STOP fights against women’s trafficking

by Katerina Nicolaou

Nicosia (CNA) -– She is someone very vulnerable, coming from a small village of a country, in which the economical situation is really bad. She has no opportunity to work, she didn’t even go to school. No hope and no future.
She only wants to help her family. So there is an ad in the newspaper or a well dressed nice lady, offering a job abroad for a baby sitter, a house cleaner or a bar maid, good money, certainly more than in her own country. It can even be a man flirting her, saying he loves her and wants to marry her, she is so naive.
And this is only the beginning, because the end of it is that the pretty girl is in a bar, tortured, drugged, locked in a room, her passport is taken away from her and she is forced into prostitution.
“Its hell”, says Celhia de Lavarene, President of Stop Traficking International, in an interview with the Cyprus News Agency.
She illustrates the profile of a trafficked victim and explaining the international crime as follows: “when you buy, you sell and you force someone into prostitution. I am dealing with sex slaves”.
In an interview with CNA de Lavarene, who visited Cyprus for a lecture, recalled the US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report.
She said Cyprus is on “TIER 2 – WATCH LIST”, adding that the island “has a lot of night clubs and private houses or bars where girls are forced in to prostitution. Nothing has been done or not a lot”, adding that traffickers recruit their victims to work as dancers in cabarets and nightclubs on short-term “artiste” visas.
She believed Cyprus will succeed because ”it is a very nice country with a lot of good people willing to do what is needed”.
Celhia de Lavarene’s book about her experiences fighting trafficking, “A Visa to Hell” is the story of two very young girls, who nobody believed.
“When I saw their tears I wanted to write their story so the world would be able to see what happened to them. We had proof and evidence, but not enough. Why believe a guy who says ‘no I did not do it’ and not pay attention to what the girls tell us? The problem is that the victim’s evidence is never enough”.
So, she concluded, in order to deal with trafficking, one has to believe. “What is the point to listen if you don’t believe? Give credit to those girls. They don’t lie”.