Film Screening
Friday, May 14, 2004
co-hosted by Amnesty International's Firefly Project
Ukrainian Institute of America
2 East 79th Street
(Corner of 5th Avenue)
New York, NY
Lilya 4-Ever
The event began with opening remarks by Jersey City's Special Task Force on Trafficking, Lieutenant Walter Zalisko at 7:00 p.m., followed by the screening of the film at 7:30.
Through a heart-wrenching vignette of post-Soviet realism, the film, which received the award for Best Swedish Film in 2002, reveals the aching portrait of an Eastern European 16-year old, who through a series of events including abandonment, lack of employment opportunities and the lure of a dream to overcome her economic circumstances, finds herself sold into sexual slavery in Sweden. This phenomenon reverberates throughout Ukraine, one of the largest source countries of trafficking victims.
"While exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint, roughly 75% of the apprehended cases of trafficking victims in the New York area in the past year have been from Eastern Europe 23% comprise young women and children from Ukraine," said Roksolana Luckhan, steering committee head of the emerging New York Coalition to Stop Trafficking. "Criminal organizations prey on women, offering what seem like legitimate jobs abroad, then confiscating passports and brutally coercing them into working in the sex industry."
The movie, which premiered in Ukraine in 2003, with the support of the Swedish Embassy, the Organization for Security and Cooperation, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Development Program, stimulated widespread discussion in several oblasts of Ukraine. Although Ukraine was one of the first countries in Europe to formally criminalize human trafficking by adopting Article 149 in its new Criminal Code to make human trafficking an indictable criminal offence, more can be done in destination cities such as New York to raise the awareness of trafficking scope and impact among policy-makers and the public-at-large.
Sponsors for the event included the Ukrainian Institute of America, Amnesty's Firefly Project, the Ukrainian Women's League of America, PLAST Kurin Spartanky, National Council of Women/USA and the World's Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations. The screening was the first in a series of activities to contribute to the prevention of trafficking of women from Eastern Europe. A reception will followed the event.
More on this web site:
The Power of Change is in Our HandsAmnesty International's Violence Against Women Campaign
Women's Human Rights
