Stop Violence Against Women

Trafficking: Background

 

Testimonies of trafficked women taken from the Amnesty International Report "Does it mean that I have rights?"

"Eventually I arrived in a bar in Kosovo, [and was] locked inside and forced into prostitution. In the bar I was never paid; I could not go out by myself, the owner became more and more violent as the weeks went by; he was beating me and raping me and the other girls. We were his ‘property’, he said. By buying us, he had bought the right to beat us, rape us, starve us, force us to have sex with clients."

"If I refused [to have sex with clients] I was threatened. He was pointing the gun to my head, and he was saying, ‘If you don’t do this in the next minute, you will be dead’. He has the gun, he was just saying do this or you will be dead."

"A friend introduced me to a woman in Chiinu, she offered me a job abroad and said she would prepare a passport for me, for free. I asked if the job was sex related and she promised that it was not."

"I was beaten and I was forced to have sexual intercourse... if we were not willing, they just beat us and raped us."

"Even in cold weather I had to wear thin dresses ... I was forced by the boss to serve international soldiers and police officers ... I have never had a chance of running away and leaving that miserable life, because I was observed every moment by a woman."

"That night two Serbian men came there and took two other girls and me away. All of us entered [Yugoslavia] illegally firstly by car, and then crossing a river on foot, until we met two other men who were waiting for us. These men took us to a house to spend the night, and the next day somebody else took us to a different house. I do not know the name of the city where we were staying. It was a woman that took us away this time."

"First they would put us to get undressed, and to be only in underwear, to look at us and see how we are looking. If you are looking OK, and they [like you], they will buy you. We were like a rag, just like a cloth."

"They put us in a line, standing up, and then they sit in an armchair and look at us, choosing one of us."

"You will not know who bought you. They will just come and tell you that you must get ready because you [have to] leave."

A journalist who visited a "trading house" near Belgrade confirmed these reports. He also observed a man bidding for a woman while talking to the purchaser via mobile phone.

"I have a female friend who worked here. When she came back she told me that there is a job. She said she would organize for a contract, and then we can go together. Three of us went together. The contract was in Albanian and English. It was translated into Russian. It was to earn €300 per month, and then 50% off for drinks. We booked a flight from Kiev to Istanbul to Pristina. I also proposed to my other friends to come together. We came as three. When we came in Ðakovica we went to a lawyer to sign a contract and for a medical check, and registered in the police station that we would work".

She was subsequently picked up in a police raid, following reports that several other women employed in this club had been transferred to other establishments and forced into prostitution.

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