Tuesday, September 20, 2005

A positive step

Greece is unfortunately a country which receives a large amount of human trafficking, especially from Eastern Europe and Balkan countries. Unfortunately, many victims who did not have legal status have been improperly arrested and deported, only to have the cycle begin again. Greece has remained on the U.S. Department of State's Tier 2 Trafficking Watch List, as it remains a desirable place for these criminals to bring their victims.

There is a small amount of good news, however, as in the next year, Thessaloniki will open a hostel for victims of human trafficking.

Thessaloniki will open a hostel as of next year for victims of human trafficking, said Prefect Panayiotis Psomiadis yesterday. The center will house the victims, who are mostly women, rather than having them sent to a prison. They will receive support services, participate in a Greek language course and receive professional training in order to be inducted into the community, officials said.

Maybe it is a small step, but at least it is a positive one. Hopefully the Greek government will be committed to making more positive changes when it comes to the fight against human trafficking, which is a terrible blight to all civilized society.

2 comments:

The SeaWitch said...

I'm very pleased to hear that Thessaloniki is opening a shelter for victims of trafficking but so much more needs to be done. The sex slave trade involves over a half a million women from just Eastern Europe alone...many of them ending up in Greece and Italy. Considering the number of women being sold into the sex trade, it's rather upsetting that only 140 arrests were made in 2003 in Greece and no word as to how many convictions. I blogged this debauched industry last December (http://theseawitch.blogspot.com/2004/12/slavery-in-21st-century.html#comments)and the stats I found were staggering...imprisoning children as well.

On a side note: There's a new movie on the Greek DVD shelves titled "Promised Land" in English but of course, the title became "Whores" in Greek and the people who rent it aren't expecting to see the harsh reality of sex for sale but soft porn. They are in for a rude awakening. I think this film should be made freely available inside the countries where most of the victims originate. Maybe they won't be so quick to believe the recruiters' promises of waitressing work in a 5 star hotel.

melusina said...

I shamefully didn't realize this was such a huge problem until I moved to Europe. You don't see or hear about it in the U.S. that much. I started hearing the stories, even Americans overseas get sucked in and become victims.

We can only hope that more gets done as time goes on.