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Mexico
Many of the 80,000 Mexican children who cross from Mexico into the U.S. alone,
as undocumented immigrants, are fleeing abuse at home, or are escaping from
child prostitution rings. As such, they
would possibly qualify for permission to stay in the United States.
These children would be able to avail themselves of this opportunity if U.S.
Border Patrol officers would provide them with the appropriate interview form,
as federal law requires. Instead, these minors are typically deported less
than 24 hours after their arrests.
...Thousands of Mexican and Central American
children flee northward into the U.S. each year to escape child prostitution...
Nugent explained how in Mexico there exists terrible child trafficking in the
area of Acapulco, Guerrero, and that many now call this region "the new Bangkok"
of child sex tourism.
Nugent also emphasized that Tijuana [on the U.S. border
with San Diego County] has also become an zone controlled by powerful child
prostitution networks.
Many children [enslaved in prostitution] from Tijuana are trying
to flee to San
Diego[, California].
According to Nugent
70 percent of children who migrate and come to the
Office of
Refugees in the United States have suffered some sort of trauma from violence
or sexual exploitation...
[Expanded
Translation]
Georgina Olson
Excélsior
July 3, 2008
Also regarding the work of Christopher Nugent:
Missing in America: 8,000 immigrant children
The Examiner
Washington, DC
Feb. 1, 2007
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Mexico
Ocho de cada diez migrantes
son violadas
Eight in every ten migrant
women is raped as they cross Mexico
The 'American
Dream' for many migrating women turns into a
nightmare when, as they cross from Central America
into Mexico, they become victims of psycho-logical
torture and other abuses of all kinds.
According to the
latest report of the Forum on Migration, drafted
this year, eight out of 10
Central American women migrants who cross the southern border of
Mexico are raped, regardless of whether they are
adolescents or elderly women. Among them are
a high percentage of Guatemalan migrants [the
majority of Guatemalans are indigenous].
Mary Galván, a
social worker with the Instituto Madre Assunta, a
migrant assistance agency, notes that sexual abuse
is prevalent along both the southern and northern
borders of Mexico. Galván lamented that: "Central
American women are the most vulnerable, because they
attach them-selves to a male fellow traveler for
protection, and he takes advantage of her."
Galván recalled a
case from 2007, in which three sisters wanted to
cross the border. Assailants forced them to strip
naked. The youngest sister, because she was mentally
disabled, did not strip. She was grabbed by the hair
and taken away. She has not been heard from since...
Pedro Pantoja, a
priest who is in charge of the Posada Belén
(Bethlehem Shelter), located in Saltillo, in
Coahuila state, related the story of Marisa, a
Central American woman. Pantoja: "After passing
through the city of Tapachula [a border town near
Guatemala], due to a lack of
freight trains [to ride], Marisa had to walk through the
forest. Twelve men robbed her of everything, and
then they each raped her. A few days before this, a
policeman had also raped Marisa..."
(Extended
Translation)
-
Prensa Libre
July. 14, 2008
Dominican Republic
Republica Dominicana: En
primeros lugares del continente en trata de personas
Dominican Republic Holds
Record for Latin American Sex Trafficking
An estimated 50,000
Dominican women are victims of sex trafficking
networks
The Dominican
Republic occupies one of the three ghastly first
place positions in the number of victims of human
trafficking in the Americas, with an estimated
50,000 women victims, aside from additional numbers
of girls, boys and men also trapped in slavery.
During her remarks
at the opening of the seminar 'Protection for
Persons Affected by Trafficking,' Margarita Cedeño
de Fernández, First Lady of the Republic, stated
that trafficking in persons is a crime against the
state and those who are affected by it. It is a crime, she said,
that is linked to poverty, gender inequality, racial
discrimination, social marginalization and unequal
development...
A plan needed
The First Lady
noted that a national strategic plan of consolidated
action is needed. That plan must be well designed and
coordinated to serve as an effective tool to
eliminate this scourge, which, after trafficking in
weapons and drugs, has become the world's most
lucrative illegal activity.
In that vein, the
First Lady said that the Dominican
Republic has been combating human trafficking
since 1999. Work
began with the founding of the Inter-Agency
Committee for the Protection of Migrant Women (CIPROM),
created by Order 97-99. Since 2003 the country
has had a specific law, 137-03, to combat human
trafficking...
(Extended
Translation)
- Diario Libre
July. 14, 2008
Central America, Mexico
What is the status of the
Jacqueline Maria Jirón Silva case?
Question from Chuck
Goolsby to Catalina Fernandez, development
coordinator, Alianza Por Tus Derechos – June 12,
2008:
"What is the status of the
Jacqueline Maria Jirón Silva case?
Although every
victim is equal, this case is unique because we have
a picture of this Nicaraguan girl who was kidnapped
into sexual slavery at age 11, and because her
mother, a domestic worker in Costa Rica, has
travelled to every corner of Central America to find
her. See:
The Jaqueline Maria Jiron
Silva case."
Answer from Catalina Fernandez – June 20, 2008:
"Jacqueline turned
15 this June 11, 2008, and we continue searching.
The investigation
team of
Alianza Por Tus
Derechos (Alliance For Your Rights) in Central America looked tirelessly for
Jacqueline in the border area between Guatemala and
Mexico, which has given us information that she is
there. However many factors make us believe that
her rescue is not possible.
First, the case of
Jacqueline reached Alliance for Your Rights nearly a
year after she disappeared. This caused us to loose
a lot of time in the search for her. Further, the
corruption that rules among many Central American
authorities has caused these officials to warn
Jacqueline’s captors when we are in a given area,
and they move her.
Here
at Alliance for Your Rights, we are convinced that
she was the victim of a network of traffickers that
began in [the city of] Chinandega, Nicaragua . She
was moved among the Central American countries, and
she is being sexually exploited in a brothel in the
Guatemala / Mexico border area.
We will not rest in
our search for Jacqueline, but we call upon the
authorities to help us. We know that there are
honest people in their ranks, and we want them, and
also the truck drivers who transit the border
region, to alert us when they see Jacqueline."
-
www.ChangeMakers.net
July 14, 2008
Guatemala
Rescatan a unos 150 menores
Some 150 children have been rescued from
prostitution during 2008
During the 2008
authorities in Guatemala have rescued 150 underage
victims from prostitution. The victims were being
exploited in bars, nightclubs and clandestine
parties.
In raids conducted
by multi-state task forces, 65% of the women
detained have been underage.
-
Coralia Orantes
Prensa Libre
July 14, 2008
Argentina
Unos 5.000 niños se
prostituyen en Buenos Aires, según informe
periodístico
Thousands of children and
youth engage
in prostitution in Buenos Aires, according to a
newspaper report
Some 5,000 underage
prostitutes exist on the streets of Buenos Aires...
says a report today that the Diario Popular
(the People's Journal), quoting sources from the
Argentine Federal Police.
According to an
expert from the federal police, poor children
between the ages of 8 and 17 are exploited by gangs
that offer tourists a "low cost and relatively safe"
form of impunity...
According to
Fabiana Tuñes, who directs the NGO Casa Encuentro,
80% of the women who are victims of sexual
exploitation are underage. Tuñes believes that the
unofficial estimate of 5,000 child victims in
Argentina's capitol "could be triple: that number.
She said that in Buenos Aires: "We have to dismember
trafficking networks and their accomplices in our
political, judicial and law enforcement
environments." Tuñes emphasized that "It is clear to
us that these [criminal child sex trafficking] organiza-tions could not operate in
the relaxed way that they do if
'liberated zones' that allowed
pedophilia did not exist.
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