Human Trafficking in [Macedonia Street Children in [Macedonia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Macedonia] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Republic of Macedonia [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Macedonia is a source, transit, and destination country for
women and children trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual
exploitation. Macedonian women and children are trafficked internally, mostly
from eastern rural areas to urban bars in western Macedonia. Victims
trafficked into Macedonia are primarily from Serbia and Albania. Macedonian
victims and victims transiting through Macedonia are trafficked to South
Central and Western Europe, including Bosnia, Serbia, Italy, and Sweden. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008
[full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Revealed: kept in a dungeon ready to be sold as slaves The women, aged 18 to 24, are from
across eastern Europe, lured from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria,
with promises of good jobs as waitresses, au pairs and dancers. Instead, they have been forced into
modern-day slavery in western ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Children are trafficked to CURRENT
GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - The government’s National Commission for Prevention and
Suppression of Trafficking in Persons has established a Secretariat, which
includes police officials, NGOs, the OSCE, and the IOM. A Trafficking
of Children sub-group has been formed within the Secretariat. The government cooperates with IOM to
provide a shelter for victims of trafficking. The government has signed the
Agreement on Co-operation to Prevent and Combat Trans-border Crime in an
effort to prevent trafficking and develop an effective transnational database
mechanism. The countries of the
Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, including Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – While
the country remained primarily a transit and destination point for
trafficking, officials and others acknowledged that it was a point of origin
for a small number of trafficking victims. Women from the country were
trafficked throughout the former There were four reported cases of
trafficking involving girls during the year. There were reports that female
minors were recruited by some massage parlor owners to perform sexual
services for clients. In at least one case, authorities shut down a massage
parlor operating in this way. Trafficked women were forced to
work in prostitution, often under the guise of dancers, hostesses, or
waitresses in local clubs. Police raids and testimony by victims confirmed
that trafficking victims were subjected to threats, violence, physical and
psychological abuse, and seizure of documents to ensure compliance. Life
in prison for child sexual abuse The Criminal Code will be also
supplemented with "Trafficking with minors". A person who
solicitates, transports, buys, sells or accepts an underage person for sexual
exploitation, pornography, forced labor, etc, will be punished with at least
8-year prison sentence. The buildings and premises used
for committing human trafficking or trafficking with minors, including
hotels, motels, bars, apartments, are also subject to confiscation. Judiciary
- weak link in combating human trafficking Judiciary is one of the weakest
links in the chain in Macedonian institutions as to the fight against illegal
migration and trafficking in human beings. Combat Against Human Trafficking, Key Issue For Macedonia The Macedonian Interior Ministry
prepared 53 charges against 111 perpetrators in the field of human
trafficking, forced prostitution and emigrants trafficking. Revealed: kept in a dungeon ready to be sold as slaves The women, aged 18 to 24, are from
across eastern Europe, lured from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria,
with promises of good jobs as waitresses, au pairs and dancers. Instead, they have been forced into
modern-day slavery in western Balkans
Urged To Curb Trafficking Countries in Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 3 Civil Liberties: 3 Status: Partly Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide Stop Violence Against Women – Country Page Macedonia
Wins High Ratings in US Report on Fight Against Human Trafficking The US Secretary of State Colin
Powell and the Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons, John Miller, presented Monday the fourth annual report on
trafficking in human beings. Macedonia
is the only country in the Balkan region, placed in the first tier of 25
mainly Western European countries which fully comply with the US standards on
the fight against human trafficking. Psychosocial
Support to Groups of Victims of Human Trafficking in Transit Situations [PDF] THE TRANSIT CENTER FOR FOREIGNER
VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING
- . The Transit Center for Foreign Victims of Trafficking in the Republic of
Macedonia was opened in April 2001. In the years since then, it has hosted
more than 700 foreign victims of trafficking: women only, including female
minors. The minimum stay in the T.C. is three weeks, which is the time needed
for issuing travel documents, making travel arrangements and designing proper
reintegration programs. Victims of trafficking often stay there longer,
because their presence in the country is deemed necessary for investigative
and judicial purposes, for medical reasons, or because the conditions do not
exist for a timely, safe return trip home. A doctor is present every day at
the T.C. and two nurses are there during the night for emergencies. Pregnancy
tests, gynecological examinations, TB tests and general check-ups are offered
to the women on a strictly voluntary basis. Whenever a woman is in need of
specialized care, a qualified professional follows her case. Regrettably,
some women arrive at the T.C. with significant physical trauma, including
broken legs and gunshot wounds and need surgical attention, rehabilitation
and hospitalization. These individual cases are transferred to local health
institutions. Report
on Situation with Children Rights in Macedonia Macedonian NGOs say that the
children in Macedonia are unprotected from all forms of violations of their
rights: physical, psychological and sexual violence, kidnapping, forced
labour and prostitution. Children are abused by their parents, neighbours,
teachers... “They can be victims of almost
anything this side of the classical trafficking in children, which is rare,
but also very possible, having in mind the current situation with the economy
in the country. Physical violence remains the greatest problem, for many
parents believe that the children are their property”, says Gordana Zmijanac
from the First Children Embassy “Medjasi”. Moldova:
Young Women From Rural Areas Vulnerable To Human Trafficking Victims are usually young girls
from poor families who graduate from middle school without few, if any,
prospects for the future. But older
women can also fall prey to traffickers. Twenty-nine-year-old Mariana is
from a village in northern Moldova and spent more than four years in
Macedonia after being sold to Serbian traffickers. She thought she was being led into Italy,
but instead, this is what she says happened. MARIANA: When we arrived in Macedonia, we
were sent to a policeman's house. The policeman bought girls and then sold
them to nightclubs. We spent one month and a half at his place. I did not
know where I was and asked him when we were going to Italy. He said,
"Italy is here." Then he sold me to a club. Prostitution
Rampage Through Macedonia: Teenagers Bought, Raped, Sold The police discovered the group
after one of the abused girls reported that she's been a victim of human
trafficking. According the preliminary reports, the girl R.A. was forced twice
into whoring with Greek citizens. In March this year, the suspects M.A. and
A.N. sold the girl to Sh.K. from Kichevo for 150 Euros. He and his unwed wife
forced the girl to serve them in their bar. The bosses sold the girl to the
Ohrid resident D.B. for 100 Euros June 6, 2003. He also forced the girl into
prostitution in his bar "Persa". A notorious human trafficker’s
escape from jail has highlighted flaws in the Macedonian judiciary which
could hamper the authorities’ efforts to stamp out organised crime. Dilaver “Leku” Bojku escaped from the
minimum-security Struga prison, where he was serving a six-month sentence for
forcing a woman into prostitution, on June 20. Struga prison director Dragan
Petreski and senior prisons official Ljupco Sapcevski were both dismissed
five days later and are now facing criminal charges over the incident, as is
a Macedonian security guard present when Bojku made his dash for
freedom. But Macedonian prime minister
Branko Crvenkovski has placed the blame for Bojku’s escape firmly on the
republic’s judicial system, which is perceived to be inefficient and in need
of a radical overhaul. Ohrid
Police Saves Nine Victims of Human Trafficking Two days ago, the local police in
Ohrid discovered a young Romanian girl (16), who was forced into prostitution
in the night club "Playboy."
The girl, a victim of human trafficking, informed the police that 8
Ukrainian girls work as sex slaves in the same night club. 535
Registered Victims of Human Trafficking in Macedonia Five hundred thirty five women
have been sold and forced to prostitution in Macedonia by October 10,
2002," said the IOM representative in Skopje, Vladimir Danailov. These 535 women are citizens of Romania,
Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine, Russia and Yugoslavia (Kosovo). All of them were
released from slavery by the Macedonian police and taken to the Shelter of
the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Skopje. From here, the
victims, if they want, can be sent back to their countries of origin. Girl,
15, Sold to Work as Slave In the Brothels of London A cousin arranged for a friend to
help Natasha to leave Romania to start a new life in Yugoslavia in apparent
safety. But she came to the notice of
Eastern European people-traffickers and soon she was forced to become a
?dancing girl? in a nightclub in the south of the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia [sic!], where, for six
months, her duties included stripping and having sex with clients. She escaped this club when she was
purchased, without her knowledge, by Jorgi, an Albanian pimp, for 4,000 German
marks (£1,300). Macedonia
on the Route of Child Sex Slavery Between August 2001 and November
2001, Macedonian Police discovered 328 [trafficked] women in the raids in the
night bars in the West and Northwest of the country. 12% of them are young
girls aged 14 to 16. A Skopje shelter, run by IOM with the assistance from
the police, accepted 6 girls under age of 18 during this year. UNICEF's child protection officer
Carry Nill says that the problem of child sex slavery in Macedonia worsened
during the last two years. Macedonia is known as a country on
the route of trafficking women for prostitution [in Western Europe], and also
as destination country for this kind of organized crime. Since the last
year's security crisis in the country, Macedonia becomes a lair for children
trafficking as well. MSNBC reports that on buses and
cars and crossing borders on foot Natasha followed a path to sex slavery
trodden by thousands of other hapless women, passing, under the watchful eyes
of a gang of Balkans thugs, through Romania, Serbia and Kosovo before ending
up in Macedonia. In Veleshta, a key transit town in the sex trade where women
are beaten and raped into submission, Natasha was bought by Meti, an ethnic
Albanian pimp wanted by the Macedonian police on smuggling and prostitution
charges. Natasha says that she was forced
to sleep with more than thousand men during her nine months in Veleshta.
Besides the Albanians and Macedonians, there were men from France, Germany
and the United States, she said, referring to soldiers from the NATO
peacekeeping mission in Macedonia and nearby Kosovo. They were as bad as the rest, Natasha said.
They did anything they wanted to us. And besides, if Meti heard me asking
them for help, he would have killed me. MSNBC:
Albanian Nationalists Profit From Sex Slavery and Drugs in Macedonia Tanja said that their bosses paid
a lot of money for them so that girls were supposed to repay the debt.
However, the repayment didn’t end in a month, but prolonged for a year.
Another Ukrainian woman Oxana says that she tried to run away couple of
times, but she was violently prevented from doing so. After one unsuccessful
attempt, her owners beat her up for a week. Her face was made blue and she
had several broken ribs. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Macedonia Street Children in [Macedonia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Macedonia] [other countries]