WUNRN
UK – Gangs Are Abusing Poor Women from Eastern Europe, Including Roma, for Fake Marriages
ČTK,
translated by Gwendolyn Albert – June 3, 2015
Klara
Balogová was 18 years old, without a cent, and in an advanced stage of
pregnancy when she traveled 1 000 kilometers from Slovakia to England to marry
a man she had never met. She knew that neither she nor her child were any of
his concern.
All the
man wanted was an EU identity card. The marriage was arranged so the
23-year-old Pakistani groom could acquire the right to live and work in Europe,
the Associated Press reports.
Balogová
was promised pleasant housing in England and maybe even some money. Several
days after her arrival, she was taken from Manchester to Glasgow, Scotland,
where she was kept prisoner in an apartment with her future husband.
When her
husband wasn't there, his younger brother guarded her. They also confiscated
her documents.
"They
never let me out. They told me it wasn't possible," the petite Romani
woman says in a hesitant, quiet voice.
"Once
a week we went out together," she says. "They never let me out by
myself."
Every
year there are dozens of women like her who come from the more impoverished
corners of Eastern Europe and are lured into fake marriages in the West. The
men are frequently from Africa or Asia and pay significant sums of money to
leave their home countries and improve their living standards through this
method.
They want
to work in Europe, to eventually request welfare benefits there, and to travel
freely. Almost all of the profits they make are raked in by the matchmakers,
who are frequently organized gangs.
These
women then frequently end up falsely imprisoned in a strange land with nothing
to show for it. This relatively new form of human trafficking is coming about
at a time when Britain is constantly toughening its border control measures and
politicians across Western Europe are calling for harsher interventions against
immigration.
Illegal
marriages as a way to get around immigration laws are happening more and more
frequently and involve both direct agreements between a bride and groom as well
as bride sales. Most brides get their travel paid to either Britain, Germany,
Ireland or the Netherlands.
Some of
them are not fully aware of what they have gotten into until they get to their
destination. The women are frequently held hostage until the marriage license
is signed; they are then abused by their "groom" and his friends,
forced into prostitution or into the drug trade, and in some cases must
"marry" more than once, according to EU authorities and charity
groups.
"Depending
on the case, a woman can be sold for EUR 1 000," says Angelika Molnar, a
Europol expert on combating human trafficking. "This is decidedly a
lucrative trade."
In
Britain the Home Office receives reports of thousands of cases of fake
marriages annually; if the woman has agreed to marry for money, she is
considered an accessory to the crime. Officials, however, admit that it is
difficult to investigate the bride trade.
"I
think the problem is much bigger than we are aware of, because we see just a
small percentage of the crimes committed," says Phil Brewer, head of
Scotland Yard's unit on human trafficking and kidnapping. "This issue is
not yet fully understood."
In order
to understand why women are willing to do such a thing, all one has to do is
visit Klara Balogová's village. Just like most of the women from Slovakia
abused for this purpose, she comes from a dilapidated Romani settlement.
The
settlement lies on the border with Hungary and Ukraine and about 250 Romani
people, members of Europe's most-impoverished minority group, live there. Most
of their tin shacks have no water supply, the roads are muddy, the houses are
dirty, and the water drawn from a rusty pump is contaminated.
Social
worker Nicholas Ogu says he knows several other women from this village who
also married in Britain. The business is controlled by a Romani gang who
recruit uneducated, unemployed Romani people with the promise of making decent
profits abroad.
The women
end up as either fake brides or as prostitutes, while the men are forced to
work in conditions approximating slavery. The perpetrators are Czechs or
Slovaks living in Britain and their "recruiters" do the other half of
the business back in their home countries, according to Slovak Ambassador to
the UK Miroslav Wlachovský.
The
ambassador says a particularly favorite destination is Scotland because local
laws make it possible for persons 16 years of age to marry without parental
consent, while the rest of Britain has an age limit of 18. Balogová, who is now
22, was not supposed to marry until after giving birth in Britain.
While she
was in hospital, however, suspicions were raised regarding the identity of the
child's father. The nurses discovered that their patient had no idea how to get
home even though she lived just a few blocks away.
Ultimately
her "groom" was deported before the wedding could take place. She was
left penniless in a shelter and returned to Slovakia two years ago with the aid
of social workers.
Her
child, a little girl named Aisa, was taken into the social care system in
Britain and remains there because the authorities are concerned her mother
would not manage to care for her at home. Despite all of these experiences,
Balogová admits that she would try her luck in Britain again.
"I
didn't want to come home," she says. "It was 100 times better for me
in England."