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LINK TO CNN RUSSIA PROSTITUTION
& TRAFFICKING VIDEO:
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By
Matthew Chance
CNN
MOSCOW,
Russia (CNN)
-- Young women in bright miniskirts and high heels line up to sell themselves
in the dingy back streets throughout the Russian capital. Moscow's illegal
flesh markets are flourishing, with up to 30 women at each pickup point, or
tochka, standing in order of price for the night.
Customers light up the lines with their car headlights and are asked to pay
between $100 and $700 for a woman.
Aid workers for groups fighting for women's rights say Moscow
is witnessing a surge in prostitution, including forced prostitution, as a
result of Russia's booming economy.
They say thousands of young women are made to work as sex
slaves on the city's streets, unable to escape from the ruthless and violent
criminal gangs who traffic them.
"It's because of the economic boom they are brought
here," said Afsona Kadyrova of the Angel Coalition aid agency, which
rehabilitates trafficked women and children. "The fast pace of development
in Moscow has fueled demand for a range of cheap workers, including
prostitutes."
To investigate the thriving trade, CNN went undercover posing
as potential customers and gained access to speak directly to the prostitutes
and their pimps.
"Take your pick from any of the girls," the female
organizer said at one location, lines of women all around. "The expensive
ones are on the right, for $600 and $700 a night. The women on the left are
$100."
Aid agencies say many of the women working here are tricked
into coming to Moscow on the promise of an education or a good job. They say
others are simply kidnapped from their hometowns and forced to work as
prostitutes in Moscow.
Russian police acknowledge that human trafficking for sexual
exploitation is a major problem, saying they do what they can to fight it by
raiding brothels suspected of forced prostitution and arresting gang members
who run them. But the problem, they say, lies elsewhere.
"First of all, we have virtually open borders, and badly
controlled migration flows from nearby countries," said Alexander Krasnov
of Russia's Interior Ministry Police.
"Secondly, we still don't have a basic law that defines
victims' rights. At the moment, it's mostly aid agencies that deal with
it."
Aid agencies say they are handling a growing number of deeply
traumatized victims rescued from brothels and pimps in the Moscow area. One U.N. organization,
the International Organization for Migration, recently opened a treatment and
rehabilitation center to cope with the large numbers of sexually exploited and
trafficked women who come for help.
At this center, Christine, a 27-year-old Nigerian woman,
tells how she acquired a painful 4-inch scar across her right cheek. She says
she was lured to Russia from Nigeria four years ago by her uncle. He promised
to give her a college education, she says.
But instead, she says, he sent her to a Moscow brothel. He
told her "the kind of job I'm going to be doing is prostitution."
"I ask him, 'Why prostitution? Why not another job to
pay the money?' He says I didn't speak the language. I cannot do any other
job."
She added, "It made me feel very bad. I felt that I'm
not going to do it over my dead body."
But when she tried to run away, her uncle cut her face, says
Christine, who asked that her last name not be used.
"He made me know that if I don't cooperate with him, something
bad will happen to me -- that if I made an attempt to run away, it would end in
taking my life. So I was really scared about that," she said.
Aid workers say Russia has become a prime destination for
trafficked women from Africa, the Far East and former Soviet states. There are
no exact figures, but aid agencies estimate that thousands of trafficked women
are on Moscow's streets.
"Before, it was just a country of origin for Europe and
the U.S. and elsewhere in the world," Kadyrova said. "But right now,
we see that Russia has become a destination country also."
According to the group's Web site, human traffickers
"prey on the dreams of impoverished women seeking employment and
opportunities for the future." Most women are young and single with little
education; some are orphans and college students; others are married with
children.
"All of them are lured by advertising images of a
beautiful life beyond the borders of their homelands -- making them easy prey
to the thousands of traffickers advertising in newspapers, on radio,
television, in the metro and on the streets for wonderful work abroad with no
experience necessary," the group says.
For millions, Russia's new economic prosperity has been a
blessing. But for those caught up in the sex trade, it's a curse.
Christine managed to escape after meeting a
woman from a church who helped her. "I was crying all the time, telling
her, 'I don't want this kind of job,' " she said.