Combating Sex-Trade a Daunting Task

As international crime goes, human trafficking has long been regarded as a cinch.

“Punishment is low, the risk of detection is low and the profits are high,” said Bjorn Clarberg, head of the human trafficking unit in Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.

But laws addressing trafficking for the sex trade are beginning to change.

The suicide of a desperate teenager from eastern Europe opened many eyes in Sweden. In the United States, the tearful Senate testimony of disguised women from Mexico and Russia made a difference.

The Senate hearings led to the Victims Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000, which provides life sentences for some categories of trafficking, threatens sanctions against countries that allow trafficking to flourish and permits victims to remain in the country, rather than be immediately deported.

Acting earlier this year under the new law, Secretary of State Colin Powell released a report stating that 23 countries, including U. S. allies like Israel, Greece and Saudi Arabia, are not doing enough to combat international human trafficking. The list also includes Russia, Romania, Turkey and South Korea.

“For a long time, countries didn’t take this issue seriously. So why would you expect international cooperation?” said Jennifer Stanger, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. The new law, she said, is “a good start.”

So far, two cases of trafficking have yielded indictments under the new law, according to U. S. Justice Department officials.

Combating trafficking in Europe is proving a more daunting task.

The continent’s patchwork of nations have vastly differing laws governing trafficking, and criminals use frontiers to their advantage.

“These borders continue to be an incredible impediment,” said Jef Swartele, the chief human trafficking inspector in the Belgian port city of Antwerp, near the Dutch border. For instance, law enforcement paperwork often moves much more slowly than the traffickers it’s intended to stop, he said.

Criminals also seek to exploit the loopholes of a patchwork legal system, in which human trafficking falls under different crime categories--prostitution, illegal immigration and the like--in different countries.

When Sweden imposed tougher anti-prostitution laws in 1999, the option for criminals was easy: They went to neighboring countries.

Within the European Union, the 15 governments have begun to realize that they have to close ranks and issue comparable legislation with equal sentencing.

“It will send a very clear message to organized crime that there will be no safe haven in any member state,” EU Justice Commissioner Antonio Vitorino said.

Witness protection will be vital.

Ines Fontinha runs a shelter for prostitutes, called O Ninho--The Nest--in downtown Lisbon.

“Women are very afraid to be witnesses because the organizations are known to be extremely violent,” she said. “If we ask them to be witnesses, they say, ‘No,’ because they think they will be killed.”