Trafficking in Women

(Andrea Saula)

SLUG: Albanians and Serbs have no problem when they want to cooperate in trafficking in women. But, on the other hand women like Fatmire Tendevci and Jelena Bjelica have no problem working together to raise awareness about this issue.

Hello and welcome to UNMIK on AIR with Sputnik Kilambi.

Many facts show that organized crime in the Balkans is multiethnic.

According to the International Organization of Migration (IOM), an estimated 200,000 women from Eastern Europe and Russia are trafficked each year. The Balkans is both a transit path and a destination.

Unfortunately prejudices and preconceived notions about these women are rife – some say they are all prostitutes, or that they are naïve and stupid…others insist that pimps come from other countries and that in their own surroundings no one is involved in trafficking. Trafficking is always something that happens elsewhere and to someone else.

The reality obviously is somewhat different. A snapshot of trafficking of women in the Balkans would look like this.

The owner of a bordello in Kraljevo buys a girl from Moldova. She’s been offered a good job in Italy or what is the case more often, she’s been kidnapped somewhere on the border between Romania and Serbia and Monte Negro. After two or three months, the owner of the Kraljevo bordello calls his old friend in Ferizaj and tells him he has a Moldavian girl for sale. After that, most don’t want to know what happens next.

Jelena & Fatmire: Oh, yes they are cooperating…

when it comes to trafficking…say Fatmire Terdevci and Jelena Bjelica, Pristina and Belgrade based journalists working on this issue.

Jelena has just published “Trafficking in women”, a kind of handbook for journalists which was recently launched in Prishtina.

Albanians and Serbs have no problems when they want to trade, especially in the purchase and sale of women, she says.

Jelena: My opinion is that God is money. Unfortunately, we are late by three or four years and they are working already for four years. And we are just in the beginning to make some cooperation to exchange some information.

But if journalists need to cooperate more in order to tell the story and raise awareness, so should the police. This aspect, emphasizes Fatmire, is crucial.

Fatmire: I just hope to see that the police could cooperate more, just to use this model from the traffickers to cooperate, police in Kosovo and in Serbia, because this is very important point.

There are other indicators that highlight the similarities, between not only Kosovo and Serbia but amongst all former Yugoslavia republics. The victims of trafficking are abused all over again through insensitive press coverage.

Jelena: this problem is widely spread in all the countries all over the former Yugoslavia; we have a misuse of terminology especially on this subject. Not only on this, especially on the subject that is how they deal with any kind of organized crimes. We have often people writing instead about victims, about prostitutes, jezebels, hookers, all possible insulting words that they can find. And instead of about criminals they would say a controversial businessman.

Research done between 2000 and 2002 by a Belgrade NGO uncovered around 150 press articles on trafficking in women, but with no clear explanation – whether it is trafficking, prostitution or people-smuggling. The main thrust of those articles was that Albanians are pimps.

Jelena: This was everything, on purpose, hate speech. Serbs would never be mentioned as traffickers or would as pimps. Our public opinion was shocked when they discovered that the Serbs are also involved, that they also are traffickers. Especially after we had a case where one of the policemen dealing with organized crime was directly involved in trafficking of human beings. He was providing false visas to Moldavian and Romanian girls.

According to Fatmire, the problem with not making a clear distinction between the terms prostitution and trafficking is the same in Kosovo.

Fatmire: Sometimes journalists refer to a trafficked woman as a prostitute instead of trafficked woman. Also there is a problem: If you ask a police about the involvement of the locals they would give you a precise percentage: 60 % of locals and 40 % of internationals as a clients. When you ask local NGOs which deal with same problem, they would say another way around 40 % locals and 60% internationals.

Trafficking has become a big issue with the entry of peacekeeping forces in Kosovo in 1999. Fatmire thinks that bordellos have double standards depending on whether clients are international or local. And she adds that it is due to lax border police controls, lack of regulations, or sometimes because of the non-implementation of those regulations.

Fatmire: We don’t have a law. We have UNMIK Regulation on forced prostitution and it’s very good and defined regulation. The question is it implemented or not. How many cases of traffickers and perpetuators faced the court? Only few of them and the sentences were very, very low.

In Serbia too it is lack of implementation rather than of required laws that is the problem. But charges have mainly been brought against those providing facilities for the prostitution rather than enslaving women. Since 1955, says Jelena, nobody has been charged in Serbia on keeping a person in slavery, an old fashioned version of the article on trafficking in human beings.

Jelena: This is showing that during Milosevic’ regime this problem has been maximally marginalized. Just a month ago we had a new article in Penal Code on trafficking, prosecuting on trafficking, so we’ll see after this state of emergency and after the 3 persons are charged for this specific crime, we will see what will be in future in Serbia.

Serbia is mainly a transit country for victims. IOM and police data show that trafficked women are usually from Moldova and Romania. Most of them come to Kosovo via Serbia and Kosovo today is both a place of destination and transit – the danger is, warns Fatmire, that today Kosovo is also becoming a source country.

Fatmire: We cannot speak of huge number of women Albanian, local women’ involved, but still there are strong indications that it is a problem, it is an issue that it’s on raise.

The alarm bells are ringing louder and louder – one of the only positive aspects of this grim phenomenon is that women like Jelena and Fatmire are taking this seriously and are working together. In both Kosovo and Serbia, the two women insist, the need of the hour is investigative journalists unafraid to call a spade a spade.

That is all for this edition of UNMIK on AIR program. Thanks for listening.