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Tourists to London know Shaftesbury Avenue well. Curving up from
Piccadilly Circus, it's the heart of London's Theatreland. Any
night of the year the street heaves with a mix of locals and internationals
out for an evening of culture. A short block north of Shaftesbury
Avenue is Soho, one of the few places in London where the city's
massive sex trade is visible.
Soho has been London's red light district since at least the
17th century, but today the sex industry has expanded all
over the city. In Britain, the act of prostitution -- a man paying
a woman for sex -- is not illegal. There are 730 off-street establishments
selling sex in London. There are brothels in each of the city's
32 boroughs. Britain's capital is home to an estimated 5,500 prostitutes.
80 percent of them are foreign born. The police estimate at
least half are being forced to work as prostitutes against their
will.
While commercial sex is not illegal, the associated activities
around it are: soliciting on the street, pimping and, a recently
coined legal term, "controlling prostitution." The police
are finally beginning to respond to the increase in the number
of women trafficked into sexual slavery since the fall of the
Soviet Union. Over the last 18 months they have been running operation
Kon-tiki. Inspector Andy Shortland of London's Metropolitan Police
says Kon-tiki is a fairly simple way of assessing what is happening
in London's saunas and brothels. "We can get into the premises
quite easily, well, men go into these places. Once inside we identify
ourselves and talk to the women. These aren't raids," he
explains. Their primary purpose is to gain information and disrupt
trafficking networks.
There have been small victories for the police since Operation
Kon-tiki started. Recently, the head of an Albanian sex trafficking
gang was jailed for 11 years and his younger accomplices deported.
But the police note that the trade is becoming more organized
and the criminal gangs are forming denser, more sophisticated
networks.
The police rely on the women for evidence against the traffickers.
Many are reluctant to testify against those who brutalized them.
But if a woman who escapes forced prostitution wants the help
of the Poppy
Project, British government's one facility for trafficked
women, she must cooperate with the police.
Trafficking for sexual exploitation is the headline grabber whenever
forced labor in the UK comes up, but trafficking networks exist
wherever there are people trying to escape.
No group takes bigger risks to get to the west than the Chinese.
Snakeheads, as Chinese traffickers are called, control an astonishingly
dangerous and lucrative trade, according to the International
Labor Organization's Roger Plant, "Migrants will pay sometimes
30, 40, 50 thousand dollars to snakeheads to get them out of China.
They arrive in Britain and find themselves at the mercy of people
who may exploit them."
The tale of Wen Chen Yung Ping, from Fujien in southeastern China
is particularly harrowing. Five years ago, Mrs. Wen's husband
entered into an arrangement with a group of snakeheads. They agreed
to transport him to Britain for $30,000. He didn't have the money
so he agreed to pay them back with his earnings once he arrived.
Mrs. Wen was human collateral.
When he arrived in England he was unable to find factory work.
The stress of the journey, the loneliness and isolation in London
and his worry about not being able to pay the snakeheads caused
him to suffer a nervous breakdown. Within weeks of the first payment
being past due, the snakeheads in Fujien visited Mrs. Wen. They
suggested she go to England. But she didn't want to leave her
two-year-old daughter and she didn't want to add more debt to
that already incurred by her husband. The snakeheads then made
her an offer she couldn't refuse. They assaulted her in her home
in Fujien and kidnapped her daughter. The next day Mrs. Wen agreed
to go to England.
After a perilous three-month journey, she arrived in London.
Her husband was in and out of mental hospitals and her daughter
was still a potential hostage in Fujien. A skilled sewing machine
operator, Mrs. Wen found a job in a sweatshop in London's East
End doing piecework and began years of debt bondage.
After five years her debt to the snakehead gang was paid, and
she was granted political asylum -- refugee status in Britain.
She says she bears the snakeheads no ill will. Mrs. Wen says "We
can't blame the snakeheads. We go to them. And they also have
their difficulties. They put the money out to take us here and
we have agreement. If you agree to pay once every three weeks
and you can't pay them then we were wrong to enter the agreement.
The trustworthiness of your word is also important. I don't know
how to explain, but we can't blame them."
Chinese civil rights activist Jabez Lam says Mrs. Wen's attitude
is common in the Chinese community. Lam is the founder of Minquan,
which help's
illegal Chinese migrants navigate to legitimate immigrant status
in Britain. Lam asks "What's wrong with wanting a better
life by working? The fact that they become so-called criminals
is not of their making. It's the making of the government by the
external border controls and they create a market for the snakehead
of trafficking."
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