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200 000 women sold in Balkans
27/11/2002 20:04 - (SA)
Skopje - Some 200 000 women in the Balkans are victims of human trafficking each year in an underground network that spreads throughout Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria, experts said on Wednesday in Skopje.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) gathered leading international experts on human trafficking, as well as local police officers and non-governmental organisations in order to address an issue described as a "black plague of the modern world".
However, the problem of human trafficking remains low on the list of priorities of most Balkans countries, apart from perhaps Macedonia, Iana Matei, the director of Reaching Out, a Romanian-based organisation that deals with trafficking, said.
Macedonian police arrested one of its officers recently over evidence presented by the organisation concerning the trafficking of a pregnant minor, she said. However, Serbian police failed to react in a similar case.
The new Macedonian government placed trafficking, organised crime, and corruption high on its list of priorities, but the country's legislation is still far behind the situation on the ground, Belgian expert and European parliament member Patsy Sorensen said.
In her view, economic and political instability in former communist countries, as well as widespread poverty, creates fertile ground for modern-day slavery, the main trade line of which runs through former Yugoslav countries, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania.
Internationally administrated Kosovo also remains a serious black- hole in the fight against human trafficking with virtually no serious control of its boundaries, it was said.
Rumours of another horrifying byproduct of human trafficking emerged recently when Macedonian policemen claimed that some women forced into prostitution were later crippled or even murdered in order to sell their organs on the black market.
"We have no firm evidence on this, just lots of rumours. But we have information of such activity in south-east Asia", Eric Van der Sypt, a Belgian prosector specialising in trafficking, said.
"Everybody is aware of this and all other criminal activities that follow trafficking, but in order to take a decisive action one has to have firm evidence and the legal system in place", he said.
Van der Sypt also noted that while Albania ratified the legislation which is in line with European standards, "unfortunately those laws are not being enforced in mountainous regions, out of reach for the country's police".
US intelligence reports estimate that between 1 million and 4 million people are being trafficked annually worldwide. Unfortunately a more precise figure is not available, Sorensen said. - Sapa-DPA
- SAPA
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