Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 15:43:26 -0500 (EST)
From: jennifer olmsted <olmsted-AT-ucla.edu>
Subject: sex industry


Sorry this message is so long, but you can get the idea of the issue just
from the first couple of paragraphs.  
I had heard about the large numbers of Eastern European women turning to
prostitution out of economic necessity in Israel, but this gives a very
different twist to these types of stories.
Jennifer Olmsted

>>> January 11, 1998
>>> 
>>> Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women
>>> 
>>> By MICHAEL SPECTER
>>> 
>>> RAMLE, Israel -- Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow
>>> rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few
>>> months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper,
>>> she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a
>>> bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables.
>>> 
>>> She was 21, self-assured and glad to be out of Ukraine. Israel offered a
>>> new world, and for a week or two everything seemed possible. Then, one
>>> morning, she was driven to a brothel, where her boss burned her passport
>>> before her eyes.
>>> 
>>> "I own you," she recalled his saying. "You are my property, and you will
>>> work until you earn your way out. Don't try to leave. You have no papers
>>> and you don't speak Hebrew. You will be arrested and deported. Then we
>>> will get you and bring you back."
>>> 
>>> It happens every single day. Not just in Israel, which has deported
>>> nearly 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian women like Irina in the past three
>>> years. But throughout the world, where selling naive and desperate young
>>> women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal
>>> enterprises in the robust global economy.
>>> 
>>> The international bazaar for women is hardly new, of course. Asians have
>>> been its basic commodity for decades. But economic hopelessness in the
>>> Slavic world has opened what experts call the most lucrative market of
>>> all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism:
>>> Eastern European women with little to sustain them but their dreams.
>>> Pimps, law-enforcement officials and relief groups all agree that
>>> Ukrainian and Russian women are now the most valuable in the trade.
>>> 
>>> Because their immigration is often illegal -- and because some
>>> percentage of the women choose to work as prostitutes -- statistics are
>>> difficult to assess. But the United Nations estimates that 4 million
>>> people throughout the world are trafficked each year -- forced through
>>> lies and coercion to work against their will in many types of servitude.
>>> The International Organization for Migration has said that as many as
>>> 500,000 women are annually trafficked into Western Europe alone.
>>> 
>>> Many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to
>>> prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before
>>> she succumbed. Finally she got a break. The brothel was raided, and she
>>> was brought here to Neve Tirtsa in Ramle, the only women's prison in
>>> Israel. Now, like hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian women with no
>>> documents or obvious forgeries, she is waiting to be sent home.
>>> 
>>> "I don't think the man who ruined my life will even be fined," she said
>>> softly, slow tears filling her enormous green eyes. "You can call me a
>>> fool for coming here. That's my crime. I am stupid. A stupid girl from a
>>> little village. But can people really buy and sell women and get away
>>> with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to
>>> me, if it can really happen at all."
>>> 
>>> Then, waving her arm toward the muddy prison yard, where Russian is
>>> spoken more commonly than Hebrew, she whispered one last thought: "I'm
>>> not the only one, you know. They have ruined us all."
>>> 
>>> TRAFFIC PATTERNS: RUSSIA AND UKRAINE SUPPLY THE FLESH
>>> 
>>> Centered in Moscow and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the networks
>>> trafficking women run east to Japan and Thailand, where thousands of
>>> young Slavic women now work against their will as prostitutes, and west
>>> to the Adriatic Coast and beyond. The routes are controlled by Russian
>>> crime gangs based in Moscow. Even when they do not specifically move the
>>> women overseas, they provide security, logistical support, liaison with
>>> brothel owners in many countries and, usually, false documents.
>>> 
>>> Women often start their hellish journey by choice. Seeking a better
>>> life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign
>>> countries at wages they could never imagine at home.
>>> 
>>> In Ukraine alone, the number of women who leave is staggering. As many
>>> as 400,000 women under 30 have gone in the past decade, according to
>>> their country's interior ministry. The Thai Embassy in Moscow, which
>>> processes visa applications from Russia and Ukraine, says it receives
>>> nearly 1,000 visa applications a day, most of these from women.
>>> 
>>> Israel is a fairly typical destination. Prostitution is not illegal
>>> here, although brothels are, and with 250,000 foreign male workers --
>>> most of whom are single or here without their wives -- the demand is
>>> great. Police officials estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual
>>> transactions every day. Brothels are ubiquitous.
>>> 
>>> None of the women seem to realize the risks they run until it is too
>>> late. Once they cross the border their passports will be confiscated,
>>> their freedoms curtailed and what little money they have taken from them
>>> at once.
>>> 
>>> "You want to tell these kids that if something seems too good to be true
>>> it usually is," said Lyudmilla Biryuk, a Ukrainian psychologist who has
>>> counseled women who have escaped or been released from bondage. "But you
>>> can't imagine what fear and real ignorance can do to a person."
>>> 
>>> The women are smuggled by car, bus, boat and plane. Handed off in the
>>> dead of night, many are told they will pick oranges, work as dancers or
>>> as waitresses. Others have decided to try their luck at prostitution,
>>> usually for what they assume will be a few lucrative months. They have
>>> no idea of the violence that awaits them.
>>> 
>>> The efficient, economically brutal routine -- whether here in Israel, or
>>> in one of a dozen other countries -- rarely varies. Women are held in
>>> apartments, bars and makeshift brothels; there they service, by their
>>> own count, as many as 15 clients a day. Often they sleep in shifts, four
>>> to a bed. The best that most hope for is to be deported after the police
>>> finally catch up with their captors.
>>> 
>>> Few ever testify. Those who do risk death. Last year in Istanbul,
>>> Turkey, according to Ukrainian police investigators, two women were
>>> thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends
>>> watched.
>>> 
>>> In Serbia, also last year, said a young Ukrainian woman who escaped in
>>> October, a woman who refused to work as a prostitute was beheaded in
>>> public.
>>> 
>>> In Milan, Italy, a week before Christmas, the police broke up a ring
>>> that was holding auctions in which women abducted from the countries of
>>> the former Soviet Union were put on blocks, partially naked, and sold at
>>> an average price of just under $1,000.
>>> 
>>> "This is happening wherever you look now," said Michael Platzer, the
>>> Vienna, Austria-based head of operations for the U.N.'s Center for
>>> International Crime Prevention. "The Mafia is not stupid. There is less
>>> law enforcement since the Soviet Union fell apart and more freedom of
>>> movement. The earnings are incredible. The overhead is low -- you don't
>>> have to buy cars and guns. Drugs you sell once and they are gone. Women
>>> can earn money for a long time."
>>> 
>>> "Also," he added, "the laws help the gangsters. Prostitution is
>>> semilegal in many places and that makes enforcement tricky. In most
>>> cases punishment is very light."
>>> 
>>> In some countries, Israel among them, there is not even a specific law
>>> against the sale of human beings.
>>> 
>>> Platzer said that although certainly "tens of thousands" of women were
>>> sold into prostitution each year, he was uncomfortable with statistics
>>> since nobody involved has any reason to tell the truth.
>>> 
>>> "But if you want to use numbers," he said, "think about this. Two
>>> hundred million people are victims of contemporary forms of slavery.
>>> Most aren't prostitutes, of course, but children in sweatshops, domestic
>>> workers, migrants. During four centuries, 12 million people were
>>> believed to be involved in the slave trade between Africa and the New
>>> World. The 200 million -- and many of course are women who are
>>> trafficked for sex -- is a current figure. It's happening now. Today."
>>> 
>>> DISTRESS CALLS: FAR-FLUNG VICTIMS PROVIDE FEW CLUES
>>> 
>>> The distress call came from Donetsk, the bleak center of coal production
>>> in southern Ukraine. A woman was screaming on the telephone line. Her
>>> sister and a friend were prisoners in a bar somewhere near Rome. They
>>> spoke no Italian and had no way out, but had managed, briefly, to get
>>> hold of a man's cell phone.
>>> 
>>> "Do you have any idea where they are, exactly?" asked Olga Shved, who
>>> runs La Strada in Kiev, Ukraine's new center dedicated to fighting the
>>> trafficking of women in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former
>>> Soviet Union.
>>> 
>>> The woman's answer was no. Ms. Shved began searching for files and
>>> telephone numbers of the local consul, the police, anybody who could
>>> help.
>>> 
>>> "Do they know how far from Rome they are?" she asked, her voice
>>> tightening with each word. "What about the name of the street or the
>>> bar? Anything will help," she said, jotting notes furiously as she
>>> spoke. "We can get the police on this, but we need something. If they
>>> call back, tell them to give us a clue. The street number. The number of
>>> a bus that runs past. One thing is all we need."
>>> 
>>> Ms. Shved hung up and called officials at Ukraine's Interior Ministry
>>> and the Foreign Ministry. Her conversations were short, direct and
>>> obviously a routine part of her job.
>>> 
>>> That is because Ukraine -- and to a lesser degree its Slavic neighbors
>>> Russia and Belarus -- has replaced Thailand and the Philippines as the
>>> epicenter of the global business in trafficking women. The Ukrainian
>>> problem has been worsened by a ravaged economy, an atrophied system of
>>> law enforcement, and criminal gangs that grow more brazen each year.
>>> Young European women are in demand, and Ukraine, a country of 51 million
>>> people, has a seemingly endless supply. It is not that hard to see why.
>>> 
>>> Neither Russia nor Ukraine reports accurate unemployment statistics. But
>>> even partial numbers present a clear story of chaos and economic
>>> dislocation. Federal employment statistics in Ukraine indicate that more
>>> than two-thirds of the unemployed are women. The government also keeps
>>> another statistic: employed but not working. Those are people who
>>> technically have jobs, and can use company amenities like day-care
>>> centers and hospitals. But they do not work or get paid. Three-quarters
>>> are women. And of those who have lost their jobs since the Soviet Union
>>> dissolved in 1991, more than 80 percent are women.
>>> 
>>> The average salary in Ukraine today is slightly less than $30 a month,
>>> but it is half that in the small towns that criminal gangs favor for
>>> recruiting women to work abroad. On average, there are 30 applicants for
>>> every job in most Ukrainian cities. There is no real hope; but there is
>>> freedom.
>>> 
>>> In that climate, looking for work in foreign countries has increasingly
>>> become a matter of survival.
>>> 
>>> "It's no secret that the highest prices now go for the white women,"
>>> said Marco Buffo, executive director of On the Road, an antitrafficking
>>> organization in northern Italy. "They are the novelty item now. It used
>>> to be Nigerians and Asians at the top of the market. Now it's the
>>> Ukrainians."
>>> 
>>> Economics is not the only factor causing women to flee their homelands.
>>> There is also social reality. For the first time, young women in Ukraine
>>> and Russia have the right, the ability and the willpower to walk away
>>> from their parents and their hometowns. Village life is disintegrating
>>> throughout much of the former Soviet world, and youngsters are grabbing
>>> any chance they can find to save themselves.
>>> 
>>> "After the wall fell down, the Ukrainian people tried to live in the new
>>> circumstances," said Ms. Shved. "It was very hard, and it gets no
>>> easier. Girls now have few opportunities yet great freedom. They see
>>> 'Pretty Woman,' or a thousand movies and ads with the same point, that
>>> somebody who is rich can save them. The glory and ease of wealth is
>>> almost the basic point of the Western advertising that we see. Here the
>>> towns are dying. What jobs there are go to men. So they leave."
>>> 
>>> First, however, they answer ads from employment agencies promising to
>>> find them work in a foreign country. Here again, Russian crime gangs
>>> play a central role. They often recruit people through seemingly
>>> innocuous "mail order bride" meetings. Even when they do not, few such
>>> organizations can operate without paying off one gang or another.
>>> Sometimes want ads are almost honest, suggesting that the women can earn
>>> up to $1,000 a month as "escorts" abroad. Often they are vague or
>>> blatantly untrue.
>>> 
>>> RECRUITING METHODS: ADS MAKE OFFERS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
>>> 
>>> One typical ad used by traffickers in Kiev last year read: "Girls: Must
>>> be single and very pretty. Young and tall. We invite you for work as
>>> models, secretaries, dancers, choreographers, gymnasts. Housing is
>>> supplied. Foreign posts available. Must apply in person."
>>> 
>>> One young woman who did, and made it back alive, described a harrowing
>>> journey. "I met with these guys, and they asked if I would work at a
>>> strip bar," she said. "Why not, I thought. They said we would have to
>>> leave at once. We went by car to the Slovak Republic where they grabbed
>>> my passport. I think they got me new papers there, but threatened me if
>>> I spoke out. We made it to Vienna, then to Turkey. I was kept in a bar
>>> and I was told I owed $5,000 for my travel. I worked for three days, and
>>> on the fourth I was arrested."
>>> 
>>> Lately, the ads have started to disappear from the main cities -- where
>>> the realities of such offers are known now. These days the appeals are
>>> made in the provinces, where their success is undiminished.
>>> 
>>> Most of the thousands of Ukrainian women who go abroad each year are
>>> illegal immigrants who do not work in the sex business. Often they apply
>>> for a legal visa -- to dance, or work in a bar -- and then stay after it
>>> expires.
>>> 
>>> Many go to Turkey and Germany, where Russian crime groups are
>>> particularly powerful. Israeli leaders say that Russian women -- they
>>> tend to refer to all women from the former Soviet Union as Russian --
>>> disappear off tour boats every day. Officials in Italy estimate that at
>>> least 30,000 Ukrainian women are employed illegally there now.
>>> 
>>> Most are domestic workers, but a growing number are prostitutes, some of
>>> them having been promised work as domestics only to find out their jobs
>>> were a lie. Part of the problem became clear in a two-year study
>>> recently concluded by the Washington-based nonprofit group Global
>>> Survival Network: Police officials in many countries just don't care.
>>> 
>>> The network, after undercover interviews with gangsters, pimps and
>>> corrupt officials, found that local police forces -- often those best
>>> able to prevent trafficking -- are least interested in helping.
>>> 
>>> Gillian Caldwell of Global Survival Network has been deeply involved in
>>> the study. "In Tokyo," she said, "a sympathetic senator arranged a
>>> meeting for us with senior police officials to discuss the growing
>>> prevalence of trafficking from Russia into Japan. The police insisted it
>>> wasn't a problem, and they didn't even want the concrete information we
>>> could have provided. That didn't surprise local relief agencies, who
>>> cited instances in which police had actually sold trafficked women back
>>> to the criminal networks which had enslaved them."
>>> 
>>> OFFICIAL REACTIONS: BEST-PLACED TO HELP, BUT LEAST INCLINED
>>> 
>>> Complacency among police agencies is not uncommon.
>>> 
>>> "Women's groups want to blow this all out of proportion," said Gennadi
>>> Lepenko, chief of Kiev's branch of Interpol, the international police
>>> agency. "Perhaps this was a problem a few years ago. But it's under
>>> control now."
>>> 
>>> That is not the view at Ukraine's parliament -- which is trying to pass
>>> new laws to protect young women -- or at the Interior Ministry.
>>> 
>>> "We have a very serious problem here, and we are simply not equipped to
>>> solve it by ourselves," said Mikhail Lebed, chief of criminal
>>> investigations for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. "It is a human
>>> tragedy, but also, frankly, a national crisis. Gangsters make more from
>>> these women in a week than we have in our law-enforcement budget for the
>>> whole year. To be honest, unless we get some help we are not going to
>>> stop it."
>>> 
>>> But solutions will not be simple. Criminal gangs risk little by ferrying
>>> women out of the country; indeed, many of the women go voluntarily. Laws
>>> are vague, cooperation between countries rare and punishment of
>>> traffickers almost nonexistent. Without work or much hope of a future at
>>> home, an eager teen-ager will find it hard to believe that the promise
>>> of a job in Italy, Turkey or Israel is almost certain to be worthless.
>>> 
>>> "I answered an ad to be a waitress," said Tamara, 19, a Ukrainian
>>> prostitute in a massage parlor near Tel Aviv's old Central Bus Station,
>>> a Russian-language ghetto for the cheapest brothels. "I'm not sure I
>>> would go back now if I could. What would I do there, stand on a bread
>>> line or work in a factory for no wages?"
>>> 
>>> Tamara, like all other such women interviewed for this article, asked
>>> that her full name not be published. She has classic Slavic features,
>>> with long blond hair and deep green eyes. She turned several potential
>>> customers away so she could speak at length with a reporter. She was
>>> willing to talk as long as her boss was out. She said she was not
>>> watched closely while she remained within the garish confines of the
>>> "health club."
>>> 
>>> "I didn't plan to do this," she said, looking sourly at the rich red
>>> walls and leopard prints around her. "They took my passport, so I don't
>>> have much choice. But they do give me money. And believe me, it's better
>>> than anything I could ever get at home."
>>> 
>>> Yitzhak Tyler, the chief of undercover activities for the Haifa police,
>>> is a big, open-faced man who doesn't mince words.
>>> 
>>> "We got a hell of a problem on our hands," he said. The port city of
>>> 200,000 has become the easiest entryway for women brought to Israel to
>>> work as prostitutes -- though by no means the only one. Sometimes they
>>> walk off tour boats, but increasingly they come with forged documents
>>> that enable them to live and work in Israel. These have often been
>>> bought or stolen from elderly Jewish women in Russia or Ukraine.
>>> 
>>> "This is a sophisticated, global operation," Tyler said. "It's evil, and
>>> it's successful because the money is so good. These men pay $500 to
>>> $1,000 for a Ukrainian or Russian woman. Do you understand what I am
>>> telling you? They will buy these women and make a fortune out of them."
>>> 
>>> To illustrate his point, Tyler grabbed a black calculator and started
>>> calling out the sums as he punched them in.
>>> 
>>> "Take a small place," he said, "with 10 girls. Each has 15 to 20 clients
>>> a day. Multiply that by say 200 shekels. So say 30,000 shekels a day
>>> comes in to each place. Each girl works 25 days a month. Minimum."
>>> 
>>> Tyler was busy doing math as he spoke. "So we are talking about 750,000
>>> shekels a month, or about $215,000. A man often owns five of these
>>> places. That's a million dollars. No taxes, no real overhead. It's a
>>> factory with slave labor. And we've got them all over Israel."
>>> 
>>> The Tropicana, in Tel Aviv's bustling business district, is one of the
>>> busiest bordellos. The women who work there, like nearly all prostitutes
>>> in Israel today, are Russian. Their boss, however, is not.
>>> 
>>> "Israelis love Russian girls," said Jacob Golan, who owns this and two
>>> other clubs, and spoke willingly about the business he finds so
>>> "successful." "They are blonde and good-looking and different from us,"
>>> he said, chuckling as he drew his hand over his black hair. "And they
>>> are desperate. They are ready to do anything for money."
>>> 
>>> Always filled with half-naked Russian women, the club is open around the
>>> clock. There is a schedule on the wall next to the receptionist -- with
>>> each woman's hours listed in a different color, and the days and shifts
>>> rotating, as at a restaurant or a bar. Next to the schedule a sign
>>> reads, "We don't accept checks." Next to that there is a poster for a
>>> missing Israeli woman.
>>> 
>>> There are 12 cubicles at the Tropicana where 20 women work in shifts,
>>> eight during the daytime, 12 at night. Business is always booming, and
>>> not just with foreign workers. Israeli soldiers, with rifles on their
>>> shoulders, frequent the place, as do business executives and tourists.
>>> 
>>> Golan was asked if most women who work at the club do so voluntarily. He
>>> laughed heartily.
>>> 
>>> "I don't get into that," he said, staring vacantly across his club at
>>> four Russian women sitting on a low couch. "They are brought here and
>>> told to work. I don't force them. I pay them. What goes on between them
>>> and the men they are with, how could that be my problem?"
>>> 
>>> DETERRENT STRATEGIES: A SYSTEM THAT FAILS THOSE WHO TESTIFY
>>> 
>>> Every once in a while, usually with great fanfare and plenty of advance
>>> notice, Golan gets raided. He pays a fine, and the women without good
>>> false documents are taken to prison.
>>> 
>>> If they are deported, the charges against them are dropped. But if a
>>> woman wants to file a complaint, then she must remain in prison until a
>>> trial is held. "In the past four years," Betty Lahan, prison director of
>>> Neve Tirtsa here, said, "I don't know of a single case where a woman
>>> chose to testify."
>>> 
>>> Such punitive treatment of victims is the rule rather than the
>>> exception. In Italy, where the police say killings of women forced into
>>> prostitution average one a month, parliament tried to create a sort of
>>> witness protection program. But it only allowed women to stay in the
>>> country for one year and did nothing to hide their identities.
>>> 
>>> "The deck is just so completely stacked against the women in all this,"
>>> said Daniella Pompei, an immigration specialist with the community of
>>> Sant'Egidio, the Catholic relief agency in Rome. "The police is the last
>>> place these women want to go." She said that only 20 women had ever used
>>> the protection program.
>>> 
>>> It is not clear who will stop the mob. On a trip to Ukraine late last
>>> year, Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke out about the new slave trade that
>>> has developed so rapidly there. The United States and the European Union
>>> have plans to work together to educate young women about the dangers of
>>> working abroad. Other initiatives, like stays of deportation for
>>> prisoners, victims' shelters and counseling, have also been discussed.
>>> 
>>> "I don't care about any of that," said Lena, a young Latvian, one of the
>>> inmates waiting to be deported here. "I just want to know one thing. How
>>> will I ever walk down the street like a human being again?"
>>> 
>>> Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
>>> 
>>> FAIR USE NOTICE.  This document contains copyrighted material
>>> whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright
>>> owner.  WomensNet is making this article available in our efforts
>>> to advance understanding of the struggle for women's rights
>>> worldwide.  We believe that this constitutes a `fair use' of the
>>> copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US
>>> Copyright Law.  If you wish to use this copyrighted material for
>>> purposes of your own that go beyond `fair use', you must obtain
>>> permission from the copyright owner.
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