What started as a dream for 23-year-old Natalia quickly turned
into a nightmare.
"I was barely earning €70 a month as a
teacher back in Russia when a friend of mine told me about this
employment agency which helps find work for girls abroad," she says
-- fearfully looking over her shoulder into the night around one of
Athens's most luxurious hotels.
"I wanted to come to Greece,
to go to the islands. They bought me and now I am doing this.
They've told me that they'll kill me if I try to escape," she says,
before rushing off towards the hotel where one of her clients is
waiting.
After travelling three days by bus, Natalia was
picked up by a man and taken to an apartment where she was told that
she had been bought by him, and would have to prostitute herself to
earn her keep.
The first night in Athens she was gang-raped
and beaten by her owner's friends. They insisted it was a means of
"breaking her in".
Natalia, like thousands of other Eastern
European women smuggled into Greece for prostitution, arrive
believing they will work as waitresses or baby-sitters.
"They
arrive as illegal immigrants and are forced to work in the sex trade
and are regularly subjected to physical and psychological violence,
with trafficking gangs keeping most, if not all money earned," said
Nikitas Kanakis, from Doctors of the World.
Prostitution is
legal in Greece, but the traditional brothel system with regular
checks and permits has been phased out over the past decade. In the
wake of a tide of human trafficking, the sex business has moved into
bars, nightclubs and over the telephone.
"Some regions, such
as south-eastern Europe and namely Greece and Italy, have developed
into a hub for trafficking in women following war and economic
decline," says Grigoris Lazos, a professor of criminology at
Panteion University.
"Russia, Albania, the Republic of
Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine are all important source countries
of trafficked victims, and many of these women are being brought
into the country via Turkey and Bulgaria," says
Lazos.
Intimidation Over the years, the number of
prostitutes in Greece has dropped from 18 000 to about
6 250 and a new form of trafficking, ironically known as "happy
trafficking", has taken shape where the subjugation of women is no
longer secured through beatings but by psychological
intimidation.
"We have a reorganisation of trafficking ... we
are not talking about a static number, but a number that is
constantly renewed with 'new merchandise' -- with new girls who are
trafficked from one country to another, who are arrested, deported
from Greece, sent back to Greece by other traffickers and arrested
again."
While the number of trafficked woman in Greece has
dropped in recent years, the number of trafficked children from
neighbouring Albania, many under the age of 13, is on the
rise.
"What we are seeing now is that there are more
children, 12, 13 and 14 years of age, on the streets, but the
government and the Greek population do not want to see that they
have a big problem on their hands," says Konstandis Kabourakis, a
doctor with ACT UP.
Nervously adjusting her ponytail,
Margarita tells how she was only 13 when she arrived in Greece on
foot through the mountains bordering neighbouring Albania with her
mother and stepfather more than a year ago.
Upon reaching
Athens, Margarita was taken to a hotel near central Omonia Square by
her mother. It was there that she was brutally initiated into the
sex trade by various men until police raided the hotel one day,
throwing her in jail.
"When we found her she had been locked
up in jail for months, pregnant and without any papers," said
Kanakis. "No authority even bothered to ask her age or
identity."
Legislation In an effort to crack down
on one of the country's fastest-growing criminal businesses, the
government passed legislation in 2002 on the lucrative sex slave
trade.
The Bill is supposed to protect victims of trafficking
who are arrested by police, detained and deported, but in reality
only a small handful ever receive the aid and protection to which
they are entitled.
According to figures from the ministry of
public order, only 46 girls were recognised in 2004, and for the
first six months of 2005, only 11 were given aid and
protection.
"The question is that in many cases we do not
know what happens to these girls when they are freed," says Lazos.
"They need health care, psychological support, legal aid and a
chance to stay and find legal employment -- but unfortunately there
is no such service available from the government."
Doctors of
the World opened Greece's first shelter for victims of trafficking a
few years ago only to close it down again in September last year,
citing financial constraints.
"If a victim of human
trafficking wanted to escape from her captor, there is virtually no
social system set up to help her -- and of course there is always
the fear that, if caught, the perpetrators will be allowed back on
the street again," says Kanakis.
Of the 480 traffickers who
were arrested in 2004 and 2005, only 11 were
convicted.
Despite the law that calls for sentences of up to
10 years for the use of violence, threats or false promises to force
an individual into prostitution, there is an unwillingness to
enforce harsh penalties.
"At this point in time, pimps and
bar owners know when the busts are coming and use them to unload the
older women and the ones which are sick or have gone mad," said
Lazos. "In Greece, there is no way out for these women. They can be
killed by the pimps or face detention and deportation by the
police." --
Sapa-dpa |