Archive for the ‘Sex Trade’ Category
Monday, July 19th, 2010
19/7/10
Malaysian police have smashed a child-trafficking racket and rescued eight children and babies, an official said yesterday. Police detained 16 suspects, including four Indonesian women, in a sting operation after an Indonesian woman was nabbed last Monday when she tried to sell a 23-day-old baby girl for 10,000 ringgit ($3590). In the latest operation on Friday, police rescued a four-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl and detained two Indonesian sisters, said to be the caretakers of the children. Police said they were yet to determine who was behind the group or whether the eight rescued children involved any foreigners. The eight children, including three infants, are aged between 23 days and 12 years.
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Tags: Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Malaysia
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Monday, May 10th, 2010
10/5/10; (2 Items)
A couple who operated a Sydney brothel forced five women to live in “conditions of slavery”, making them work more than 100 hours per week, even if they were sick, a jury has been told. Trevor Frank McIvor, 62, and his de facto wife, Kanokporn Tanuchit, 44, have each pleaded not guilty to five counts of possessing a slave and five counts of using a slave. The jurors, who were told the hearing is a retrial, heard that the five women were recruited from Thailand by a third party, who arranged Australian visas for them. Crown prosecutor Bruce Levet said on their arrival in Sydney, the women had their passports and phones taken and they were housed in “restricted circumstances” at the Fairfield brothel or the couple’s house.
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Tags: Australia, Sex Trade, Thailand, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Stephen Fitzpatrick; 30/4/10; http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/indonesia-sings-to-end-slavery-and-exploitation/story-e6frg6so-1225860378463
Some of Indonesia’s top rock bands, a bubbly pop starlet who makes teenagers swoon, the music channel MTV and the Australian government’s aid program might seem an unlikely combination. But a series of concerts kicking off this weekend in Pontianak, the regional capital of West Kalimantan, has a serious objective: raising awareness of human trafficking. The five free concerts, which it is hoped will attract about 100,000 young Indonesians, are designed to push the message that being sold into prostitution and forced labour is a major human rights violation. UN figures suggest 2.5 million people are trafficked annually, the majority in the Asia-Pacific. About 100,000 Indonesian women and children are sold into sexual slavery each year, according to Unicef.
AusAID and its American counterpart, USAID, are the concert program’s major sponsors, which is headed up by young former Sydney lawyer Matt Love and spruiked by Agnes Monica, a young pop singer, dancer and soapie actress who sends Indonesian teens delirious. “It takes more than just one person, it takes more than just MTV, it takes more than just the government, it takes everyone to stand up and do their part,” Ms Monica said at the Jakarta launch.
Tags: Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Sex Trade, Women
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Joanna Moorhead; 6/4/10
I am walking along a brightly painted corridor when a couple of young girls catch first my eye, and then my arm. They smile at me, and giggle; they look about the same ages as my elder daughters, 17 and 15. Just like my daughters, these girls have taken a lot of time over their make-up and their clothes, and they look beautiful. In their faces I see the same fun and youthful optimism that I see every day in my own house. But there the comparisons end. Because I am in Faridpur in central Bangladesh, on the banks of the Padma River, and these girls are sex workers. Each day they must have intercourse with four or five men, for the price of about 100 taka, or less than $2, a time. And for most of the girls here, there is no monetary gain whatsoever: because most of the inmates (and it is, in many ways, like a prison) at this Faridpur brothel are chhukri, or bonded sex workers, sold by their families to a madam in return for two or three years in which she, the brothel owner, can pocket all their earnings.
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Tags: Asia, Children, Prostitution
Posted in Asia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Sian Powell; 13/3/08;
A laugh rings out; one of the young women leans over, grinning, and whacks her neighbour on the arm. There are eight or 10 friends here in the Can Do bar in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai, sitting in easy camaraderie around a big table in an open-air back room. Eating noodles, teasing, gossiping – they are clearly enjoying themselves, at ease with one another, relaxed. These women could be students, or colleagues, or factory workers on a break.
Instead, they are all prostitutes – forced by economic necessity and a lack of opportunity to make a living selling sex to men. Thailand has limited social welfare provisions and life is hard for the poor, especially refugees.
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Tags: Sex Trade, Thailand, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
8/3/10
A bishop has given new details of sex abuse at a boys’ choir in Germany once headed by the Pope’s brother. Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, bishop of Regensburg, in southern Germany, where the Domspatzen choir is based, said Pope Benedict XVI’s brother Georg Ratzinger, 86, did not head the choir at the time. The two “remembered” cases of sex abuse at Domspatzen dated back to 1958 and therefore “did not coincide with the period where professor Georg Ratzinger was in charge”, Bishop Mueller said in the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper. Mr Ratzinger headed the choir between 1964 and 1994, he said. The director and composer Franz Wittenbrink, a former pupil of the school attached to Domspatzen, spoke of an “ingenious system of sadistic punishments connected to sexual pleasure” at the school.
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Tags: Christianity, Germany, Sexual Abuse
Posted in Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Saturday, March 6th, 2010
John Hooper; 6/3/10
The Vatican has been rocked by a sex scandal with links to Pope Benedict’s household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. Angelo Balducci, a ceremonial usher, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. According to transcripts, numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood. The explosive claims about Balducci’s private life have caused grave embarrassment to the Vatican, which has yet to publicly comment on the affair.
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Tags: Christianity, Homosexuality
Posted in Christianity, Homosexuality, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
5/3/10
Victims of clerical sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church have reacted angrily to an appeal by an Irish bishop for parishioners to help pay spiralling compensation claims. Bishop Denis Brennan of the diocese of Ferns, in the east of Ireland, said the diocese had paid E8 million ($13.4m) to settle 48 civil actions arising from decades of sexual abuse by priests and that another 13 actions against the diocese were pending. Dr Brennan is the first bishop to give details on how much compensation has been paid to victims. He said his official residence had been remortgaged to cover nearly E2m in legal fees. A request for financial help from parishioners was not about sharing blame, he said, but about “asking for help to fulfil a God-given responsibility”. Eugene Doyle, the chief financial officer of the diocese, said the church had no option but to ask its members to help foot the bill.
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Tags: Christianity, Ireland, Pedophilia
Posted in Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Rebecca Urban; 16/2/10
Grains exporter AWB has settled a potential $100 million-plus class action brought by investors who claimed to be kept in the dark over secret payments to Iraqi companies, marking an end to the company’s legal battles in Australia. Less than a week into a four-week hearing in the Federal Court in Sydney, AWB has announced it has settled the long-running case for $39.5m, including the applicants’ legal costs. The settlement, which is still subject to the court’s approval, is not expected to involve an admission of liability. Describing the deal as “commercially acceptable”, AWB chairman Peter Polson said it was in the best interests of the company’s shareholders. “The company is pleased to put this matter behind it as this is the final legal matter directed against the company in Australia arising out of activities under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program,” Mr Polson said in a statement.
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Tags: Australia, Iraq, Terrorism, Trade, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, Iraq, Sex Trade, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
13/1/10; http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=23077
Fourteen men and a woman have been charged in connection with the largest human trafficking and prostitution ring to have been busted in Abu Dhabi, a United Arab Emirates newspaper reported on Monday. The defendants are accused of involvement in a ring which allegedly promised jobs in the oil-rich UAE to 13 women, most of them from Morocco, but then forced them into prostitution, The National reported. “There was the recruiter in Morocco, the kingpins in the UAE who oversaw the logistics, and handlers to control the women,” the English-language newspaper said. “Then there were the women, all lured here in the hopes of a good job only to find themselves enslaved in a seedy underworld of prostitution.” According to court testimony, the women were kept locked in a villa and several flats after their arrival in the Gulf Arab state, then beaten and threatened with death to force them to work as prostitutes, it said. The Abu Dhabi court is to issue a verdict in the case on January 17.
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Tags: Emirates; Trade, Womens Rights, Workers
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Workers | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
Bassam Za’za’; 23/12/09; (3 Items)
An Iraqi and his wife have been jailed after a court convicted them of sexually exploiting a teenage girl to work as an exotic dancer and sex worker. The Dubai Court of First Instance sentenced the 52-year-old electrician, R.A., and his 45-year-old wife, A.I., to three years in jail each followed by deportation. Presiding Judge Al Saeed Mohammad Barghout, who pronounced Tuesday’s judgment, also sentenced a 26-year-old Iraqi salesman, H.M., to a year in jail followed by deportation for aiding and abetting the couple. The court pardoned a 25-year-old Iraqi housewife, B.A., from serving a punishment, which the judge did not specify. She had refuted the charge of failing to report the couple to the authorities. The couple had earlier denied buying the 17-year-old girl from her parents in Iraq and forcing her to work as an exotic dancer and prostitute in Dubai.
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Tags: Dubai, Sex Trade, UAE, Violence, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
16/12/09
As the granddaughter of Molly Craig and the daughter of Doris Pilkington-Garimara, I am deeply offended by the comments made by Keith Windschuttle. White station owners and itinerant workers often took advantage of young Aboriginal girls, many of whom were raped. Their punishment? Taken from their loving parents and their homelands to an alien environment and brainwashed into believing their parents had abandoned them. A.O. Neville had the sole intention of attempting to “breed out” the Aboriginal race. I have read many Native Welfare files in my job as an information officer with a government department, and what I read broke my heart. Aboriginal women were described in the most derogatory terms by ignorant people who had no intention of learning about our culture and history. My mother worked tirelessly to gather the facts for her book, Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, and Phillip Noyce and Christine Olsen did a fantastic job of bringing her story to life through the film. I feel sorry for Mr Windschuttle if he has to resort to distorting the truth to panhandle his latest book. Maria Pilkington, Mt Lawley, WA
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Tags: Aboriginals, Australia, Human Rights, Reconciliation
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Racism, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Amira Hass: 10/12/09
Young Palestinian women are being forced to into prostitution in brothels, escort services, and private apartments in Ramallah and Jerusalem, including areas inhabited by Jews, according to a report released Wednesday. The Palestinian organization SAWA (All Women Together Today and Tomorrow) published the paper, the first of its kind, urging Palestinian society to break its silence over its sex industry. The report was compiled with support by UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, which allotted resources for research on the subject. SAWA conducted research and interviews for the study in the beginning of 2008, but for a variety of reasons has only now been published. The report, which is titled “Trafficking and Forced Prostitution of Palestinian Women and Girls: Forms of Modern Day Slavery,” was released in conjunction with the “Global 16-day Campaign to Combat Violence Against Women.”
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Tags: Israel, Sex Trade
Posted in Israel & Palestine, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Nick McKenzie; 3/12/09
The Catholic Church’s chief sexual abuse investigator in Melbourne has for the second time tipped off a priest that he is the target of a covert police inquiry. The action by Peter O’Callaghan, QC, has infuriated police and drawn a strong rebuke from Victoria’s top sexual crime detective. In the two separate cases, the priests were told by Mr O’Callaghan that they were under investigation without the consent of detectives, before police had interviewed them and while the inquiries were at a covert stage, leaving them open to potential compromise.
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Tags: Australia, Christianity, Sex Trade
Posted in Australia, Christianity, Health & Children, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
John Honner; 17/11/09;
John Honner has worked in community services for the past ten years. He was an instigator of a research project exploring the life experiences of a sample of care leavers: see Suellen Murray et al, After the Orphanage: Life beyond the Children’s Home (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009). His submission to the Senate Inquiry that led to the Forgotten Australians report can be read here.
At 11.00am yesterday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia, formally apologised to generations of Australians who were subjected to harm in children’s homes through the twentieth century.Some could no longer be cared for in their families, yet were labeled ‘orphans’. Others were child migrants, sent out from Britain to have a chance of a better life in Australia. Many lived in a series of residential institutions, from infancy to adolescence, with every move damaging their development.There are some 500,000 of these ‘Forgotten Australians’ and ‘Lost Innocents’. They all suffered hurt and distress. Many were victims of abuse and assault. Many never experienced a hug. Many were kept separate from siblings. Many never knew until years later that they actually had a mother and a family. All were at risk of attachment disorder and most lived with a fractured identity. Many struggled later in life to develop relationships. Most finished their very inadequate schooling at the age of fourteen and were used as cheap labour.Many live heroic, resilient lives, holding on to hope. Some, as the Prime Minister acknowledged, ‘could not cope and took their own lives in despair’.They were all innocent.
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Tags: Australia, Children, Human Rights, Migrants & Refugees, UK
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Hugh Mackay, 17/11/09; (2 Items)
So we’re to have another national apology, tendered by the Prime Minister on behalf of the Parliament and the Australian people. This time, it’s the turn of the “forgotten children” – those who languished, and were often neglected or abused, in institutions for orphans and other marginalised or displaced children, including those sent here from postwar Britain “for their own good”. No doubt an apology is called for. Even those who are cynical of such formalities would have to acknowledge that terrible wrongs were committed against these children – comparable in many ways to the wrongs committed against the members of the so-called stolen generations of Aboriginal children. But there’s a terrible gap in this process that no one seems to be acknowledging. You can easily identify that gap if you ask yourself: what is the purpose of an apology?
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Tags: Apology, Australia, Gender, Global, Sexual Abuse
Posted in Australia, Gender & Marriage, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade | No Comments »
