My prostitution problem

by limbic on June 29, 2006

style="font-weight: bold;" size="+1">UPDATE: Success!:

Just a quick note to thank you all very much for helping out so quickly.

Within one day the executive director of the MTV Europe Foundation contacted the Safe House to offer EU2000 immediately to pay the electricity bill I mentioned below. This was thanks to a friend in MTV forwarding my mail. The MTV Europe Foundation will be meeting with the Safe House soon to discuss ongoing funding.

This was exactly the sort of arrangement I was hoping we could find.

Thank you all once again

JD

Dear Friends,

The global sex slave
trade is one of the most pernicious evils I have ever come across, and
it is likely you are much closer to it than you think.

Every outrage you can
imagine - rape, torture, ritual humiliation, beatings,
murder, maiming - is routinely inflicted on tens of
thousands of women (and girl-children) across Europe every day by
pimps, traffickers, slave traders and the assorted mafia involved in
the trafficking of human beings. 

It it is just under 200
years since slavery was supposedly abolished for good in Britain as one
of the the greatest evils in history!

The Balkans - especially
Bosnia and Kosovo - have become a global center of this dreadful trade.
Countries like Serbia and Montenegro are fighting a growing incursion
of mafia slavers who are expanding their operations into these formerly
’safe’ territories of the fomer Yugoslavia.

Increasingly Serbian and
Montenegrin women and girl-children are being targeted by slavers.
Additionally, thousands of enslaved women from Russia, Albania,
Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and elsewhere pass through the region en
route to the vicious vice gangs of Europe or to the Arab &
Asian slave bazaars where they will be sold on to pimps or end up in
Middle Eastern harems.

There is a global
political and law enforcement effort now underway to fight back against
the ethnic mafias that control this trade, but help for the victims of
the trade is still woefully inadequate. 

style="font-weight: bold;" size="+1">There is help at
hand…

It is against this
backdrop that I want to introduce you to a wonderful but jepoardised
project I discovered here in the Balkans. 

It is a an organisation
that provides a safe house for girls and women who have been rescued
from this evil global sex slave trafficking racket. The only hope
for girls and women often far from home, with no money, deeply
traumatised, afraid for their lives and the victims of repeated rapes
and beatings.

It
is called the href="http://www.sigurna-zenska-kuca.cg.yu/sve/eng/index2.html">The
Women’s Safe House of Montenegro.

The founder href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/ginettasaganfund/recipient.html">Ljiljana
Raicevic won the highly prestigious href="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=65242">Ginetta
Sagan Award from Amnesty International USAin May
2005 for her “heroism and life-saving work” . 

Yet despite this
wonderful endorsement, the
Women’s Safe House is struggling to survive.

The Women’s Safe House
not only provides a sanctuary
for women fleeing slavery, it also provides 

  • a
    hotline for women and children suffering sexual and domestic abuse,
  • councilling
    services, and it 
  • campaigns
    for human rights and on women’s safety issues across the region
  • style="font-family: Verdana;">Rehabilitation for victims

The brave men and women
who run the Women’s Safe House literally risk their lives for the women
they save. The local mafia want to murder them and death
threats are routine. They are taking on a multi-billion billion
industry in one of Europe’s poorest and most corrupt countries. I
marvel at their courage.

style="font-weight: bold;">The main problem…money (of
course)

To compound their
problems with physical threats and aggression, the Women’s Safe House
is now in debt.

A cold winter has led to
very high utility bills which remain unpaid.

As of writing this style="font-weight: bold;">we are trying to find EU2000
(£1300)  in the short term to pay the
utility bills for safe house (principally electricity).

I know that you are
presented with a sickening array of deserving causes begging for your
help every day but perhaps I can appeal to help in some novel ways that
could land us a funding jackpot.

Here are some things you
can do today, and trying
to send money is not neccesarily the best way you can help.


1. You can donate some cash…but it is not easy

Due to local laws,
charity funding rules and an underdeveloped eCommerce in Montenegro,
the only way to send money to this charity is by bank transfer. style="font-family: Verdana;">


This is costly and
fairly difficult to do. style="font-family: Verdana;">


There are other very
valuable things you can do to help (read on) style="font-family: Verdana;">


If you can afford to
help directly with financial assistance, the any donation will be
gratefully recieved.

Bearing in mind the
principle of never squandering what to others are riches,
perhaps you could sacrifice a few cocktails or a meal out or resist
some frivolous transaction and consciously commit the saved money to
this fantastic project.

The reason I encourage
you to convert an act of sacrifice into money is that it is infinitely
more meaningful than just depositing money. It will nourish your sense
of affinity with the people you help and deepen the significance of
your act of kindness for them and you.

If you do make a
contribution, please let them know what you did to enable you do
contribute - it is deeply appreciated.

To make a contribution,
please e-mail: shelter@cg.yu
 and request payment instructions.

style="font-size: 14px;">2.
You can publicise the issue of trafficking and the work of The Women’s
Safe House

You can help by forwarding this communique, reposting this bulletin and
simply mentioning this issue at your next dinner party. 

Please just mention this
issue to people. No hard sell, no lecturing, just a mention or a
question: “Have you heard about the mass rape right here in this
city?”, “Did you know slavery was thriving right here in Europe
today?”,  “Funny that people they worry about the pedophiles
in the neighborhood and yet thousands of children are being
raped in this city every month by slave traders”. Tell your
cab driver, your masseuse, your lover, your other lover…speak
up. 

Keep in mind style="font-weight: bold;">several style="font-weight: bold;">million style="font-weight: bold;"> children are enslaved in the
child sex trade (Source: ECPAT, UNICEF, UNESCAP)

Trafficking of children
and young women into the global sex trade is the style="font-weight: bold;">third largest international
criminal activity (Source: Interpol). It is a
multi-billion dollar industry.

Those women and girls end
up in every
big city in Europe. They are enslaved, tortured, raped, beaten
and sometimes murdered.

Your act of awareness
raising may be extremely valuable in stopping this outrageous situation
because It thrives on our indefferance,  apathy and
incredulity when confornted with the scale and horror of the situation.

style="font-weight: bold;">3. Tell me the name of your
corporate charity officer

If a mid sized company
were to commit even a fraction of its charity budget to this project,
it could make a massive impact.

If a major corporation
were to take an interest, its future would be assured.

If you work for a company
that has a corporate giving scheme, please
either tell them about this project or let me know who the charity
officer is so I can approach them. You can usually find out about this
from the Human Resources department or on the company’s investors
website. 

I can be emailed at: href="mailto:limbic11@hotmail.com">limbic11@hotmail.com style="font-weight: bold;"> or
reply to this mail. style="font-weight: bold;">

style="font-weight: bold;" size="+1">4. Read the
pamphlet

Have a read of this href="http://www.streamload.com/limbic/projects/safehouse/safe_house-april2006.pdf">pamphlet
and perhaps a good idea will strike you about how we can be
helped.

Make sure you mail me or
the Women’s Safe House the great idea.

style="font-size: 14px;">5.
Arrange a screening of the film “ href="http://amazon.imdb.com/title/tt0300140/">Lilya-4-Ever“

Lukas Moodysson’s
“Lilya-4-Ever” is a masterpiece of Russian realist cinema and one of
the saddest movies I have ever seen. 

It is also a harrowing
and href="http://www.stopdemand.org/wa.asp?idWebPage=8109&idDetails=137">painfully
accurate account of how the sex slave trafficking trade
works.

It is available in every
decent video store, from href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AM73T/qid%3D1151590060/">Amazon
Rental,   href="http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=60027586&trkid=189530&strkid=21874623_0_0">Netflix
and local libraries.

It tells the story of 16
year old Lilya, her 11 year old homeless friend, Volodya. It charts
the horrors this angelic girl suffers at the hands of
traffickers after being lured into slavery in Sweden from Russia. I
defy you to watch this film - which is the story of thousands of girls
and women - and not get involved in the fight against
trafficking. 

style="font-size: 14px;">6.
Spare a good thought for these brave people

Finally, if you have
neither the energy nor interest to help in any of the ways above (and
in our media saturated world, I would think this is the majority), then
please spare a positive thought for the victims and those people trying
to help them.

Fore some of you this
will be a prayer, for others a kindly meditation, for other a quite how
thing improve.

Whatever it is, your
beneficence is deeply welcomed and appreciated.

More information:

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Traffiking">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Traffiking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_slavery


Tagged as: