Human trafficking from Armenia to Dubai, UAE
June 19th, 2007I don’t think I need to remind anyone here that sex trafficking is a huge issue in the Middle East, especially the Gulf. My concern is not women who choose to do this for their own personal reasons. My concern is women and young girls who are forced to do this on a daily basis with no form of support or help whatsoever.
This kind of corruption is almost always dismissed as “something that exists in every society,” so fighting it is apparently “useless.” This is not an excuse. This is a poor reaction to a major crisis that shouldn’t exist today. The fact remains that it does exist, and it’s happening right here in front of our eyes while we dismiss it, justify it, and ignore it in silence or ignorance. At this point we’re old and aware enough to say: no more. We need to make a bigger effort in raising awareness about what’s going on. We need to be the voice of those who clearly don’t have one in our societies.
Recently I found this alarming documentary focusing on the sex trafficking of Armenian women and girls into Dubai. Do watch:
And this one (Part 3) -
You can watch all the other episodes here.
The woman in the first video justifies this in her own way, claiming that prostitution is a choice that many of such women can escape, this is factually incorrect. I personally came across many women here – Bosnian, Russian, Pakistani, and especially Albanian – who were smuggled here due to war and instability within their own countries. It wasn’t by choice. Many of them came here thinking they were going to end up as waitresses, housemaids, business partners, etc. As soon as they arrive, they have their passports taken away from them, and their lives as sexual slaves begin…
The police? Not an escape. Firstly there are many policemen in the region involved in human trafficking. Secondly, many women get in further danger because if they don’t present a passport or valid documentation (which they usually don’t have access to), they get imprisoned for being within the country illegally and for taking part in prostitution. An example is this excerpt taken from a book:
…. when she arrived in Abu Dhabi she was taken to a brothel where a pimp told her that he had bought her for $7000. From that moment on she was to work as a prostitute until she paid off her so-called debt. After three months of captivity, Tanya managed to escape. She bolted to a police station and recounted her story. Incredibly, she was charged with prostitution and sentenced to three years in a desert prison. In 2001, psychologically crushed and ashamed, Tanya was released. Nothing happened to her pimp. Branded a prostitute by the Muslim nation, she was summarily deported back to her Ukraine.
Choosing between years of prison and sexual slavery is not a proper and fair choice, and thus there should be more active organizations that try to tackle this growing issue. We aim to be one of them.
It’s not just women and girls being enslaved. For the past few years, many cases involve young boys from Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, etc. Very rarely do news agencies ever make an effort to report such grave crimes against humanity.
For more information, you can always refer to our campaign against this. It’s not the best, but right now, it’s the least that we can do to help.
If you are interested in being an author with us at Sexual Terrorism, please let us know. We are looking for an editor-at-large or contributors to help us keep the site updated and to help its readers stay aware of what is going on in our societies.
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[...] [Cross posted from Mideast Youth] [...]
hey is every settled yet?
This is truly sad. Only a monster would force anyone into such nonesense. These actions are vicious, cowardly and demonic. Someday they will have to answer for this.
This is not only sad it’s a cheapening of human value, and testifies to the empty promises of greed at the sake of dignitiy.
Education of women is the only way to rescue them.
[...] Human trafficking from Armenia to Dubai, UAE [...]
To us it seems that the police department did not care nearly enough in this situation and simply wanted to find someone guilty of the cause so to speak. Due to this, Tanya was arrested for her pimp’s wrongdoing. She was the victim in this situation, not the wrong doer, being falsely accused of the crime. Her pimp was a horrible man who bought her for $7,000 dollars and used her as a prostitute against her will because she supposdley “owed debts”. That kind of torture is absolutely heartbreaking. Tanya deserved to be heard after escaping her terrifying future and was instead punished for trying to live her life in safety. Being placed in a desert prison for something that someone else did to her upsets us, she couldn’t have a say in the matter for 3 months and finally when she could, the only thing people were hearing was the word prostitute. After that her feelings and struggles didn’t matter because of the fact that some religions do not see woman as being equal to men, so they blamed it on her instead. To me it seems like the government system is proud of what the man did for forcing this girl into prostitution instead of finding him, they just let it go and put her in jail. Being forced into the “job” of prostitution is a crime alone we believe and then to not even listen to the girl’s explanation and put her in jail because of the word prostitution is an insult to women.The fact that the woman was being tortured and was held in a brothel for three months, which could have been longer if she did not escape is horrible, but then when she did finally escape she was put in prison, because she was a prostitute. She was forced to prostitution by the pimp and it should have been him thrown in jail. In the end this is showing how women still do not have the same privileges as men, which is unfair.
Im sorry , but I think this is not true , if a women goes to the police in Dubai they do investigate and try to find out who has the passport , and saying that Dubai police is involved with that , sorry but thats not true . They work as a prostitute because they are making 4 times my monthly salary.
We are not talking about prostitution by choice. We are talking about sexual enslavement. If you think all prostitution is a voluntary business, then you are unbelievably misguided. Pimps make money by having sex slaves; and Dubai is known to be amongst the first in the world when it comes to this. People tricked into going there for a respectable job but end up chained in beds for others to make money off of, your government has so far done nothing at all to prevent this from happening, as a matter of fact they silence anyone who even brings this issue up in an effort to hide such crimes, even if they know it exists. If you don’t understand the issue and are hidden under the propaganda that your government likes to spew for the sake of their reputation, then you really need to hit the books and start reading people’s stories about the horror they had to suffer in your country. Denial and ignorance won’t solve this problem, informed activism will.
If someone does not want to believe that the police and government in the UAE is not involved in human trafficking, then watch the whole video of the documentary “Desert Nights”, of which I was the lead investigator for. I not only observed the Dubai police stand guard over the trafficking victims, I also had an undercover police officer confront me while he stood guard over his girls. Both of what I am stating is shown in the documentary. As for girls that turn themselves in with the hope that they will be saved, we had one girl do this and before someone from the Armenian embassy could get to the police station, the person who “owned” the girl had been called and he paid $1,000 to the police who anded the girl back to him. This happened 3 times until we were able to get her deported. We had also interviewed a number of women who when they were under-aged and tricked to go the UAE with promises of work, they were taken to a doctor who checked to see if they were virgins and if they were, they were taken to one of the UAE kings, who had his way with them and paid the girl and traffickers $20,000 to $40,000 and the girl was then sent back to Armenia. So if you don’t think the UAE government, police and the members of the royal family are not involved with Human Trafficking, then I would say it is time to open your eyes, watch the whole documentary (link below) and then if you don’t like what you are seeing, make your voice heard and tell your government that you want them to do the right thing and put an end to this crime.
Click on my name to go to the documentary Desert Nights.
This RACIST traficking of White, Christian women into MUSLIM countries must stop! Muslims think everyone who is not muslim is garbage – extremely racist. And what about the racist Saudi royals? They KIDNAP white children and girls, keep them as sex slaves and FORCE them to have babies with arab. STOP THE MUSLIM RACISM AND AGGRESSION!
Idun, your comment is both ironically racist and is utterly rubbish. It doesn’t even merit a serious refutation. Most of these customers are “white Christians,” yet you don’t see anyone making petty stereotypes about them.
Have some shame and try to understand the issue at hand instead of ranting ignorantly and with such racism.
I’m tempted to ask: what about the non-white, non-Christian victims, but then again I know better.
Idun most likely considers them “garbage.”
Though Arabs are claiming to be true muslims, majority of them acting opposite to it…many of them have number of wives, engaged in sex with prostitutes and conside women as simply tool for fun….they are very lazy, do not work and keep slaves with them….But things are going to change…now the price of petrol is reaching the lowest and these people are going to suffer…Human trafficking is a big problem in the world..if u want to stop this kind of barbarism just send the traffickers to hell…
iDun calm down.
This isn’t about religion, its about humanity. This is happening to muslim women and childern too.
Women and childern are kidnapped and traffikked from Pakistan and Afghanistan which are both largely muslim nations.
“Muslims think everyone who is not muslim is garbage – extremely racist.”
You my friend need to take a long look in the mirror.