Latin America's secret slave trade

Oliver Balch reports from the triple frontier of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, where humans have become the most sought-after contraband.

Wednesday December 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Sit by the swimming pool of the exclusive Iguazú Jungle hotel and you can watch the "contrabandistas" emerging from the undergrowth.

All day, an army of smugglers can be seen passing along the mountainous path that separates Argentina from Brazil. Locals know it as the "pique". It is just one of a dozen or more unofficial crossing points on the so-called triple frontier, the name given to the porous border area where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet.

Everything from fake branded clothing to Class A drugs are ferried back and forth along these clandestine routes. The list of contraband goods now also extends to human beings.
The human-trafficking business is estimated to be worth over £10bn a year, making it the world's third most profitable criminal activity after drug-smuggling and gun-running.

Many of those trafficked through the triple frontier are destined for the illegal labour market in Brazil or Argentina. The trade in babies for adoption is also widely reported. But a large proportion end up as sex workers. Many end up in brothels across the region, although a high number are destined for the triple frontier's own thriving sex industry.

Children are particularly vulnerable to human traffickers. Charities working with at-risk children in the border region estimate that as many as 3,500 young people could be involved.

"Many girls are trafficked via the pique. It's all highly organised", explains Marcelina Antunez, director of Luz de Infancia, a children's care centre in the Argentine town of Puerto Iguazú.

Driving the trade is the flood of foreign tourists who come to visit the world famous Iguazú waterfalls. Much of the demand for prostitution is casual. Yet the region also attracts a hardened group of sex tourists.

The region's reputation for prostitution is not new. In the late 1970s, around 40,000 workers flooded into the triple frontier to help build the colossal Itaipú hydroelectric dam. Around 97% of the new workforce were men. As the dam went up, so too did the demand for paid-for sex.

"The triple frontera is the Bangkok of Latin America...after the tsunami, many sex tourists started coming here instead of Asia," notes Cynthia Bendlin, director of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for the triple frontier area.

IOM runs a number of awareness programmes to highlight the dangers of the trafficking trade. But it is an uphill struggle. Many of the children most at risk either live on the street or come from very impoverished families, Ms Bendlin explains.

In some cases of extreme destitution, children are even contracted out by their parents. There is a blind beggar in Puerto Igazú, for example, who walks the streets hand-in-hand with a seven year-old girl. He makes his living by renting her out for sex. She is his neighbour's daughter.

The situation is complicated further by the "recruiters". Often known to the victims, they promise the opportunity of work across the border. When the fictitious jobs never materialise, the victims finds themselves trapped and unable to return home.

IOM also works with local government agencies and the police in an attempt to develop coordinated strategies to stop the traffickers. Again, prgress is slow. In Argentina alone, there are at least five separate security agencies operating in the border zone. Between the three countries, the problem of coordination becomes triply complicated, Ms Bendlin admits.

At a national level, there are some signs of encouragement. This week, Argentina's lower house is scheduled to discuss a bill that would officially recognise underage human trafficking in the criminal code.

Victim organisations welcome such measures, but remain sceptical about how much difference they will make on the ground. Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay all have separate laws and legal processes. Add to that the variety of municipal, provincial and national legislation and you have a complex legal web to navigate.

It is a journey that many victims would rather not undertake. In addition to the psychological and financial implications of pursuing a court case, many fear the threat of reprisals.

"Although we know about more than 700 cases of child trafficking, we have only reported 40 in the last three years", confesses Benigno Cáceres, a lawyer with CEAPRA, a children's charity in the Paraguayan border town of Ciudad del Este.

Only one of these complaints resulted in a guilty verdict.

The relative impunity for sex-related crimes is in keeping with cultural attitudes in the triple frontier. The region's strong culture of machismo holds that sex with underage girls is safer and a sign of male virility, says Norma Pereira, a child psychologist in Ciudad del Este.

In addition, the mothers of trafficked children are frequently themselves the victims of abuse or involved in prostitution, she explains: "Families often refuse to recognise the problem. It's as if this new form of slavery has become natural."

· Oliver Balch is a freelance journalist based in Argentina.

o_balch@hotmail.com

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel: NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF & Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy: FRANK RICH

THE COMPLETE ARTICLES
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 17, 2006

In poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, stories like Yan Kosal’s are still wrenchingly common.

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia

One of the oldest social dichotomies is the one dividing good girls from bad, the madonna from the whore. But in poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, it is the saintly ones — those who risk leaving their villages to help their families — who often end up as whores.

Yan Kosal is a 26-year-old woman here in northwestern Cambodia who was devoted to her aging parents and desperately concerned with providing for them. Her mother is blind, her father is frail, and they depend on her — the only surviving child — for food.

Kosal earned only $30 a month as a peddler, barely enough to scrape by. So when a woman acquaintance told her that she could earn $90 a month selling snacks in Thailand, Kosal leapt at the opportunity.

"I thought I should do this to feed my parents," Kosal said, particularly because her acquaintance offered to escort her to Bangkok. Kosal borrowed $15 to pay her travel expenses, and they set out in September. But once they were in Thailand, where Kosal couldn't speak the language, the trafficker sold her to a brothel.

"First, I cried," Kosal said. But the brothel manager beat Kosal until she capitulated. "If the men wanted to go to the room," Kosal said numbly, "the girl had to go." The women were paid nothing, except for tips — but the sad ones who wept and were uncooperative didn't get tips.

--MORE--

---

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 17, 2006

Gay-baiting may do candidates who traffic in it more harm than good.

IT'S not the least of John McCain's political talents that he comes across as a paragon of straight talk even when he isn't talking straight. So it was a surprise to see him reduced to near-stammering on ABC's "This Week" two Sundays after the election. The subject that brought him low was the elephant in the elephants' room, or perhaps we should say in their closet: homosexuality.

Senator McCain is no bigot, and his only goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible. He kept repeating two safe talking points for dear life: he opposes same-sex marriage (as does every major presidential aspirant in both parties) and he is opposed to discrimination. But because he had endorsed a broadly written Arizona ballot initiative that could have been used to discriminate against unmarried domestic partners, George Stephanopoulos wouldn't let him off the hook.

"Are you against civil unions for gay couples?" he asked the senator, who replied, "No, I'm not." When Mr. Stephanopoulos reiterated the question seconds later — "So you're for civil unions?" — Mr. McCain answered, "No." In other words, he was not against civil unions before he was against them. His gaffe was reminiscent of a similar appearance on Mr. Stephanopoulos's show in 2004 by Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained doctor who refused to criticize a federal abstinence program that catered to the religious right by spreading the canard that sweat and tears could transmit AIDS.

--MORE--

Reposted

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel: NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF & Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy: FRANK RICH

THE COMPLETE ARTICLES
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 17, 2006

In poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, stories like Yan Kosal’s are still wrenchingly common.

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia

One of the oldest social dichotomies is the one dividing good girls from bad, the madonna from the whore. But in poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, it is the saintly ones — those who risk leaving their villages to help their families — who often end up as whores.

Yan Kosal is a 26-year-old woman here in northwestern Cambodia who was devoted to her aging parents and desperately concerned with providing for them. Her mother is blind, her father is frail, and they depend on her — the only surviving child — for food.

Kosal earned only $30 a month as a peddler, barely enough to scrape by. So when a woman acquaintance told her that she could earn $90 a month selling snacks in Thailand, Kosal leapt at the opportunity.

"I thought I should do this to feed my parents," Kosal said, particularly because her acquaintance offered to escort her to Bangkok. Kosal borrowed $15 to pay her travel expenses, and they set out in September. But once they were in Thailand, where Kosal couldn't speak the language, the trafficker sold her to a brothel.

"First, I cried," Kosal said. But the brothel manager beat Kosal until she capitulated. "If the men wanted to go to the room," Kosal said numbly, "the girl had to go." The women were paid nothing, except for tips — but the sad ones who wept and were uncooperative didn't get tips.

--MORE--

---

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 17, 2006

Gay-baiting may do candidates who traffic in it more harm than good.

IT'S not the least of John McCain's political talents that he comes across as a paragon of straight talk even when he isn't talking straight. So it was a surprise to see him reduced to near-stammering on ABC's "This Week" two Sundays after the election. The subject that brought him low was the elephant in the elephants' room, or perhaps we should say in their closet: homosexuality.

Senator McCain is no bigot, and his only goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible. He kept repeating two safe talking points for dear life: he opposes same-sex marriage (as does every major presidential aspirant in both parties) and he is opposed to discrimination. But because he had endorsed a broadly written Arizona ballot initiative that could have been used to discriminate against unmarried domestic partners, George Stephanopoulos wouldn't let him off the hook.

"Are you against civil unions for gay couples?" he asked the senator, who replied, "No, I'm not." When Mr. Stephanopoulos reiterated the question seconds later — "So you're for civil unions?" — Mr. McCain answered, "No." In other words, he was not against civil unions before he was against them. His gaffe was reminiscent of a similar appearance on Mr. Stephanopoulos's show in 2004 by Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained doctor who refused to criticize a federal abstinence program that catered to the religious right by spreading the canard that sweat and tears could transmit AIDS.

--MORE--

Our duty to help the real victims of conflict

Leading article

Published: 05 December 2006

In a few days' time we will tell you the story of Jahad, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who was lying in bed when he felt weird vibrations deep inside his gut. Yet he did not feel sick. Perhaps it was an earthquake, he thought. He was not to know, but it was the rumble of dozens of tanks. He had not heard them. For Jahad is deaf. So when the Israeli soldiers came and shouted to him to move he could not hear them either. Thinking him disobedient they kicked him to the ground. Today bruises in the shape of boot-prints still mottle his skin.

Jahad is one of the innocents of war. The world is full of them, but we rarely see them. News is a fickle business. There is room, it seems, only for one major tragedy in the international headlines at any time. Each has its moment, then the spotlight moves on to another drama. But little moves on for the children, the disabled and the elderly who remain behind to pay the quotidian price of war. They become forgotten people, the real victims of war and political failure.

In the charity world, as everywhere, some causes are fashionable, and some resolutely are not. In our 2006 Christmas appeal, which we launch today, we have tried to steer away from "in" high-profile charities to focus on three who are working on issues that are rarely in that international spotlight. Some of the work is familiar enough to us. Take the example of one of our charities, Merlin, the British medical charity which zooms emergency relief to disaster zones in Gaza and elsewhere around the world. The television cameras may pick up the activities of its rapid response team, in which British doctors are parachuted in to patch up victims. But what is rarely seen is the NHS consultant who later takes a month's annual leave from running the orthopaedic unit in a major UK hospital to set up a proper field clinic. Or the medical worker who lives in a tent in four feet of snow to help earthquake survivors through the winter. Such things happen away from the scrutiny of the international media, for the rebuilding of a shattered normality is a non-newsworthy process.

The same may be said for the activities of our other two charities. The Welfare Association, which works in Gaza and the West Bank, also focuses on the marginalised people caught up in the Middle East's central conflict. It gives football pitches to children with nowhere to play. It replants the olive groves destroyed by the erection of the Israeli security barrier. It improves Palestinian hospitals starved of cash by the international community. It rebuilds electricity supplies in refugee camps destroyed by Israeli artillery and tanks.

There will be those who may find the work of such charities contentious in a war zone. But we are unabashed in our support for their activities, whether in Gaza or Darfur; it is all too easy to forget that the collateral damage of conflict and violence registers most harshly upon the frail, the vulnerable and the dispossessed, not upon the shoulders of the guilty.

Our third charity, Anti-Slavery International, works among people who are not just forgotten and ignored, but deliberately hidden away. These are the millions of children and bonded labourers who exist in conditions virtually indistinguishable from the abject slavery of earlier ages - and yet whose products, Indian gemstones or silk rugs from Pakistan, grace our smarter shops.

It is such innocents that we have a duty to aid and succour. Jahad and his fellow deaf students have had their life transformed by a project which embraces them with warmth, offers them speech therapy and access to the latest learning technology and even a sign language dancing group. Let us hope our appeal will mean there are many more projects like it. Such are the signs of hope in our weary world.

In a few days' time we will tell you the story of Jahad, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who was lying in bed when he felt weird vibrations deep inside his gut. Yet he did not feel sick. Perhaps it was an earthquake, he thought. He was not to know, but it was the rumble of dozens of tanks. He had not heard them. For Jahad is deaf. So when the Israeli soldiers came and shouted to him to move he could not hear them either. Thinking him disobedient they kicked him to the ground. Today bruises in the shape of boot-prints still mottle his skin.

Jahad is one of the innocents of war. The world is full of them, but we rarely see them. News is a fickle business. There is room, it seems, only for one major tragedy in the international headlines at any time. Each has its moment, then the spotlight moves on to another drama. But little moves on for the children, the disabled and the elderly who remain behind to pay the quotidian price of war. They become forgotten people, the real victims of war and political failure.

In the charity world, as everywhere, some causes are fashionable, and some resolutely are not. In our 2006 Christmas appeal, which we launch today, we have tried to steer away from "in" high-profile charities to focus on three who are working on issues that are rarely in that international spotlight. Some of the work is familiar enough to us. Take the example of one of our charities, Merlin, the British medical charity which zooms emergency relief to disaster zones in Gaza and elsewhere around the world. The television cameras may pick up the activities of its rapid response team, in which British doctors are parachuted in to patch up victims. But what is rarely seen is the NHS consultant who later takes a month's annual leave from running the orthopaedic unit in a major UK hospital to set up a proper field clinic. Or the medical worker who lives in a tent in four feet of snow to help earthquake survivors through the winter. Such things happen away from the scrutiny of the international media, for the rebuilding of a shattered normality is a non-newsworthy process.

The same may be said for the activities of our other two charities. The Welfare Association, which works in Gaza and the West Bank, also focuses on the marginalised people caught up in the Middle East's central conflict. It gives football pitches to children with nowhere to play. It replants the olive groves destroyed by the erection of the Israeli security barrier. It improves Palestinian hospitals starved of cash by the international community. It rebuilds electricity supplies in refugee camps destroyed by Israeli artillery and tanks.

There will be those who may find the work of such charities contentious in a war zone. But we are unabashed in our support for their activities, whether in Gaza or Darfur; it is all too easy to forget that the collateral damage of conflict and violence registers most harshly upon the frail, the vulnerable and the dispossessed, not upon the shoulders of the guilty.

Our third charity, Anti-Slavery International, works among people who are not just forgotten and ignored, but deliberately hidden away. These are the millions of children and bonded labourers who exist in conditions virtually indistinguishable from the abject slavery of earlier ages - and yet whose products, Indian gemstones or silk rugs from Pakistan, grace our smarter shops.

It is such innocents that we have a duty to aid and succour. Jahad and his fellow deaf students have had their life transformed by a project which embraces them with warmth, offers them speech therapy and access to the latest learning technology and even a sign language dancing group. Let us hope our appeal will mean there are many more projects like it. Such are the signs of hope in our weary world.

'Modern day slavery’ in Israel

Migrants face ‘modern day slavery’ in Israel


Migrant workers in Israel face shocking working conditions, denied rights, blackmail, fraud before deportation.


TEL AVIV - Impoverished Turkish labourer Shaheen Yelmaz arrived in Israel four months ago dreaming of helping his father pay off his mounting debts.

But today the 23-year-old faces a US $14,000 debt of his own, deportation and the possible loss of his family home in Turkey after challenging his employer over non-payment of wages and shocking working conditions.

"I never wanted money for myself, I just wanted to pay off my father’s huge debts. We were told by Yilmazlar [a Turkish manpower agency that supplies construction workers to a number of companies in Israel] that we could make up to $1,400 a month and more with overtime if we worked in Israel," he told IRIN.

"Yilmazlar assured us we would be well treated and be housed in good accommodation. However, when I arrived, my dream turned into a nightmare."

Yelmaz was sharing a room with eight others - furnished with bunk beds - that was so small that there was no space for their suitcases. They were fed a monotonous diet of rice and lentils and there were only three toilets with no running water for 130 workers.

"The conditions of the toilets were so disgusting, they were not fit even for an animal," said Yelmaz.

"We were forbidden from using mobile phones on pain of confiscation and fines and were forced to work an average of 11 hours a day, without being paid overtime. And in our half-hour lunch break we were expected to go home, eat and return to the construction site.

"In addition to our passports being taken away [by the employer], we needed special permission to leave the premises after work and on our day off. If people left without permission, they were fined and threatened with deportation by the management."

The final straw came when Yelmaz found out that he and the other workers would only receive their first payment after three months. He and a friend, 41-year-old father-of-three Hikmat Tekin, decided to challenge their boss.

"We were told by the management that if we didn't like it, we would be deported without payment and barred from employment elsewhere in Israel," Tekin said.


Strict visa regulations


As he began his battle against his employer, Yelmaz became aware of the strict Israeli visa regulations governing conditions for migrant workers.

"The issuance of these visas is subject to the workers staying with the same employer stated on the visa and if this condition is broken then the migrant worker is deemed illegal and liable for deportation,” said Sigal Rosen, spokeswoman for Israeli human rights organisation Hotline for Migrant Workers.

The Hotline has received more than 20 requests for help from Turkish workers placed by Yizmazlar over the past few years.

"Many employers take advantage of the visa conditions by withholding wages from uninformed workers and then firing the employees when they owe them significant amounts of money," Rosen said.

"Often the employer will then inform police that the workers he has just fired are now illegal aliens. The police then arrest and deport them before they can challenge the employer in court,” said Rosen.

About 200,000 migrant workers live in Israel, mostly from Turkey, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. Half of them are deemed illegal, with about 5,000 getting deported annually on average, according to Rosen.

In March this year, an Israeli Supreme Court judge described the conditions of migrant workers in Israel as a "form of modern slavery" following a petition from human rights organisations.

The court further ordered the State to adopt a new employment scheme within the next six months allowing workers to resign without losing their legal status.

"Although it is difficult for migrant workers to change employers if they find the conditions too terrible, they can ask the manpower agency to find them new employment after three months,” Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, said.

But in reality this does not happen. In general, manpower agencies are reluctant to help migrant workers find new employment as there is no further financial incentive for them once the workers have already been placed, said Rosen.

Furthermore, this provision is not available to workers placed by Yizmazlar who are not entitled to seek employment elsewhere.


In huge debt


Meanwhile, as Yelmaz awaits the Supreme Court's decision on 13 December, following a successful stay of deportation filed by his lawyer, he has found out that he cannot possibly pay off his father's debts.

Before leaving Turkey, he and other Turkish workers were obliged to sign blank promissory notes and a labour contract by Yilmazlar, which they said they were not allowed to read or keep a copy of.

"When the company found out I was leaving, they filled in one of the blank promissory notes that I had signed before coming to Israel," he said.

"They stated I owed the company $14,000 and that they would repossess my family's home if I did not pay up. The Turkish Embassy couldn’t help me because my signature was on the notes.”

He said that he was warned by the company manager that if he returned to Turkey quietly he would be forgiven but if he made any trouble, he would disappear.

Yilmazlar’s lawyer, Tal Benenson, told IRIN that he had affidavits signed by Yelmaz and Tekin before a Turkish-speaking notary in Israel, admitting that they were only using Yilmazlar to get into Israel and had no intention of staying with the company once in the country.

“They have told a pack of lies which they planned beforehand in Turkey with the help of Turkish workers already in Israel and the aim of these lies is to try and justify their fraudulent behaviour.

“Our client has laid out a huge sum financially for air tickets and medicals and is now suing Shaheen and Tekin for 200,000 Shekels [about US $46,450] to retrieve these expenses,” he said.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=18464