Report on sexual slavery within the UAE.

The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) remains a destination country for men and women trafficked for the purpose of involuntary servitude and commercial sexual exploitation.

Read the full article here.

Relevant links (with excerpts):

Human trafficking from Armenia to Dubai, UAE

… when she arrived in Abu Dhabi she was taken to a brothel where a pimp told her that he had bought her for $7000. From that moment on she was to work as a prostitute until she paid off her so-called debt. After three months of captivity, Tanya managed to escape. She bolted to a police station and recounted her story. Incredibly, she was charged with prostitution and sentenced to three years in a desert prison. In 2001, psychologically crushed and ashamed, Tanya was released. Nothing happened to her pimp. Branded a prostitute by the Muslim nation, she was summarily deported back to her Ukraine.

Private sector ‘can help combat human trafficking’

He said T.S. and M.K. used the victim’s poverty to subjugate and exploit her into working in the sex industry unwillingly. “The couple bought her from an unidentified person for Dh4,300 after she reportedly abandoned her sponsor. When she refused to have sex with customers, she got brutally beaten by the female suspect,” said the Attorney General.

New study shames human traffickers

Countries in the Middle East have been named as the worst culprits of human trafficking.

A new report by an international trade unions’ umbrella organisation says Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen are notorious destinations for women trafficked from Kenya.

Its report, ‘Trafficking in Persons — The Eastern Africa Situation’, notes that women and children were favourite targets for well-organised trafficking rings, which operate freely for lack of solid laws against the vice.

Stress on global network to fight human trafficking

A teacher in her home country, Noora says she was tempted by the promise of a good job and salary in Dubai. It was the first time that she had ever left her home country and her job and visa were arranged by a man she was put in contact with by a friend from her home town.

In her early 20’s at the time, Noora was told to expect a representative from the school where she was to work to collect her from the airport. Instead, she was met by a couple who took her to their home in Sharjah and locked her inside a room in a high-rise.

“The first couple of days were a blur. I kept asking when I was starting my job. The wife laughed and said there is no school - that I had to work as a prostitute,” she remembers. “I was terrified and couldn’t do anything. I was powerless.”

UAE: Probe begins into Indian Human Trafficking Racket

The 54 year-old visitor identified as A.K.S, 50, and his wife identified as M.S, were waiting for a connecting flight to Paris when they were arrested. They were reportedly carrying fake passports of two young boys accompanying them.

The data recorded in the passports of the two minors showed them to be the sons of the accused but upon questioning, the couple denied being the parents, claiming they had been asked by some people in Mumbai to hand over the children to someone in Paris.

Click here for an extensive trafficking report (PDF)

As moclippa notes:

Looking at the Tier ranking, Bahrain made Tier 2 between 2003-2004, and has since steadily fallen back, hitting Tier 3 once again in 2007, the first time since 2002.

Recommendations for Bahrain Include:

“The government should enact a comprehensive anti-trafficking law that criminalizes all forms of trafficking in persons and assigns penalties both sufficiently stringent to deter the crime and adequately reflective of the heinous nature of the crime. Bahrain should also ensure that victims are not punished or deported for unlawful acts committed as a result of being trafficked, and should offer protective services to all victims of trafficking, including women coerced into prostitution and both female and male victims of forced labor.”

“Bahrain made no discernible progress in preventing trafficking this year. The government initiated no new campaigns to prevent trafficking, but continued to distribute multilingual brochures on workers’ rights and resources to incoming workers. The government should ensure that recruitment agencies and employers are aware of the rights of foreign workers to prevent their abuse.” (60)

Tier 3 is composed of:

Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Sudan, Bahrain, Iran, Oman, Syria, Burma, Kuwait, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela.

Click here for a full report.

From the Ansar Burney Trust -

LAHORE: Many smuggled minor girls from Pakistan are forced into prostitution in Middle East in an organised crime.

Some minor girls recently rescued from Middle East by human rights activist Ansar Burney revealed horrifying facts regarding the flesh trade going on in the region.

They said most of their companions belonged to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Afghanistan and newly independent countries from Russia.

“Most of the victims are between the age of 11 to 13 years and are smuggled to the Arab countries where they are forced into prostitution in Middle East and Arab countries,” one of the victims said and added that on the passports the ages of these girls were shown as 20 to 22 years old.

She said the human traffickers promised a beautiful and bright future and respectable jobs in the Middle East and Arab countries to lure young girls and after reaching abroad these girls are forced into prostitution.

“The traffickers forced the young girls to show themselves as virgins because most of their clients demanded young girls,” said another victim. She said “After arrival and clearance from the airport the traffickers took her passport and forced her physically to do what she was told,” she said. Threats of informing the police and of telling their families were the other tools being used by the traffickers against their sex slaves.

She said threats of violence kept the victims in line and in some cases these threats became reality. Many girls were forced to have abortions and were forced back to work within weeks. She maintained beatings and forced abortions are common in the life of the sex slaves.

Read more of the report here.

The News features a horrifying story by Shakeel Anjum, who reports:

ISLAMABAD: The irony is chilling. Even before they could bloom into flowers, teenaged flower-selling girls are being trafficked to some Middle East countries ostensibly for employment but only to be used for physical pleasure.

The poor girls, who sell flowers on Islamabad roads, are being trafficked on passports bearing fake names by a new racket as startling details of the ordeal of one such girl reaches before the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP).

[…]

The main accused Parveen lured the young flower vender to Muridke, a town near Lahore, impersonating her as real sister under the name Shama. She, later, took Nazia to Nadra centre and got her a CNIC as Shama, daughter of her (Perveen’s) own father Muhammad Shafi. Later, Nazia was issued passport on the basis of this fake CNIC. She was sent abroad and was sold for prostitution in Dubai.

[…]

“The racket has smuggled about 40 young girls to the Middle East for prostitution,” Hashmi added. The police arrested all the nominated accused — Rafaqat, resident of District Narowal, Parveen, Anees Ahmed and Allah Rakha r/o District Sheikhupura.

The gang members, during questioning, confessed Nazia was enticed by Parveen when she used to sell flowers in Saddar area and district courts area of Rawalpindi. A Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) official said the Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance (PACHTO) 2002 empowers the agency to enforce the ordinance and break into the nets of human smugglers and traffickers.

[Read the full article.]

19,000 Pakistani children have been trafficked to the United Arab Emirates. (LHRLA, Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, “Paper on Globalization and Human Rights”)

‘SANLAAP is a developmental organisation in West Bengal, India, working to correct social imbalances, which manifest in gender injustice and violence against children, youth and women. It works against the trafficking of children and women for commercial sexual exploitation and sexual abuse using a wide range of strategies: campaigns, advocacy and sensitisation of various stakeholders on the issue of trafficking on one hand, and rescue, rehabilitation, repatriation and socio-economic reintegration of trafficked persons on the other. SANLAAP engages youth as partners in all its endeavours.’

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.

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.