Showing posts with label world and Bride trafficking. Show all posts
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Hyderabad girl sold to Arab in Goa by her mother, brother-in-law, escapes
Hyderabad: A 15-year-old girl who was reportedly sold to a Gulf national a week ago allegedly by her mother and brother-in-law escaped from Goa and returned to Hyderabad.
A rights activist, who is sheltering a girl who ran away from her Arab national husband, said the minor was sexually exploited by about 15 people. “She is now mentally unstable,” alleged activist Jaya Vindhyala.
According to Ms Vindhyala, there was already a case against her brother-in-law who had earlier sold his daughter from his first wife to the Arab.
The man, identified as Akbar, had been planning to marry the minor to a Gulf national for a year. According to the victim, she was dropped at the airport by her brother-in-law and mother from where the man took her to Goa. “The girl said when she refused the mother and brother-in-law beat her up. Her condition is not stable. We are taking her to the police station now." said Ms Vindhyala.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Cambodia, China Drafting Agreement to Curb Bride Trafficking
Between August 2013 and June of this year, Licadho said it received 26 complaints—involving a total of 37 women—who had been mistreated or sold into the sex trade after being sent to China as brides.
Read more http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cambodia-china-drafting-agreement-to-curb-bride-trafficking-62940/
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Conflict and Bride Trafficking: The Sino-Burmese Border
This piece is by Laura Hackney, from Stanford STAND
With the end of the ceasefire in 2011 between the KIA (Kachin Independence Army) and the national Burmese army*, fighting in the Kachin State has escalated across the vast province. Though peace talks have taken place recently in the Chinese border town of Ruili, the effects of this violence have destroyed lives and endangered the livelihoods of thousands of Kachin people living in the region. Additionally, the Palaung people in the Northeast Shan State of Burma have also suffered decades of fighting, increased food, education, and healthcare costs, as well as military seizures of land. The vulnerabilities of these minority groups (especially women) have intensified despite the political reforms coming from Naypyidaw.Due to these various compounding factors, these states along the Sino-Burmese border have become a perfect breeding ground for the trafficking of women and girls into China’s Yunnan Province. Over the past 15 years, migration to China has increased as economic opportunities in towns such as Ruili have exploded. Once thought of as the “Wild West” of China, these border towns were the centers for the sex industry, drug trafficking, gambling, and a lucrative jade market. The local government has swiftly cracked down on these illicit activities (especially in Ruili) in the recent decade. However, there has emerged another lucrative market in the region, namely—women trafficked to become brides for Chinese men.As with several other rapidly developing nations, China has experienced extraordinary demographic changes in the past three decades. In addition to an aging population, there exists in China an aggregate gender imbalance. This imbalance exists in various regional contexts, and has had its most extreme manifestations in rural areas. Due to land reform, the One Child Policy, the proliferation of ultra-sounds, and the overwhelming dependence on son to carry on the family name, the sex ratio at birth in some regions is greatly skewed (in some areas the imbalance is as high as 130 males per every 100 females). Traditional means of securing a bride is no longer available for some men, particularly those living in poor villages. Ruili’s location on the border between Yunnan and Burma acts as a gateway for women to be trafficked into Yunnan and then out to different provinces across the country.Two Burmese NGOs, the Palaung Women’s Association and the Kachin Women’s Association, have been working in Thailand to document these cases of human trafficking. As with a large number of trafficking cases, traffickers are able to take advantage of the relative poverty of those victims who they wish to sell. Many young women living in the Palaung and Kachin areas of Burma are told that they will be able to find good jobs in prosperous China and send money home to their families. These women enter China, often without documentation, and are sold to Chinese families who need a wife and heir. Once in China, these women do not have access to many public services, can suffer abuse at the hands of their new husbands, or be forced to work without wages in various industries.Both the Burmese and Chinese governments have established National Plans of Action against Trafficking of Women and Children; however, the root causes of this problem, especially in Burma, have yet to be addressed. The causes of trafficking can be complex, incorporating gender relations, conflict environments, economic resource allocation, globalization, proliferation of crime networks, and poverty--to name a few. In this light, human trafficking is an intolerable symptomatic of various forms of oppression. As a starting point, there must be awareness that a main factor pushing these women in the hands of traffickers is the lack of opportunities in their home cities or villages. An end to the fighting in the Kachin State and a focus on more equitable economic investment by foreign, private, and government entities should be the priority for those working for positive change in Burma.
*Note: “Burmese” here does not explicitly mean the Burmese ethnic group.
Friday, March 8, 2013
China imprisons four men for ‘ghost marriage’ corpse bride trafficking
BEIJING — A county court in central China has sentenced four men to prison for digging up and selling corpses on the black market to enable “ghost marriages”, a millennia-old custom of burying deceased bachelors alongside newly deceased wives so that they will not grow lonely in the afterlife.
On Saturday, the Xi’an Evening News reported that the Yanchuan county court in Yan’an City, Shanxi province, sentenced each of the men to more than two years in prison for stealing 10 female corpses, cleaning them up and counterfeiting their medical records to boost their prices, and selling them on the black market for a total of £25,000 (S$47,000).
Ritual ghost marriages, which may date back to the 17th century BC, are increasingly rare in contemporary China – Mao Zedong tried to eliminate them when he assumed power in 1949 – but they are still practised in rural parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces. Families often employ a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones.
The four men, with surnames Pang, Bai, He and Zhang, exhumed the corpses in the winter of 2011 from a smattering of arid, coal-rich counties in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces.
The state-run Global Times newspaper reported in 2011 that an influx of coal money to parts of northern Shaanxi province bolstered the area’s underground corpse trade, with a newly wealthy but superstitious demographic suddenly being able to afford high prices for desirable postmortem mates. Some are known to purchase their corpse brides straight from hospitals, where they cut deals with grieving families.
This is not the first time that ghost marriage intermediaries have fallen on the wrong side of the law. One woman died over the lunar new year in February 2012 and was sold by her family to the family of a recently deceased young man for about £3,700; soon afterwards, police caught a graverobber selling her twice-exhumed body to another family for slightly less.
In 2009, a grieving father in Xianyang City, also in Shaanxi province, paid a team of graverobbers £2,700 to find a suitable bride for his son, who had died in a car crash. They were arrested for exhuming the remains of a teenage girl who had killed herself not long after failing her college entrance exams. GUARDIAN
|
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Conflict and Bride Trafficking: The Sino-Burmese Border
This piece is by Laura Hackney, from Stanford STAND
With the end of the ceasefire in 2011 between the KIA (Kachin Independence Army) and the national Burmese army*, fighting in the Kachin State has escalated across the vast province. Though peace talks have taken place recently in the Chinese border town of Ruili, the effects of this violence have destroyed lives and endangered the livelihoods of thousands of Kachin people living in the region. Additionally, the Palaung people in the Northeast Shan State of Burma have also suffered decades of fighting, increased food, education, and healthcare costs, as well as military seizures of land. The vulnerabilities of these minority groups (especially women) have intensified despite the political reforms coming from Naypyidaw.
Due to these various compounding factors, these states along the Sino-Burmese border have become a perfect breeding ground for the trafficking of women and girls into China’s Yunnan Province. Over the past 15 years, migration to China has increased as economic opportunities in towns such as Ruili have exploded. Once thought of as the “Wild West” of China, these border towns were the centers for the sex industry, drug trafficking, gambling, and a lucrative jade market. The local government has swiftly cracked down on these illicit activities (especially in Ruili) in the recent decade. However, there has emerged another lucrative market in the region, namely—women trafficked to become brides for Chinese men.
As with several other rapidly developing nations, China has experienced extraordinary demographic changes in the past three decades. In addition to an aging population, there exists in China an aggregate gender imbalance. This imbalance exists in various regional contexts, and has had its most extreme manifestations in rural areas. Due to land reform, the One Child Policy, the proliferation of ultra-sounds, and the overwhelming dependence on son to carry on the family name, the sex ratio at birth in some regions is greatly skewed (in some areas the imbalance is as high as 130 males per every 100 females). Traditional means of securing a bride is no longer available for some men, particularly those living in poor villages. Ruili’s location on the border between Yunnan and Burma acts as a gateway for women to be trafficked into Yunnan and then out to different provinces across the country.
Two Burmese NGOs, the Palaung Women’s Association and the Kachin Women’s Association, have been working in Thailand to document these cases of human trafficking. As with a large number of trafficking cases, traffickers are able to take advantage of the relative poverty of those victims who they wish to sell. Many young women living in the Palaung and Kachin areas of Burma are told that they will be able to find good jobs in prosperous China and send money home to their families. These women enter China, often without documentation, and are sold to Chinese families who need a wife and heir. Once in China, these women do not have access to many public services, can suffer abuse at the hands of their new husbands, or be forced to work without wages in various industries.
Both the Burmese and Chinese governments have established National Plans of Action against Trafficking of Women and Children; however, the root causes of this problem, especially in Burma, have yet to be addressed. The causes of trafficking can be complex, incorporating gender relations, conflict environments, economic resource allocation, globalization, proliferation of crime networks, and poverty--to name a few. In this light, human trafficking is an intolerable symptomatic of various forms of oppression. As a starting point, there must be awareness that a main factor pushing these women in the hands of traffickers is the lack of opportunities in their home cities or villages. An end to the fighting in the Kachin State and a focus on more equitable economic investment by foreign, private, and government entities should be the priority for those working for positive change in Burma.
*Note: “Burmese” here does not explicitly mean the Burmese ethnic group.
|
|
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
North Korean Bride Trafficking
North Koreans escaping regime repression employ escape channels likened by author Melanie Kirkpatrick to Harriet Tubman’s for American slaves. Explore the network of ethnic Koreans, brokers and missionaries who seek to aid those fleeing the North with Kirkpatrick, in conversation with human rights advocate and U.S. businessman Steven Kim, founder of 318 Partners, an effort to rescue North Korean women trafficked to China
.
Melanie Kirkpatrick is a writer-journalist based in Connecticut and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She contributes reviews and commentary to various publications, including the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, for which she worked from 1980 until mid-2009. Her book, Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad, is published by Encounter Books.
At The Wall Street Journal, Melanie was deputy editor of the editorial page from 2006-2009 and a longtime member of the editorial board. As a deputy editor, she was responsible for the editorial page’s coverage of international issues and oversaw the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal in Asia and Europe, the Far Eastern Economic Review and the U.S. columnists on foreign affairs. She wrote editorials and op-ed articles on foreign affairs.
Melanie spent 10 years in Asia, working for The Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and, prior to that, for a division of Time-Life Books in Tokyo. She received the 2001 Mary Morgan Hewett Award for Women in Journalism from the Friends of the East-West Center in Honolulu. The annual award recognizes a journalist who has demonstrated commitment, hard work and expanding influence throughout her career.
She received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. She was a Gannett Newspaper Foundation Fellow in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a trustee of Princeton in Asia, an internship program in Asia for young graduates of American universities; and a director of the America for Bulgaria Foundation.
Ms. Kirkpatrick is married to Jack David, who is a senior fellow and trustee of the Hudson Institute.
More at The Korea Society
.
At The Wall Street Journal, Melanie was deputy editor of the editorial page from 2006-2009 and a longtime member of the editorial board. As a deputy editor, she was responsible for the editorial page’s coverage of international issues and oversaw the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal in Asia and Europe, the Far Eastern Economic Review and the U.S. columnists on foreign affairs. She wrote editorials and op-ed articles on foreign affairs.
Melanie spent 10 years in Asia, working for The Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and, prior to that, for a division of Time-Life Books in Tokyo. She received the 2001 Mary Morgan Hewett Award for Women in Journalism from the Friends of the East-West Center in Honolulu. The annual award recognizes a journalist who has demonstrated commitment, hard work and expanding influence throughout her career.
She received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. She was a Gannett Newspaper Foundation Fellow in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a trustee of Princeton in Asia, an internship program in Asia for young graduates of American universities; and a director of the America for Bulgaria Foundation.
Ms. Kirkpatrick is married to Jack David, who is a senior fellow and trustee of the Hudson Institute.
More at The Korea Society
|
|
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Monday, August 20, 2012
Philippine : Tighter monitoring of human trafficking methods
This is in relation to Jocelyn R. Uy’s report titled “Bureau of Immigration uncovers new human trafficking scheme” (Inquirer, 8/4/12). The Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO), as the lead agency of the Inter-Agency Council Against Human Trafficking (IACAT) Committee on Advocacy and Communication (Advocom), would like to inform the public that the fight against human trafficking has resulted in tighter monitoring by concerned government agencies.
Since the establishment by the CFO and IACAT of the 24/7 telephone hotline 1343 against human trafficking, 11,000 calls from local and overseas sources have been received, with 165 case calls recorded, and of which 52 are reportedly human trafficking victims. Unfortunately, many victims do not file charges against their recruiters.
Due to the need for closer surveillance of human traffickers, especially via marriage bureaus or syndicates, on July 16 the CFO took over from two private service providers the guidance and counseling services for Filipino spouses of foreign partners. This was necessary because doubts had earlier been raised regarding the improper use of the CFO sticker, which is affixed to passports of spouses and their foreigner-partners upon presentation of the certificate of completion of the counseling requirement. The CFO has expanded its services and taken a direct hand to ensure the legitimacy of the documents being presented.
In addition, the CFO emphasizes that the convergence initiatives of the Aquino administration have resulted in stronger IACAT coordination in the wake of the marked increase in the number of Filipino women with foreign spouses heading for abroad, especially for South Korea. The recent successes reported by the Bureau of Immigration in curbing the efforts of traffickers using “fake” or “arranged” marriages for transporting Filipino women prove that this is an effective way to nip the problem at various points of the departure processing system. Even though the CFO has recently signed an agreement with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (Mogef) of South Korea to improve the delivery of information and assistance here and abroad, this is still no guarantee that our nationals will be well-protected.
Trafficking, in the guise of intermarriage, is a known practice, updated with advances in social media and the Internet. The CFO case monitoring databank shows that offers of overseas employment via marriage are a source of income for local prostitution rings, sometimes with the collusion of the victims’ relatives and friends.
The need for heavily penalizing and revealing the identity of the perpetrators of mail order bride schemes and other forms of human trafficking cannot be overemphasized. The CFO strongly urges policy reform via changes in the Anti-Mail Order Bride Law (RA 6955) and the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 (RA 9208), as initiatives of the IACAT-Advocom will need the cooperation of all stakeholders.
—UNDERSECRETARY MARY GRACE TIRONA,
executive director,
Commission on Filipinos Overseas
North Korea: Human Traffickers and the Chinese Market for Brides
Steven Kim, an American businessman from Long Island, New York, may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides. He acquired this expertise accidentally. He likes to say it was God’s plan.
Kim, a practicing Christian, became a regular attendee. One Sunday he noticed two shabbily dressed men seated in a corner of the room. After worship, he went up to them, said hello, and learned to his astonishment that they were from North Korea. They had escaped across the Tumen River to northeast China and traveled 2,000 miles south to Guangdong province, a journey that took two months. They hoped to find a way to slip across the border into Hong Kong. “They came to church asking for help,” he says. “But the church would only feed them, give them a few dollars, and let them go.”
That was the start. Kim began to assist North Korean refugees clandestinely. He provided safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries. Before long, he gained a reputation along the new underground railroad as someone North Koreans could count on for assistance. Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them as brides.
Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China. It’s named after Article 318 of the Chinese criminal code, the law under which Kim was arrested in September 2003 as he led nine North Koreans in a prayer meeting at his apartment. Convicted of helping illegal migrants, he spent four years in a Chinese prison. His home office now, on a quiet street on suburban Long Island, is a luxurious contrast to the Chinese prison cell he shared with a dozen felons. On the morning of my visit, his cellphone rings repeatedly with calls from South Korea, China, and Southeast Asia regarding a rescue operation in the works. It is not until lunchtime, when most of Asia is asleep, that his phone finally goes quiet.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Scandal of 'summer brides'
Milena Veselinovic on Egyptian schoolgirls married to foreigners for a price, and for a season only
Hundreds of under-age Egyptian girls are entering temporary marriages with rich tourists from the Persian Gulf during the summer in return for money for their families, a US report has found. These unions, dubbed summer marriages, are not legally binding, and end when the foreigners return to their own countries.
The marriages are organised by intermediaries who link wealthy men, mainly from Saudi Arabia, with poor families with young daughters, for commission. The foreign "husbands" give families money and presents akin to a dowry, with the "bride price" ranging between the equivalent of £320 and £3.200.
A recent US State Department report "Trafficking in Persons" found that wealthy men from the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, travel to Egypt to buy "temporary" or "summer marriages" with Egyptian females, including girls under 18, and that these arrangements are often facilitated by the girls' parents and marriage brokers. The report found that children involved in the temporary marriages suffer both sexual servitude and forced labour as servants to their "husbands".
Egypt has laws designed to combat trafficking, which state that it is illegal to marry a foreigner when there is an age difference of more than 10 years. Nevertheless, there are ways to circumnavigate this, with one common practice being to forge birth certificates to make the girls appear older, and the men younger. In 2009, a court in Alexandria sentenced two marriage registrars to two years in prison for conducting temporary marriages of hundreds of girls under 18, but non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say that this is the tip of the iceberg, and that more needs to be done to implement existing laws.
Pre-marital sex is forbidden under Islamic law, and most hotels and landlords demand proof of marriage before allowing an Egyptian to stay in the same room with a person of the opposite sex. So these marriage contracts are a way around this. In many cases, the family agrees to marry their daughter without her consent, but often the girls are willing participants as they see no other way of helping to feed their family.
In a thinly veiled form of human trafficking, some men take their Egyptian spouses back to their home country to work as maids for their first wives, in conditions comparable to slave labour. The ones left behind in Egypt do not fare much better, shunned by society and finding it difficult to marry in the traditional way, especially if their temporary marriage resulted in children.
Many abandon their offspring out of shame, either taking them to orphanages or leaving them to join thousands of other Egyptian street children. Some girls find themselves cast in a cycle of temporary marriages with Gulf tourists, and others are targeted by Egyptian men who marry them in order to force them into prostitution.
Dr Hoda Badran, who chairs the NGO Alliance for Arab Women, thinks that poverty is the main factor behind this phenomenon. She said: "If those families are in such a need to sell their daughters you can imagine how poor they are. Many times, the girl does not know she is marrying the husband just for the short term. She is young, she accepts what her family tells her, she knows the man is going to help them. If the girl is very poor, sometimes it is the only way out to help the family survive."
Through her work, Dr Badran met several former "summer wives" living in villages around Giza. One of them, Aziza (not her real name), married a 45-year-old man from Saudi Arabia when she was 17 because he promised to find a job for her brother in the Gulf, and gave her father the equivalent of £2,120, an enormous amount of money for her desperately poor family. He also bought her dresses and took her to expensive restaurants.
Aziza's Saudi husband stayed for a month, and before leaving said that he would send for her to join him later. She waited for several months and, by this time heavily pregnant, tried to get hold of him through the Saudi embassy so her child could be formally recognised by him. However, her marriage was not officially registered which meant that Aziza could not prove her claim. She had no choice but to go back to her family and raise her baby as a single mother, something extremely frowned upon in Egypt's conservative society.
| |
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Friday, July 6, 2012
27 mn living in a world of slavery, bonded labour continues in India
Up to 27 million people are living in slavery around the world, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton estimated as the US unveiled its annual report into human trafficking.
But the report showed that as governments become more aware of the issue, instigating tough new laws and programs to help victims, progress is being made in wiping out what it called the "scourge of trafficking."
US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton looks at Fatima M'Baye, president and co-founder, Mauritanian Association for Human Rights, Mauritania, as she is recognized at the release of the 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report in Washington. AP/Cliff Owen
"The end of legal slavery in the United States and in other countries around the world has not, unfortunately, meant the end of slavery," said Clinton.
"Today it is estimated as many as 27 million people around the world are victims of modern slavery, what we sometimes call trafficking in persons," she said at the unveiling of the report at the state department.
"Those victims of modern slavery are women and men, girls and boys, and their stories remind us of the kind of inhumane treatment we are capable of as human beings," said Clinton.
"Whatever their background, they are the living, breathing reminders that the work to eradicate slavery remains unfinished."
Children work in a paddy field at Gobindpura village in Bathinda district of Punjab on World Day against Child Labour. HT/Kulbir Beera
Out of the 185 countries included in the 2012 report, only 33 complied fully with laws in place to end human trafficking, putting them at the top of a four-tier ranking system.
On India, the report states that the country is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking.
India, however, has maintained its position at tier 2, which it climbed to in 2011. Tier 2 is defined as a country whose government does not fully comply with the TVPA’s (Trafficking Victims Protection Act) minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
"The forced labor of millions of its citizens constitutes India’s largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children in debt bondage are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. A common characteristic of bonded labor is the use of physical and sexual violence as coercive tools," it says.
According to the report, 90% of trafficking in India is internal, and those from India’s most disadvantaged social strata, including the lowest castes, are most vulnerable. It also states that children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, agricultural workers, and to a lesser extent, in some areas of rural Uttar Pradesh as carpet weavers.
"There were new reports about the continued forced labor of children in hybrid cottonseed plots in Gujarat, and reports that forced labor may be present in the Sumangali scheme in Tamil Nadu, in which employers pay young women a lump sum to be used for a dowry at the end of a three-year term."
The report also recommends that India develops a comprehensive anti-trafficking law or amend anti-trafficking legislation to be in line with the 2000 UN TIP Protocol, with adequate penalties prescribed by the UN Transnational Organized Crime Convention. It also suggests that India increase prosecutions and convictions on all forms of trafficking, including bonded labour.
Prosecution of officials allegedly complicit in trafficking, and convict and punish officials complicit in trafficking; encourage states to establish special anti-trafficking courts and improvement in distribution of state and central government rehabilitation funds to victims under the Bonded Labour (System) Abolition Act (BLSA), improve protections for trafficking victims who testify against their traffickers, encourage AHTUs to address both sex and labour trafficking of adults and children as well as encourage state and district governments to file bonded labour cases under appropriate criminal statutes are some of the suggestions.
Five countries had moved up from the bottom blacklist known as tier 3, including Myanmar and Venezuela, to be included among the 42 countries now on what is known as a tier 2 watchlist.
Among the 16 other countries on the blacklist were Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Kenya slipped down onto the watchlist for the first time in five years, while Nigeria lost its place on tier 1, moving down a notch as the report highlighted that women and children were forced into labor and sex trafficking.
But Clinton hailed the fact that a total of 29 countries had been upgraded to a higher ranking, "which means that their governments are taking the right steps."
They included Bangladesh, which was bumped up to tier two for making significant efforts to comply with minimum standards, including passing "a comprehensive anti-trafficking law" in December.
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, director of the office to combat trafficking in persons, said while the number of people officially identified as victims of trafficking and slavery had gone up by 28% since last year to 42,291, the numbers of prosecutions in 2012 had also increased by 10% to 3,969.
So while countries "still have a little ways to go" there was "the beginnings, I think, of a real trend," he said.
This year's report focuses on how to better protect the victims, and urges governments to meet the challenge head-on.
A girl covers her face near the road to Mazatenango, where she fills holes in the road with earth in exchange for money, about 165km north of Guatemala City. Reuters/Jorge Dan Lopez
"Traffickers are criminals. Governments -- which alone have the power to punish criminals and provide legal recourse to survivors -- cannot waver in their efforts to confront modern slavery," the report says.
But it also argues that human trafficking takes many guises and it is not just about moving people across borders to trap them in prostitution.
"The United States government, and increasingly, the international community, view 'trafficking in persons' as the term through which all forms of modern slavery are criminalized," it says.
"The essence of the trafficking experience is the denial of freedom, including the freedom to choose where and how you live, the freedom to work or choose not to work, the freedom from threats, and the freedom of bodily integrity," the report says.
| |
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Indian jailed for treating brother's wife as slave
The sister-in-law of an Indian woman, who came to the US after an arranged marriage, has been sentenced to two years in prison for physically assaulting her and treating her as a slave. Rajani Jagota, 32, was convicted in February this year on charges of labour trafficking and assault,
said Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe.
"Simply put, this is a tragic case of modern-day slavery. The victim was physically assaulted, psychologically coerced and fearful of reporting the often-daily abuse to authorities. This defendant will pay a very heavy price for her actions," Zugibe said.
The victim, now 25-years-old, is an Indian citizen who came to the US after an arranged marriage with Vishal Jagota.
The defendant, along with her mother, Parveen Jagota and brother using intimidation, physical abuse and manipulation to force the victim to work as a round-the-clock servant, performing a variety of household chores, cooking, child care and other tasks under threats of violence.
When the victim threatened to contact authorities, the Jagotas vowed to concoct wild stories, accusing her of committing various types of crime.
On one occasion, Parveen and Rajani burned the victims' hand with a hot iron in order to "teach her a lesson", following their displeasure with her ironing skills.
The victim's sister-in-law also forbade the victim from receiving medical treatment for the serious burn, telling her to treat the open wound with toothpaste.
The victim was forced to face her captors for nearly three years, beginning shortly after her arrival in New York in January 2008 until September 2010.
"Despite relentless exploitation, trapped in dehumanizing conditions, the victim in this case exhibited enormous strength by coming forward and participating in the prosecution of her captors," said Chief Assistant District Attorney Arthur Ferraro.
"Victims of human trafficking rarely break free. When they do, most are too wary of authorities to detail their personal nightmare. Hopefully, this case has raised awareness of the plight of people caught in the dark world of modern-day slavery."
This case marks the first indictments, trial and convictions under New York State's new human trafficking law.
Parveen is scheduled to be sentenced on July 24, 2012.
The victim's husband, who was convicted of assault for biting her, was sentenced last month to probation.
| |
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Sister-in-law gets 2 years in Ramapo bride trafficking-assault convictions
 |
| Parveen and Aman Jagota walk into Rockland County Courthouse Jan. 30, 2012 to stand trial for forced servitude and sexual abuse of a 22- year-old daughter-in-law on. / Ricky Flores/The Journal News |
Written by
Hema Easley
A Rockland County judge sentenced a Ramapo woman to two years in state prison, faulting her in the labor trafficking and assault of her Indian sister-in-law who testified she was brutalized by her husband and his family when she came to the United States following an arranged marriage.
Rajani Jagota, 31, was given a minimum of one year and a maximum of three years in prison for two counts of labor trafficking, and two years for a felony assault conviction. Judge William Nelson, in New City, ruled the sentences would run concurrently. A Parole Board will decide the exact length of the sentence.
Nelson fined Rajani Jagota $375 and ordered her to stay away from the victim under an order of protection until June 2023.
Her mother, Parveen Jagota, 58, was given the same sentence Wednesday morning for two labor trafficking convictions, and between one to three years for felony assault. But Nelson agreed he would review her sentence and rule on July 24 after her attorney raised questions about the felony assault portion of the sentence.
Parveen and Rajani Jagota are the mother-in-law and sister-in-law respectively of the victim who came to the United States in 2008 following her marriage to Vishal Jagota, which was arranged by her relatives in the United States and India. The victim’s identity has not been disclosed by The Journal News because her father-in-law was accused of sexually abusing her. He was found not guilty of the charges.
The victim’s husband was sentenced in May to three years' probation and 220 hours of community service for third-degree assault, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
“She was selected as a servant, not as a bride,” Nelson told the defendants who were seated in court along with a group of supporters from the Indian community. “It was his mission to find a young Indian woman from India, not one raised in the United States, ... For three years, (the victim) lived a life of involuntary servitude, waiting hand and foot for you and your family.”
In five days of testimony in February, the dark-haired petite victim told Nelson that she came to the United States expecting to live a happy married life, but instead her in-laws forced her to perform backbreaking work, and beat her if it wasn't to their satisfaction.
She also said her movements were restricted and that her mother-in-law burned her with an iron on the instruction of her sister-in-law, and her husband bit her on her face as part of a pattern of punishment.
Prosecutor Arthur Ferraro said Rajani Jagota showed no remorse to a probation officer and exhibited a confrontational attitude in the first of her two meetings. The victim’s aunt said in an affidavit that Rajani Jagota confronted her at a supermarket after the conviction and made disparaging remarks.
Rajani Jagota sobbed as court officers escorted her out of the courtroom. Her 4-year-old son waited outside with her brother during the sentencing.
She will be held in county jail until the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision decides which prison she will be sent to.
The Rockland County District Attorney’s Office has said the case is the first time in New York state that a 2007 labor trafficking statute, commonly understood to deal with illegal immigrants being forced to work in inhuman conditions, is being used within the context of a household. The victim lived with her husband and his family in a multigenerational home on Butternut Drive in Ramapo.
“The state prison sentence is appropriate,” said prosecutor Arthur Ferraro. “This is going to send a message that you just can’t do this.”
A dozen Indian supporters gathered outside Nelson’s courtroom after the sentencing, commiserating with the Jagota family. The oldest Jagota son, Vikas, who wept before the sentencing, collapsed as soon as he left the courtroom.
Several friends of the Jagotas family complained bitterly about the conviction and the sentence, saying that the family was upright, honest, hardworking and with the highest moral standards. They alleged that the victim lied to the court about the Jagotas, and that she only agreed to the arranged marriage because she wanted permanent residence in the United States.
Those allegations were made by the defense during the trial and vigorously denied by the prosecution. In fact, prosecutors said, the victim arrived in the United States with permanent residency, and had no incentive to lie.
Kulwant Singh, a friend of the Jagotas from West Nyack, said he was saddened by the tragedy that had befallen the family. Family disputes, like those between the Jagotas and their daughter-in-law, could have been resolved if they had found an intermediary to resolve their differences, he said.
“The family didn’t find the right middle man,” he said. “This tragedy could have been averted.” http://www.lohud.com
| |
| Subscribe to Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance India HTRAI |
| Email: |
| Visit this group |
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
Posts
