An article translated by the Women’s Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran -

SINA News Agency – Sociologists have called this decade a decade of explosion of social destruction in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The trafficking of women and girls is perhaps the most tragic aspect of all the social damages. As sex workforce in this market, women and girls are lured in various ways by different rings inside and outside of the country.

Many experts have noted, the presence of Iranian girls as prostitutes in surrounding Arab countries of Persian Gulf is alarming while damaging to the good name of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The network of traffickers entrap young and attractive run-away girls and widows with deceiving promises of a better and prosperous life including marriage to rich men; then they are smuggled across boarders legally and illegally.

Traffickers send these girls to Dubai, Kuwaiti, and Sheikhdom of the Persian Gulf. Even other neighboring countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan are hosting these girls.

Upon arrival to these countries, women and girls are taken to hotels, motels, casinos, and clubs as maids or prostitutes; or they are taken to the houses of affluent men as temporary or permanent wives of the riches. The networks’ profit is collected in various forms of payments including checks and promissory notes.

These women and girls face coercion and threats while being stranded in strange countries, yet the hope for a flow of income keeps them from returning home.

Read more.

This is an excerpt from the International Labour Office [PDF] -

In the Middle East and North Africa, there are a number of different patterns of trafficking, depending to a large extent on the proximity of other regional centres, but into the more affluent countries of this large region, trafficking is mostly characterized by discrimination on ethnic or gender grounds and high demand for child labour and commercial sex. Girls are trafficked to work in domestic service, and boys are trafficked into the region to work as ‘camel kids’.

More from the same article:

According to the US Department of State, some, 150,000 South Asians are trafficked every year. Both boys and girls are trafficked internally and across borders, principally into other countries in the region, the Middle East and South-East Asia. This parallels a general increase in illegal and undocumented migration within the region. Within the region, also, the prevalence of commercial sex outlets at many levels (low-class brothels, high-class escort services, etc.) coupled with increasing rates of HIV/AIDS and STD infection,provides a ready market for those who exploit children for commercial sex. It has been reported that, of the approximately 200,000 sex workers trafficked from Nepal to India, 40,000 are below 16 years of age.

Recent ILO-IPEC Rapid Assessment research suggests a speculative figure of 12,000 children per year.

In the Middle East and North Africa, women and girls come from a number of regions, pulled by the demand for commercial sex and the wide economic disparities that make the Gulf States, in particular, a potentially profitable market for traffickers and exploiters.

Some good news in a tragic case:

HEADLINE: THAILAND/MIDDLE EAST - A suspected human trafficker has been arrested for allegedly luring women to the sex trade in the Middle East, Thai police said. Officers of the Suppression of Crimes Against Children and Women Monday arrested La-iad Kaewdee, 32, in Thai central province of Samut Prakan. She has been charged with being a member of a gang procuring women for prostitution, a police source was quoted on Monday by Thai news group The Nation as saying.

Police said La-iad had admitted the charges but claimed she had only been involved in duping one woman. Division deputy commander Colonel Jaruwat Vaisaya said a victim who escaped from a brothel in an unnamed Middle Eastern country reported La-iad after being assisted back to Thailand by the Foreign Ministry.

The victim alleged La-iad lured her to the Middle East with the promise of a well-paying job in a restaurant. When she arrived her passport was seized and she was forced to work as a prostitute. The gang claimed she owed 100,000 baht (about 2,780 U.S. dollars) for transport costs, said the report.

“We estimate up to 100 women remain in the Middle East being forced to work as prostitutes,” Jaruwat said. Most of the victims are from the North and Northeast of Thailand. Human trafficking “networks” go to different places and lure women with promises of good jobs as domestic helpers or in restaurants. (Xinhua General News Service January 15, 2007)

Source: Gender Watchers

100 only from Thailand, perhaps. But the number of women being forced into prostitution in the region go up to thousands, and are being smuggled from various parts of the world, mostly Asia and Eastern Europe.

This is an article from Gulf News, reported by a staff writer, Sunita Menon -

Dubai: Two women who were duped into coming to the UAE on the pretext of being offered jobs and then forced into prostitution managed to escape from their “agents” yesterday.

A man who encountered them near the Kuwaiti Roundabout in Sharjah and asking motorists for a ride took them to the Sharjah Indian Association from where they were taken to the Indian consulate’s shelter in Dubai.

“We were forced to entertain 23 to 25 men a day. I have three children back home and I came here to work as a cleaner. I have not been paid at all. I am also scared … what if I have contracted some disease,” one of the women told Gulf News.

“I have got in touch with the Department of Non-Resident Indian Affairs in Kerala as well as the Indian Minister for Overseas Affairs Vayalar Ravi and gave details about the two women who were brought here on the pretext of being given jobs,” said K.A Mathews, president of the Indian Association Sharjah.

Revolt

Mathews said the women, both Indians, did not fly directly from Kerala to the UAE but came via a neighbouring country.

In a written statement to the association, the women ages 31 and 32, said they were married and had come to the UAE on September 10 on a visit visa.

The visas were provided by a travel agent for Indian rupees 10,000 (about Dh800) each. The agents whom they dealt with in Kerala had promised them jobs as cleaners in a hospital in the UAE.

One of the women said the news of her father’s death forced her to revolt against the agents.

“Since I came here I have not called home, so one of the agent’s men whose job was to guard us took pity on me and gave his mobile phone to me. I telephoned home only to hear my father had died.

“I desperately wanted to go home and asked the agent to give me my passport back. But he refused.”

They were kept in a flat in Sharjah.

Ten days ago the women refused to entertain any more men. As punishment they were taken to a building near the Kuwaiti Roundabout and locked in a flat.

“For the first couple of the days the agents’ men came with food, but later their visits stopped. Left alone, we planned our escape. We came across a screwdriver… slowly we unscrewed the lock and got out of the flat early in the morning. All along we kept our fingers crossed no one would come to the flat,” said one of the women.

Yes, such a crime can happen in a place that’s supposedly as safe as the UAE.

From the BBC -

Between 3,000 and 5,000 women have been smuggled into Israel in the past four years to work as prostitutes, according to a parliamentary inquiry.

The report described how the women are sold at public auctions for as much as $10,000 and forced to work up to 18 hours a day.

On average the women receive only three percent of the money they earn from prostitution, the report said.

Most of the women are from the former Soviet Union.

Many are raped and beaten as they are smuggled into Israel over the Egyptian border, the inquiry found.

Read more.

An article by Morteza Aminmansour -

The UAE was one of the 19 countries in the world that the United States blacklisted for human trafficking. The trafficking as a modern form of Slavery leaves no land untouched..

With camel racing heavily patronized by the oil rich rulers, who have least respect in the legislature, thousands of small children from Indian sun continent face a black and future.

Women migrated from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, India and Eastern Europe have reported being lured with fraudulent promises of lucrative opportunities, legitimate jobs and then forced into sexual exploitation. Women who dared resist encountered harsh punishment from their employers, including physical assault. Their status as illegal migrants made the women particularly vulnerable to attacks by customers and traffickers alike. UAE has joined the growing global criminal activity of sex trafficking.

Exact number of victims is impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in UAE, there has been increase in the number of teen-age girls in prostitution (forced to work from Iran and other countries). The magnitude of the statistic conveys how rapidly this form of abuse has grown. The popular destinations for victims of the sex slave trade are the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf (UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar). Traffickers target girls between 13 and 17 to send to Arab countries. The number of Iranian women and girls who are deported from Persian Gulf countries indicates the Magnitude of the trade.

A measure of Islamic fundamentalists success in controlling the society is the depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights of women.

The Islamic fundamentalists in Iran have for example expended tremendous amounts of time and efforts controlling, harassing, and punishing women and girls in the name of Islam. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the Streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the City. The trade is also international. Thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad. The Sex Slave Trade is one of the most Profitable activities in Iran today. Iranian governments officials are involved in buying, selling and sexually abusing women and girls. One factor contributing to the increase in prostitution and the sex slave trade is the number of female teens who are running away from home. In Tehran alone there are an estimated 25,000 Street Children, most of them girls. Many of the girls come from impoverished Rural areas. Some addicted parents sell their Children to support their habits…A number of prostitution and slavery rings operating from Tehran that has sold girls and women to Britain, France, and Germany. In Iranian Province of Khorasan, local police report that girls are being sold to Pakistani men as

They have passed and enforced humiliating and sadistic rules and punishments of women and girls, enslaving them in a system of segregation.

Many Mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual exploitation and trade of women and girls. Women who are arrested for prostitution say they must have sex with the arresting officer. There are reports of police locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs. Some may think a thriving sex trade in a theocracy with clerics possibly acting as pimps is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists.

I would like to define the slavery as work done without any
compensation under the threat Of violence.

The modern-day of slavery are forced labor, forced prostitution. Slavery is technically illegal everywhere but they are estimated 27 million enslaved worldwide than ever before, while the moral argument against slavery has been won, the practical struggle to end slavery is by no means over. Camel racing in the Persian Gulf(UAE), for example is known to be slave work only by human rights experts or locals. Until poverty is overcome, some forms of slavery will always exist. Some argue that slave labor built up western capitalist development.

One of the fastest growing means by which children are enslaved today is trafficking. Girls as young as six are trafficked to work as maids in UAE and Saudi Arabia. Men and women and children live and work as slaves or in slave-like conditions. The sexual enslavement of children is part of the generation exploitation of children in impoverished parts of the world.