It S All the Same If She S Maria Or Anna

Trafficking of Bulgarian Women in the United Kingdom

It’s All the Same If She’s Maria or Anna…

And it’s all the same if she’s Maria or Anna…

From ‘Eternal and Holy’ by Elissaveta Bagryana

Rumyana Emanuilidu, London

The Council of Europe’s Organised Crime Situation Report 2004, prepared under the Octopus Programme and released at the beginning of 2005, points at trafficking in human beings, along with economic crime and trafficking in drugs, as a major problem of the modern age.

According to the report, Bulgaria is one of the most often quoted European countries of origin of trafficked women and children as well as of traffickers, and the UK is one of the preferred destinations of trafficking.

This investigation disproves the officially promoted opinion that because of the British visa requirements for Bulgarian citizens, there are no Bulgarian traffickers and trafficked Bulgarian women in the UK.

The investigation shows that the problem does exist and, moreover, that because of numerous gaps and flaws in the laws the victims of trafficking are usually victims of civic discrimination too.

It is expected that in 2005 the European countries will adjust their laws to realities and that European legislation on trafficking in human beings for the purpose of exploitation will be harmonised.

Anna

Anna is standing at the window and watching the people outside. She doesn’t want to be among them. Or to confide in anybody. She trusts no one. She has no friends.

She agrees to talk with us but only if it is in English and in the presence of someone from POPPYProject (project of a non-governmental organization, which is the only one in GB to provide shelter for trafficked women).

I understand that Anna came to London three years ago on a legal tourist visa. A family friend had told her exactly what to do if she wanted to remain in Britain. In London, she applied for a business visa, hoping to find a job. Her plans were to study and support herself by working part-time. But they soon fell through.

She says that she was led out of a pub where she was having a drink with friends, bundled into a car with four men inside, and driven to a flat at an unfamiliar location. The first one to rape her was the boss of the other three traffickers. He was the ‘pimp’ as Anna calls him, an Albanian. In the next few months he forced her to service men for money, repeatedly taking advantage of her body himself which, for Anna, was equivalent to rape.

The other three men controlled the business. At first she was taken to houses, doing eight-hour shifts without a break. The girls worked in twos every day, but they were often replaced. They were usually expected to earn £300 a day. That was not impossible if the girls provided escort services, but it was very difficult if they worked in flats. The pimp would set a target and if the girls failed to bring in the required amount of money, he would beat them.

Anna told herself that she must try to be strong if she wanted to survive. Otherwise they would destroy her. So she did try to be strong…

She changed many different places – flats, sauna baths, escort agencies. There were other Bulgarian women everywhere, especially in the sauna baths. The ‘working girls’ were not kept long in one and the same place. They were constantly replaced in order to offer clients a steady supply of fresh flesh or, in some cases, for security considerations.

Anna says that at least one thousand Bulgarian women are in this situation in London alone. ‘Just open The Daily Sport and you’ll see how many such places there are in London. All their phone numbers are listed there,’ the girl suggests.

The pimp used threats against her and her family in Bulgaria to put any thoughts of running away out of her head. He told her that there was a device in her cell phone by which he could track her down any time. When he allowed her to make phone calls to Bulgaria she was forced to lie. ‘Instead of telling the truth I had to lie to my loved ones about my situation in order to spare them the trouble – that’s very distressing!’

One day Anna succeeded in running away. She went into hiding with the help of other girls. They were in the same situation, but they had false Greek passports which the police assumed were legal. One of the girls called the police. When the officers searched the premises they found Anna, who had no identity papers, and arrested her on suspicions of illegal immigration.

Checking at the Home Office, the immigration officers found that Anna had had a legally issued business visa. But being under the control of the traffickers, she had failed to get her visa on time. Unfortunately, the visa had expired a fortnight before she was found by the police. They asked her if there were any special reasons why she didn’t want to return to Bulgaria and she told them everything, starting from the very first day of her arrival in the UK. She believed that this was the end of her suffering. She was lucky to be referred to POPPY Project.

‘Working Girls’

Anna is just one of many ‘working girls’ who have been forced into prostitution. According to one survey of the National Service for Combating Organized Crime (NSCOC) with the Ministry of the Interior, more than ten thousand Bulgarian women are working abroad, including the ones working in GB. Many of them are employed in the sphere of ‘special services’. Dozens complain of rape and abuse, but others are too afraid to do so. The majority have entered the respective country on a legal visa, but quite a few of them have been sent there by pirate companies. International analysts blame this on widespread corruption and poor cross-institutional communication.

The Bulgaria Mission at the International Organisation for Migration has helped hundreds of women by providing transportation home, accommodation in the country for several weeks, temporary financial support, psychological counselling, training and assistance in finding a job in Bulgaria.

According to unofficial reports, the number of victims from Bulgaria is much larger because the majority of them use false foreign passports. On the whole, in the UK as in other European countries – such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany – there are many people with false passports. The Bulgarians, in particular, usually have false Greek, Italian or Albanian passports. Quite often the women seeking shelter and help have false names too, POPPY reports.

In fact, because of the distance and the visa requirements, women from Bulgaria are rarely trafficked to the UK directly. Most of the victims have to cross several countries before arriving here. In most cases they enter the country from Spain or France where visas are not a problem. Perhaps that is why the institutions in Bulgaria do not count the UK as a sex-trafficking destination. Britain is the only West European country in which the Bulgarian Interior Ministry’s National Service for Combating Organised Crime (NSCOC) does not have a representative at the embassy. The first and natural impulse of any woman in trouble is to turn to the representatives of her country. Bulgarian diplomats, however, are not instructed what to do in such cases. Moreover, they have virtually closed the door on the problem.

The Bulgarian Consul claims that he not only hasn’t heard any talk of human trafficking but that he himself hasn’t come across such as a case since he became consul. In his opinion, trafficked women ought to turn to the police.

Iveta Bartunkova, Trafficking Project Manager at Anti-Slavery International, thinks that Bulgarian NGOs such as Animus are doing a good job. But because Bulgaria is part of the Stability Pact the government, too, ought to be aware of the problem.

‘If individual responsible government officials claim that there is no problem, this means that this government actually has a very big problem. It means that there is a real need of targeted action to inform precisely the people on whom the solution of the sex trafficking problem depends,’ Ms Bartunkova notes.

A POPPY report identifies Bulgaria, as well as Moldova, Romania and Albania, as one of the main Balkan countries of origin of trafficking victims. Bulgaria is also a transit country for Moldovan, Romanian and Ukrainian women en route to Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Bulgarian women are likewise trafficked into the last two as well as into Western countries.

The Council of Europe Organised Crime Situation Report 2004 points trafficking in human beings and smuggling in persons as a commodity, along with organised crime and drug production and trafficking, as one of the priority issues of concern in combating organised crime. Bulgaria is identified as one of the countries of origin of trafficking in women and children for sexual purposes. Violence and intimidation against victims are frequent, and corruption is widespread as a tool facilitating trafficking, the report also notes.

Corruption

NGOs in Bulgaria are cautious about commenting on the causes and scope of corruption in the flesh trade. That is because their functions can be summed up as ‘victim protection’.

This, however, is not so in the UK. Iveta Bartunkova, for example, claims that corruption definitely has a very important role in sex trafficking even though this is hard to prove. ‘That’s because those women leave with false passports. Which means that someone issues and then lets those passports through,’ Ms Bartunkova points out.

Natalia Dawkins, Manager of the Poppy Project (run by the charity Eaves Housing for Women), is positive that there is corruption at all levels in both the countries of origin of trafficked girls and in the UK.

‘I’m certain that many officers from the police and the immigration service buy sex too. But the only way such a case can become public is when there is a big scandal and it gets media coverage. Otherwise everything remains hidden,’ Ms Dawkins firmly believes. She admits that she trusts the girls who seek help from POPPY much more than she trusts police officers or people at other levels who might not be directly involved in trafficking but might participate in it in some way.

Anna, a Bulgarian victim of trafficking, likewise admits that judges, police officers and lawyers are regular clients of commercial sex. In her opinion, this is one of the reasons why the UK won’t learn soon about the problem of sexual exploitation of women and children.

Inspector Dick Powell of the Metropolitan Police Service was brief in his comment: ‘How could the victims tell who their clients are – the men who visit them aren’t dressed like judges or police officers, are they?’ When told that this opinion is also shared by the NGOs, he said, ‘I have never seen any proof of this.’ So we found ourselves facing the same locked door as at the Bulgarian consulate.

Where the Profits from Trafficking in Flesh Go

Smuggling in persons and trafficking in human beings are likely to expand with negative impact on human rights, and they will continue to generate political scandals and controversies.

The common denominator of all organised crime and of most other forms of serious crime is the pursuit of profit. Criminals need to launder the proceeds of crime in a way that they become indistinguishable from legitimate money. The report released end January 2005 under the Council of Europe’s Octopus Programme notes that Europe is a major stakeholder in global money laundering as a source and destination of criminal proceeds and – through its financial markets – as an actor in different stages of the money laundering process. And, as criminals encroach on the legal institutions of society by investing their proceeds in legal commercial entities, the boundaries between legal and illegal structures of societies become ever more blurred.

It is no secret that part of the proceeds of sex trafficking is sent back to the traffickers’ countries of origin. In Bulgaria, these proceeds are invested mainly in tourism and tourism related industries. Sex tourism, fed by sexual exploitation of women and children, is getting more and more diverse.

Symbiotic relationships – nurtured by corruption, nepotism, patron-client relationships, family and clan ties – with public officials, politicians, criminal justice representatives, media but also private sector representatives appear to be the preferred modi operandi to facilitate criminal activities or to ensure protection from law enforcement, the Council of Europe report notes.

How the Law Discriminates Against Victims

Commercial sexual services are offered in many places in the UK. Prostitution is semi-legal in this country, but there are laws that are related in various ways to payment, offer and procurement of women for sex. A woman can be arrested for soliciting in the street, but if she wants to sell sex in her home – operating alone, without intermediaries – this is not considered illegal.

The flaws in the law are used in another way too. For example, you can obtain a perfectly legal licence for a massage parlour or sauna bath, hire a masseuse or therapist and at the same time sell sex on the premises, thus operating under the unwitting protection of the law.

As a sauna bath manager, you can get in touch with men from Bulgaria, tell them that you are running such an establishment and ask them to arrange supply of workers.

The police can enter and inspect such premises only if they have had a complaint from employees or clients. Unless someone complains, the police cannot conduct a search. Although they issue the official licences, the local authorities cannot conduct inspections either unless a specific crime has been reported. In these circumstances, crimes are difficult to prove. The few tip-offs to the authorities to date have usually come from friends or sex workers and have concerned abused women in need of help, NGO representatives state.

They express their disapproval that in Scotland the police and local authorities are cooperating to eliminate the practice of illegal sauna baths which are offering other services, but in England there are no such efforts.

Still, since February 2003 trafficking has been treated as an arrestable offence. Although the law has been in force for two years now, the first people to be convicted in London of trafficking were two Albanians – they were convicted on 23 December 2004. Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of prostitution or labour is punishable by up to fourteen years in prison. One of the Albanians was sentenced to eighteen years in prison because he was found guilty on two counts, of trafficking and rape. The other was convicted of trafficking women in the UK.

Before the law was adopted there were other arrests too, but because it was not in force the suspects were charged with, for example, living on immoral earnings, holding a woman captive or rape – in other words, the charges did not include trafficking in women.

One of the purposes of the NGOs is to persuade the British government to treat sex trafficking in women and children as a human rights abuse.

Another purpose is to provide more support services for women who have escaped from trafficking. This, however, is a political issue whose resolution requires heavy funding. But it is difficult to provide funds for people who have not yet been recognised as victims of human rights abuse.

POPPY is the only project in the UK that provides shelter, but it can accommodate twenty-five women only. The project’s annual budget of £724,000, which are granted by the Home Office and must cover all costs – accommodation, travel, medical treatment, interpreters for the women – runs out in March. ‘There are associations and organisations that are ready to help. Their donations are generous but insufficient,’ Natalia Dawkins says.

The statistics show that the age of victims of trafficking for sexual purposes has dropped to 13 years, and that the majority are young women aged 16 to 19. POPPY, however, does not provide shelter for women aged under 18 because in the UK persons aged under 18 qualify as children. Children in the UK are under the protection of local councils which, however, cannot cope with the problem because they lack the required specialists and funding.

Carron Somerset from ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking) thinks that the law on child protection is good but that applying it in practice is problematic. Because in the UK proving an offence requires victims to testify. Yet there are no laws guaranteeing victims adequate protection. There is a law on witness protection, but ‘witness’ is a rather general term and it does not mention victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. If the police cannot protect them, no one else can and they must return to their country. According to Carron from ECPAT, priority is given to solving the problems of Africans and Asians but not of East Europeans, because their routes are very different. She said that Africans and Asians would come alone and directly go to the social services. Whereas East Europeans were always accompanied by a trafficker and went to a location where they were impossible to find. The social services would learn of their existence only after they were found by the police. East European women were more likely to reside in the country illegally, without passports or with false passports, and this was another obstacle for them which, however, did not decrease their need of help.