“The coffee shop was in a village, it was a tiny dark space, even during the day. The owner was a short man with dark hair who rarely smiled. The first night he said to me: “I bought you for 1300 DEM. Understand, you are mine now? You are going to work here as a whore, you will do as I say, and you will learn to accept that life or you will suffer.”

In accord with the National Plan of action, a free SOS telephne number was created for the fight against the trafficking of women and children: 0800-77-99.That is what Marija (not her real name) said, a 25 year old from the former USSR, who knows what it feels like to be a sex slave in the 21st century, when they call victims of sexual trafficking fighters for human rights. The torture that was exhibited and what her life looked like after she accepted a job offer from her friend for a job in a café in Italy, and turned into forced prostitution in an obscure club in Priština, was confided by Siobhan Cleary, an activist for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Her authentic testimony is priceless because victims of this form of trauma often keep quiet and all organizations that fight against human trafficking insist on the protection of victim identity, so the public can only imagine what a human trafficking chain looks like and how it operates.

Slavery in the modern society, as the IOM estimates, is hitting 4 million women in the world. Experts on trafficking define it as a global evil, an incomprehensible violation of human rights at all levels: from dealing human organs, unlawful slave labor, to forced prostitution.
Trafficking began in the 60’s and 70’s when Europe was hit by a wave of sexual tourism in Asian countries, and the phenomenon grew after the fall of the Berlin wall. Poland, the Czech Republic, and former USSR are believed to be the countries that started the problem. The victims of trafficking often come from poor families and poor countries; they suffer from a lack of perspective and a longing for a better life. In Moldova alone, one million girls have been “trafficked”!

Because these are secret and illegal organizations and because they are protected by a wall of silence, the figures on trafficking are incomplete and unreliable. Until now, the IOM has saved 459 women, victims of human trafficking, most of which were from Moldova and Russia. That means that they give them medical and legal assistance and get them new documents because 80% of them did not have anything. In BiH it is believed that there are 3000 victims with an average age of 22 years.

There are no statistics fro Croatia. The Government Agency admits to only 22 cases of trafficking, which were registered in Croatia from 1998 to 2000, but claim that they involve Ukrainians and Hungarians. The Government claims that human trafficking does not exist, and that Croatia is only a transit country on the path towards the West; they also claim that Croatian women do not go to other countries. Newspaper reports refute this statement. Among other things, the only valid court decision against slavery and sexual abuse was brought about in Slovenia based on a victims’ testimony, originally from Croatia.

Human rights activists are convinced that Croatia also participates in this bizarre form of criminal activity. They claim that Zagreb is the center for the organization of human trafficking, and that it is also done in Knin, Dubrovnik, Split, and Šibenik. According to their statements, Croatia is the source: Croatians leave to work in foreign countries, and end up as prisoners in night clubs, through transit to the final destination; there is an organized group of pimps that force women to sell their own bodies.

To be a slave means to be led to a foreign country by deceit, usually disguised as an attractive and well paid job. Slaves are cut off from the outside world, left without their passports, deprived of their free movement and income for life. That does not only mean being a victim to a pimp, but also a victim of bad legal regulation: many women who were saved by police raids from forced prostitution ended up in court as suspects for illegal residency in a foreign country. Fear of the pimp has proved to be stronger than fear of the state, and that is one of the reasons why trafficking is mistaken for illegal immigration. In court, these women would not dare to testify on how they got to the country or how their boss shamelessly used them. They would rather be deported and spend one month in prison, which is the legal punishment in Croatia for illegal residency, than risk revenge by their boss.

In most of the Eastern countries, even in Croatia, there has not been criminal legislation for years for pimping and freedom deprivation aiming at sexual robbery, so the pimps, in most cases, were charged with disturbing public peace. Loopholes in the law are paid once again by trafficking victims: women would end up in centers for exiles, waiting for deportation to their home land. That meant dealing with one more trauma: the fear that she will be proclaimed a “whore” in her region, and once again become a victim.

In a rare process, it was discovered that trafficking owners of white slaves guarantee a fantastic profit. By only owning one woman, your capital is worth several thousand euros, as well as a monthly profit worth another thousand euros. The owner, on average, has approximately twenty women, and orders that each must serve five to ten clients per day, which means that the owner puts about €250,000 in their pocket each month in the illegal and unscrupulous business of destroying someone’s life. The expenses for this business, selling other people’s bodies, are low: the largest expense is on underwear. Women who have managed to escape reported that they were on the edge of starvation, and had only one dry meal per day.

Siobhan Cleary described Marija as a “frightened woman who appears much older than her age.” Her destiny is a model of how women end up in trafficking chains and what cruelty they deal with. Marija escaped captivity – without a passport, left to the displeasure of her pimp- when she met a representative of the international police that fell in love with her. That situation confirms the largest fear of human rights activists: trafficking to this extent could not be possible if police officials, attorneys, and politicians were not involved- either as a client for the slave or an owner hidden in the shadows.

Activists warn of the danger that sexual trafficking is hard to protect because “attractive’ job offers do not only come from newspaper advertisements but from a circle of friends and family. That is confirmed by Marija’s experience. She found out about her job from someone she went to school with just after the factory that she worked at went bankrupt. This is how she described how she fell into the trafficker’s trap: “One evening I went out with my friends and I met my old friend from school. He was one of those “tough” guys, or at least acted that way. We had not seen each other for a long time because he was working in Italy. I told him that I lost my job- he was very compassionate. He told me that there are many agencies in Italy through which I can find a well paid job as a waitress, and that I could easily earn 2000 dollars per month. He added that they need attractive women just like me. His good friend held that kind of agency and said that he would ask about me when he saw him: “Marija, I cannot promise you anything but I will do everything to help you, because I will never forget how much you helped me in school.” He did poorly in school; his father was violent and constantly beat him. One of my friends said that she did not believe him because he has a lot of money, but I did not take note of that. Several days later we met again – everything was taken care of, the visa, the travel expenses, everything! I was so happy; he told me that we could leave in two days. So soon! Why did I trust him? Have you ever believed someone who let you down in the end?! It seemed that he really wanted to help me. I could not even imagine that he could be so cruel. I was desperately hoping for a better life. My father was angry when I told him I was leaving: “You never achieved anything in your life, you’ll be back.”

Marija described the trip and the transformation in her “friend’s” behavior. At the border, no one was suspicious- they were friends on a trip. “His friend arrived in a white Mercedes with another man. He acted differently, gruffly. He complained that we were going too slowly. When we crossed the border I knew that something was not right but I bottled up that feeling- I wanted to believe my dream. His friend then took my passport. I was disturbed, and he became completely friendly. He gently, as no one before, touched my hair and told me not to worry.”

Then he took her to an apartment, an “assembly center” for girls from various parts of Eastern Europe. Marija was then beaten and raped, first by her new “owner” and his friend, and then forced to work as a prostitute. “When we entered the apartment, he locked the door. Someone grabbed me by the arm – I fell. There were three people in the apartment; I saw the face of the largest man who was half smiling. He grabbed me by the arm and pushed me into one of the bedrooms. It was full of beer cans, cigarette butts, and the sheets were so dirty that they were almost black. Everything happened so quickly. I tried to escape, but he hit me across the face. I started bleeding from the mouth, and I tried to lift my head but he pushed me down on the bed. He tore my clothes off, and the more I fought the worse he became. He bit my breast and I began to scream. He told me to shut up, and that he would kill me if I screamed once more. I kept quiet. I quickly learned that silence was the only way to survive.

They left me for two days, without food, frightened and scared that they would kill me. I was half dead, raped, but alive enough to feel guilty about what I had done. I hoped that they would leave me until I starved to death, but the other girls told me that he wanted us alive so we could work for him as prostitutes. They came to pick us up, ‘their possessions’, as one called us. That is how all the men saw us- we were not human beings. My “friend” disappeared. As we left the building, one man put a gun to my back. I felt the metal on my skin until we got into the car. We crossed another border and I knew we were in Macedonia. Everyone knew each other at the border, the police winked at us. I wanted to scream but who would help us?”

Marija spent several months in a village in Macedonia that she will not mention the name of. She worked in a café as a dancer and a prostitute. Her owner would convince her with beatings that she should not consider escaping. “I bought you”, was the sentence that he repeated everyday. He presented her to clients as an “old model, as though he was talking about buying a car”.

That is why Marija got a new owner a job: at a bar in Priština. “One evening a buyer came – he was Albanian, and my owner agreed to sell me. He told me: “You are going to Kosovo”. Marija remembers the new owner as being short and fat with evil eyes who reminded her of her father. He was very vain, she said – every time that he would pass by a mirror, he would stop and fix his tie. “When I arrived, he tore off my clothes and raped me.” Rape is, evidently, one of the unwritten rules of delight for the female trafficker.

At the bar in Priština, Marija lived and worked with eight other women. They were more and more skinny each day, “with larger bags under their eyes and more and more makeup”, surviving in unimaginable conditions: “When we did not have a client, they would keep us locked in a dark basement. There was no air, no window, and no trace of light. There was no water, bathroom, and we slept next to each other on bar stools. I longed to wash my hair. I was constantly tired and hungry- they gave us one hamburger per day. We had to accept eight or nine men each night; we received no money because everything went to our owner.”

In her diary Marija recorded: “6 March, 1 client, 150 DEM; 7 March, 3 clients, 350 DEM; 8 March, 7 clients, 900 DEM; 9 March, 5 clients, 750 DEM; 10 March, 8 clients, 1100 DEM; 11 March, 8 clients, 1200 DEM; 12 March – menstrual cycle; 13 March – menstrual cycle, 14 March – menstrual cycle…” “My owner told me that he did not care about my menstruation, we can please clients in other ways.” “15 March, 5 clients, 700 DEM ”.”That was like counting days in prison. It was the only way that I could stay normal. After some time I could no longer tell them apart- they were all the same. Why did I not try to escape? Why do people think it is so easy? That is like watching a horror movie and yelling to the actors- ‘look at what he is getting ready to do to you, look out!’ Everything is clear when you are an observer, but when you are in the movie, you cannot see anything.”

Marija uselessly asked for help from her clients: “in the beginning, I begged them to help me escape. I always got the same answer: ‘I will help you tomorrow…’ One of my clients gave me his telephone number and said that he would help me; he said that he had fallen in love with me. I never saw him again. Most clients believe that I make a lot of money. If we dared to tell the truth to anyone, they would be convinced that we were lying. For them, we were only whores.”

Marija believes that she managed to survive her days of sexual abuse because of Lori. Lori was also a captive, and after one incident she ended up in the hospital, half dead: “She was our hero, because they could not break her. She always rejected our owner just so that she could feel that she had a choice. We admired her for her courage. In the bar, there was a rule that there was no kissing with clients. They hypocritically presented us as ‘dancers’. One evening, Lori broke that rule- these small victories kept her going. An American came, he could not have been older than 19. It was clear that others had brought him to the bar- he was ashamed for being there. Lori grabbed him and passionately kissed him. Everyone was watching, he tried to move away, but she did not stop. We waited all night because we knew that she would not pass unpunished. Lori knew that too but she did not care. Our owner appeared, grabbed her by the hair, and pulled her across the floor while she screamed. He threw her in the basement, and then chased us there too. Lori was already there, tied and naked on the floor. He ordered us to strip, shaking with anger and holding a large stick in his hands. He pushed one of the girls and ordered her to hit Lori. When she began to cry, he hit her and forced her to hit Lori. Each girl, one by one, was forced to hit her with the stick. When it was my turn, I broke…”

That breaking moment could be used by experts who claim that some social groups, whose families suffer from alcoholism and violence, are more vulnerable than others. The background for victims of trafficking is created in an atmosphere of violence and poverty, where children do not manage to become confident individuals with developed social skills and defense mechanisms.

Marija’s breakdown describes that: “I took the stick and turned towards him. I wanted to hit him, but my arm froze. I saw my father’s eyes, remembered my youth when my father would come home every night reeking of beer with bloodshot eyes. We would wait and then I would grab my sister and hide under the covers. Sometimes it seemed like we would wait for hours in the same position, catching our breath under the covers. We tried to stay still under the covers, believing that he would not come. He would always do things because of stupid reasons- the chair was not in the right place, or the beer he had in the fridge disappeared. My mother would try to calm him down with a soothing voice. I could hear her steps, feel her fear and then hear my father’s hit. Violence is like a wave. You see it coming but you cannot move away from it. Everything is out of our control, even though you desperately want to escape, each wave has its path. Then it breaks, and you never know where. I never accepted my father’s violence, but I learned to deal with it. The only thing I wanted in life was to be as far from that wave as possible. My friend’s offer for work in Italy gave me hope that I would succeed in that.”

Beatings, hunger, exhaustion, rape and forced satisfaction for numerous male clients continued until a representative of the international police showed up. He fell in love with Marija and decided to take her back to her home town. In that action to save her he did not use the advantages of his official identity card and status as protector of the law. He did not organize a raid in that bar in Priština or send the pimp to jail; he used the same method that 4 million women robbed of their freedom and sentenced to slavery use every day. The representative of the international police “kidnapped” Marija. He returned her to her freedom. Even though Marija is free today, she will feel the consequences of her abuse for along time to come:

“I spent the first three months of my return sitting in the corner. There are days when I lock myself in my room and do not want to leave. When I do, if feel that people know nothing; goldfish under a crystal bell, protected in their world full of small trivial incidents. They cannot understand why this all happened to me. Even if I understand, it will not give me the peace I am looking for. You can turn off or on the button on your stereo, but there is not button in my head. I am telling this story because I do not want any other women to go through what I went through. I am telling you this because I hope that in some way, one day, some one will catch a pimp- and he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”

THERE ARE 3000 SLAVES IN BiH, AND NO ESTIMATION FOR CROATIA
One of the rare cases of sex trafficking in Croatia was recorded in Knin. Maja, an under aged girl, answered an advertisement for taking care of an eight year old girl; instead, human traffickers took her to Vienna where they beat and raped her, as well as forced her to beg and sell drugs. “He kept me and three other girls there like animals and fed us one sandwich per day in which he placed sedatives so we would not feel hungry”, testified Maja against her “owner” , Mijo Nikoliv, who is not charged and freely living in Vienna while running a human traffic chain. Gynecologists at the hospital in Sibenik concluded that Maja will most likely never be able to have children because of the sexual excess. After her story was published in the press, her family had to leave Knin because of the external pressure.

THE SLAVERY CASE THAT SHOOK MONTENEGRO
Moldavian S.Č. in December 2002 was freed from sexual slavery in Podgorica, but was not as frightened as the other women so she told the police of the names and nicknames of her rapists and abusers, as well as detail of their automobile smuggling and falsified documents. 29 individuals became suspects; the Assistant District Attorney, Zoran Piperović, was arrested for human trafficking and mediation in prostitution, as well as Bajram Orahovac, Irfan Kurpejović and Ekrem Jasavić, whose brother was the Security Inspector in Podgorica.

In volumes of the research proceedings, 45 witnesses from Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina testified. Moldavian citizen S.Č., the key witness in the case, was moved to a third country after the case. Prosecutor Zoran Radonjić, in May, dropped the charges against the four accused; this was the reason that experts from the OESS and European Council came to Montenegro to inspect the regularity in the court. Despite their visit, the court proceedings were suspended.

PREVENTION
The Woman’s Room, the name of the first Croatian center for prevention, research, and combat against sexual violence, was founded at the end of 2002. Nera Komarić is one of the founders, and she mentioned that steps forward have been recorded in Croatia. A national plan of action has been created with specific priorities, and in July, changes and supplements were added to the criminal law, which now explicitly introduces the criminal activity of “implementation slavery and human trafficking.”

Education among police officers, judges, and district attorneys has been completed. Nera Komarić believes that “without cooperation with relevant Ministries, we cannot go far in the fight against sexual trafficking. That is the only way we can save thousands of young girls who want to live life and become an easy target; as one trafficker for women stated for national Geographic “soccer players are sold, so why can’t we sell women?”

THE ROAD TAKEN BY FEMALE TRAFFICKERS

50,000 women and children enter the United States each year in search of a better life; many end up in the arms of mafia forced to do slave labor, prostitution, and criminal activities. Most of these women come from South America, Mexico, Nigeria, Thailand, and countries of the former Eastern Block. About 12,000 women annually end up on the streets or in brothels in Europe.

Networks with headquarters in the Ukraine, Latvia, Czech Republic, Poland, and the former Yugoslavia export towards Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Benelux through Austria and Germany. Women from Brazil, Peru, and Columbia arrive through Spain where they drown in the open space of the Schenengen circles. African chains in Morocco and Algeria recruit women for the markets in France, Italy, and Spain. The same locations, as well as Benelux and Germany, have women from Zaire, Ghana, Cameroon, Toga, and the Ivory Coast. The South East Asian chain is difficult to follow because it is closed to the outside world.

THE LAW OFTEN PUNISHES WOMEN

Tatjana, a 20 year old from a small village in the Luganska region in Eastern Ukraine, where factories close on a daily basis, accepted help from her mother’s friend: she could earn $4000 per month working as a maid for a rich family in the United Arab Emirates. When she arrived, they took her passport and she was sold to a brothel for $7000, where she had to work to pay off her travel expenses. When she managed to escape and seek help from the police, they arrested her and sentenced her to three years in prison because of prostitution.