>>>Now ... this may be old news but the new news is it's emanating from Germany, a little more liberal and socially advanced with regard to the subject matter. Perhaps a union or two is on the horizon. A<>E<>R <<< >From http://www.fr-aktuell.de/english/401/t401004.htm }}>Begin Kosovo-Prostitutes WHEN THE WAITRESSING JOB IS A TRAP Sexual slave trade a problem in Kosovo By Stephan Israel Pristina - The dubious clubs that spring up overnight with names like Miami Beach, Manhattan or International Club often do not remain in business very long. A raid by Italian carabinieri first brought the miserable situation to light in January, when the UN peacekeepers burst into one club to find a dozen desperate women staring back at them. "The women were treated like slaves," said one of the investigators on the case. Since then about 60 women have been freed from similiar conditions. Trafficking in sexual slaves and forced prostitution have become serious problems in Kosovo. The women come from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria: the poorest regions of eastern Europe. A monthly salary of 50 to 100 dollars is normal in all of those countries. Some of the women fell prey to seemingly innocuous newspaper adverts promising lucrative jobs in the West as waitresses or dancers. Some of them wound up part of a sex trade ring after being kidnapped. Still others knew about the nightclub and the job as a prostitute that awaited them, but not about the horrifying conditions. None of the 60 women were still in possession of their identification documents when they were discovered, according to investigators in Pristina. Passports are usually collected by the "carers" while the women are still in their native countries; sometimes, their "escorts" issue them false documents. It usually takes a while before the trip gets underway, with long waiting periods par for the course. The sex traders command a well-organised network of contacts across the entire region. Inconspicuous motels are the scenes of out-and-out auctions, where the women are sold for the highest bid to pimps and bar owners. On the way to Kosovo, the actual trafficking occurs in Struga on the Macedonian- Albanian border and several villages around the capital, Skopje, that are well- known for their role in illegal prostitution. Until now Macedonian officials have shown little interest in co-operating with the UN, says one UN investigator, who suspects that Macedonian police are involved in the trade in women. Kosovar club owners and pimps pay around 1,500 dollars for each woman. The women are confined to the bars day and night and made to endure cramped and unhygenic conditions. They are usually told that they have to "work off" the cost of transporting them. However, none of the women found in forced prostitution in Kosovo had ever seen any money. Anyway, in most cases the women are auctioned off to another club in some other region after a few weeks or months. Contributing to the problem is the massive international presence brought by the arrival of Nato peacekeeping forces, and the large amounts of money now in circulation. At present more than 40,000 soldiers from all over the world are stationed in Kosovo, plus another 7,000 UN administrators and aid workers from public and private international relief organisations. Many of the prospective customers perusing the bars and nightclubs are members of the international mission in Kosovo, reports one aid worker with an international organisation. "This business is determined by supply and demand," says the woman, who gets her information from talking to victims. It is, she says, a cheap investment for the traffickers, who are attracted by the low risk and the potential for making enormous profits. But, she adds, for the women and girls - sometimes as young as 15 - the sex trade is an extreme form of sexual and economic exploitation. Once they come under the slave traders' control and end up in one of the clubs, the women have no freedom whatsoever to decide their fate, according to the aid worker. A campaign is now being planned for the coming weeks that is aimed above all at the nightclubs' international "clientele." The campaign is supposed to make it clear to these men that the women in the clubs are not "normal" prostitutes. "You pay once, she pays her whole life long," one of the slogans goes. The situation in Kosovo is not without precedent. Nightclubs and bars sprouted up like mushrooms near the former frontline after the war in Bosnia. Kosovo is simply the latest market in a network that is part of a booming business. Most local women stay away from the clubs. Kosovo, like neighbouring Albania, is both a recruiting ground and a transit area for traffic in women. Experts estimate that around 30,000 Albanian women are currently working as prostitutes, most of them in Italy. For eastern European women, the road also stops in Serbia or Belgrade en route to final destinations in Bosnia, Montenegro or western Europe. Recently seven Ukranian women were rescued from a club in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, thanks to leads provided by a development organisation based in their home country. Aid organisations allege that, once the women are freed from forced prostitution, officials treat them no better than criminals, arresting them and then deporting them. Pimps and "nightclub" owners, however, generally get off scot-free. In April a Serbian court in the northern section of the divided city of Mitrovica sentenced two Moldovan women to 30 days in jail for prostitution, and issued a three-year ban on their re-entering the country. The UN administration, which is formally responsible for Kosovo, did not see fit to intervene. The women usually have no identifying papers to show police when they arrived. In what human rights observers see as a clear case of criminalising the victim, the women are generally taken into custody like illegal immigrants to await their deportation. The carabinieri working for the UN in Kosovo who made the initial nightclub raid did not know what to do at first with the 12 women they discovered. In the meantime, local and international aid organisations in Pristina have quietly opened a temporary refuge for women at a secret location. The "safe house" with room for 20 women has already been full on occasion. Workers from the non-profit International Organisation for Migration (IOM) assist women who want to return to their countries of origin. The organisation locates people they can turn to and also procures new identity documents for the women. IOM is active in some of the women's home countries as well, working, for example, in Ukraine and Moldova in conjunction with local charities, counselling centres and women's shelters so that the women have somewhere to turn once they arrive home. No one, however, is forced to return. Once back in their hometowns, the women often fear acts of revenge by the traffickers, who feel cheated out of their profits. UN investigators and aid workers believe the trend in illegal prostitution is likely to continue. "If we close a nightclub one day, a new one is certain to open up somewhere else the next day," says one official resignedly. The attention international organisations are now giving to the problem could result in the unintended consequence that the lucrative business will increasingly be driven underground, where the women will be forced to work in anonymous, private apartments. 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