[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.

Posted in Eastern Europeans, Slavery, Sex trade, Prostitution - Gulf | 1 Comment

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.

Posted in Reports, Slavery, Child traficking, Sex trade | No Comments

The New York Times reports the following story:

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

[Read the rest of the article.]

Click here for another story involving Iraqi women and sexual slavery.

Posted in Syria, Iraq, War, Sex trade | No Comments

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.

Posted in Child traficking, Asia | 1 Comment

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.]

Posted in Child traficking, Asia, Sex trade | No Comments

Amal from the Arab Woman Progressive Voice writes:

Rape and war go hand in hand. That’s the lesson of history. That’s the lesson of Iraq. Iraqi women are being raped and for the most part are silent about it. The rapists, unfortunately, will get away.

When Sabreen al Janabi came forward with accusations of rape, the issue became a sectrarian one. Those who did not believe her, and in fact just issued a warrant for her arrest on the grounds that she’s has more than one husband, tarnished her reputation. Her supporters saw in her rape a violatioin of their sunni honor and slaughtered 22 men who had nothing to do with the rape in her name. Both parties were acting as if this is the first rape that ever happened. A woman’s rape is outrageous only if it fits in one group or another’s politcal agenda.

But Iraqi women are being raped. We will never know how many and their rapists, in the majority of cases, will never be punished. They will live silently with the pain and stigma.

Posted in Iraq, War | No Comments

Wikipedia has it wrong:

In the contemporary Middle East, sexual slavery is uncommon. However, transportation and trafficking of these women does exist there. Iran, Israel, and Turkey have a significant sex trade-much of it involving women from Eastern Europe and poor areas of Northern India.

Sexual slavery is very common in the Middle East as this site proves, especially if we go by their own definition of sexual slavery which includes “forced prostitution.”

Secondly, the majority of it does not involve Eastern European women or “poor areas of Northern India” (how vague is that?), but rather from places such as Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and quite recently Iraq and Iran. Moreover, Dubai has one of the worst cases of forced prostitution (and migrant rights abuses in general.)

Posted in Slavery, Sex trade, Uncategorized | No Comments

The following article is two years old, but the situation is not much different today than it was back then.

Excerpt taken from “Asian Sex Gazette,” which features inappropriate material (visit at your own risk.)

‘There have been some reports that indicate Iraqi women may be subjected to sexual exploitation in prostitution in Syria at the hands of Iraqi criminal networks, but those reports have not been confirmed,’ the report said.

The going rate for an Iraqi prostitute is 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($7), according to The Toronto Star.

Though some women are adopting prostitution to feed their families, others are being sold against their will.

The Independent interviewed two women who were abducted and then sold into prostitution.

‘Because I was not married, I was sold for $6,000, and Sajeeda for $3,000. My hymen had a price - this is when we realized that we were going to have to do bad things with men. We were terrified,’ one of the women told The Independent.

A growing concern of many humanitarian organizations is the young ages of Iraqi prostitutes. In an article for Salon magazine, an outreach organization for refugee children, Good Shepherd Nunnery, in Damascus said they had lost many of their students.

‘In the past year, many of the children attending the nunnery`s learning center suddenly disappeared’ said a sister at the school.

Read more. The article also describes how prostitution in Iraq serves as a last resort to some women.

Posted in Slavery, War, Sex trade | No Comments

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.

Posted in Eastern Europeans, Israel, Sex trade | No Comments

This is a blog post by Reem George, whom I recently contacted about this site. This has been featured in Arabisto:

This is my first blog, so I decided to write about a subject I am passionate about, and one I spent months researching and even dreaming about at some point.

Why sex trafficking? Is it an act of desperation by those who sell women and girls around the globe? How does the mind come to a point where it accepts to carryout a crime so heinous, so despicable, and so unjustifiable?

In the mind of a criminal, who is looking to make some money, human trafficking and especially sex trafficking is one that outweighs all the profits made from drug trafficking per say. This is simply because women who are trafficked can be “recycled” over and again and can be bought and sold by one criminal to another.

So what does human trafficking have to do with the Middle East? The problem has always existed in the area, but in deeply religious societies, the problem never gets the attention that it deserves. Human trafficking is caused by political and economic upheavals and instability in the country of origin, widespread poverty, chronic unemployment, lack of economic opportunities, marginalization of women and girls, lack of education, rapid modernization leading to the loss of cultural values, development of materialistic values, break of family ties, and social and cultural practices that devalue women and girls.

Through transnational organized networks, criminals take advantage of declining conditions and prey on poor women, who are often displaced victims of war and lure them by work opportunities abroad. Women are generally bought, sold or auctioned to brothels and private buyers as sexual slaves. The crime of sex trafficking is spreading in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon and Yemen.

In Tehran alone, there are over 87,000 prostitutes on the streets, most of them forced into the business, with some being as young as nine years of age. Following the invasion and occupation in Iraq, hundreds of Iraqi women as well as Iraqi boys were kidnapped and sold into slavery in Syria and Yemen. In the United Arab Emirates, women are being trafficked from countries in Eastern Europe and Russia, and as far as China, India, and Indonesia.

The pattern of sexual slavery has not changed in the Middle East today, but rather has increased in modern times, especially in the more industrialized nations of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. The business employs modern technology and takes advantage of porous borders and corrupt leadership. This increase resulted as the appeal for the old world desires was coupled with the lures of business and profit-making opportunities in the Middle East. The temptations of “business and pleasure” have attracted tourists, businessmen, criminal gangs and sexual predators alike from around the world.

This is a global phenomenon that is occurring at our doorstep, in every country, in every city, and it is possibly happening in your street at this moment. I live in San Diego, close to the busiest border in the world. I am not worried about “terrorists” crossing these borders. I am worried about girls as young as nine, being kidnapped and brought here against their will and made to lose their dignity and childhood, all for money and power.

In the Middle East, where civil wars are raging on in Iraq and the Sudan, and intense fighting in Palestine is prolonged by the lack of cooperation, the issue of sex trafficking becomes even more difficult to control. But, who is listening? It is terrorism that people are more worried about, this war between powerful men, and not human trafficking. Trafficking is a war between men and vulnerable human beings, most of whom are women. They are our mothers and daughters, sisters and nieces. Are you listening?

An excellent piece. It makes people aware of an issue that should be important to us all, but isn’t. Unfortunately, the majority of us are not listening, simply because there aren’t enough people talking and writing about it.

Posted in Sex trade | No Comments