here," he said.
I ask to be let in, saying that I only want to order a drink at the
bar. When that fails, I threaten to complain to the UN police about
the discriminatory entrance policy at the club. Naim will not budge.
"All the girls inside the club are on contract, if the police raid the
place and find uncontracted local girls we'll be in trouble," he said.
"Anyway, this is no place for you 'sister', do you have any idea of
why people come here?" He probably didn't expect an answer, but I
whisper back, "Per kurv'ni?" - a piece of local slang best translated
as "for whoring". Naim does not respond, but his face reddens.
Such prudishness might seem absurd from a man working at a club where
punters can buy sex with the dancers. But this is a traditional
tightly-knit society. Discussing his job with an Albanian woman was
probably as awkward for him as talking about it to his mother, or his
own sister. Naim probably justified his work on the basis that the
club - which has since closed - is staffed entirely by foreign women.
By "importing" Romanian, Moldovan or Ukrainian women, club owners and
their staff can argue that they are shielding "our women" from this
unpleasant, but lucrative business.
Unheard of three years ago, the sex industry is now the fastest
growing "business" in post-war Kosovo, which has undergone
unprecedented social and political upheaval since the 1999 conflict.
Mobilised for over a decade against the Milosevic regime, the
population now plays host to the KFOR peacekeeping force, which
provides a steady stream of clients for the protectorate's 120 or so
strip clubs.
Around 60 per cent of women working in the sex trade come from
Moldova, the others from Romania and Ukraine. However, figures from
the International Organisation of Migration, IOM, counter-trafficking
unit suggest that 70 per cent of the overseas women were lured from
their home countries with promises of jobs as cleaners, waitresses,
baby-sitters or care workers.
While the arrival of 45,000 international peacekeepers has certainly
been a key factor in the sudden growth of the industry, in research
conducted by the IOM Kosovo team last year, victims of trafficking
reported that the bulk of the clientele are local residents.
Sevdije Ahmeti, a human rights activist and director of the Centre for
the Protection of Women and Children, CPWC, also questions the image
of Kosovo as an untainted, traditional society where an imported sex
trade serves the needs of promiscuous foreigners. Traditional
Albanian family structures, in which a male breadwinner provided for
women and children, had started eroding even before the war, she says.
Many Kosovar men emigrated to western Europe during the 1990s, either
to escape the military draft or to earn the hard currency which funded
Kosovo's "parallel economy" in a period when Albanians either
boycotted or were sacked from state jobs. Their absence altered the
traditional balance of roles between the sexes.
Kosovar society was then traumatised by the events of spring 1999, as
the majority of men were left powerless to defend their families in
the face of Serbian army tactics, which included rape and gang rape.
This "weapon" was not only used against women, but also to humiliate
and emasculate the men who were supposed to be their protectors.
Claims by local men that no Kosovar women work in the sex industry are
open to dispute. A local safe house set up by CPWC in 1996, to offer
refuge to Bosnian women who had been raped during the 1991-5 war, has
helped hundreds of women from across the former Yugoslavia, including
a significant number from Kosovo.
Tina, a Kosovar girl who sought sanctuary at the refuge, was kept as a
virtual slave in a Mitrovica nightclub for two years. Her clientele
was divided between locals who visited the club and military personnel
to whom she was "delivered" at checkpoints and barracks across
northern Kosovo.
In practice, the traditional attitudes that are believed to "protect"
Kosovar women from the sex trade leave victims of trafficking and
sexual crimes largely unprotected by the law.
One teenage victim of abduction and gang rape received scant support
from the legal system.
Violeta, 16, was kidnapped by two young Albanian men on her way to
school in Pristina three years ago. She was taken to a bar, which
promptly closed for the day. After drawing the curtains, the men and
their friends raped her repeatedly. She was allowed to return home in
the evenings, but the kidnappers threatened to ruin her reputation if
she said a word to anyone. Terrified, Violeta, did not dare tell her
parents what had happened and her ordeal was repeated several times.
She became pregnant and had an abortion before her abductors were
eventually caught. She testified against them, but they were released
for "lack of evidence".
Three years on, her life is still severely restricted. "My kidnappers
can go wherever they want, I only dare to go out in the company of my
mother or father," she said. "I had to drop out of school, because
they would follow me and ask my teachers where I was."
The first judge Violeta encountered told her to be less emotional and
stop crying about her ordeal, which, he said, was clearly her own
fault. With the support of her parents and the CPWC, she is now
pushing for a new hearing of her case at the Pristina district court,
but her experience shows the attitude rife among local men and even
judges that women willingly engage in sexual activities in the various
strip joints and bars. It is a view that conveniently overlooks the
fact that girls may have been trafficked or abducted.
Urosevac (Ferizaj in Albanian) is a grim little town with a population
of 130,000 in the south-east of Kosovo, bordering Macedonia. Even
before the war the town had a bad reputation, with the level of drug
dealing and underworld activity earning it the title of Kosovo's
gangster capital. The nightclubs here are more relaxed than in
Pristina.
Anyone - including a woman - can walk into the clubs and the owners
seem unconcerned about regulations or the police. Their confidence is
well-placed. "You don't just go and raid off-limits clubs in
Ferizaj," exclaimed Jamie Higgins, head of the UNMIK Trafficking and
Prostitution Unit, TPIU, when I asked if I could join a police swoop
in the town. As a centre of organised crime, a crackdown on the town
would require detailed planning and extensive numbers of police on the
ground - more than the TPIU has at its disposal, he said.
On the outskirts of the Freizaj is the Madonna nightclub, a former
family house turned striptease joint. In the corner, girls were
putting on bikinis, ready to perform. Following a signal from an
Albanian pimp, a blonde girl dancing on the podium made way for a dark
girl, who began an elaborate gyration to Michael Jackson's ballad
"Liberian Girl". A clientele of Albanian men, old and young, relaxed,
surrounded by groups of foreign women.
This is where Gezim, a local resident and acquaintance from high
school, brought me when I asked him to show me the place where he had
tried to "order" a girl for a friend who he thought had "a problem" in
that department.
"We stood outside the club almost all night after the dancing
finished, but we couldn't get anything," he told me. "Other people
were bidding and by the end there were no women left. The demand was
high so I don't think we could have afforded them anyway."
We also visited the Apachi Club, named after the famous US Apache
helicopters and one of the first clubs to open after the NATO action.
Armed with Hellfire amour-piercing missiles, the aircraft were much
vaunted during the war as the only military hardware capable of
stopping the Yugoslav tanks and troops ethnically cleansing the
province. The Americans' reluctance to deploy the helicopters, and
their frequent crashes during training exercises in northern Albania,
did not deter the owners. They probably hoped to attract a clientele
from the US military base Camp Bondsteel, 14 km away.
It seems to have worked. "I drive both civilians and uniformed men to
these clubs," said a taxi driver waiting outside the Apachi club,
sometimes also - confusingly - known as the Arizona club. "Some have
even changed into civilian clothing in my car. Of course, the locals
think this is bad for the area. It's a bad example for the young if
they see these things, but soldiers will be soldiers and they won't
stay on base if there is a night-club outside."
Outside the Apachi, a string of red Christmas lights hang neatly
around the entrance. Inside, the corridor leading to the striptease
room was festooned with pictures of helicopters.
By 2 am, the dancing was over. Semi-naked, heavily made-up girls
accompanied men to different tables, to negotiate "business" for the
night. With heavy local patronage and little international appetite
to take punitive action, scenes like this one look set to continue in
Kosovo for many nights to come.
Jeta Xharra is a freelance researcher/journalist & recent MA graduate
from the War Studies department, at King's College London
[WARNING:
Balkan Crisis Report, by IWPR, is an anti-yugoslav and serbophobic
newsletter supported by the Department for International
Development, the European Commission, the Swedish International
Development and Cooperation Agency, The Netherlands Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges general
support from the Ford Foundation.
For further details on this project, other information services and
media programmes, visit IWPR's website: www.iwpr.net
C.N.J.]
Telegraph)
2. In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids (The New York
Times)
3. Investigative Report: KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY (IWPR)
Una sintesi in lingua italiana dell'ultimo documento si puo' trovare
su: http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1920
Altri articoli recenti sul problema della "tratta delle bianche" nei
Balcani si possono trovare su:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1912
=== 1 ===
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$
GWYSBEGGIXKI1QFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=%2F
news%2F2002%2F10%2F21%2Fwbalk21.xml&secureRefresh=true&
_requestid=207679
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)
(Filed: 21/10/2002)
The 'job offer' that led to years of sex slavery
Eve-Ann Prentice in Podgorica reports on attempts to
clamp down on the trade of young women as sex slaves
in the Balkans
Elena was a naive 19-year-old when a man started
flirting with her in the market place of her home town
in Moldova.
She and her mother were near destitute after her
father had left home and she believed the handsome
stranger when he offered her a job as a waitress at a
coastal resort in Montenegro.
Instead, she was taken to the Serbian town of Novi
Sad, where she was drugged, beaten and repeatedly
raped.
After a couple of weeks of relentless abuse, stupefied
by drink and drugs, she was taken to northern
Montenegro, where she was sold as a sex slave.
Elena is just one of countless thousands of young
women, some as young as 14, who every year become
victims of human trafficking.
It is big business for the gangsters who kidnap the
women off the streets of impoverished towns in eastern
Europe and the Balkans, or lure them with false
promises of work, then beat them into becoming unpaid
prostitutes.
Many are taken across the Adriatic to Italy, from
where they are transported to the brothels of
north-western Europe, including Britain.
Some are increasingly being held as captives in
brothels used by the army of foreign aid workers now
working across the region. Elena was luckier than
most.
After three years of being sold from one owner to
another, police raided the bar where she was
imprisoned this summer and she grabbed her chance to
escape. She was taken to a secret shelter for victims
of trafficking on the outskirts of Podgorica in
Montenegro.
Two men were arrested in the bar, including a
policeman, Vladan Bakic, who is awaiting trial. This
weekend, Elena is on her way back home to Moldova,
after spending several weeks at a high-security
shelter run by the International Organisation for
Migration.
Here the lucky few who either escape from their
captors or are rescued in police raids can find
counselling, medical care and help to return home.
Even then, the women often face hostility from their
own families, as they are forever afterwards regarded
as soiled.
Most of the victims of the trade in humans have been
from Moldova, Romania and other countries outside
Montenegro but now an increasing number are from
within the tiny mountain republic which, with Serbia,
makes up what remains of federal Yugoslavia.
"This is because standards of living have become worse
and worse here and all criminal trades flourish in
such an atmosphere," says Zana Pevicevic, who runs the
IOM's operation in Podgorica. Cuddly toys and pop star
posters testify to the youth of the victims at the
shelter.
It is dangerous work for Zana and her two assistants
who run the shelter at a modern, clean and
well-equipped house guarded by security cameras and
with a fast-response alarm system linked to the local
police.
Attitudes to the human trafficking are beginning to
change in Montenegro. There are signs that police
raids have forced the criminal gangs behind the trade
to change their main route - south through Serbia,
Montenegro and Albania - to a more northerly path. The
misery will not be ended, it will only be relocated.
letters.online@...
=== 2 ===
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/international/europe/20MIRA.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, October 20, 2002
In Europe, Sex Slavery Is Thriving Despite Raids
By DAVID BINDER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - An intensive European operation conducted with
American assistance to crack down on the trafficking of women for the
sex trade has had mixed success, American officials say.
Preliminary data show that in 20,558 raids conducted from Sept. 7 to
Sept. 16 across Central and Eastern Europe, 237 victims of trafficking
were identified and 293 traffickers were arrested and charged as
criminals.
But little was done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the focus of the
operation because it is considered a center for international
prostitution and sexual slavery as well as a major transit point to
northern Europe. National and international police officers made just
71 raids on Bosnian nightclubs, hotels and other locations during the
September operation and arrested seven trafficking suspects.
"We are gratified by what was accomplished by some of the
participating countries, but are less satisfied with others who should
have been more involved," said John F. Markey, a United States customs
agent who directs law enforcement assistance programs in the State
Department.
Regionally and globally, the problem is huge. Trafficked women from
poor regions of Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and other Central and
Eastern European countries have been turning up in the United States
as well - in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and even Anchorage.
The International Organization for Migration, an offshoot of the
United Nations, estimates that 700,000 women are transported, mostly
involuntarily, over international borders each year for the sex trade.
As many as 200,000 are taken to or through the Balkans.
The September operation was conducted by the transborder crime center
of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative in Bucharest,
Romania, bringing together regional law enforcement agencies. The
center receives considerable assistance from the United States Customs
Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
Secret Service. The crime center is directed by Brig. Gen. Ferenc
Banfi of Hungary, and the antitrafficking task force is led by a
Romanian, Col. Gabriel Sotirescu.
In addition to Bosnia, the operation enlisted the assistance of
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary,
Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.
The operation focused on Bosnia because, since the war there ended
seven years ago, the presence of thousands of NATO troops and civilian
workers for the United Nations and aid agencies has made it a prime
market for both prostitution and sexual slavery, officials said.
Over the past two years, both NATO soldiers and United Nations
officials, including some Americans, have been implicated in the
exploitation of young women held in sexual bondage.
Because of its porous borders - only about 40 of its 432 official
border crossings are guarded - Bosnia is also a major transit country
for trafficked women, narcotics and contraband being sent to Northern
Europe.
On Thursday, the United Nations Mission in Sarajevo dismissed 11
Bosnian police officers, including members of the antitrafficking
squad, after they were apprehended visiting brothels and abusing
prostitutes. One has been sentenced by a Bosnian court to a month's
imprisonment, the mission announced.
By contrast, Bulgaria posted large numbers during the September
operation: in 2,079 individual raids, 258 people were identified as
traffickers and 64 women as trafficking victims. Some of the women
were taken to shelters run by private groups.
Romania reported 2,597 police raids, in which 47 traffickers were
identified and 1,063 women were identified as being in the sex
industry; 37 were classified as sex slaves.
For the other participating countries, the available performance data
declined sharply, officials said.
Among the functions of the Bucharest center's approximately 30
permanent officers is to receive, evaluate and pass on information on
suspected illegal movements of people, narcotics and contraband goods
to bring about transborder law enforcement operations. More than 100
messages were exchanged during the September operation, Colonel
Sotirescu said.
The center, housed in a palace built under Romania's Communist-era
dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, carried out its first joint action last
summer, focusing on narcotics trafficking across 15 countries from
Central Asia to the Balkans. More such operations are in the works.
Mr. Markey said the lack of cooperation the operation sometimes
encountered could be explained by political turmoil surrounding
elections in some countries, including Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia.
letters@...
=== 3 ===
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 355, Part II, August 2, 2002
KOSOVO SEX INDUSTRY
There was hardly any prostitution in Kosovo before the war - now it's
booming
By Jeta Xharra in Pristina
Red neon over the Nairobi bar and an arc of light slicing through a
chink in its heavily-draped window are all that illuminate the
entrance to the striptease club, where Naim, a thin Albanian man in
his twenties, stands looking bored. When he sees me he springs into
action, spreading his scrawny chest across the door. "Sorry, women
are not allowed here," he said.
The doorman, Naim, was soon joined by a colleague who said he had
visited similar nightclubs in Sweden, and considers the provision of
such "entertainment" a measure of Kosovo's recent progress. "The real
excitement here is that guys whose first journey beyond their village
was to Stankovac (a refugee camp in Macedonia) can now see women strip
here," he said.
I ask to be let in, saying that I only want to order a drink at the
bar. When that fails, I threaten to complain to the UN police about
the discriminatory entrance policy at the club. Naim will not budge.
"All the girls inside the club are on contract, if the police raid the
place and find uncontracted local girls we'll be in trouble," he said.
"Anyway, this is no place for you 'sister', do you have any idea of
why people come here?" He probably didn't expect an answer, but I
whisper back, "Per kurv'ni?" - a piece of local slang best translated
as "for whoring". Naim does not respond, but his face reddens.
Such prudishness might seem absurd from a man working at a club where
punters can buy sex with the dancers. But this is a traditional
tightly-knit society. Discussing his job with an Albanian woman was
probably as awkward for him as talking about it to his mother, or his
own sister. Naim probably justified his work on the basis that the
club - which has since closed - is staffed entirely by foreign women.
By "importing" Romanian, Moldovan or Ukrainian women, club owners and
their staff can argue that they are shielding "our women" from this
unpleasant, but lucrative business.
Unheard of three years ago, the sex industry is now the fastest
growing "business" in post-war Kosovo, which has undergone
unprecedented social and political upheaval since the 1999 conflict.
Mobilised for over a decade against the Milosevic regime, the
population now plays host to the KFOR peacekeeping force, which
provides a steady stream of clients for the protectorate's 120 or so
strip clubs.
Around 60 per cent of women working in the sex trade come from
Moldova, the others from Romania and Ukraine. However, figures from
the International Organisation of Migration, IOM, counter-trafficking
unit suggest that 70 per cent of the overseas women were lured from
their home countries with promises of jobs as cleaners, waitresses,
baby-sitters or care workers.
While the arrival of 45,000 international peacekeepers has certainly
been a key factor in the sudden growth of the industry, in research
conducted by the IOM Kosovo team last year, victims of trafficking
reported that the bulk of the clientele are local residents.
Sevdije Ahmeti, a human rights activist and director of the Centre for
the Protection of Women and Children, CPWC, also questions the image
of Kosovo as an untainted, traditional society where an imported sex
trade serves the needs of promiscuous foreigners. Traditional
Albanian family structures, in which a male breadwinner provided for
women and children, had started eroding even before the war, she says.
Many Kosovar men emigrated to western Europe during the 1990s, either
to escape the military draft or to earn the hard currency which funded
Kosovo's "parallel economy" in a period when Albanians either
boycotted or were sacked from state jobs. Their absence altered the
traditional balance of roles between the sexes.
Kosovar society was then traumatised by the events of spring 1999, as
the majority of men were left powerless to defend their families in
the face of Serbian army tactics, which included rape and gang rape.
This "weapon" was not only used against women, but also to humiliate
and emasculate the men who were supposed to be their protectors.
Claims by local men that no Kosovar women work in the sex industry are
open to dispute. A local safe house set up by CPWC in 1996, to offer
refuge to Bosnian women who had been raped during the 1991-5 war, has
helped hundreds of women from across the former Yugoslavia, including
a significant number from Kosovo.
Tina, a Kosovar girl who sought sanctuary at the refuge, was kept as a
virtual slave in a Mitrovica nightclub for two years. Her clientele
was divided between locals who visited the club and military personnel
to whom she was "delivered" at checkpoints and barracks across
northern Kosovo.
In practice, the traditional attitudes that are believed to "protect"
Kosovar women from the sex trade leave victims of trafficking and
sexual crimes largely unprotected by the law.
One teenage victim of abduction and gang rape received scant support
from the legal system.
Violeta, 16, was kidnapped by two young Albanian men on her way to
school in Pristina three years ago. She was taken to a bar, which
promptly closed for the day. After drawing the curtains, the men and
their friends raped her repeatedly. She was allowed to return home in
the evenings, but the kidnappers threatened to ruin her reputation if
she said a word to anyone. Terrified, Violeta, did not dare tell her
parents what had happened and her ordeal was repeated several times.
She became pregnant and had an abortion before her abductors were
eventually caught. She testified against them, but they were released
for "lack of evidence".
Three years on, her life is still severely restricted. "My kidnappers
can go wherever they want, I only dare to go out in the company of my
mother or father," she said. "I had to drop out of school, because
they would follow me and ask my teachers where I was."
The first judge Violeta encountered told her to be less emotional and
stop crying about her ordeal, which, he said, was clearly her own
fault. With the support of her parents and the CPWC, she is now
pushing for a new hearing of her case at the Pristina district court,
but her experience shows the attitude rife among local men and even
judges that women willingly engage in sexual activities in the various
strip joints and bars. It is a view that conveniently overlooks the
fact that girls may have been trafficked or abducted.
Urosevac (Ferizaj in Albanian) is a grim little town with a population
of 130,000 in the south-east of Kosovo, bordering Macedonia. Even
before the war the town had a bad reputation, with the level of drug
dealing and underworld activity earning it the title of Kosovo's
gangster capital. The nightclubs here are more relaxed than in
Pristina.
Anyone - including a woman - can walk into the clubs and the owners
seem unconcerned about regulations or the police. Their confidence is
well-placed. "You don't just go and raid off-limits clubs in
Ferizaj," exclaimed Jamie Higgins, head of the UNMIK Trafficking and
Prostitution Unit, TPIU, when I asked if I could join a police swoop
in the town. As a centre of organised crime, a crackdown on the town
would require detailed planning and extensive numbers of police on the
ground - more than the TPIU has at its disposal, he said.
On the outskirts of the Freizaj is the Madonna nightclub, a former
family house turned striptease joint. In the corner, girls were
putting on bikinis, ready to perform. Following a signal from an
Albanian pimp, a blonde girl dancing on the podium made way for a dark
girl, who began an elaborate gyration to Michael Jackson's ballad
"Liberian Girl". A clientele of Albanian men, old and young, relaxed,
surrounded by groups of foreign women.
This is where Gezim, a local resident and acquaintance from high
school, brought me when I asked him to show me the place where he had
tried to "order" a girl for a friend who he thought had "a problem" in
that department.
"We stood outside the club almost all night after the dancing
finished, but we couldn't get anything," he told me. "Other people
were bidding and by the end there were no women left. The demand was
high so I don't think we could have afforded them anyway."
We also visited the Apachi Club, named after the famous US Apache
helicopters and one of the first clubs to open after the NATO action.
Armed with Hellfire amour-piercing missiles, the aircraft were much
vaunted during the war as the only military hardware capable of
stopping the Yugoslav tanks and troops ethnically cleansing the
province. The Americans' reluctance to deploy the helicopters, and
their frequent crashes during training exercises in northern Albania,
did not deter the owners. They probably hoped to attract a clientele
from the US military base Camp Bondsteel, 14 km away.
It seems to have worked. "I drive both civilians and uniformed men to
these clubs," said a taxi driver waiting outside the Apachi club,
sometimes also - confusingly - known as the Arizona club. "Some have
even changed into civilian clothing in my car. Of course, the locals
think this is bad for the area. It's a bad example for the young if
they see these things, but soldiers will be soldiers and they won't
stay on base if there is a night-club outside."
Outside the Apachi, a string of red Christmas lights hang neatly
around the entrance. Inside, the corridor leading to the striptease
room was festooned with pictures of helicopters.
By 2 am, the dancing was over. Semi-naked, heavily made-up girls
accompanied men to different tables, to negotiate "business" for the
night. With heavy local patronage and little international appetite
to take punitive action, scenes like this one look set to continue in
Kosovo for many nights to come.
Jeta Xharra is a freelance researcher/journalist & recent MA graduate
from the War Studies department, at King's College London
[WARNING:
Balkan Crisis Report, by IWPR, is an anti-yugoslav and serbophobic
newsletter supported by the Department for International
Development, the European Commission, the Swedish International
Development and Cooperation Agency, The Netherlands Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges general
support from the Ford Foundation.
For further details on this project, other information services and
media programmes, visit IWPR's website: www.iwpr.net
C.N.J.]