The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade

EPILOGUE: CROCODILE TIERS

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2003, U.S. president George W. Bush ambled into the United Nations headquarters in New York City to deliver a blistering speech on Iraq. At the close, he suddenly shifted gears and turned to the subject of the global trafficking of women: “There’s another humanitarian crisis spreading, yet hidden from view. Each year, an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold or forced across the world’s borders,” he said. “Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as five, who fall victim to the sex trade. This commerce in human life generates billions of dollars each year—much of which is used to finance organized crime.

“There’s a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable,” Bush continued. “The victims of sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of

life—an underground of brutality and lonely fear. Those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others… governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.”

He then touched on the U.S. government’s efforts to take a bite out of the trade internationally and concluded by issuing a call to action to all members of the United Nations: “We must show new energy in fighting back an old evil. Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and more than a century after slavery was officially ended in its last strongholds, the trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time.”

His comments on trafficking were terse and, sadly, completely eclipsed by his spin on Iraq. The news media virtually ignored it. Still, he was the first world leader to address the UN General Assembly on the trafficking of women, and his words were indeed powerful.

But for the UN delegates who sat through the speech in silence, those words must have rung hollow. After all, the U.S. record on supporting crucial UN treaties and conventions on that very issue is anything but impressive. The U.S., for example, is one of only two countries in the world that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; the other is Somalia. The U.S. also has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, nor has it ratified the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. Most surprisingly, however, the U.S. actually went to the trouble of “unsigning” the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The court was created as a forum for prosecuting war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity, including the trafficking of women. Nearly every major European ally signed on without reservation. President Bill Clinton signed on behalf of the U.S. in 1999.

Then on May 6, 2002, citing concerns about the potential prosecution of U.S. service members and officials, Bush withdrew the signature. In a three-sentence letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he formally ended U.S. participation in the world’s first permanent international tribunal. In doing so, Bush went down in history as the only world leader ever to revoke a signature on an international treaty. Understandably, the move provoked outrage and disappointment from human rights advocates around the globe. Criticism also poured in from human rights leaders on Bush’s home turf. William Schulz, executive director of the U.S. section of Amnesty International, condemned the move as “a new nadir of isolationism and exceptionalism. Out of step with our allies and America’s legacy, this is an historic low for the United States’s role in protecting human rights.”

Other critics zeroed in on what this could mean for the U.S. in the broader sense. Mark Epstein, director of the World Federalist Association, noted that “this unprecedented action suggests to the world that the signature of a U.S. president lacks enduring meaning. At the very time the U.S. seeks signatures and ratifications of anti-terrorist treaties, an ‘unsigning’ by the Bush administration will undermine the power of the international treaty system.” Many expressed concern that this unprecedented “unsigning” would encourage other governments to follow the U.S. lead. “Other countries might well use this precedent to justify backing out of international commitments that are important to the U.S.,” the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights pointed out. More broadly, the renunciation was seen as seriously undercutting America’s standing as a nation committed to international justice.

On the crucial issue of trafficking, Bush’s action can only hobble his own ability, and that of his country, to pressure other nations to make serious efforts to eliminate this particularly repugnant trade.

THE ISSUE OF TRAFFICKING desperately cries out for firm, committed leadership; it has to be made a global concern. This point is not lost on the U.S. government, which, despite the inconsistencies of its approach, has anointed itself world sheriff on the issue. The American position was delivered loud and clear at the swearing-in ceremony for John Miller on March 4, 2003, when he was appointed director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in Washington, D.C. “The struggle we wage to abolish modern day slavery will decide the fate of millions of human beings,” Miller began. “But this struggle is also tied to the United States’s role in the world. We live in a time when many people abroad do not know or have forgotten the idealism that led Americans to sacrifice over and over so that others might enjoy the God-given, inalienable right to liberty enunciated in our Declaration of Independence.”

Miller waxed eloquently about trafficking, describing it as “an issue that cries out for national and international leadership.” And the one country that must provide that leadership, he continued, “is the United States of America…

“[J]ust as today the people of Eastern Europe thank us for freeing them from Soviet tyranny,” he predicted, “in the future, if we are successful, millions of men in forced peonage and millions of women and children forced into prostitution and sex slavery will thank the United States for their freedom.”

With these righteous words, America officially assumed the role of global crusader intent on saving trafficked women and girls everywhere. But if we look beyond the moral indignation of its official pronouncements, the U.S. has a record that tells a different story.

Yes, the U.S. government continues to expound vociferously on the global trafficking situation. On December 9, 2003, Miller even raised the bar, describing trafficking as “the emerging human rights issue of the twenty-first century.” And yes, the State Department continues to publish its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. It continues to pound its fist and utter menacing threats that it will take decisive action against any nation that doesn’t move to stop the traffic. But sadly, the threats have turned out to be hollow and contingent on political, foreign and diplomatic interests. The proof is in the action, or better yet, inaction. Let’s take a look at some of the facts.

On June 11, 2003, the State Department released its third annual TIP report. Two thousand and three was to be the defining year. Countries still languishing on the third tier for their inability or unwillingness to deal with the trafficking problem would face the consequences of U.S. sanctions. For a handful of countries, the prospects looked decidedly grim. Russia, Turkey and Greece had landed on Tier Three for the past two years in a row. A third Tier Three rating would not only have been embarrassing but would also have incurred possible withdrawal of non-humanitarian assistance by the U.S.

All eyes were on Russia, which has one of the worst trafficking problems in the world. Each year tens of thousands of Russian women are trafficked to more than fifty countries for sexual exploitation, and far more girls and women from the former Soviet republics are forced to work the streets and highways in and around Moscow and St. Petersburg. This travesty continues for one reason alone: Russia is one of the most corrupt societies on the planet, not to mention home to one of the most formidable forces in the global trafficking of women—Russian organized crime.

For two years running, the State Department has given Russia sour reviews in its annual TIP reports. The 2003 report didn’t sound any different, highlighting the areas where Russia still has considerable work to do:

All in all, a fairly damning start. But in a surprising about-face, the report begins to applaud Russia’s ostensible progress. It notes that the Duma, which is the Russian parliament, is considering passing an anti-trafficking law and has improvements in public education with various public awareness campaigns. This apparently scored major points in the State Department, which elevated Russia to the safe zone of Tier Two and, in one fell swoop, enabled Moscow to dodge a disconcerting diplomatic dart.

At a news conference, Miller defended the promotion, referring to Russia’s “Herculean effort in drafting what could well be a model anti-trafficking law.” He noted that the U.S. will be monitoring Russia closely to see how it performs over the coming year: “We’re going to look and see if this law is indeed passed, and if on the ground it is implemented.” Well, Russia passed its law in December 2003, but as of spring 2004, it has not made a dent. There haven’t been any real crackdowns, major police raids or arrests; there’ve been no charges, no prosecutions and no convictions under the new act.

Ironically, every single Eastern European nation—all with shameful records as sending countries—is now safely perched on the Tier Two rung as well.

Yet while the State Department upgraded Russia for merely considering the passage of a law, it wasn’t so kind to other players. For example, Greece actually passed an anti-trafficking law in 2002, but, unlike Russia, it didn’t get promoted to Tier Two. That’s because, according to the 2003 TIP report, the Greek government “has not yet effectively enforced the law.” Sounds an awful lot like Russia. Why such an obvious double standard? Doesn’t enforcement mean enforcement, regardless of where it’s taking place? To add to the irony, the report on Greece went on to say that “victim assistance mechanisms have not yet been implemented and NGO co-operation remains weak.” Weak in Russia and also weak in Greece. Yet, one gets rewarded, while the other earns a diplomatic slap.

In the decision-making bull pen at the State Department, it is clear that, when it comes to country rankings, other factors are at play. Consider for a moment a number of other countries that managed to land safely on Tier Two in the latest report: Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Japan, Israel, Ukraine, Moldova… and (this one is unbelievable) Serbia, land of the notorious breaking grounds! Does this make any sense?

Japan, for example, managed to hang on to Tier Two for a third straight year despite the fact it still had “no national plan of action” or any law specifically prohibiting the crime. The TIP report notes that the number of prosecutions “has been too few and the penalties too weak to act as an effective deterrent against professional syndicates involved in trafficking.” In addition, Japan treats victims as illegal immigrants and quickly deports them.

After receiving a Tier Three rating in the 2001 TIP report, Israel was elevated to Tier Two in the report’s second year and managed to hang on to that ranking this last year as well. The 2003 report notes that the country’s maximum penalty for trafficking is twenty years in prison, commensurate with those for rape and assault. Yet the majority of cases are resolved through plea bargains “that result, on the average, in sentences of about two years.” The report also acknowledges that a number of individual policemen are being investigated for corruption, specifically for taking bribes or tipping off brothels about imminent raids.

Incredibly, despite mounds of hard evidence to the contrary, the State Department continues to play down the seriousness of what is happening in Israel by stating that “these instances of corruption are not widespread.” Yet on March 27, 2003, three months before the TIP report was released, Israeli NGOs, headed by the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Awareness Center, presented an alarming report to the UN Commission on Human Rights. It speaks of two types of collaboration between traffickers and policemen: “a passive manner where policemen visit the brothels as clients, and an active manner which involves cooperation with traffickers and tipping off of police raids.” The report also notes that

Did the State Department bureaucrats even read this report? Or did they simply discard it because it didn’t suit U.S. needs?

Another disquieting aspect of the 2003 TIP report is the preference status it accords most nations in the European Union. Every year, tens of thousands of women and girls are trafficked into Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. They’re delivered to satisfy the burgeoning demand by the prostitution industry. For three years in a row, every single one of these countries was placed safely on Tier One. Every year, the annual TIP report proclaims that these nations are meeting the “minimum standards” for the elimination of trafficking. The situation throughout the European Union, however, continues to deteriorate.

A key reason is that Germany and the Netherlands have recently legalized prostitution. They purport that doing so is an ideal way to deal with trafficking. They maintain that legalization will better protect the rights of the women entering the trade—an argument that is nothing short of specious. The only tangible effect of such legalization is that the state effectively becomes another pimp, living off the avails of women in prostitution through taxation, and reaping huge benefits from increased foreign sex tourism.

The unspoken reality is that German and Dutch women are not the ones lining up to enter the trade. They have real jobs that don’t require them to shed their clothes and have their bodies invaded by a dozen men a day. As a result, brothel owners have had to meet the growing demand by recruiting the supply from nearby Russia, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. You’ll be hard-pressed to hear Dutch or German spoken in the brothels and alleyways. What you’re more likely to hear is Ukrainian, Russian, Moldovan and Romanian. In fact, a report by the International Organization of Migration states that in the Netherlands “nearly 70 percent of trafficked women were from CEEC [Central and Eastern European Countries].” In Germany that figure is as high as 87 percent.

This simple fact speaks volumes. More disconcerting, however, is the finding by NGOs that legalization in these two nations has led to a dramatic increase in demand. There is mounting evidence showing a direct correlation between the legalization of prostitution and an increase in victims of trafficking for sex. Given this shift toward legalizing prostitution and its harmful effects, a number of women’s groups have asked the U.S. government to place Germany and the Netherlands on Tier Three. One of these groups, the Coalition against Trafficking in Women, has recommended that no country legalizing prostitution should be allowed to remain on Tier

One. The coalition argues that “at the very least, the TIP report should note that countries that have established legal regimes in which prostitution is allowed to flourish have exorbitantly high numbers of women who have been trafficked.”

Strangely, the State Department remains disingenuously mute on the issue, despite the fact that the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Protection Act specifically states that governments are not allowed to legalize prostitution as a way to “prohibit trafficking and punish acts of trafficking” or as a way to make “serious and sustained efforts to eliminate trafficking,” as the act requires. Moreover, the U.S. government has elsewhere taken an unequivocal stand on prostitution. On February 25, 2003, for example, Bush signed a National Security Presidential Directive to advance the fight against trafficking. The directive states that “prostitution and related activities, which are inherently harmful and dehumanizing, contribute to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons.” It does not mince words in acknowledging the link. Prostitution was similarly condemned by the United States Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003, which declares that “prostitution and other sexual victimizations are degrading to women and children and it should be the policy of the United States to eradicate such practices. The sex industry, the trafficking of individuals into such industry, and sexual violence are additional causes of, and factors in, the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”

So that, then, is the official line. In practise, however, the boundaries of the line get blurred.

ON SEPTEMBER 9, 2003, with less than a month to go before the U.S. was to impose sanctions on the fifteen Tier Three countries, President Bush promoted ten of them to the safer and more respectable rank of Tier Two. The move barely registered a peep in the news media. No doubt the State Department breathed a collective sigh of relief. After all, 2003 was to be the year in which the sheriff would show the world it meant business by sticking to its guns and punishing any country that remained on Tier Three, and this might have meant some difficult diplomacy for the State Department. Now the five countries left on Tier Three are Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Liberia and Sudan. As punishment, the U.S. won’t provide funding for officials or employees of these governments to participate in educational and cultural exchange programs until the countries comply with the minimum standard in combatting trafficking or make significant efforts to do so. Oh, how chilling! The fact is that the U.S. government has little or no diplomatic, economic, trade or cultural ties with any of these nations, so they, and the U.S. government, have little to lose.

Not surprisingly, the countries elevated by Bush to the swollen ranks of Tier Two include Greece and Turkey—both NATO allies—but they also include Bosnia, a fledgling nation teeming with UN peacekeepers, whose sky-blue berets have been spotted in brothels filled with sex slaves from Moldova, Romania and Ukraine.

In its June 2003 TIP report, the State Department claimed that the Greek government had moved with “Herculean force” to change the trafficking landscape of this notorious destination nation. By contrast, the State Department’s Country Report on Human Rights, released eight months later in February 2004, concluded that “trafficking in women and children for prostitution” in Greece “increased sharply in the last few years.” The Country Report went on to state that “one academic observer estimated that approximately 40,000 women and children, most between the ages of 12 and 25, were trafficked to the country each year for prostitution.” It also acknowledged that the trafficking of children was a particular problem. “While there were reports that child trafficking has decreased, the practice persisted,” it said, noting that local police corruption played a role in facilitating trafficking into the country and that, according to local NGOs, some police officers were in the pay of organized crime networks involved in trafficking. “While the law permits court prosecutors to allow women who press charges against their traffickers to remain in the country legally, anecdotal reports indicated that trafficking victims continued to be deported,” the report pointed out.

The 2004 Country Report on Turkey found it “lacked a consistent, comprehensive approach” in dealing with trafficking of women and that there were “credible reports that police corruption contributed to the trafficking problem.” According to the Country Report, “There were allegations that police allowed operation of informal brothels in Istanbul and could also be bribed by traffickers at ports of entry.” Moreover, “The government tended to treat trafficking in persons as a voluntary prostitution and illegal migrant issue,” which means the women get deported. Finally, the report pointed out that Turkey “has not developed any anti-trafficking information campaigns aimed at the general public.”

And then there’s Bosnia. The State Department Country Report noted that trafficking in persons in Bosnia “remained a serious problem.” According to the findings, “there were reports that police and other officials were involved in trafficking.” Moreover, a disquieting joint report released on December 11, 2003, by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the UN and the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe concluded that “failure to protect the human rights of trafficking victims is a key obstacle to progress in the fight against trafficking and organized crime” in the Balkan states. That report highlighted a disturbing trend —an increase in anti-trafficking activities in the region but little progress in assisting actual victims—and stressed that there was “ineffective law enforcement and a lack of options for women and children… rather than any actual decline in the scale of trafficking” and that there had been “no real increase in the prosecution or sentencing of traffickers.”

With all these unsettling assessments at its fingertips, most published by the State Department itself, why the U.S. decided to elevate Turkey, Greece and Bosnia remains a mystery—unless one adopts a cynical view of U.S. diplomacy in this area.

What is even more telling, though, is the curious ranking of three of the countries that did find themselves relegated to Tier Three. Neither Cuba nor North Korea had appeared on any TIP lists before, but all of a sudden they were the most egregious offenders! Their previous absence stemmed from the fact that the U.S. government has no embassies in these countries, which makes it difficult to gather evidence to make an informed decision on their tier placement. When asked about the quality of the evidence at the June 11, 2003, news conference, Miller, the director of the anti-trafficking office, responded: “The information on North Korea and Cuba is not ambiguous. Cuba has a government-run sex tourism business that employs minors. Cuba has no efforts at prevention, protection or prosecution. There are not even ambiguous evidence of that. The same can be said for North Korea, where stories, reports from NGOs, document forced labor trafficking and there are no efforts. So the information may not be as vast as where we have an embassy, but there is significant information and it’s not ambiguous.”

Yes, Burma, Cuba and North Korea have trafficking problems, but in terms of volume they’re far eclipsed by many countries on Tiers One and Two. Ironically, Burma lies next door to Thailand, whose capital city, Bangkok, is internationally notorious as the sex pit of Southeast Asia. It is the number one destination for sex tourists from North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan, and Thailand’s government has dragged its feet for decades on the situation. Yet Thailand gets a Tier Two rating while Burma, a U.S. political target, gets blacklisted on Tier Three.

Then, of course, there is North Korea. It’s almost as though the decision-makers at the State Department mistakenly typed in North when they meant South because South Korea is the one with the egregious trafficking problem. Women from

Russia, Ukraine and the Philippines are trafficked to bars outside U.S. military bases in South Korea, and these bars continue to thrive with the military’s patronage and the government’s full knowledge and support.

Lastly, there’s Cuba, not really a trafficking destination but certainly a magnet for doughy middle-aged men from Canada and the U.S. who throng the beach bars with greenbacks in hand with one objective—to purchase poor and desperate young women and girls. Funny, isn’t it, that for the despicable actions of American men the U.S. government slams Cuba! Miller was called on that very point on December 9, 2003, when he was asked at a foreign press briefing how the U.S. can expect Cuba to solve its growing prostitution problem if so many American men head there on sex tours. Miller acknowledged the problem: “Yes, Americans go to Cuba,” he conceded.

If Miller is truly concerned about doing something about the unfortunate situation of young women in Cuba, he should start by cleaning up in his own backyard and nail American tourists who flock to the country for cheap sex.

In short, the decision by the Bush administration to blacklist Cuba, North Korea and Burma for trafficking smacks of other foreign policy interests. The U.S. is using trafficked women as political pawns. For that, the U.S. State Department and the Bush administration should hang their heads in shame.

On June 14, 2004, the State Department released its fourth annual TIP report. Secretary of State Colin Powell described the tome, which covers 141 countries, as “the most comprehensive worldwide report on the efforts of governments to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons, or modern-day slavery.

“Its findings,” Mr. Powell noted, “will raise global awareness and spur countries to take effective actions to counter trafficking in persons.”

The major accomplishment? In their collective wisdom, the people at the State Department decided that rather than downgrade a horde of slothful nations to Tier Three, they would simply forge another tier. Well, it’s not exactly a full-fledged rung. It’s a sub-tier of Tier Two. In other words, the real Tier Two is for countries that are making “significant efforts” to end trafficking but are not quite there, while the new Tier Two “watch list” is technically a demotion. It’s reserved for nations not deserving a firm placement on the Tier Two rung but deemed not quite bad enough to be relegated to the disgraceful bottom tier. According to the report, this sub–Tier Two is for countries in which “the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; or there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year.”

Among the forty-two nations making the dubious skid to the Tier Two watch list are Russia, Greece, Turkey and Serbia, as well as Japan, Thailand and India. However, by any reasonable standard, the majority of the seventy-seven countries on both Tier Two lists belong on Tier Three. In their defense, State Department officials stressed that the point of the ranking exercise is not to sanction countries, but to prod them into action to deal with what Powell called the “awful business” of trafficking in human beings. But it has been four long years of cajoling, prodding and nudging, and most countries are still doing less than the bare minimum to stop the rape. In this latest report, ten countries were cited for failing to deal with the trafficking problem and were relegated to the third tier, including yet again Burma, North Korea and Cuba. Only twenty-five nations—chiefly in Western Europe—were deemed to meet the United States’s standards. The fact that these are the prime destination nations for trafficked women and girls raises many questions about the decisions behind those rankings.

THE TIP REPORT was designed to save women and girls from being sold into the global flesh trade. It was supposed to be about having the courage and vision to take a firm and even bold stand. It was supposed to be about leadership. It was supposed to be about accountability. Sadly, it’s just brimming with crocodile tiers. Despite all the hoopla and sabre rattling, the U.S. has degraded the process to little more than a diplomatic game. The Bush administration and the State Department appear content to dance the diplomatic tango with a host of nations that clearly have despicable records in dealing with the trafficking of women and girls. On this issue, one thing must remain clear: there is no dance for rape.

The 2003 TIP report has confirmed the worst. The State Department’s pronouncements that foreign governments are making serious efforts and finally coming around rings hollow. The global trafficking situation has not improved.

We don’t need another report or international conference on trafficking to get a sense of the situation. The picture has been painted repeatedly by untold numbers of victims. In my research for The Natashas, I spoke to many of them. Their stories chilled me to my very core. The enormity of their suffering was almost impossible for me to fathom. I am grateful to those who found the courage to talk to me. I know it was extremely difficult for them to relive the nightmares and recount the indignities they were forced to endure, especially to a man. To me, they are the heroes in this sad epic, and hopefully the stories of their suffering and humiliation will finally trigger a firm worldwide commitment to put an end to this monumental human rights tragedy. For every day, hundreds of thousands of girls and young women are being raped in brothels around the world. Their lives are being stolen from them. Their bodies are being ravaged, their spirits broken. That alone, in the name of human decency, should compel every nation to do everything within its power to stop the traffic.