Whilst digging around on wikileaks!

I came across a file that is very relevant to where I currently reside in the east of Europe! And having had experience first hand in Thailand with trapped and trafficked women from eastern Europe, it made my mind up to write this article.

Allow me to enlighten you a little on how they did it in Thailand.

I met a young & very beautiful Ukrainian girl in a go-go bar on Walking street in Pattaya Thailand, it was a honey trap where you have a very over priced drink, and a girl sits next to you, starts chatting - then says she has to move on if you do not buy her a drink (repeat that every 15 minutes), her drink is 10x the price of yours, and if you want to take the girl for dinner (sex is not on the menu) you have to pay the bar $100 per hour for her time!.

I befriended this girl outside of work and took her for dinner many times, at no cost other than her food. It was whilst having dinner she explained to me that she had been duped into going to Thailand with free a flight & offer of a modeling contract. Of course there was no modeling job, and upon entry to Thailand her passport was taken away from her by her new boss, who then said she has to pay back the flight money, plus her over priced accommodation she was now staying in, before she can leave or get the passport back. (she could never earn enough to do this)

Other girls she told me were shipped over by car or bus illegally with no papers, forcing them to work forever effectively for free.

The Bulgaria cable!

I found this cable on wikileaks that shows that there simply is no justice in this world when it comes to politicians. How does 1 year in prison seem appropriate for drug trafficking, extortion, and human trafficking?.......

1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The Varna District Court sentenced two municipal counselors on June 11 to one and three years respectively for leading and participating in an organized crime group involved in drug trafficking, extortion, and human trafficking. The government froze their property and anticipates recovering seven million leva (approximately five million USD) through forfeiture proceedings. In total, 24 people were implicated in this case, including a third municipal counselor who is awaiting a court hearing on July 15. With the fall of major long-term players and the expected seizure of the group's ill-gotten gains, prosecutors count this case as a major breakthrough in dismantling an entire Varna-based organized crime group. It is also the first time that elected officials have been successfully prosecuted for crimes related to human trafficking. End Summary.

Full source link on wikileaks

I have also known girls that were trafficked to the UK in my home town of Birmingham UK!

This is not simply a eastern thing as the UK sits nicely in the west. A massage parlor known for being a prostitutes house in reality was raided by the police a few years ago, inside were many young European women (mainly from the East) that had been trafficked to this house, and forced into the sex slave trade, again with no chance to be released, they had to work until they were no longer of use to the men running the illicit house of ill repute, that were sentenced to years in prison once the place was raided.

The owner of a West Midlands brothel who was told to pay back £2m under the Proceeds of Crime Act has been returned to jail for nearly seven years.
Carl Pritchett ran the Cuddles massage parlour in Hagley Road, Bearwood, where 19 foreign women were found during a police raid in September 2005.
He was jailed for two years in 2006 and told in 2009 he had six months to pay back the money or serve seven years.
Pritchett, 57, of The Parade, Dudley, was jailed for six years and 325 days.

West Midlands Police said last year that an investigation showed that he had no legitimate income and "had not paid income tax in years".
The force has said Pritchett had laundered the money that he made from the brothel, using it to buy properties overseas and had been driving a Ferrari a couple of years prior to his arrest.

Source in full from the bbc.

As that article is more about getting the money back from the men involved.

I found a more relevant article that explains the girls plight.

NINETEEN women who had been locked up and forced to become sex slaves have been freed in a police raid on a massage parlour.

The women, from seven different countries, had their passports taken away by the owners of a building allegedly being used as a brothel.
Fifty officers, half of whom were women, stormed the building and arrested two men, aged 22 and 50, and a 50-year-old woman.

A sawn-off shotgun, three batons and condoms were also found at Cuddles in Birmingham. It had an electric fence at the rear and boarded up windows so that the girls could not escape.

The sex slaves from Greece, Latvia, Turkey, Poland, Italy, Japan and Hong Kong, were also being questioned.

Full source link, the sun newspaper UK

Bulgaria is a hub for the trafficking of people in the EU.

As you can see from this open source Wikipedia article below.

Bulgaria is a source and, to a lesser extent, a transit and destination country for women and children who are subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution and men, women, and children subjected to conditions of forced labor. Bulgarian women and children are subjected to forced prostitution within the country, particularly in resort areas and border towns, as well as in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Cyprus, and Macedonia.

Full Wikipedia source

Below are more source links that implicate Bulgaria.

• Vice article.

• Children and trafficking via Bulgaria.

• Eight charged with human trafficking for forcing Bulgarians to beg in Sweden.

• Is the Government Playing Politics With Human Trafficking Rankings?

There are hundreds more articles regarding Bulgaria.

The part that disturbs me the most, is the fact that for ruining someones life, and many peoples lives via trafficking them to other countries and enslaving them, gets politicians only a 1 year to 3 year prison sentence, it would be more appropriate to give them life, as they have forced many other people into a life of turmoil and strife.

It is difficult to imagine what some of the trafficked people have to endure and suffer, though I for one have met them, and I can assure you it is not a pretty site.

Please consider this my entry to the official @deepdives special edition challenge here.

Verdict = It is not about winning, it is about taking part!

Images courtesy of pixabay.

I am going to keep digging even though only 1 entry is allowed.