MOLDOVA: Poverty stricken country has leading problem in human trafficking and prostitution

Record ID: 656541

  • Title: MOLDOVA: Poverty stricken country has leading problem in human trafficking and prostitution
  • Date: 9th October 2002
  • Summary: (L!1) CHISENAU, MOLDOVA (RECENT - OCTOBER 9, 2002) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) ANA CHIRSANOV , PSYCHOTHERAPIST SAYING : "They [women] were treated like animals. They were constantly told they were not human beings but plain goods They were simply bodies that could be sold. One girl told me her master used her and then sold her so she did ot bore clients. They were sold from one bar to another and simply passed over from one place to another. In such situations a person starts thinking that he is not a is simply plain goods."
  • Embargoed: 24th October 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: CHISENAU AND COSTESTI, MOLDOVA
  • Country: Moldova, Republic of
  • Topics: Crime
  • Reuters ID: LVAF3DMTB7W634EQ0XCXNU6RJWXU
  • Story Text: The republic of Moldova has been known for decades as a rural nation that exports wines. But in the last ten years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the poverty-stricken country has another leading export; women.
    Thousands of young Moldovan women are trafficked out of their homeland with false promises of work and a better life abroad, but end up working as prostitutes.
    Twenty-three-year old Natasha will remember her time as a prostitute in Israel for the rest of her life.
    Nearly six months after escaping what she described as a "living hell", she is still haunted by what she lived through.
    Natasha is one of the hundreds of Moldovan women who have been lured out of the country with promises of a better life.
    Her story is typical of many trafficking victim. No job, a three-year-old child, a sick mother and an unemployed husband on her hands--she was forced her to look for other opportunities to support her family. A family friend offered to help her get a job as a housekeeper in Israel. And she took the chance.
    Instead she ended up in a brothel, a sexual slave without documents nor legal rights--only her will to resist.
    "They tried to sell me to ten different pimps. But nothing came out of it. Nobody wanted me because I refused to work. Then they started to threaten me that my family will suffer if I don't work," she said.
    Natasha is one of the 900 documented cases of Moldovan women who have escaped and returned home. But many more are believed to be trapped in brothels outside of the country.
    Bleak economic prospects in Moldova have fueled this crisis. The ex-Soviet republic is now the poorest country in the former Soviet Union. The average salary is 30 USD. Lack of jobs for younger generation force many to look for other opportunities. Statistics show that one out five Moldovan women is willing to work outside her native country.
    But for many, the promises of good money in foreign lands is simply too good to be true.
    Many young girls are fooled by professional crooks, very often their closest friends. They promise to arrange visas to Italy or Greece and later sell them to criminal groups who force the girls into sexual exploitation in Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Israel.
    Ana Chirsanov, a physiotherapist, has been going through intensive rehabilitation work with girls, like Natasha, who were fortunate enough to escape the sexual exploitation.
    "They were treated like animals. They were constantly told they were not humanbeings. They were simply bodies that could be for sale. They were sold from one bar to another. One girl told me that her owner sold her to other brothels because he was afraid she would bore the clients. In such situations a person starts thinking that she is simply plain goods", she says.
    The problem is growing. Over 100,000 women a year are believed to cross over from Eastern European countries to work as prostitutes in neighbouring, richer nations.
    According to local representatives of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the Moldovan capital Chisenau, of the 4.3 million population of Moldova about
    000 people now work outside their country. Ninety five percent of them illegally and the majority of these are women between the age 18-24.
    Many of these women are leaving behind a bleak life for an even worse one.
    "There is a high degree of violence in the families of these women. And our statistics show that 85 percent of the women that came back were subject to some form of violence in their families," says Lyuba Revenko, a countertrafficking program manager working for the IOM.
    The hopelessness is particularly felt in remote rural areas such as Costesti, just 12 kilometers outside of the capital Chisenau.
    The formerly prosperous fish farm is becoming a ghost town as young people leave the village because it offers them no work and no future.
    "It's very hard to find a job in this country.
    Very many young girls have left our village to earn money elsewhere, in Russia or Italy," says 15 year-old Margarita who said she wanted to go to America or Britain when she finishes school.
    "I'm not planning to leave Moldova now. But the situation here is very hard here so if things don't improve then maybe I'll leave too," says Olesya.
    Specialists say if the migration of women from Moldova continues the country could face a grave demographic crisis in the near future.
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