Via Uruknet:

Dubai is of course not the only place in the Middle East famous for sex-trafficking; it faces stiff competition from Israel. BBC reports, in 2006 ‘the United Nations named Israel as one of the main destinations in the world for trafficked women; it has also consistently appeared as an offender in the annual US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (Tip) report.’

Marina rarely leaves her two-room home in northern Israel these days. She is in hiding - wanted by the Israeli authorities for being an illegal immigrant, and by the criminal gangs who brought her here to sell her into prostitution.

Marina - not her real name - was lured to Israel by human traffickers.

During the height of the phenomenon, from the beginning of the 1990s to the early years of 2000, an estimated 3,000 women a year were brought to Israel on the false promise of jobs and a better way of life.

“When I was in the Ukraine, I had a difficult life,” said Marina, who came to Israel in 1999 at the age of 33 after answering a newspaper advertisement offering the opportunity to study abroad.

“I was taken to an apartment in Ashkelon, and other women there told me I was now in prostitution. I became hysterical, but a guy starting hitting me and then others there raped me.

“I was then taken to a place where they sold me - just sold me!” she said, recalling how she was locked in a windowless basement for a month, drank water from a toilet and was deprived of food.

MAIN ORIGINS OF WOMEN TRAFFICKED TO ISRAEL

-Russia
-Moldova
-Ukraine
-Uzbekistan
-Belarus

That part of her ordeal only ended when she managed to escape, but the physical and mental scars remain.

Last year, the United Nations named Israel as one of the main destinations in the world for trafficked women; it has also consistently appeared as an offender in the annual US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (Tip) report.

Read the rest of the report here.

From PBS Frontline:

Four years ago, I began a photo project on the sex trafficking of young women in Eastern Europe. I interviewed and photographed girls who had escaped. Some had been trafficked to Turkey and Russia. Others were taken as far as the United Arab Emirates, lured by the promise of legitimate jobs and a brighter future. Once they arrived in the new country, they were priced and sold, and their documents taken away. The young women told me they were forced to service mechanics, soldiers, priests, butchers, tourists, and even U.N. personnel who were supposed to protect them.

I grew up in Eastern Europe and met Vika on my second reporting trip to Moldova. (You can hear Vika’s story in the FlashPoint slideshow, Moldova: The Price of Sex.) She told me she had been trafficked to Dubai, at times serving 30 clients a day. She quickly learned the only English words necessary to keep her owner from hitting her: “How much?” and “With or without plastic?” Once, without plastic, her luck ran out and she got pregnant. It didn’t matter. Her pimp kept her working for the duration of her pregnancy.

After hearing Vika’s stories, Dubai became a place I felt I had to see to understand.

Read the rest of the article here.

[Cross posted from Mideast Youth]

I don’t think I need to remind anyone here that sex trafficking is a huge issue in the Middle East, especially the Gulf. My concern is not women who choose to do this for their own personal reasons. My concern is women and young girls who are forced to do this on a daily basis with no form of support or help whatsoever.

This kind of corruption is almost always dismissed as “something that exists in every society,” so fighting it is apparently “useless.” This is not an excuse. This is a poor reaction to a major crisis that shouldn’t exist today. The fact remains that it does exist, and it’s happening right here in front of our eyes while we dismiss it, justify it, and ignore it in silence or ignorance. At this point we’re old and aware enough to say: no more. We need to make a bigger effort in raising awareness about what’s going on. We need to be the voice of those who clearly don’t have one in our societies.

Recently I found this alarming documentary focusing on the sex trafficking of Armenian women and girls into Dubai. Do watch:

And this (part 3):

You can watch all the other episodes here.

The woman in the first video justifies this in her own way, claiming that prostitution is a choice that many women can escape, this is factually incorrect. I personally came across many women - Bosnian, Russian, Pakistani, and especially Albanian - who were smuggled here due to war and instability within their own countries. It wasn’t by choice. Many of them came here thinking they were going to end up as waitresses, housemaids, business partners, etc. As soon as they arrive, they have their passports taken away from them, and their lives as sexual slaves begin…

The police? Not an escape. Firstly there are many policemen in the region involved in human trafficking. Secondly, many women get in further danger because if they don’t present a passport or valid documentation (which they usually don’t have access to), they get imprisoned for being within the country illegally and for taking part in prostitution. An example is this excerpt taken from a book:

…. 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.

[Source]

Choosing between years of prison and sexual slavery is not a proper and fair choice, and thus there should be more active organizations that try to tackle this growing issue. We aim to be one of them.

It’s not just women and girls being enslaved. For the past few years, many cases involve young boys from Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, etc. Very rarely do news agencies ever make an effort to report such grave crimes against humanity.

For more information, you can always refer to our campaign against this. It’s not the best, but right now, it’s the least that we can do to help.

If you are interested in being an author with us at Sexual Terrorism, please let us know. We are looking for an editor-at-large or contributors to help us keep the site updated and to help its readers stay aware of what is going on in our societies.

From SOS Sexisme -

Trafficking in Eastern European women is a huge business, bringing from $ 5 billion to $ 22 billion a year to the sex industry’s tycoons. The risks are lower and the profits higher than from drug smuggling, according to a recent report by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. A woman can be resold and utilized until she dies or goes mad, which is often the case, said Marie-Jose Ragab, president of the Dulles Area Chapter of the National Organization for Women.

She said worse lies ahead for those who reach Turkey. There they are delivered to a market in the Turkish city of Trebizond, where they are literally bought and sold as slaves.

From Bosnia to Israel, women are sold for anything from $800 to $15,000, depending on the quality of the “product” and remain obligated by large debts for their transportation and the arrangement of documents, according to Human Rights Watch.