Moldova: Lower prices behind sex slavery boom and child prostitution

USA's ABC News identified the sex slave problem to be huge in Chisinau, Moldova ... not in Tiraspol, Pridnestrovie's capital

CHISINAU (Tiraspol Times) - Last year, Moldova's best known legitimate export - cheap wine - was blocked from its main market and exports nearly cut in half. Exports of fruit and meat also suffered. But one category increased: The export of human flesh, in the form of Moldovan girls sold into sex slavery abroad. Many never return.

Two American TV crews have investigated this modern slave trade. The first, a team from PBS Frontline, went undercover and pretended to be Western buyers of prostitutes. They were quoted prices between $500 and $600 per girl.

A second report aired on ABC News this weekend, putting the spotlight on a problem which is improving in Pridnestrovie but becoming worse all the time in Moldova. CIA, in unclassified material, describes Moldova as a country with widespread crime and underground economic activity. Moldova is the center of the slave trade of the 21st century. As Europe's leader in human trafficking, people - many of them underage - are today the country's main illegal export.

Forcing underage girls to sell sex

Most often, the victims are women and children headed to the Middle East and other European countries. They often become slaves forced into the sex trade.

ABC News cite reports that trafficking has reached epidemic proportions: A $42.5 billion illegal industry for the traffickers, so the rewards are high.

The average salary for a Moldovan is less than $100 a month. In the villages it's even less, and you can consider yourself lucky if you even make a salary: 80% of Moldova's population subside on far less than the minimum wage. It's no surprise that many girls dream of a better future. But these dreams can turn into nightmares.

One of the victims filmed by ABC News was Nadia who, at age 14, was forced to become a sex slave by Moldovan traffickers.
" - I was taken to a house where I was told I had to become a prostitute," she says. "I didn't want to do it. I was only 14 years old."

Nadia was lucky; a young client took pity on her and helped her escape. But most victims can't return home.
" - I was sold several times," she said. "I was living in a basement. There was always a huge line of clients and I couldn't service them all."

Thousands of Moldovan girls, many of them underage, are sold into slavery each year. The country is a major source for trafficked persons, particularly women and girls for sexual exploitation. Newspaper advertisements promising well-paying jobs abroad also lured many victims.

Population leaving Europe's poorest country

The poorest nation in Europe, Moldova became the first former Soviet state to elect a Communist as its president in 2001. Twenty five percent of Moldova's population travel overseas in search of better wages.

In one rural village, ABC News met 23-year-old Irina. When she was 19, she was promised her a job at a restaurant in Portugal. Instead, she was sold to into white slavery by a group of men who brought her to Dubai and forced her into the sex trade.
" - They told me that I had to first study the language and then work as a prostitute," she says.

She was forced to work for a year and a half and became pregnant by one of her clients. But Irina was lucky. She was arrested and deported to Moldova.
Thousands are still left behind, forgotten by the world and enslaved in a life of abuse.

Chasing a dream of freedom and a better life, some of the abused escape and end up in Tiraspol, the capital of Pridnestrovie. A safe haven tucked between Moldova and Ukraine, Pridnestrovie is an unrecognized country which is also known as Transdniester in English, and which Moldovans call Transnistria. It declared independence in 1990 but has not yet been diplomatically recognized by the international community which considers it part of Moldova. Nevertheless, Moldova has no authority here, and Pridnestrovie's own government does not permit human trafficking.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations organization which has set up a trafficking prevention program in Tiraspol. Of the 200 cases reported last year by IOM, which its Tiraspol based hotline dealt with, the vast majority were prevention calls. Very few involved any actual victims or trafficked individuals, leading observers to conclude that Pridnestrovie - a more socially coherent society than Moldova - has tackled the problem much more successfully than its larger neighbor west of the Dniester River.

" - While I'd be careful not to say categorically that human trafficking doesn't exist in Transnistria, it is clear that the Moldovan situation dwarfs everything else," says Oksana B., herself a former victim and now active in prevention and education.
" - Government institutions work better in Transnistria than in Moldova, and we have no evidence of official complicity. In Moldova, much of the flesh trade is done with government involvement."

Price for a Moldovan sex slave: $500 to $600

With full knowledge and often even complicity of Moldovan government officials, young girls are torn from their lives, taken from their families and sold into slavery. They are victims of a ruthless multi-billion-dollar international business that traffics hundreds of thousands of women a year.

PBS reported that traffickers prey on women who are kidnapped and exported to Europe, the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere. During this process, they may be sold to pimps, locked in brothels, drugged, terrorized and raped repeatedly. In Eastern Europe, since the fall of communism, sex trafficking has become the fastest growing form of organized crime. PBS Frontline singles out Moldova as a major supplier of women into the global sex trade.

On location in Moldova, PBS set out to expose the government indifference that allows the global sex trade to continue virtually unchecked.

" - The official line is `We're doing as much as we can; we have a counter-trafficking unit; we're trying to prosecute,'" says says PBS producer Ric Bienstock, explaining that the prosecution rate is abysmal.
" - We know that there is a level of corruption; we know that there is bribery. But without the political will to address this, traffickers will continue to operate with impunity."

Not known for much else besides its human trafficking, Moldova has today become Europe's leading exporter of women and girls into the global sex trade. PBS went undercover in Moldova. Posing as buyers and wearing hidden shirt-cameras, the crew set out to see how pervasive human trafficking has become here.

" - I had a business card that said "Exotic Entertainment." I pretended that I was a guy from the West who's interested in buying Eastern European girls. From the get-go, it was very plain and simple. "I buy girls from you?" "Yes." "How much?"," said Felix Golubev, the PBS undercover journalist.
He found plenty of sellers, at prices ranges from $500 to $600 per girl.

After being sold to sex businesses abroad, trafficking victims often disappear without a trace.

Victor Malarek, author of The New Global Sex Trade says: "These women are being trafficked to the West. In the United States, they figure 20,000, 25,000 a year. But Europe is the major destination, Germany, upwards of 80,000, 40,000, 50,000 in the Netherlands, Spain and Italy and Turkey. All of these countries are getting trafficked women."

Main origin of forced child prostitution

Pridnestrovie declared independence in 1990. For 17 years, this territory with a population equivalent to the population of Montenegro has resisted pressure to become part of Moldova.

There are good reasons for not wanting to join Moldova. The poorest country in Europe is also the world's top exporter of forced child prostitution. The registered daily income of 80% of the population is below $1 per day.

Organ trafficking and sexual slavery are mainstays of Moldova's economy. Record numbers of Moldovan women are made into sex slaves, forced into prostitution and lifelong servitude.

Moldova holds a dubious world record: The country is today the leading haven for pedophiles and for traffickers who earn fortunes enslaving underage kids in a brutal international sex trade.

The United States Department of State verified the fact and pulled no punches in a report which it issued in 2006 on human rights violations in Moldova:
"The country was a major country of origin for women and children trafficked abroad for forced prostitution and men and children who were trafficked to Russia and neighboring countries for forced labor and begging. The country was also a transit country for victims trafficked from Ukraine to Romania. Women and girls were trafficked to Turkey, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, and the Balkan countries for prostitution. NGOs reported recent cases of victims trafficked to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Women and girls reportedly were trafficked to Italy and Greece through Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Albania. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), victims have increasingly been directed to Asia, Russia, Turkey, Western Europe, and the Middle East. The IOM reported that the country was the main origin in Europe for women and children trafficked for forced prostitution."

With words such as forced prostitution, children, and forced labor all in the same breath, it is no surprise that the majority of Pridnestrovie's population voted against joining Moldova in the local independence referendum held in September 2006.

Few in Pridnestrovie hold a strong desire to join the country which is today the "main origin" in Europe for women and children trafficked for forced prostitution.

" - We prefer our own independence," says an ethnic Moldovan resident of Kamenka, a town in northern Pridnestrovie. Even among Pridnestrovie's ethnically Moldovan minority, most are in favor of continuing the unrecognized country's 'de facto' independence rather than building a common state with Moldova.

See also:
» NGOs urge Moldova and Pridnestrovie to work together in fight against sex slave trade
» Government officials behind record rise in Moldova organ trade
» Moldova falling apart as corruption, poverty force half the country to leave