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Added: June 30, 2009

Texas, USA, Mexico

Man handed 5 years in sex trafficking

A former registered nurse was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for engaging in what was the first and so far only federal sex-trafficking case in San Antonio.

Brent Andrew Stephens, 41, who surrendered his nursing license amid the criminal case, pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to harbor aliens for financial gain and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion…

Stephens admitted that he and his business partner, Timothy Gereb, planned to use young Mexican women as escorts and in a massage parlor in May 2007.

The two paid Stephens' personal assistant, Maria de Jesus “Jessica” Ochoa; her sister, Consuelo Pilar Ochoa; and their mother, Isabel, to recruit and smuggle females from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, to San Antonio.

The Ochoas smuggled three victims, including two minors, and took them to Stephens. The victims were given alcohol, threatened at gunpoint by Gereb and warned not to return to Mexico, court documents state…

The victims told agents that once they arrived in San Antonio, they were told they would have to work as prostitutes for five years to pay the $3,000 smuggling fees…

Gereb, 50, was sentenced earlier to 10 years in prison. Isabel Ochoa, 60, received time served. Consuelo Ochoa, 34, was sentenced to 18 months for the sex-trafficking case and 39 months for a separate drug case. Maria Ochoa, 32, got 12 months and one day and is now out of jail.

Guillermo Contreras

Express-New

June 25, 2009

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Added: July 01, 2009

Florida, USA

Lee County at Forefront of Slavery Fight

"We're light years ahead of other communities," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy, who's prosecuted 20 slavery and human trafficking cases throughout Southwest Florida over the past decade, freeing 50 victims. "Because of our united community efforts, we're in a place most areas aspire to."

Those efforts include a two-man team at the Lee County Sheriff's Office, a multi-agency task force and a new command center at Florida Gulf Coast University: The Esperanza Project.

"What's happening at FGCU is electric - just electric," Molloy said.

One of a scant handful of university-based human trafficking research centers in the country, it opened eight months ago with $100,000 in seed money from a federal anti-trafficking grant given to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

The center's name means "hope" in Spanish. It's also the pseudonym of the 11-year-old girl whose enslavement in Cape Coral became a galvanizing force as Lee county's first high-profile victim.

In 2005, the girl was discovered in Cape Coral, pregnant and bleeding. Born in Guatemala, she was sold to a man who brought her here and forced her into sexual and domestic slavery. She was repeatedly raped and beaten during her two-year captivity. Molloy eventually sent her captors to federal prison.

Her case sparked a wave of questions and self-examination among law enforcement and residents alike.

In short order, the Sanibel chapter of Zonta International, a service group, made human trafficking its signature cause.

The U.S. Department of Justice awarded the Lee County Sheriff's Office a $450,000, three-year grant to combat human trafficking.

By the end of 2005, Molloy said authorities were working on more trafficking cases in Southwest Florida than many entire state sees in a year…

"(The U.S.) spends about about $23 million on this annually - that's not much at all,"... "Estimates are there are about 17,000 [new] foreign-born trafficking victims alone [each and every year] and 17,000 homicide victims, and yet we solve 70 percent of the homicides and 1 percent of trafficking cases." ...

The man in the No. 1 human trafficking job in Washington is Luis C. de Baca. The new ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons at the State Department promises trafficking will be a priority of the new administration as well - especially, of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton...

Amy Bennett Williams

www.News-Press.com

June 28, 2009

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Added: June 30, 2009

Mexico

Mexican Congressional Deputy Maricela Contreras speaks out about defects in trafficking law's regulations

Denuncian colusión de bandas y funcionarios para secuestrar migrantes  

México - La presidenta de la Comisión de Equidad y Género de la Cámara de Diputados, Maricela Contreras, denunció que bandas organizadas coludidas con autoridades cometen la mayoría de los secuestros contra migrantes en las zonas fronterizas.

Señaló que según el Informe Especial sobre los casos de secuestro contra migrantes se documentaron nueve mil 758 personas privadas de su libertad, y de ese total en nueve mil 194 casos el delito fue cometido por ese tipo de organizaciones criminales...

Congress Explores Allegations of Collusion Between Criminal Gangs and Government Officials to Kidnap Migrants

According to the Special Report, 9,758 persons were deprived of their liberty

In 9,194 cases, the offense was committed by criminal organizations

The president of the Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies, Maricela Contreras has reported that Mexican authorities have colluded with organized gangs to commit the majority of kidnappings targeting migrants in border regions.

Deputy Contreras noted that a special report on cases of kidnappings against migrants documented the fact that 9,758 people had been deprived of their liberty, and that in 9,194 of these cases, organized crime was the perpetrator...

The report states that migrants who enter Mexico are subjected to extortion, robbery, kidnapping, illegal searches, beatings, chases, being thrown off of moving trains, rape, threats, psychological pressure and even murder.

Contreras pointed out that the assailants most often mentioned by victims are elements of the Federal Preventive Police, military personnel and agents of the National Institute for Migration.

Data reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) indicates that along the southern border of Mexico, 70 per cent of migrants are victims of violence. Some 60 percent of migrants suffer some form of sexual abuse, including rape.

The CEPAL report also emphasizes that the United States border with Mexico is also a very dangerous region, where women migrants become victims of sexual violence, forced prostitution, human trafficking and murder.

Deputy Contreras denounced these human rights violations and called upon Mexican society to not tolerate inefficiencies, incompetence and  complicity by govern-ment officials, behaviors that threaten the lives and integrity of thousands of men and women who cross the borders into Mexico...

Full English Translation

El Financiero Online

With information from Notimex / JOT

June 27, 2009

Sitio Oficial de Maricela Contreras Julián - Maricela Contreras' official web site (In Spanish)

Maricela Contreras Julián en la página oficial de la Cámara de Diputados - Maricela Contreras' Congressional web site - In Spanish

Mexico

Mexican Congressional Deputy Maricela Contreras, chairwoman of the national commission to combat trafficking, speaks out about defects in the federal regulations published by President Calderón that weaken the nation's first federal anti-trafficking law

Atorada, ley contra tráfico de personas

Señala diputada que Segob no incluyó fiscalía en el reglamento

La Comisión de Equidad y Género de la Cámara de Diputados lamentó que a pesar de que se han detectado redes de delincuencia organizada dedicadas a la trata de personas en el país, el programa nacional de combate contra este delito no podrá operar sino hasta 2011 debido a que no se ha instalado la comisión encargada de su elaboración y no cuenta con una partida presupuestal específica...

Mexico’s Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons is Stuck in the Mud

The Interior Department failed to include a role for the special prosecutor for trafficking's office in the law’s published regulations

The regulations as written will tie the hands of the anti-trafficking law’s enforcement provisions until 2011

The Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of Congress) regrets the fact that despite having identified organized crime networks involved in human trafficking in the country, the national program to combat this crime cannot begin operating until 2011. The [unexpected] delay is due to the fact that the commission responsible for standing-up these efforts does not yet have a line item in the federal budget, and therefore it has not been created.

Deputy Maricela Contreras of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) and chairwoman of the anti-trafficking commission, noted that another failure of the Department of the Interior (SEGOB) in drafting the required federal regulations that will activate the 2008 anti-trafficking law is the fact that SEGOB did not create a role for the office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Trafficking (FEVIMTRA) [an office of the Attorney General of the Republic] as one of the institutions responsible for combating trafficking...

Contreras, as part of her analysis of the official anti-trafficking regulations published on February 27, 2009 in the Official Gazette, added that the targeting of organized crime is also absent from the regulations.

"This situation is serious, because the regulations do not recognize that the problem [of trafficking] originates with various forms of criminal organizations, from disorganized bands that are just starting up to the more highly structured trafficking networks and mafias," says Contreras...

The Joint Committee of Congress has made an appeal to President Calderón’s legal counsel requesting that the Executive open the official regulations for revision [to repair the many defects within]. Presidential deputy legal counsel Javier Sanchez Arriaga responded to Congress by stating that changing the regulations was a responsibility of the Interior Department (Segob). [And thus, nothing was ever done to improve the regulations - LL]

Liliana Alcántara

El Universal

June 20 2009

See also:

The Joint Committee of the Mexican Senate and Lower House has voted unanimously to ask President Calderón to revise his federal regulations governing the nation’s first anti-trafficking law.

The current regulations have no minimum standards, nor do they integrate the work of key federal agencies

Mexico City – Mexico City congressional deputy Maricela Contreras, president of the Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies, has declared that a re-writing of the published Federal Regulations that enable the 2008 Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons is urgently needed, given that there is an indifference and unwillingness on the part of the federal government to stop this crime wave, [of human trafficking - in defiance of the will of Congress].

...Contreras, who had called for the declaration, stated that "the published rules were delivered late [after a 9 month delay following the law’s passage, and after four warning to President Calderón from Congress -LL], they are 'plain,' and they contain omissions. The rules don’t provide any tools to combat or prevent trafficking, much less any provisions for the care of the victims, who are mostly girls and women. For these reasons, President Calderón should have the rules revised, because in their current state, they aren’t worth anything."

Full English Translation

CIMAC Noticias

May 22, 2009

See also:

¡Héroes! Lea nuestra sección sobre la lucha de varios congresistas y defensoras de los derechos humanos para lograr obligar que el Presidente Felipe Calderón publica un reglamiento fuerte respladar a la nueva ley: Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas, de 2008, que hasta ahora es sigue siendo una ley sin fuerzas. Read our special section about the brave work of advocates and congressional leaders in Mexico to break-through the barriers of impunity and achieve truly effective federal regulations that will enforce the original congress-ional intent of Mexico's 2008 Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons. LibertadLatina

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Added: June 28, 2009

Mexico, Canada

Pedophile ring suspect caught in Mexico

A Canadian suspected of heading a North American pedophilia ring has been arrested in Mexico in possession of four million photographs and videos of children shown naked or striking suggestive poses.

The suspect, Arthur Lelland Sayer, "was caught red-handed at his home in Tijuana, Baja California (close to the US border) with a large number of photos and videos that were stored on over a dozen hard drives", Mexico City's public prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday.

A Mexican police investigation is ongoing to dismantle a major child pornography network and to "find evidence that it is active in the three North American countries: Mexico, the United States and Canada."

The crime ring was discovered by the "cyber police" of Mexico's Public Safety Ministry, which arrested the Canadian on Sunday along with agents from FEVIMTRA, a special unit that combats human trafficking.

Agence France-Presse (AFP)June 27, 2009

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Added: June 28, 2009

Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration service, says that sex tourism and pedophile networks are "inevitable." "El turismo sexual es inevitable" - Cecilia Romero del Instituto Nacional de Migración de México Photo: El Universal

LibertadLatina Commentary

President Calderón, the Human Rights Crisis at Mexico's Southern Border is Unacceptable

Our current series of articles covering the human rights emergency facing women and girl migrants at Mexico's southern border responds directly to the recent comments of Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration service (the National Institute for Migration - INM). Director Romero stated in a press interview with El Universal, a major Mexico City daily paper, that human trafficking is "inevitable", and that, "the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

We strongly disagree with Director Romero and others in the leadership of Mexico's National Action Party, who habitually dismiss critical women's rights issues, including the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, as being the inevitable, and 'normal' results of male human behavior.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The citizens of Mexico, Mexico's Congress and the international community need to hold the government of President Felipe Calderón accountable for his allowing unending mass gender atrocities to occur on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala and Belize.

In this hell-on-earth, an estimated 450 to 600 migrant women are sexually assaulted each day, according to the International Organization for Migration. Police response is almost non-existent. At times, police are complicit in this criminal violence.

Mexico's southern border is also the largest zone on earth for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), according to Save the Children.

As Father Luis Nieto states in the below article about Salvadoran mothers who must come to Mexico's border to grieve for their raped and murdered daughters, "We cannot keep quiet, we cannot be complicit in this."

We strongly agree with that sentiment. Silence is also violence.

The federal government of Mexico is not ignorant of this ongoing catastrophe. The United Nations, the International Organization for Migration, Save the Children, elements of the Catholic Church, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and many members of Congress have, for the last several years, demanded action to end these atrocities.

Although INM director Cecilia Romero promised in February of 2007 that she would "entirely eliminate this terrible situation," no visible action has been taken to do so as of June of 2009, 16 months after Romero made that promise.

With the current economic slowdown and the expansion of global criminal sex trafficking operations, the rapes, kidnappings and sexual  enslavement of innocent migrants on that border is increasing with no end in sight.

As the United States Congress prepares to send over $400 million dollars in largely military aid to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative to combat the drug cartels, we insist that human rights conditions be placed on those and other U.S. foreign aid funds that are headed to Mexico.

Mexico must close down the mass rape,  kidnapping, murder and child sex trafficking gauntlet that exists with total impunity on its southern border.

We also want to see the estimated 4,000 mostly Mayan indigenous children kidnapped from this region and sold to brothels in Tokyo, and also the uncounted thousands of other indigenous child victims who have been sold to brothels in New York and Madrid rescued, repatriated and then truly cared for.

Do you need money, President Calderón, to get these things done? Or is a misogynist, 'socially conservative' ideology that is resurgent in Mexico, and that has as its strongest voice the PAN political party, the real problem here?

Esta barbarie no será perdonado por Dios!

This barbarity will not be pardoned by God!

If Mexico does not have control over this part of its own territory, or if, as appears to actually be the case, the PAN's socially conservative agenda won't allow it to defend innocent and vulnerable women and children in crisis, consistent with their apathetic reaction to the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, then perhaps an international force organized by the Organization of American States, or by the United Nations needs to step-up to the plate, offer to help Mexico, and take control of the situation.

This crisis in Mexico is the best example in the Americas of why a new Global Plan of Action, as proposed by Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica and diplomats gathered at the United Nations on May 13, 2009, is needed to get around this impasse.

Somehow, the fact that the government of Mexico is a signatory to the Palermo Protocol, and the fact that Mexico passed its 2009 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report evaluation with a relatively positive Level 2 Rating (as we also acknowledge State's strong critique of corruption in Mexico), misses the point.

New and out-of-the box strategies are needed to oblige Mexico to fulfill its international obligations to end this mass gender atrocity once and for all.

It is not an impossible task.

The status quo today is... unacceptable!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 28, 2009

Mexico

Salvadoran mothers gather to pray and leave offerings and crosses for their family members who were abused, kidnapped and murdered in the 'mugging and rape guantlet' at Mexico's southern border region known as 'La Arrocera' - the Rice Cooker.

Madres salvadoreñas depositan ofrendas en "La Arrocera"

Huixtla, Chiapas - Los parientes de indocumentados fallecidos y desaparecidos visitaron "La Arrocera" , un pequeño tramo de escasos cuatro kilómetros que los indocumentados utilizan para evadir la caseta migratoria El hueyate, en Huixtla...

Huixtla, Chiapas - relatives of deceased and missing undocumented migrants visited "La Arrocera," a four kilometer long rural trail that north-bound Central and South American migrants use to bypass the Hueyate immigration station in the city of Huixtla, Chiapas.

Under strict security arrangements and with the support of Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), members of the Committee of Families of Deceased and Missing Migrants toured the area of "the Rice Cooker" near Huixtla, a municipality in the state of Chiapas, where dozens of men and women have been assaulted, raped and murdered.

"The Rice Cooker" is a [rural] migrant trail where 80 percent of the assaults and homicides in the region are committed, according to testimony gathered by the Catholic Church and human rights organizations.

Even police will not enter this zone unless they have several officers armed with high-powered weapons.

Father Luis Angel Nieto prayed for eternal rest for all of those migrants who lost their lives here in their attempt to reach "the American Dream."

For the second time during the trip, Father Luis Nieto demanded that the Mexican authorities combat these crimes, that for several years have sewn pain and fear.

After prayer, the Salvadorans planted dozens of crosses in memory of those who lost their lives here and who were never identified.

During the emotional ceremony, the mothers and fathers could not contain their tears. The sadness and pain invaded their faces. Most knew the true meaning of "the Rice Cooker".

Juan de Dios Garcia Davish

Feb. 11, 2009

See also:

“Wall of Violence” on Mexico’s Southern Border

Calderon’s “two-faced” policy combines police, the military, gangs, and Los Zetas [ex-military, who are now 'hit men' for the drug cartels] to fulfill US mandate to deter Central American migration

...Wall of Violence

“Migrants don’t have rights in Mexico,” says Father Heyman Vazquez Medina, founder of El Hogar de la Misericordia. “It’s ok to beat them, extort money from them, rob them, sexually abuse them, murder them, and nothing happens.

Central American migrants’ legal security guarantees appear to be repeatedly and permanently violated by individuals and groups of people who rely on the protection, consent, tolerance, or acquiescence of the State and who have the power of weapons, money, police protection, corruption, and impunity. They have put a price on the head of each migrant.”

Migrant shelter staffers say those who abuse migrants operate with absolute impunity... [Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, the southern coordinator of the Catholic Church’s Human Mobility Mission Migrants program] recalls one case where a woman was kidnapped from one of the shelters he oversees. Solalinde remained in contact with her family throughout the ordeal. When she finally turned up in the United States, she said that the group that kidnapped her forced her to make several [pornographic movies]. When they finally brought her to the US-Mexico border, they made her family pay thousands of dollars in ransom. Solalinde offered to fly her back south and pay all of her expenses if she filed a complaint with the government. The woman refused, saying she never wanted to set foot in Mexico ever again.

Even when migrants or human rights organizations do file complaints, they almost never result in arrests or convictions. Solalinde says that almost every time he calls the police because migrants have identified and located their attackers, he can’t find a police force that will arrest the suspects. They all say they don’t have jurisdiction in immigration affairs...

 ...[Mercedes Osuna of La Semilla del Sur, a Chiapas-based organization that works primarily on indigenous issues] explains that [after crossing into Mexico, to avoid a migration station on the highway north], undocumented migrants must walk a roundabout route through an area called la Arrocera. La Arrocera is teeming with violent criminals who mug [and rape and kidnap] migrants as they pass through. Osuna spoke with some migrants who recently passed through la Arrocera. They told her that in la Arrocera they saw uniformed Chiapas state police in marked vehicles pick up and drop off people who mugged migrants. In la Arrocera, the muggers are painfully thorough: migrants complained to Osuna of being stripped searched. The assailants even checked their victims’ anuses and vaginas for hidden valuables.

Police don’t just offer rides to assailants; they often are the assailants...

**

The “Wall of Violence” is fierce: El Hogar de la Misericordia [a migrant shelter] estimates that 80% of all migrants who pass through Chiapas state have been assaulted during their travels. Approximately 30% of the women who come to El Hogar de la Misericordia report being sexually assaulted in la Arrocera, Chiapas, which is only one of many stops along the migrants’ route. Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray [Friar] Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center, which monitors human rights on Mexico’s southern border, says, “When you talk to women, they consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate.” ...

Kristen Bricker

My Word is My Weapon

Dec. 24, 2008

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Added: June 27, 2009

Panama

A 'Genteleman's Club' in Panama Photo: Panama Star

The Sexual Reality of the Country

Panama is not only seen as a tax haven, but also a sexual paradise for tourists where everything is available for the right price

Every country has a seedy side and Panama is no exception. Like many other places in the world the sex industry is thriving and attracting visitors.

For many tourists that is one of Panama’s attractions. The so called “gentlemen’s clubs” offer not only beautiful women willing to do anything for the right price, but also the promise of forbidden pleasures.

Technically speaking sexual tourism is a crime, however there are Internet sites where the would be traveler will not only have all the their traveling arrangement taken care of, but also they throw into the package a lovely companion of whatever sex and age depending on the client’s preference...

Prostitution is a big business and organized crime gangs regularly bring women from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and other countries to work in the sex industry.

They bring the girls under false pretences promising them work. In reality the human traffickers take away their passports and use them as prostitutes in nightclubs and bars.

They are scared and lonely, in a foreign country, with nowhere to run to. They are terrified of the human traders and too afraid to go to the police because they know they are going to be deported...

Perhaps the worst part of the sex industry is the commercial sexual exploitation of children through on-line pornography and actual prostitution.

The Public Ministry is currently investigating 40 cases involving commercial sexual exploitation of children and pornography...

Marijulia Pujol Lloyd

Panama Star

06-04-2009

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Added: June 27, 2009

Mexico

Senators José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea (left) and Rubén Velázquez,

Senators Lázaro Mazón (left) and Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca

PRD pide a INM explicación por red de lenocinio

Legisladores del PRD pidieron la comparecencia de Cecilia Romero Castillo, comisionada del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), por el caso de mujeres sin papeles de Centroamérica prostituidas...    

Legislators call upon the Joint Committee of Congress to call immigration (INM) director Cecilia Romero in to appear and explain apparent involvement of INM agents in Yucatán sex trafficking network

Congressional lawmakers from the Party of the Democratic Revolution [one of Mexico’s three main political parties] have called for Cecilia Romero Castillo, commissioner of the National Institute for Migration (INM) to appear before Congress to explain the situation of a case in which undocumented Central American women where prostituted in [the state of Yucatán, with the alleged involvement of immigration agents in criminal activity].

Senators José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea, Rubén Velázquez, Lázaro Mazón and Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca presented an accord before the Standing [joint] Committee of Congress to "invite" to the commissioner of the INM to a meeting with legislative members of the First Committee.

PRD legislators want Romero to report on the performance of INM immigration officers in the areas of human rights, and especially in the state of Yucatán, “where a network dedicated to trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation of women" [involving INM officers] has been discovered.

The PRD congressional members have also asked the Standing Committee of Congress to request that the Attorney General’s Special Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Trafficking in Persons (FEVIMTRA) investigate and take action against agents in the INM’s Yucatán office for their involvement in human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

The Standing Committee was also asked to request from the National Commission on Human Rights that it open an investigation into the case, and assist the foreign national victims who have filed criminal complaints in the case.

Jorge Ramos and Ricardo Gomez

El Universal

Mexico City

June 17 2009

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Added: June 27, 2009

Colombia

The 11 month police operation was code named for this well known Colombian novel

Así operaba la red de trata de personas más poderosa del país, desmantelada por la Policía  

Un grupo de 20 investigadores de la Policía de Infancia y Adolescencia de Medellín adelantó toda la investigación, que se inició en julio del año pasado. Una joven de 18 años denunció su caso. 

"Una amiga me dijo que le estaban ofreciendo un trabajo en Bogotá y que nos iban a pagar 300 o 400 mil pesos. Cuando nos presentamos nos subieron a un bus, pero para el Urabá. Luego nos recogieron en un taxi, nos quitaron los papeles y nos llevaron a una casa de citas. Allá un señor nos dijo que ya sabíamos a qué íbamos, hasta que la ley nos encontró como a los cinco días"...

Police dismantle the largest sex trafficking network discovered to date in Colombia

A group of 20 police investigators from the Children and Adolescents unit in the city of Medellin developed the entire investigation, which began in July of 2008. An 18-year-old youth originally reported to network to authorities.

"A friend told me that she had been offered a job in [the capital city of] Bogotá that would pay 300 to 400 pesos [between $140 and $185 US dollars]. When we reported for work we were told to board a bus, but it was bound for the city of Urabá. Then our employers picked us up in a taxi, they took our identification and took us to a brothel. There, a man told us that we knew what we were going to have to do. We were rescued by the police 5 days later.” ...

The authorities arrested 69 people, including 17 women. Police remain on the trail of another 28 suspects.

There were so many similar complaints from victims that investigators had concluded that they were not dealing with two or three people who induced women into prostitution, but a powerful network. One that trafficked women from Medellin not only to other cities in Antioquia department [state], but also to the capital, Bogota , and to Cucuta, Cartagena, Santa Marta and towns in the Magdalena Medio [the eastern-most region of Antioquia]. There are also indications that the network had contacts abroad to traffic women to Aruba and Venezuela...

"Send me another one like her and we will call the account even"

Police intercepted communications between members of the network. They were able to establish that eight people, which they called ‘The Commission,’ sold women for amounts ranging from 30,000 to a million Colombian pesos [between $14 and $467 US dollars].

One intercepted communicated from a customer of the network [a brothel owner] to a member of the ‘Commission stated: "You sent me a woman for 30,000 pesos, but she was very ugly. Send me another one like her and we’ll call the account even.” ...

After the operation, code named 'Candida Eréndida' [Innocent Eréndira, a novel by famed Colombian Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez], police distributed leaflets in the city of Medellin to warn the public not to be taken in by these networks.

Police continue to investigate the network’s links abroad.

Full English Translation

www.eltiempo.com

June 26, 2009

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Added: June 26, 2009

Mexico, Guatemala

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Niñez y prostitución en la frontera sur, el costo de llegar a EU

Leticia, una vida entre ebrios, maras y policías

Segunda y última parte

Suchiate, Chiapas. - Leticia, como miles de púberes y jóvenes en el submundo de la explotación sexual infantil en México, sobrevive entre ebrios, en esta zona de 700 kilómetros de frontera con Guatemala y Belice.

Tenía 12 años cuando llegó sola a Chiapas por primera vez, con la ilusión de continuar viaje y cruzar la frontera estadounidense en busca de un mejor futuro. Ahora, en su sexto intento, trabaja en una cantina de la zona. Apenas ha cumplido 14 años de edad...

The Cost of Reaching the U.S.; Children and Prostitution at Mexico’s Southern Border

Leticia at age 14: a life drinking, gangs and police

Second and last part

Suchiate, Chiapas state - Leticia, like many pre-teen and teenage youth living in the underworld of child sexual exploitation in Mexico, survives between bouts of heavy drinking here along Mexico’s 700 kilometer border with Guatemala and Belize.

Leticia was 12-years-old when she came alone to Chiapas for the first time, with the illusion of being able to reach and then cross the U.S. border in search of a better future. Now, after her sixth attempt, she works in a cantina (bar) in the area. She has just turned 14...

Unlike many of her fellow teen prostitutes, Leticia did not have to sell her virginity, a ‘service’ that customers are charged between $2,000 and $3,500 for. "I wanted to marry my boyfriend, but he abandoned me when he learned that I was pregnant. I had an abortion at two months out of disappointment," said Leticia, expressing with her child’s eyes a false maturity that shows even more her clearly her helpless...

Leticia says that many customers not only want to have sex, but they also want to photograph her or record her on videotape or on cell phones in exchange for an additional amount of money...

...The Chiapas State’s Attorney has, during 2009, dismantled three gangs dedicated to the sexual exploitation of minors in the cities of Tapachula, Tuxtla Gutierrez and Rayón. At least 14 detainees facing charges for procuring, criminal association and assault, among other charges.

The children and underage youth freed from these gangs had been forced to work in sexual slavery for more than 12 hours each day. They had to bring their enslavers $2,000 during that period. In exchange, they were given one plate of rice and beans to eat. These facts are just the tip of an ominous iceberg...

Full English Translation

Manuel de la Cruz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 25, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

We at LibertadLatina once again applaud the detailed, consistent and high quality reporting that CIMAC Noticias in Mexico has provided on the critical issues affecting women and girls in Mexico and across Latin America.

The global humanitarian organization Save the Children has identified Mexico's southern border with Guatemala and Belize as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in the entire world. We have long recognized this fact, and accurate reporting in the Spanish language press, from CIMAC and also mainstream Mexican newspapers has provided a window into this nightmare.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in Tapachula, Chiapas has estimated that between 450 to 600 women and girl migrants who cross the border into southern Mexico are raped each and every day, with little or no law enforcement reaction in response.

In Tapachula, a prostitution 'mega-center' in Chiapas state, over 50% of the 20,000 females working in prostitution are underage girls and youth who have been forced by others or by economic necessity to accept a life of sexual exploitation. Some 50% of them are from the Mayan majority nation of Guatemala.

Chiapas, being a state located on this lawless border, is the only government entity in the world that is not actually a  nation to have established a direct relationship with the United Nations to address human trafficking. This region's crisis is indeed an emergency that requires the focused attention from the world community.

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico has been less than enthusiastic about fighting human trafficking, given his year-long effort to foot drag on efforts to publish effective regulations to enable the nation's first anti-trafficking law.

Now, Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's immigration service (the National Institute for Migration - INM), has stated that human trafficking is "inevitable", and added that, "the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Women and children's rights and immigrant rights groups in Mexico have been under-standably outraged by these comments. We join with them in denouncing such a hands-off and dismissive approach to confronting the mass gender atrocity of sexual exploitation and violence with impunity that is now taking place across Mexico.

We remain especially concerned that Cecilia Romero,  a former congressional deputy, senator and a long-time activist and official in the National Action Party (PAN) since 1982, is, through her statements about the 'inevitability' of sex trafficking, effectively justifying such criminal sexual exploitation and the lack of a Mexican federal response to that illegal enterprise. This policy position is consistent with many other statements and actions from the socially conservative PAN, that actively seek to diminish the independence and basic individual human rights of women.

It thus remains the responsibility of the international community to address these issues in collaboration, and in solidarity with the many elements of Mexican society who desire to be liberated from this Taliban-like mass movement to repress the basic humanity of women and girls.

Members of Congress, and activists in organizations such as the Teresa Ulloa's Mexico City based Latin America and Caribbean branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, as well as brave reporters like Lydia Cacho (who has been unjustly jailed and still faces death threats for her activism), and news agencies such as CIMAC Noticias (who's offices have been ransacked in the past for their reporting on sexual exploitation), all deserve the support of the international community, and they deserve our help.

We especially laud Teresa Ulloa and CIMAC Noticias for standing up to denounce the exploitation of indigenous women and girls, who are the primary target of many traffickers and rapists.

Let's give the advocates for women and girl's human rights in Mexico the help that they need now, while there is still time to avert an even more well organized war against women and girls than the one that is happening today!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 26/27, 2009

Mexico vows to improve migrant's treatment

Mexico City - Mexico's head of migration [Cecilia Romero Castillo] on Tuesday pledged to improve the agency's detention centers in response to criticism that Mexico fails to give Central American immigrants the same respect it demands for its own citizens in the United States....

The Mexican government has acknowledged that many officials are bribed by human smugglers. Migrants face abuse from corrupt police as well as
violent gangs who wait on the southern border to rob and assault them.

The government-funded National Human Rights Commission, U.N. human rights officials and other non-governmental organiza-tions say they have documented abuses.

The migration depart-ment's plan aims "to entirely eliminate this terrible situation," Romero told a news conference. [Yet as of June, 2009 they have failed to act on this promise - LL.]

Answering U.S. concerns, President Felipe Calderon also has promised to strengthen security on Mexico's southern border to stop the tide of illegal migrants - the majority of whom use Mexico as a way station to the United States...

In January [2007], Mexico detained more than 10,000 illegal migrants, and
expects that number to increase to 205,000 by the end of [2007],
according to a report by the migration department....

Lisa J. Adams

The Associated Press

Feb. 28, 2007

Mexico, Guatemala

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Leticia, de 14 años, sobrevive en la explotación sexual

24 mil niñas y niños prostituidos u obligados a la pornografía

Primera de dos partes

Suchiate, Chiapas - Leticia es una niña centroamericana de 14 años, sin documentos, a quien prostituyen en una cantina de este municipio fronterizo con Guatemala.

Han pasado casi dos años desde que dejó su país natal para migrar rumbo a Estados Unidos. A pesar de las duras condiciones en que vive para lograr su objetivo, no deja de intentarlo. Sabe que la deportación es casi segura, según sus propias palabras, pero ni eso la detiene en su idea de cruzar la frontera, alternativa que encontró ante la miseria y el incierto futuro en su lugar de origen... 

Leticia, Age 14, Survives in Sexual Exploitation

24,000 boys and girls forced into prostitution or pornography across Mexico

First of two parts

Suchiate, Chiapas state – Leticia is a 14-year-old undocumented Central American girl who is being prostituted in a Cantina (bar) in this town on the Guatemalan border.

It has been almost two years since Leticia left her native country to migrate to the United States. Despite the harsh conditions she has had to live through in order to achieve that goal, she will not give up. She knows that her deportation from Mexico is almost certain, as she herself says. But she will not be detained in her effort to reach the U.S. border, seeking to find an alternative to the misery and uncertain future that she faced in her homeland.

Leticia’s situation is no different than that of  hundreds of children who have been trapped by this border region’s commercial sex networks, who have offered their victims “a way to make fast money.”

They are victims of exploitation of the international networks of traffickers who grab them either before or after they cross the border at the Suchiate River or along clandestine smuggling paths that exist all along the border with Guatemala. Advocacy organizations who fight on their behalf refer to them as “sex slaves...”

The director of the Movimiento Ciudadano de la Frontera Sur (Southern Frontier Citizen’s Movement), Juan José González, notes that the phenomenon of prostitution in the region has increased alarmingly. These are not isolated cases, he says.

On the streets, and in bars, clubs, schools and outside of shopping centers in cities such as Suchiate, Tapachula, Cacahoatán, Tuxtla Chico and Huixtla, it is common to find women [and girls] of different ages engaged in prostitution...

For now, while Leticia continues to be a victim of sexual exploitation, the director of Mexico’s National Institute for Migration (INM), Cecilia Romero, has recently told the newspaper El Universal that the existence of smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Manuel de la Cruz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 24, 2009

The United States, Mexico

Joaquín Aguilar Méndez, right, a former altar boy, has sued the Rev. Nicolás Aguilar, shown in photo at left. (From a web site that takes an opposing position in the case of Nicolás Aguilar - in Spanish).

Arquidiócesis de Puebla y Los Ángeles toleran pederastia

México DF.- Integrantes de la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos por Sacerdotes (SNAP, por sus siglas en inglés) interpusieron una demanda contra las arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles, California, y de Tehuacán, Puebla, querella que involucra a los cardenales Roger Mahony y Norberto Rivera, respectivamente, informa la Agencia NotieSe.

El ciudadano, identificado como Juan Doe (“Juan Nadie”), abusado sexualmente en 1988 por el sacerdote mexicano Nicolás Aguilar, acusa a esas instancias eclesiales y al Departamento de Educación de California de negligencia en la protección a su persona, puesto que Aguilar trabajó como profesor después de ser transferido de Tehuacán a Los Ángeles por el entonces obispo local, Norberto Rivera...

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 23, 2009

Charges of cross-border church abuses continue

Mexico City - A victims’ group said Thursday that it was filing a new lawsuit in Los Angeles, California, against Mexican and U.S. church officials accused of sheltering a suspected pedophile priest.

The lawsuit accuses Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera of conspiring with Roman Catholic officials in the United States to shelter Nicolas Aguilar, a Mexican priest wanted in California for 19 felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child.

This is the third lawsuit filed by the group, Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, against the Catholic Church for allegedly protecting Aguilar. Two previous lawsuits filed in Los Angeles against the Mexican cardinal by Mexican citizens were dismissed in 2007.

This time, however, the unnamed plaintiff is a U.S. citizen.

“In this case it was a North American boy molested in North American territory,” said Jose Bonilla, a lawyer for SNAP.

Bonilla said he was “practically 100 percent sure” that the plaintiff, identified only as John Doe, would have his day in court. “But it’s going to be a long process,” he said.

In addition to Cardinal Rivera, the lawsuit charges the archdiocese of Tehuacan in the Mexican state of Puebla, where Rivera worked at the time, the archdiocese of Los Angeles and the California Department of Education with failing to protect the plaintiff from Rev. Aguilar.

Foreign Correspondency

June 18, 2009

Colombia

Stella Cardenas, director of Fundacion Renacer (the Rebirth Foundation)

Insuficientes, Nuevas Sanciones Sobre Turismo Sexual Y Pornografía Infantil En Colombia

Bogotá.- La muerte de Yesid Torres, de apenas 15 años, conmovió a los habitantes de Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, donde la explotación sexual va en aumento. El menor de edad falleció a consecuencia de una sobredosis de cocaína que consumió en el apartamento del italiano Paolo Pravisani, pederasta de 72 años,  quien lo había contratado para proveerle servicios sexuales, informó la agencia Semlac…

New Sanctions on Child Pornography and Sexual Tourism in Colombia are Insufficient

Bogota .- The death of Yesid Torres, a boy who had just turned 15, shocked the people of the city of Cartagena de Indias, where sexual exploitation is increasing. The youth died from an overdose of cocaine consumed in the apartment of Italian Paolo Pravisani, a 72 year old pedophile who had contracted Torres to provide sexual services.

In response to increasing levels of sexual exploitation, Colombian lawmakers passed a law on June 10, 2009 that applies new penalties, including a 20 year prison term for those who engage in producing child pornography. The law also makes child sex tourism a crime.

The legislation provides for prison sentences of 4 to 8 years for persons who promote child sex tourism, without the possibility of parole. The length of the sentence may be increased by half when the victim is under 12 years of age.

Stella Cardenas, director of Fundacion Renacer (the Rebirth Foundation), notes that although the penalty for promoting child sex tourism under the new law is higher than the 3 year sentence available under the old law, the length of sentence is still too low. She adds that the law fails to address cases of aggressors who sexually exploit youth between the ages of 14 and 18 who have consented to engage in [commercial] sex, often due to economic hardship.

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico city

June 23, 2009

Véase también:

Luz Stella Cardenas

Luz Stella es la directora y fundadora de la Fundación Renacer, una organización que trabaja con niños y niñas víctimas de explotación sexual y ha atendido a lo largo de su historia a más de quince mil niños de Bogotá, Cartagena y Barranquilla. Desde 1988, su propósito fundamental ha sido combatir la explotación sexual infantil y acompañar a las personas explotadas sexualmente en su recuperación y realización personal...

About Stella Cárdenas

Stella Cárdenas is building new institutional protections against child prostitution and pornography in Colombia by persuading the government to extend the mandate of its ministry charged with protection of children, the Ministry of Family Welfare... Stella and her Fundación Renacer ("Rebirth Foundation") contributed substantially to the passage of Law 360. This law, passed in 1997, for the first time assigned penalties–fines or jail sentences–for anyone who draws children into prostitution...

Ashoka International

2001

Mexico

Mexico's immigration commissioner Cecilia Romero

El turismo sexual es inevitable: INM

Para la comisionada del Instituto Nacional de Migración, Cecilia Romero, el turismo sexual, tráfico de personas, comercio de mujeres, redes de pederastia, plagio y violencia contra miles de migrantes son “males de la humanidad” que México no puede erradicar...

Mexico’s Immigration Chief: Sex Tourism is Inevitable

According to Cecilia Romero, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute (immigration service), sex tourism, human trafficking, female commercial sex work, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that victimize thousands of migrants [crossing Mexico to get to the U.S.] are "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Even if such practices have triggered: 1) harsh reports [about Mexico] from the U.S. Department of State and Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH); 2) complaints by foreign victims about their forced prostitution and sex trafficking; and 3) complaints from  [undocumented] Cuban migrants who have been extorted for thousands of dollars in their quest to get to Florida, Romero concludes that all of these problems have existed since the origins of migration...

[Commenting on strong criticism of the INM and repeated calls for her resignation,] Romero argues that the National Migration Institute has implemented a 'purification' effort which has caused a number of problems to emerge into the public spotlight.

The immigration director noted that since her team arrived as part of President Felipe Calderón’s government, she has accomplished much, but she is also aware that those achievements will never be enough [to solve the problems that exist].

Romero said that the vast majority of complaints that have been submitted [about official corruption] originate from within the INM itself. So far about 300 immigration officers have been reprimanded or removed. "This shows that we are making progress, although I will never be satisfied in our war against organized crime."

Romero adds that when there is discussion about immigrants, the finger is always pointed at the INM. But, she says, the criminal networks have state police, corrections officers and also immigration agents on their payrolls. We are investigating and pursuing them. Romero insists that her agency is taking action to get to the bottom of the problem of corruption.

LibertadLatina Commentary

Colombia may indeed be a leader in efforts to combat modern human trafficking. In the U.S. State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Colombia received a 'Tier 1' rating, the highest possible, to reward their efforts against human trafficking.

Yet Colombia's government and certain social elements contribute to a large number of human rights abuses, especially those that victimize Afro-Colombians in Indigenous peoples, who face wanton murder, rape and displacement by the military and right wing paramilitary forces hell bent on stealing their land and conducting their own perverted version of 'social cleansing.' Leftist guerillas are not innocent either.

These abuses, including the forced conscription of underage girls and accompanying sexual abuse perpetrated by illegal armed groups on both sides of the conflict contribute to an environment where mass human trafficking is made possible.

With an estimated 70,000 victims of human trafficking being created annually, Colombia is right up there with Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Argentina as one of the major nations involved in the illegal trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation.

We recommend that an index of trafficking behavior in these nations that is separate from the annual TIP report be developed to assess the true story 'on the ground' in the nations of the Americas. Currently, the TIP rating system does not reflect the true intensity of the problem.

Inter press Service (IPS)

June 10, 2009

Ten years ago a Colombian woman caught in an almost identical situation of domestic labor slavery approached a hair dresser, asking for help to escape her employer - a wealthy Colombian diplomatic family living in the Washington, DC region. I made good her escape, and that of a friend who worked for another diplomatic family from Colombia.

The victim's employer yelled and screamed at her, made her work under constant verbal threats from 6 am until midnight, forced her to cook, clean, mow the lawn and shovel the snow for a family of five living in a big house on a large piece of land, and forbade her to leave the house alone. Only during one of her 'supervised' visits to a local hair salon was she able to contact a sympathetic person willing to help. That person contacted me.

This woman still lives in fear of her employer, but has gotten married and has brought her daughter to the U.S.

Many middle and upper class women across Latin America employ domestic workers. A very large number of these employers act in a fashion that reflects extreme cruelty, and is consistent with the manner in which wealthy women in the Roman Empire treated enslaved women in their homes.

We see the results of this attitude in the Roman Empire through the example of the poorly fed and frail servant girls, barely given enough food to survive, whose well-preserved bodies have been found in the ruins of the houses of wealthy Romans who lived in the city of Pompeii.

Many wealthy and middle class women continue to treat their 'hired help' in the same slave-like fashion in one offshoot of the Roman Empire known as modern Latin America. You just have to watch a Mexican soap opera on a Spanish language TV network anywhere in the world to confirm that ugly fact.

As a millionaire Greek business owner once explained to me, the fact that Mediterranean cultures enslaved each other 'back and forth' for millennia lead directly to the fact that there is no remorse for slavery in Latin America. He told me that when he arrived in the U.S. years ago, his biggest surprise was that white Americans felt remorse for the past enslavement of African Americans.

That remorse does not exist in the Mediter-ranean region. By extension (and Spain is one of these Mediter-ranean cultures), remorse for slavery does no exist among the elites in Latin America.

So how can the world depend upon the judgment, and trust the actions of such elites to pass anti-trafficking laws and enforce them, when tolerance for labor and sexual exploitation was and is built into the very foundation of Latin American societies?

This is why a new Global Plan of Action against slavery, proposed by a number of United Nations member countries, is needed, because... given the existence of the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons report or not, international legal instruments, and the threat of U.S. economic sanctions will not break through the Roman wall of impunity that enslaves Latin America's oppressed populations, and especially the poor, the indigenous and the African descendent, without engaging in out of the box thinking and action to end this crisis.

In other words, the modern anti-trafficking movement, and the actions of many international and U.S. bodies assume that all nations want to collaborate to end sex and labor  trafficking. That sentiment is true among some sectors of society in Latin America. But powerful economic and political forces thrive through the exploitation of the victims of modern human slavery, while ancient cultural and religious traditions justify such inhumanity.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission recently announced that some 1,600 mostly Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S., mostly women and girls, are kidnapped each month into slavery. It is known that sexual slavery predominates in Mexico much more so than labor slavery. In the case of domestic servitude, involving tens of thousands of underage Indigenous girls in Mexico, sex and labor slavery, co-exist).

This is happening to the benefit of the elites and paid-off corrupt officials in Mexico, while at the same time the publication of serious federal regulations that are urgently required to enact the nation's first anti-trafficking law was intentionally delayed by President Felipe Calderón for 11 months. When the rules were finally published, after four stern warnings from Congress, they were watered down to make the law ineffective.

Many members of Mexico's Congress of the Republic have admonished President Calderón for not caring about the plight of trafficking victims.  Together with non-governmental organizations, these legislators have organized an effort to insist that President Calderón withdraw his current anti-trafficking regulations and allow them to be re-written to put the teeth back in them to reflect the original intent of Congress in passing the law. It is obvious that President Calderón finally published the regulations so that Mexico would receive a positive rating (Tier 2) in the 2009 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report.

Meanwhile, 20,000 migrants, mostly women and children, are kidnapped into slavery in Mexico each year while corrupt and apathetic law enforce-ment and government officials not only don't lift a finger to help these victims, but, as the 2009 TIP report acknowledges, they are sometimes direct participants in these kidnappings.

In addition, 4,000 Indigenous Mexican children remain enslaved in prostitution in Japan, while neither Mexico nor Japan do anything to find and rescue them.

Eight year old Mexican girls have been reported as being trafficking "into the brothels of the basements of New York" both currently and since at least the mid 1990s, if not earlier.

Yet these realities are not reflected in the 2009 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, which was also true under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The overall TIP report assessment of Mexico is accurate, but the nuances, detailing the intentional resistance by the Calderón administration against actually caring about and acting to defend trafficking victims and those at risk, is not reflected in the report.

The misogynist policies of the far right members of Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) are also not reflected in the 2009 TIP report. It is not in their best interest to clamp-down on modern human slavery, a position reflected in their efforts to foot-drag on building effective anti-trafficking efforts at the federal level.

Truth be told, Mexico's economy would be seriously 'harmed' if all forms of labor and sexual slavery ended. That does not justify extending the life of such exploitation for even one second.

We applaud Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Trafficking in Persons Office Director Louis C. De Baca, the first Latino head of the office, for the release of an expanded and well thought out Trafficking in Persons report, the first delivered by a Democratic administration.

But the case of Mexico, as well as the case of the major criminal enterprise that is the trafficking of mostly Afro-Latina women from the Dominican Republic to Argentina (while anti-trafficking analysis largely ignores this issue) are two areas that greatly concern us.

We look forward to seeing serious emphasis placed on addressing sex and labor trafficking in Latina America, especially where indigenous and African descendent populations are targeted, because in both types of slavery, these peoples comprise a very large segment of those who are at risk.

If this basic task of putting greater focus on the Latin American issue is accepted by the U.S. State Department, we should expect to see new initiatives in the Trafficking in Persons Office that go beyond the limited work that is being done today to address this emergency.

Latin America's exploding human trafficking crisis was virtually ignored during the past decade by the U.S. Government, except where foes of the U.S., including Cuba and Venezuela were concerned.

The real bad guys make their money in Mexico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Argentina. The Mexican trafficking mafias enslave 500,000 sex trafficking victims, according to Teresa Ulloa, director of the Latina American and Caribbean office of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Children. Yet the U.S. State Department declares, following the estimates developed by the United Nations funded International Labor Organization (ILO), that only 1.5 million sex slaves exist in the entire world.

So if both Teresa Ulloa and the ILO are to be believed, then Mexico has 1/3 of the world's sex slaves? Something is wrong with these numbers.

In addition, Save the Children has recognized that the southern Mexican border region is the largest area for the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world. That fact is also missing from the 2009 TIP report.

We do not need another 8 years of obfuscation about the true and horrific magnitude of modern human slavery in Latin America.

We also do not need a diminished focus on this emergency because the forces that favor the legalization of prostitution are strongly represented in liberal Democratic circles. Their work is largely academic, and it does not account for the mass victimization of children and underage youth, especially in Latin America, who cannot possibly be seen as consenting, willing participants in the sex trade.

As well, we do not need to limit action against human trafficking to only a focus on further adoption of the Palermo Protocol, an approach which was defined during a gathering of diplomats at the United Nations on May 13, 2009 as being ineffective.

As we have stated before... We are encouraged by the brave efforts of United Nations diplomats and Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica to promote a Global Plan of Action to get around the very clear fact that the Palermo Protocol, and regional efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) are insufficient to successfully fight this aggressive criminal war against a whole generation of Latin American and especially Indigenous women and girls.

We look forward to seeing the United States take a leading role to step-up efforts to bring this crisis under control. We also look forward to seeing the U.S. State Department demonstrate leadership in addressing the hard issues in Latin America without seeing the rules changed behind closed doors in favor of quieting criticism of U.S. allies in the region, something that was quite blatant during the last U.S. Administration.

Those at risk, and those who are today enslaved in the region deserve our undivided attention and an honest approach to ending the condoned and officially sanctioned mass gender atrocity that is modern human slavery in Latin America.

The time of the Roman Empire is over!

Free my people now!

End impunity now!

See also:

En Japón, de 3 a 4 mil niñas mexicanas víctimas de ESCI

Afirma la experta Teresa Ulloa

Three to four thousand underage indigenous girls from the poor states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Mexico [state] have become victims of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in Japan.

Puebla city, in Puebla state - Teresa Ulloa, Latin America and Caribbean Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW) announced her estimates of the numbers of indigenous children sex trafficked to Japan, and explained that traffickers trick the victims using offers of thousands of dollars for their parents in exchange for  [obtaining permission] to take their daughters. The parents are told that their girls are going to the United States to work in fast food restaurant jobs.

Taking advantage of the condition of submission that Mexico's indigenous communities are forced to live in, the traffickers take their victims to Japan where they are prostituted and work as geishas, a role that Asian women no-longer want to play because today they have more decision-making power than in the past.

Ulloa said that before these victims from Japan are repatriated, the home conditions of these girls must be investigated to assure that they can be reintegrated without facing the risk of being sold or sexually exploited again.

Ulloa noted that in the year 2002 the CATW helped to repatriate two sisters, ages 8 and 10, who had been prostituted in a brothel in New York. They were subjected to exploitation again, 15 days later, because their family "had sold their daughters in exchange for two goats and two cases of beer."

During her interview with CIMAC Noticias, Ulloa declared: "the subject [of child protection] is not on the national agenda. Much attention is paid to drug trafficking, but the government hasn't even realized that the same drug trafficking networks are used for the [sex] trafficking of children, and that organized crime regards this activity to be one of their most important businesses." ...

Nadia Altamirano Díaz

CIMAC Noticias

Dec. 12, 2008

See also:

Mexico: Más de un millón de menores se prostituyen en el centro del país: especialista

Expert: More than one million minors are sexually exploited in Central Mexico

Tlaxcala city, in Tlaxcala state - Around 1.5 million people in the central region of Mexico are engaged in prostitution, and some 75% of them are between 12 and 13 years of age, reported Teresa Ulloa, director of the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean...

During an international seminar in the city of Tlaxcala, Ulloa noted that, due to the conditions of marginalization in which they live, at least 50 million women and children in Latin America are at risk of being recruited for sexual exploitation.

La Jornada de Oriente

Sep. 26, 2007

---

Added: June 22, 2009

The United States - Latin America

The US Human Trafficking Report 2009: Whatever makes you think it's political?

The USA sometimes tries to make out the "equal partners" thing with the rest of the Americas and sometimes it doesn't. You get The Hawaiian making some lip service to the greater cause at the moment, but when push comes to shove and the bureaucrats are let loose, those old habits of arrogance, selective memory based on friendships and high-handedness towards "the brown people down there" shine on through.

Today the US State Department's ninth annual "Trafficking in Persons Report" was published, and here's how the region stacks up in the eyes of TheWorldPoliceman.™

Level One (complies with all, we luvs ya): Colombia

Level Two (not up to scratch but we see you're making an effort, try a bit harder, boyz): Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay.

Level Three (hmmm..not so good, kiddies. We're watching you so don't do anything stupid): Argentina, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Rep Dom, Venezuela

Level Four (bad bad bad naughty naughty sanctions sanctions): Cuba

But the biggest guilty party on human trafficking is left off the list completely. The country where many labor and sex slaves are sent by their paymasters and blind eyes are turned. Go on....take a wild guess as to which one.

The Democratic Underground

June 16, 2009

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Added: June 21, 2009

The Americas

2009 TIP Ratings
	Tier 1
	Tier 2
	Tier 2 Watch List
	Tier 3

2009 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report - Nations of the Americas

A-C: Antigua and Barbuda (Tier 2), Argentina (Tier 2 Watch List), Bahamas (Tier 2), Barbados (Tier 2), Belize (Tier 2 Watch List), Bolivia (Tier 2), Brazil (Tier 2), Canada (Tier 1), Chile (Tier 2), Colombia (Tier 1), Costa Rica (Tier 2), Cuba (Tier 3)

D-K: Dominican Republic (Tier 2 Watch List), Ecuador (Tier 2), El Salvador (Tier 2), Guatemala (Tier 2 Watch List), Guyana (Tier 2 Watch List), Haiti (missing), Honduras (Tier 2), Jamaica (Tier 2)

L-P: Mexico (Tier 2), Nicaragua (Tier 2 Watch List), Panama (Tier 2), Paraguay (Tier 2), Peru (Tier 2)

Q-Z: ST. Vincent and the Grenadines (Tier 2 Watch List), Trinidad and Tobago (Tier 2), Uruguay (Tier 2), Venezuela (Tier 2 Watch List)

See also:

Letter from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Letter from Ambassador Luis C. de Baca

Introduction

Major Forms of Trafficking in Persons

The Three P's: Punishment, Protection, Prevention

Financial Crisis and Human Trafficking

Topics of Special Interest

Victims' Stories

Global Law Enforcement Data

Commendable Intiatives Around the World

2009 TIP Report Heroes

Tier Placements

Maps

U.S. Government Domestic Anti-Trafficking Efforts

U.S. Department of State Office of Trafficking in Persons

June 16, 2009

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Added: June 20, 2009

Guatemala 

Justicia parece no llegar en casos de niñas víctimas de violencia

El sistema de justicia parece no ser efectivo en los casos de tres niñas asesinadas recientemente en San Lucas Sacatepéquez y de una menor violada en Sololá, ya que se han registrado señales de negligencia en las investigaciones y parcialidad en el estudio de las pruebas, denunció la Fundación Sobrevivientes...

Justice Appears Distant in Cases of Girl Victims of Violence

The non-governmental organization La Fundación Sobrevivientes (the Survivor’s Foundation) has denounced the fact that Guatemala’s justice system does not appear to be working effectively in two criminal cases: 1) that of three girls killed recently in San Lucas Sacatepequez; and 2) the case of a minor girl raped in the city of Sololá. The Foundation states that there have been indications of negligence and bias in the evaluation of the evidence in these cases.

In the first case, a 13-year-old girl was raped on July 8, 2008 in Sololá. Judge Frank Armando Martínez allowed the accused assailant, Martín Tambríz, to be freed despite conclusive evidence of his guilt. Forensic evidence had showed a positive DNA match tying Tambríz to the rape. The Foundation plans to appeal the acquittal.

Lawyers for the Survivor’s Foundation also expressed concern about the case of three girls, ages 7, 8 and 12, who were “butchered” on May 29, 2009 in the hamlet Chicamán in San Lucas Sacatepequez. It was ascertained that one of the victim’s was raped. Three men suspected in the crime have been detained. The Foundation emphasizes that there are signs of negligence in the investigation conducted by the District Attorney of Sacatepéquez, a fact that will not contribute to solving these crimes.

The Survivor’s Foundation has asked that the case be moved to the capital, Guatemala City to insure that the investigation and preparations for prosecution are able to be observed, ensuring that due process is respected in the case.

CERIGUA

June 19, 2009

---

Added: June 20, 2009

Guatemala

Juana Méndez, right, and her translator explain in Court how one of the two police-men who raped her told her after the attack: "Why are you complaining? I will put two bullets into you and throw you over an embankment." From the documentary film on the Juana Méndez case (in Spanish on YouTube)

Guatemala.- Una indígena guatemalteca es la primera mujer maya que logra que encarcelen a un policía por haberla violado

Nebaj - La indígena guatemalteca Juana Méndez ha sido la primera mujer maya que abre un proceso judicial contra un policial por haberla violado y logra que sea condenado, según contó ella misma en una entrevista con Europa Press.

El gran índice de impunidad en delitos contra las mujeres, según han denunciado reiteradamente asociaciones feministas, se rompe así con este caso. A Méndez "le hicieron daño" y ella "no lo quiso dejarlo así, quiso decir la verdad".

Pese a las amenazas de muerte y a los consejos que personas de su entorno le reiteraban para que retirase del proceso contra el policía, ella decidió seguir adelante. "Qué pienso, que tiene que haber ley; si un hombre me hizo eso, tiene que pagarlo"...

An Indigenous Mayan Woman has Become the First Female in Guatemala's History to Achieve the Conviction and Imprisonment of a Police Officer for Having Raped Her in Custody

Nebaj - Juana Méndez has become the first Mayan woman [in this Mayan majority nation] to pursue legal proceedings against a policeman for the crime of rape resulting in a conviction and a prison sentence.

This case succeeded despite the high rate of impunity for crimes against women, an issue that has repeatedly been raised by feminists.  Méndez stated: "they did me harm" and she "did not want to leave it at that, I wanted to tell the truth."

Despite death threats and the repeated advice from people around her to withdraw the case against the policemen, she decided to go ahead. "What do I believe? I believe that the rule of law has to exist. If a man does that to you, he has to pay.” Juana Mendez said that with the full support of her husband, who had told his wife that he would not respond to this problem with domestic violence [a common reaction of the husbands of rape victims]…

Méndez’ struggle for justice caused her insomnia from fear, and she couldn’t eat. But she never retreated, saying, “I had to tell the truth.” "I told the judge that these policemen had raped me.” Her female friends told her that she should not pursue the case, because her husband would beat her. She replied to them: “I don’t care if my husband beats me. I am going to tell the truth.”

The one policeman who was tried has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Asked whether she fears retaliation when the convicted rapist gets out of prison, Méndez said that "I am afraid that he will do something. But I don’t think that he will get out of prison."

Echoing the sentiment of many indigenous defense association leaders, Méndez denounced the situation of impunity that we live through in Guatemala, and above all, she protests the crimes that were committed during the 36-year armed conflict [that ended in 1996]. I regret that the victims and the murderers have to live together.

Francisco Otero

Europa Press

May 10, 2009

See also:

New film about Juana Mendez

Juana Mendez will be remembered in Guatemala as the first woman who succeeded in achieving a conviction against a serving police officer for mistreating her in custody.

During her detention at the police station in Nebaj she was raped and sexually assaulted by several officers, one of whom was finally brought to justice. The Institute of Comparative Studies in Penal Sciences, ICCPG from its initials in Spanish, and Project Counseling Services, have made a film about the case which you can see here, in three parts (in Spanish).

El Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales de Guatemala (ICCPG) fue el productor de una pelicula documental sobre el caso de Juana Méndez

From the film:

A study conducted in 2005 by the The Institute of Comparative Studies in Penal Sciences found that 75% of women arrested in Guatemala suffer sexual abuse at the hands of policemen while in custody.

Some 43% of these victims file complaints in regard to their abuse.

The answer of the Government, says the film, is: impunity.

Gabriela Barrios

April 6th, 2009

Also about Juana Mendez:

Supervivientes del genocidio Maya se sienten "olvidados" y acusan al Gobierno de incumplir los acuerdos

Supervivientes del genocidio Maya, acaecido durante la guerra civil de Guatemala (1960-1996), acusaron al Gobierno de la nación de incumplir los acuerdos de paz de 1996 y denunciaron que "se sienten olvidados" por las autoridades del país centroamericano.

Survivors of the Mayan Genocide Feel "Forgotten" and Accuse Guatemala's Government of Having Ignored their Obligations Under the 1996 Peace Accords

Nebaj - Mayan survivors of the genocide, which took place during Guatemala's civil war (1960-1996), have accused the national government of violating the 1996 national peace agreements and they feel neglected by the authorities of the Central American country.

This is what Juana Méndez believes. She asserts that "we continue living in poverty because our people have not yet recovered from the crimes committed against us." “They have not acknowledged the fact that the victims need material, as well as psychological support, such as in the form of opening a museum so that the families [of the victims] can understand what happened.”

Méndez explained that in her case, she had to flee to the mountains to avoid being attacked by soldiers. She doesn’t remember any longer how how long she was in hiding, but she feels that she is “one more victim of the military violence,” which had a major impact on women. However, Méndez says that she appreciates the efforts made by non-governmental organizations to bring light upon the violence that Guatemalan women suffered in the flesh during the war.

Francisco Otero

Europa Press

May 09, 2009

Colombia

Statement of Ms. Navanethem Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to the 11th Human Rights Council

"In Latin America, I wish to reiterate that Colombia remains a situation of utmost concern. That country's 40-year-long armed conflict has resulted in enormous human, social, economic and political costs. Civilian lives, security and property continue to be targeted by all armed groups. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian are disproportionately affected. Sexual violence as a war tactic is directed against women and girls. Most victims are women heads of larger households, in their 40s, with limited education and few opportunities to work. The conflict continues to displace people. Antipersonnel mines, which the Government banned, but which are planted by guerrilla groups, keep exacting their toll on civilians.

I welcome the Government's invitation to a number of Special Procedures mandate holders, but also call upon it to act on their recommendations in an effective manner. The Government should take all the necessary steps to protect civilians, mitigate their suffering and address their need for justice."

United Nations Human Rights Council; United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Geneva, Switzerland

June 03, 2009

Mexico 

2009 TIP Report: Summary of Evaluation of Mexico's Anti-trafficking Efforts

Mexico is a large source, transit, and destination country for persons trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Groups considered most vulnerable to human trafficking in Mexico include women and children, indigenous persons, and undocumented migrants. A significant number of Mexican women, girls, and boys are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation, lured by false job offers from poor rural regions to urban, border, and tourist areas…

Child sex tourism continues to grow in Mexico, especially in tourist areas such as Acapulco and Cancun, and northern border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Foreign child sex tourists arrive most often from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Organized criminal networks traffic Mexican women and girls into the United States for commercial sexual exploitation. Mexican men, women, and children are trafficked into the United States for forced labor, particularly in agriculture and industrial sweatshops.

The Government of Mexico does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so…

Prosecution

The Government of Mexico failed to improve on its limited anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts against offenders last year. No convictions or sentences of trafficking offenders were reported by federal, state, or local authorities… There are concerns over the new law’s effective implementation, particularly that victims must press charges against traffickers, otherwise they will not be considered trafficking victims and will not be provided with victim assistance.

NGOs and other observers continued to report that corruption among public officials, especially local law enforcement and immigration personnel, was a significant concern; some officials reportedly accepted or extorted bribes or sexual services, falsified identity documents, discouraged trafficking victims from reporting their crimes, or ignored child prostitution and other human trafficking activity in commercial sex sites. No convictions or sentences against corrupt officials were achieved last year…

…Last year Mexican authorities identified 55 trafficking victims within the country: 28 females and 27 males; trafficking allegations related both to commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor…

U.S. Department of State: 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report

June 16, 2009

The Americas

Mailiana Morales Berrios - Costa Rican anti-trafficking activist

Fighting Human Trafficking a Critical Part of U.S. Foreign Policy

Washington - The Obama administration views the fight against human trafficking, both at home and abroad, as a critical part of the U.S. foreign policy agenda, says Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At a June 16 event at the State Department marking the release of the ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report, Clinton emphasized the need for more public-private partnerships to fight the scourge of modern-day slavery.

“The criminal network that enslaves millions of people crosses borders and spans continents,” Clinton said, “so our response must do the same.”

“We are committed to working with all nations collaboratively,” the secretary said...
The secretary also made the announcement that the State Department will rank the United States in its report to be released next year, even though the U.S. Department of Justice releases an annual report focused exclusively on the trafficking problem as it exists inside the United States…

Ambassador Luis C. de Baca, director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons... himself a federal prosecutor who has worked many trafficking cases, noted that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently released its own report on global human trafficking and found that two out of every five countries have yet to achieve a single conviction of a human trafficker. “Prosecutions can be a blunt tool, but they do matter” in deterring traffickers, he said.

In addition to a number of U.S. senators and House members, two anti-trafficking activists were present at the June 16 State Department event: Mariliana Morales Berrios of Costa Rica and Vera Lesko of Albania.

Public Awareness a Major Weapon in Fighting Human Trafficking

Washington — Around the world, people desperate for employment often find themselves tricked by human traffickers. An estimated 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year. Millions more are trafficked within their own countries.

This problem does not go overlooked by everyone, as some everyday heroes from a variety of nations take steps to end modern-day slavery...

For example, Canadian Benjamin Perrin founded The Future Group, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) committed to fighting human trafficking and the child-sex trade. By bringing together a team from across Canada, The Future Group works with foreign governments, other NGOs and businesses to address human trafficking and other global issues such as HIV/AIDS…

Costa Rican Woman a Pioneer in Anti-Trafficking Programs

…Over the last year, the Costa Rican government has made progress in addressing human trafficking crimes and helping victims. The government recently launched prevention campaigns as well as training efforts for government and law enforcement officials. Also, the government has begun to provide more victim assistance, although prosecution of human traffickers remains lacking.

Before the government began such efforts, Mariliana Morales Berrios was already fighting to protect trafficking victims. In 1997, she created the Rahab Foundation to help victims and their families find a new life, keeping the program running despite limited resources. Although she and her staff frequently face threats and attacks, they continue to help trafficking victims escape from their captors. In fact, since its founding, the Rahab Foundation has helped more than 3,000 victims and also trained more than 5,000 government leaders, law enforcement officials and tourism workers on human trafficking issues...

For these efforts, Perrin and Morales are being recognized by the U.S. Department of State in its annual report on human trafficking…

Yasmine Alotaibi

America.gov

June 16, 2009

Mexico

Child Sex Tourism Growing in Border Cities Like Juárez, Report Says

Child sex tourism continues to grow in Mexican northern border cities like Tijuana and Juárez, according to a U.S. State Department report.

"Foreign child sex tourists arrive most often from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe," the report said.

People from Mexico also are trafficked into the United States for commercial sexual exploitation. Besides the northern border cities, the report said Cancun and Acapulco were popular child sex tourism destinations.

Each year, as many as 20,000 children are sexually exploited in these urban centers, officials said.

"Mexican men, women, and children (also) are trafficked into the United States for forced labor, particularly in agriculture and industrial sweatshops," the report said.

The U.S. federal government said corruption and lax enforcement were to blame for few human-trafficking prosecutions in Mexico.

The U.S. State Department released "The 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report" on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Mexican authorities announced the arrest of a Mexican federal immigration official assigned to Mexico City's airport on suspicion of human-trafficking.

Last week authorities in Costa Rica said they were investigating the trafficking of its citizens in Mexico.

Diana Washington Valdez

El Paso Times

June 18, 2009

Mexico

"IMPUNITY" - Women victims of Police Assault at Atenco Protest at FEVIMTRA offices

"Women are not the Spoils of War!"

Exigen atenquenses a fiscalía agilizar juicios contra policías

Habitantes de San Salvador Atenco, particularmente 11 de las 26 mujeres que denunciaron haber sido víctimas de violencia sexual, física y sicológica por policías los días 3 y 4 de mayo de 2006 en ese municipio mexiquense, exigieron a la Fiscalía Especializada en Delitos Violentos cometidos contra Mujeres y Trata de Personas (Fevimtra) que ya consigne la averiguación previa que abrió y ejercite acción penal contra todos los uniformados que participaron en los acontecimientos, con el propósito de que sean sancionados por acción u omisión…

Women Victims of Sexual Violence at 2006 Atenco Protest March Demand That Special Prosecutor's Office for Crimes Against Women Expedite Proceedings Against Accused Policemen

Inhabitants of [the Mexico City suburb of] San Salvador Atenco, including 11 of the 26 women who reported being physically, psychologically and sexually abused by [male] police officers on May 3^rd and 4^th of 2006, have demanded that the [federal] Special Prosecutor's Office for Violent Crimes Committed Against Women, and Trafficking in Persons (FEVIMTRA) act upon the results of their preliminary investigation in the case, and bring the actors to justice for their actions and acts of omission.

During a demonstration in front of the offices of FEVIMTRA in Mexico City, the activists indicated that, "the Mexican authorities have once again demonstrated their inefficiency in prosecuting and punishing those responsible for the serious violations human rights that were committed in San Salvador Atenco. They were referring specifically to the fact that just recently, the only police officer to have been tried, convicted and sentenced for the assaults against women at Atenco was pardoned...

Full English Translation

Gustavo Castillo

La Jornada

June 17, 2009

Mexico

20000 Migrants a Year Kidnapped in Mexico En Route to US

Some 20,000 of the 140,000 illegal migrants en route to the United States via the Mexico border to find work and a better life are kidnapped each year and subjected to rape, torture and murder, crimes that usually go unpunished due to the corruption of the authorities, fear of reprisals and distrust of authorities, according to Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission.

EFE

June 17, 2009

Guyana

Guyana will not prosecute people for trafficking in personss just to satisfy the US, says minister

Georgetown, Guyana - Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Priya Manickchand, has lashed out at the United States of America’s rating of Guyana for its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report by the US State Department which places Guyana on Tier 2 watch list.

“Guyana objects completely to being placed on the Tier 2 watch list...we do not believe that we have trafficking on the scale that should attract the attention of the US, the report is inaccurate in some of its assertions: it did not given us (government) credit for all that has been done,” she stated...

“We prosecute every person who can be prosecuted under the Act who would have committed acts of trafficking, what we do not have is a large number of convictions. We cannot dictate what the courts do, we do recognize that there are some weaknesses in the entire judicial system in terms of how long matters take to pass through the system and in that regard, the government is at present engaged in improving the entire justice system through the Justice Sector Reform Strategy,” she explained.

GINA / Caribbean Net News

June 18, 2009

United States

Human Trafficking Rises in Recession

This particularly gory testimony, used by the US State Department to highlight the severity and widespread nature of human trafficking, is one of many alarming personal accounts included in their 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.

Time Magazine

June 18, 2009

Jamaica

Jamaica cited for inadequate anti-human trafficking measures

Jamaica has again been ranked as a tier two country for human trafficking by the US State Department which has cited inadequate efforts to prosecute trafficking offenses and protect victims. In its ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report released ...

RadioJamaica.com

June 18, 2009

Costa Rica

Mejora en la lucha contra trata de personas

Costa Rica se supera en la lucha contra la trata de personas, según un informe del Departamento de Estado de los Estados Unidos.

Telatica.com

June 17, 2009

The United States

Alerta de que la -esclavitud moderna- está aumentando por la crisis

El Gobierno de EEUU amplió la lista de países con crecientes problemas de tráfico humano de 40 en 2008 a 52 este año, en que ha incluido a Nicaragua, Irak, Filipinas, Antillas Holandesas y los Emiratos Arabes Unidos.

Authorities in Colombia dismantle sex trafficking ring and free 69 women between the ages of 18 and 25. (Translation to follow)

U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Office director ambassador Luis C. de Baca delivers press briefing on the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report

Briefing by U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Office director Ambassador Luis C. de Baca

[This year's TIP finds a 30% increase in countries listed in the 'Tier 2 Watch List']

"...The International Labor Organization issued a report, The Cost of Coercion, about six weeks or – excuse me, about a month ago, and in that report the ILO estimated about 12.3 million people being held in bondage worldwide, of whom they estimated about 1.5 million are for sexual slavery, sexual servitude, which is perhaps a little bit counterintuitive to what people have seen the modern slavery or the human trafficking problem as, historically. Certainly, press accounts, what you see in movies, what you see in mass culture, tends to define this as a problem of people being moved to prostitution, people perhaps being kidnapped into prostitution. Rather, what we see, what the UNODC has reported on in their trafficking report earlier this year, and what the ILO is reporting on, is the notion that people are being enslaved, whether it is for prostitution, whether it is in labor, agriculture, factories, fields, domestic service, that they are often entering into the relationship voluntarily and then becoming enslaved within that..."

"...At the end of the day, though, it’s not about administrative responses, it’s not about structural responses; it’s about the fact that this is a crime. It is one of the most serious crimes that is out there. The slavery and involuntary servitude that the traffickers hold their victims in is something that cannot simply be remedied by having different immigration structures, by having labor inspectors, by having different policies about various things. Rather, it can only be dealt with by investigating and prosecuting the people who dare to do this.

U.S. Department of State

June 16, 2009

Mexico

"My body is mine, and I decide." Photo: CIMAC

Cifras evidencian atropello a derechos SyR de las mexicanas

United States -

The World

Melanne Verveer - US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues

Remarks at Swearing-in Ceremony of the Honorable Melanne Verveer as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues

Secretary Clinton: …Melanne is most famous for the unwavering passion she brings to her causes. And for the last 15 years, that cause has been women and girls; their rights, their opportunities, their central importance to the future of our world’s progress and prosperity.

The absolute commitment she has always shown to giving voice to the voiceless, and making sure that the stories of everyday heroes and heroines would be known to a broader audience. She helped to launch the Vital Voices Democracy Initiative more than a decade ago, and she nurtured it and helped it to grow into what it is today. In the past eight years, she turned a government program into a global NGO, and the results of that work are ones that I encounter everywhere I travel on behalf of the United States. And she particularly helped to lead our commitment to end the intolerable scourge, the global crime of human trafficking.

So I was pretty lucky that Melanne was willing to accept this nomination to be our first ever ambassador on behalf on the issues and the causes and the women and girls that she has worked for so many years. She’s exactly the kind of diplomat that we need in the 21st century to exercise what we call smart power. And I am so pleased that the President agreed with me that there wasn’t any other choice for this job…

Video of Melanne Verveer's swearing in ceremony

Hillary Rodham Clinton

US Secretary of State

June 12, 2009

See also:

Melanne Verveer on Human Trafficking

Verveer has called human trafficking, which disproportionately affects women, one of the most important women’s issues she will address. "We need to elevate the race against human trafficking to the Grand Prix level, with Formula One-quality vehicles, sponsors and fuel. We simply can't stay in the slow lane for another ten years," she said in a 2007 interview.

She has long been an advocate of protecting women from trafficking. While working in the Clinton White House, she heard stories of networks that took women from their homes and “sunk them into a nightmare.” These stories inspired her to push for the 2000 Trafficking in Persons Act, which demanded an annual report on the state of human trafficking around the world.

As ambassador, Verveer will work with the Department's Trafficking in Persons Office to address trafficking in three ways: prevention, protection, and prosecution, all of which must be worked on together to be successful.. She has also called on the U.S. to work more closely with NGOs, international-law organizations and the business community to address the underlying problems that give rise to trafficking, including lack of opportunity and worker exploitation.

WhoRunsGov.com

May, 2009

See also:

Guatemala

Rosa Lacan Petzey

Vital Voices: Rising Voices of Guatemala

At age eight Rosa Lacan Petzey left home to seek work to support her family. For eleven years she worked away from home for meager pay, living with surrogate mothers. Her 14 hour workday left no time to study or to play. She lost her chance to enjoy childhood. 

Rosa’s story is common in Guatemala, a country recovering from a 36-year civil war that claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced over 1 million refugees. The devastation wrought by the conflict permeates Guatemalan society, especially for young indigenous rural women.

At age 22 Rosa defies all expectations - she is an educated, single woman in unwavering pursuit of a focused professional goal - advocacy for reproductive health. As part of a Population Council program, she works with girls under pressure to drop out of school. Recounting her job, Rosa tells stories of smart, ambitious girls unable to pay school tuition, who reluctantly decide to enter the sex trade to pay for their fees.

Rosa sees herself as a mentor for vulnerable young women, someone who can inform, counsel and empathize with them. “Parents say the girls need to marry, because they don’t have the means to keep them at home.” As someone who went to work and back to school, Rosa challenges parents to see the potential in their daughters that she saw in herself.

Vital Voices selected Rosa to attend Rising Voices: Unleashing Young Women’s Economic Potential, a collaboration between Vital Voices and the World Bank Group supported by the Nike Foundation...

Student Fellow Megan Abbot

Vital Voices

We congratulate Melanne Verveer upon her swearing-in as US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues. We look forward to seeing serious efforts to defeat human trafficking and slavery during the Obama Administration. As Ambassador Verveer stated in 2007: "We need to elevate the race against human trafficking to the Grand Prix level, with Formula One-quality vehicles, sponsors and fuel. We simply can't stay in the slow lane for another ten years,"

End impunity now!

Ni Plan Nacional ni definición de trabajos peligrosos

…The global community observes World Day Against Child Labor

Begun in 2002 by the International Labor Organization, this year's theme is "Give Girls a Chance -- End Child Labor."

Marisa Treviño - Blogger

The World / El Mundo

AEl Día mundial contra el trabajo infantil se conmemorará el 12 de junio de 2009. Este año, el Día mundial marcará el décimo aniversario de la adopción del simbólico Convenio núm. 182 de la OIT que responde a la necesidad de erradicar las peores formas de trabajo infantil. A la vez que celebrará los progresos logrados en los últimos diez años, el Día mundial pondrá de relieve los retos que aún subsisten, haciendo hincapié en la explotación de las niñas en el trabajo infantil.

Se estima que hay en el mundo unos 100 millones de niñas víctimas del trabajo infantil. Muchas de ellas realizan trabajos similares a los que desempeñan los niños, pero también suelen sobrellevar dificultades adicionales y enfrentarse a diferentes peligros. Además, las niñas están también expuestas a algunas de las peores formas de trabajo infantil, habitualmente en situaciones de trabajo encubierto...

Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT)

Eileen Sullivan

The Associated Proess

June 10, 2009

About the Sexual Exploitation with Impunity of Especially Indigenous Women and Children in Guatemala

...The Río Negro massacre occurred after an indigenous community at Río Negro refused to relocate and make way for the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam, a massive government energy project supported by The World Bank. After 74 villagers were killed in February 1982, most of the men fled to the hills. Early on March 13, 1982, army soldiers and a civil patrol from the nearby village of Xococ arrived at Río Negro, and murdered 177 women and children. Many of the victims were raped and tortured...

See also:

LibertadLatina

Commentary:

A Tzeltal Mayan mother and son in Chiapas

The government of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas has just announced the opening of their own state-level anti-trafficking office, developed in collaboration with the United nations.

We wish good luck and success to the members of this newly formed prevention-oriented committee. They will have their hands full.

Save the Children has identified Mexico's border region with Guatemala, and especially Chiapas state, as being the largest marketplace for the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) in the world.

As our map shows, this border region is the funnel through which all Central and South Americans seeking to migrate to the United States must pass. As a result, organized criminals and common rapists have set themselves up in Chiapas like trolls under a bridge, just waiting to ambush and victimize the tens of thousands of innocent migrants who cross into Mexico each year. Indigenous women and girls are subjected to these crimes at four times the rate experienced by other migrants.

According to the International Organization for Migration's Tapachula office, estimated 450 to 600 women and girls are sexually assaulted in this region each and every day as they cross the border into Mexico, with no police response whatsoever to this massive crime wave. Many of the victims are then kidnapped into sexual slavery, only to be sold to brothels in Tapachula, Mexico City, Tijuana, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York and Madrid, among other destinations.

It is therefore not surprising that the United Nations has established its first anti-trafficking collaboration with the state government of a nation in Chiapas. The emergency in this state merits such focused attention.

While Mexico's President Felipe Calderón has delayed and watered down regulations to combat trafficking during the past year, we are glad to see that the Chiapas state government has developed a direct working relationship with the United Nations to combat this obscene scourge.

While this is a good start, international political pressure must be brought to bear on the federal government of Mexico to insist that: 1) significant resources be committed with sincerity to combat trafficking and violent crime against migrant women and the local, especially indigenous Mayan population; and 2) corrupt police, military and immigration agents under federal control stop sexually exploiting and extorting migrant women and girls in collaboration with the region's brutal sex trafficking mafias.

If those steps are taken honestly and obtain results (a tall order), perhaps Chiapas will finally loose its infamy as being the largest center for the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world.

End impunity now!

Traffickers sell these children to Tapachula's pimps for $200 each.

Prostitution in cities like Tapachula operates openly.  Contralínea Magazine has documented the fact that traffickers work with corrupt federal and local officials in exchange for bribes or as direct participants in the criminal networks.  They do business in easily identified neighborhoods such as Las Huacas.  

According to ECPAT's report "Ending Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes," from Tapachula, where these children are sold, the victims are transported to the Mexican cities of Oaxaca, Michoacán, Guerrero, Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa and Mexico City.

More that 50% of these child victims are from [indigenous] Guatemala.  The rest are Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.  They range in age from eight to fourteen-years-old.

See also:

Trafficking Migrant Women and Minors at the Mexican Southern Border. A Exploration into an Unknown Reality. (Executive Summary - In English)

Rodolfo Casillas R.

The Organization of American Sates (OAS)

Feb., 2005

See also:

Traficking of Women, Adolescents and Children in Mexico: "An Exploratory Assessment in Tapachula, Chiapas" (In Spanish - Large PDF file - 269 pages)

Rodolfo Casillas R.

The Organization of American Sates (OAS)

2006

See also:

Navajo Nation

(The Navajo woman pictured is not a known victim related to this story.)

Sexual Assault Among the Navajo

Mexico

Indigenous girls in Mexico - always at risk from sex traffickers and a government that does not care...

LibertadLatina

Commentary

Corruption in Mexico and its impact on that nation's war against sexual exploitation and trafficking

The June 5, 2009 article by Carlos Osorio in the Toronto Star, "Everybody knows who really runs Mexico" - highlights one of the key roadblocks to combating sexual exploitation in the 'Aztec nation' as U.S. based Spanish-language TV network news refers to Mexico.

Many in the inter-national anti-trafficking movement, including professionals working in government,  inter-governmental organi-zations, academia, international aid groups, law enforce-ment agencies and non-governmental agencies focus a large portion of their efforts to combat modern human slavery on the advancement of international legal instruments - protocols and conventions, to reign-in the explosive growth in modern human slavery.

An assumption is made in professional circles that the international legal system will provide a framework that each nation can model national legislation on, the law in each country will be passed, law enforcement will then enforce these laws, and human slavery will be brought under control.

As our extensive news coverage of the crisis in Mexico illustrates, being a signatory to international human rights and anti-trafficking agreements does not automatically mean that the signatory nation is actually in agreement with the goal of ending modern human trafficking and related forms of sexual exploitation.

The Toronto Star article highlights the fact that narco-traffickers, through their use of criminal profits to fuel payoffs to corrupt government officials, effectively represent a shadow government that runs in parallel with the federal government of Mexico. This is not surprising, given that millions of Mexicans live in severe poverty and find the idea of working for a drug cartel to be a reasonable employment option.

The drug cartels are also Mexico's largest financiers of the sex trafficking industry. The cartels use their complex trafficking  transportation networks to ship guns, drugs, and yes, also 10-year-old Mayan girls, and many other Mexican and Central American-migrant kidnap victims destined to be sold into much-shortened and tortured lives as sex slaves in Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York, Amsterdam and Madrid.

The mass sexual slavery of women and children is condoned in Mexico in-part because these 'customs' have existed as a basic element of the 'cult' of machismo for hundreds of years, during which time the 'practice' has focused most intensively on the sexual exploitation with impunity of Indigenous women and girls. That was the reality in 1600, and that is the reality today in 2009.

It is simply not in the best interests of the drug cartels to see sex trafficking brought under control in Mexico. Selling women and girls internationally brings them as much profit as trafficking in drugs, while exposing them to less risk.

In reality, the fact that Mexico does not control modern human slavery, and especially the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC), means that the entire world-wide marketplace of buyers of child and adult sex slaves eagerly seek-out the merchandise sold by Mexico's sex trafficking 'industry.'

The southern Mexican border region has been identified as the largest center for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the entire world. In one glaring example of that truth, over 50% of the 20,000 plus women and girls working in that border region's prostitution 'mega-center,' the city of Tapachula, are underage girls.

In addition, an estimated 450 to 600 Latin American migrant women and girls are sexually assaulted each and every day as they cross from Guatemala into Mexico, seeking to reach the United States. Many of those victims are then kidnapped and sold by sex traffickers. A 12-year-old Mayan girl can be bought in the border region for $100 to $200 dollars. If she can be transported to Madrid, Spain, the trafficker can resell the girl for over $25,000, because Mayan girls are considered to be 'exotic' merchandise.

Despite these tragedies, and the thousands of other cases that exist, for 11 full months, during which time the Congress of the Republic issued four stern warnings to him on the issue, Mexico's President Felipe Calderón delayed publishing federal regulations that were desperately needed to enable the nation's 2008 federal anti-trafficking law, its first.

When the President did finally publish the regulations, Congress and anti-trafficking activists in Mexico found the rules to have been watered down, weakening the law and deliberately thwarting the intent of Congress - to control modern human slavery.

The drug cartels control Mexico 'on the ground' - and Mexico's federal government expresses a combination of indifference and impunity in regard to combating human trafficking. Therefore, sexual slavery and labor trafficking are not at all controlled in Mexico. Plain and simple. Mexico's government will do what it must to be placed in a good position on the U.S. Department of State's global Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, but beyond that, victims should not hold their breath while they wait for assistance.

Despite Mexico's ratification of the United Nations' Palermo Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants in March of 2003, modern sexual and labor slavery remain completely protected by impunity, while traffickers laugh all the way to the bank with their profits.

Mexico is just one example of a reality that exists across the world. Nations living in poverty who are targeted by modern human traffickers will, at the levels of  government, law enforcement and civil society, often turn a blind eye in exchange for a cut of the profits from the sex trade. As honest citizens and those who are vulnerable to being trafficked clamor for protection and justice, they find that 'nobody is home' in the government agencies that should protect them from these sadistic gangsters.

As the crisis on modern human slavery grows and spins out of control in reaction to increasing demand and the impact of the global economic downturn, creative new approaches and  solutions to combat trafficking must be brought to the table.

We are therefore encouraged by the brave efforts of United Nations diplomats and Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica to promote a Global Plan of Action to get around the very clear fact that the Palermo Protocol, and regional efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) are insufficient to successfully fight this aggressive war against a whole generation of Latin American and especially Indigenous women and girls.

We look forward to seeing the United States take a leading role to step-up efforts to bring this crisis under control.

We are not, for example, impressed that sex traffickers have taken an estimated 4,000 underage Indigenous girls from Mexico to Japan to be sold into the Yakuza mafia's network of brothels.

Between the leaders of Japan, the United States and the United Nations, there does exist the power to rescue these children and bring them back home.

Can you make that happen, President Obama?

If not, it is time to form a United Nations-based Global Plan of Action entity that can carry out such rescues.

We therefore recommend that the U.S. Department of State change its current opposition to a Global Plan of Action, a position that it bases  upon an assumption that the Palermo Protocol is an effective mechanism to combat modern slavery.

It is clear to see that the Palermo Protocol is not working effectively.

Meanwhile, the victims wait for help that may never come, and those at risk wait for the day when they can walk down the street without fear of being kidnapped and raped dozens of times per day for the three or four years that they might be expected to survive through the unending, nightmarish hell of a life that we call sexual slavery.

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 6, 2009

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Added: June 6, 2009

Guatemala

"Guatemala: We have neither protection nor justice for women and girls." Photo: Amnesty International

Guatemala’s Femicide Law: Progress Against Impunity?

Excerpt form the  Executive Summary

Guatemala ranks among the most dangerous places in Latin America, especially for women. While crime and violence affects everyone, particularly community leaders, indigenous rights representatives, judges, and human rights defenders, violence against women and girls has escalated markedly in the past ten years…

With a population under 14 million, Guatemala registered over 4,300 violent murders of women from 2000 to 2008, and shockingly 98% of the cases remained unsolved. The majority of murders are committed by firearm in and around Guatemala City, and are preceded by rape or torture…

The internal armed conflict, classified as genocide by the United Nations, contributed heavily to the legacy of violence in Guatemala, including violence against women. With torture regularly used as a military technique, the torment that women faced was of a particularly sadistic nature. Two comprehensive reports document the extent of the sexual abuses carried out against women during the war. The vast majority who suffered sexual violence were of Mayan descent (88.7%). It has been estimated that 50,000 women and girls were victims of violence.

The suffering endured by women during the internal armed conflict did not end with the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. Organized crime, gangs, drug trafficking, and human trafficking have become part of daily life both in the capital city and also throughout the countryside. A lack of rule of law, including corruption, gender bias and impunity in law enforcement, investigations and the legal system have also had an adverse effect on women…

Impunity in cases of violence against women and femicide is staggeringly high. Dr. Carlos Castresana, Commissioner of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), has identified impunity as the overwhelming factor in the femicide crisis…

The Guatemalan National Police force is understaffed, lacks training on how to approach female victims of violence, and is notoriously corrupt. Domestic violence continues to be dismissed as a “private” matter, despite legislation to the contrary, and gender bias permeates the investigative process and judicial system. In many femicide cases victims are initially dismissed as prostitutes, gang members, or criminals…

Guatemala Human rights Commission / USA

2009

See also:

LibertadLatina

About the sexual exploitation with impunity of women and children in the Mayan majority nation of Guatemala

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Added: June 6, 2009

The World /

El Mundo

Regine Stachelhaus, head of UNICEF Germany, attends a press conference to present a UNICEF world report on global child sexual exploitation on June 2, 2009 in Berlin Photo: Getty Images

Roger Moore urges global action against child exploitation

Former James Bond star Roger Moore lashed out on Tuesday against the sexual exploitation of children, urging those who abuse minors to be pursued across national borders - reports AFP.

Speaking at the publication of a new UNICEF report on the sexual abuse of children, Moore said: "Childhood is being destroyed by sexual abuse, violence and neglect. We must stop it. If we do nothing, our silence would mean acceptance."

The 81-year-old British actor, a longtime UNICEF ambassador, added: "I can hardly imagine a more shameful violation of the rights of children as the deliberate exploitation of their bodies by unscrupulous adults to serve their sexual appetite."

"They destroy the childhood of their victims and do harm to them that lasts throughout their lives."

He called for better cooperation between police forces, public prosecutors and the business sector.

"Perpetrators must be followed across borders," he urged.

The UNICEF report quoted data from a