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SLAVES IN THE FIRST WORLD
More than 500,000 women fall into Europe each year for sexual exploitation and forced labor






More than 21 million people live trapped in networks of modern slavery. And there is no country that escapes of this scourge. Each, to a greater or lesser extent, is involved, as the country of origin or of destination. These are data from 2015 provided by the Jesuit Service to Migrants, which investigates the trafficking in persons as the new slavery of the twenty-first century.

When speaking of "trafficking", it is usually related to prostitution, but unfortunately, reaches far beyond. "Is the most sordid forms which displace labor force in the world", according to a report of the Jesuit Service to migrants and that Maria Jose Castaño, researcher at the Institute for University Studies on Migration of the Pontifical Comillas University of Madrid, has facilitated a mission.

"The trafficking and smuggling of persons are two totally different offenses, although they have connections among themselves," says Brown. Trafficking in persons is a "transnational crime" that consists in helping a person to cross a border illegally, which leads to the violation of the immigration regulations of that State. The realization of this act has as a consequence the immediate expulsion of that person in the country and the return to their nation of origin. However, the crime of trafficking in persons is "far more serious" because it consists in "the recruitment of someone through acts of violence, threats, deceit or abuse in a context of vulnerability, whether economic, psychosocial, physical, administrative or of any kind, in order to move it or transfer it to another person, therefore it does not require the crossing of frontiers for sexual or labor exploitation or trafficking of its organs".
More than 500,000 women fall into Europe each year for sexual exploitation and forced labor which, together with the benefits that are obtained from the smuggling of migrants and weapons, moves around 35,000 million dollars in the entire world.
Although in Spain there have been no reported cases of organ trafficking, sexual and labor exploitation itself is present in our country. "Those responsible for trafficking of the Guardia Civil I commented that are carried out as many research related to the purpose of labor exploitation as for purposes of sexual exploitation",Castaño says.


Operation Wei
The operation Wei attests to this. Began in June 2009 and was closed at the end of 2015. In Mataró (Barcelona), 750 Mossos d'Esquadra intervened 72 clandestine workshops and arrested 77 persons of Chinese nationality. More than 100 were attributed to have almost 500 of their compatriots to work from Monday to Sunday during 15 hours a day, without public holidays. In times of particular demand, workers sew until three in the morning, slept four hours in the same workshop and returned to work. Lived in basements, and fed on the basis of small portions of pasta and rice to prevent "work little to be very full". There were no windows and the hygienic conditions were deplorable. And all this for only 25 euros per day.
Only two of the nearly 500 workers dared to relate their experience as protected witnesses after suffer from threats of the owners. As victims of trafficking shall be indemnified with at least 10,000 euros.
In the registry of the clandestine workshops, labels were found of 363 brands. It was not a question of counterfeits, but of 'business groups dedicated to the textile industry of notorious relevance in national and international markets". Large companies stated that they knew nothing. And it is a pyramidal system of outsourcing of production lines through Spanish suppliers with their papers in order that, with the increase in production and the reduction of the time, hire intermediaries clothing, which are in an absolute hiding.
Monica Prieto, Liberata, Foundation against Trafficking in human beings, specifies that "60 percent of the employees around the world work without contract" and that, in some sense, "the global economy is held in slavery". Not only the textile industry, but also the agriculture. "Much of the production, for example, cocoa, comes from countries such as the Ivory Coast, where children of ten years working in the collection". But you do not need to go to Africa to find slaves: "In the greenhouses of the South of Spain, during the collection of the strawberry of Huelva, for example, are recruited Moroccan women and ensure that they are mothers to return to his country, with its small".
According points Prieto, "the commodification of human labor and the body are profitable. Therefore, trafficking extends and thrives. Only in Europe moves 3,000,000 euros per year and enslaves to approximately 140,000 women. At the global level, it is estimated that 1 out of every 5 victims of trafficking are children, while women reach the two-thirds of total".

Sell the body
When speaking of trafficking, this is usually associated with prostitution because it is the most widespread form of trafficking. In Caritas know well; therefore, during the presentation of the report "prostitution from the experience and the gaze of Caritas", its responsible stressed that, in the majority of cases, "women victims of trafficking are not aware of their status as victims and their rights as such". "They think they are within a migration process, but that will come out of it and which will pay the debt that acquired with the trafficker; although, in fact, this does nothing more than increase", stresses Chestnut.
The profile of the more than 2,200 women in a situation of trafficking and prostitution aided by Caritas in Spain between 2011 and 2014 is that of a woman of foreign origin, particularly sub-Saharan, Romanian, Brazilian Dominican or - less than 35 years; with a low educational level - in its vast majority, not arrive to complete secondary education - and with minors in their charge. "Are women who leave behind, in their countries of origin, situations of poverty, exclusion, discrimination and even violence", precise Hilde Daems, that causes the area of women in Caritas.
The Center of Intelligence and Risk Analysis of the National Police warned of "lower scandalous in the average age of the customer of prostitution", as currently, also reaches out to young people between 19 and 20 years.
Since APRAMP, the Association for the prevention, reintegration and attention to prostitute women, insist that 'the ads and the misuse of the Internet have degenerated into a normalization of prostitution as a leisure activity and the image of women as an object of consumption". A change in values, which now only seek the immediate gratification. Pornography is just a few clicks away, and the inability to be contained before the sexual frustration makes the 20 percent of boys in Spain recognize having recently paid for services of prostitution. The vast majority did not conceive that the woman may be a victim of trafficking, as it claims to be a study of the Pontifical University of Comillas commissioned by the delegation of the Government by gender-based violence.
Comprehensive Law against trafficking
To end slavery in the twenty-first century in all its forms, there is a need to develop a comprehensive law against trafficking. This is why, since Caritas calling for collaboration of the security forces and the social entities. Chestnut insists on the importance of collecting a definition of "victim" covering the three types of trafficking: sexual holdings, labor and trafficking in organs. Currently, it is complicated to get the recognition of victim because the proof lies on the person, which is often not identified as such.
In addition, "it is the obligation of the State to give the person an official protection to ensure their physical integrity, give legal and psychological assistance, and, to the extent possible, provide a long-term solution to exit this situation". For its part, chestnut appeals to the responsibility, "not only individual, to hire someone in fair conditions and not exploitation", but also that the companies are accountable for its line of suppliers and the possible benefit of slave labor.




Translated by catholic.net








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