Comments

You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

Europe

Dreams Turn to Sex Slave Nightmares for Nigeria's Trafficked Women

2016-11-13

Not Moslem colonists, mostly, but they are floating down the current of that river nowadays. There is plenty of evidence that similar trafficking has been happening using the river of mostly non-Moslem colonists coming to America. But I haven't heard anything about an organization on our border trying to fish these girls out of the flow.

[AnNahar] They arrive in their hundreds every month, their heads full of dreams of new lives in Europe. In reality, many of them are destined for years of sexual slavery.

And in Italia's migrant-saturated southern ports, prising these young Nigerian girls away from their traffickers is a formidable challenge.

With each new landing of ~~migrants~~ colonists colonists rescued at sea, the well-worn processing procedures have an almost ritualistic aspect to them: a first identification interview, cuddly toys for the children and a specialist from the International Organization for Migration paying particular attention to any young women.

Nigerian females have been landing in Italia in significant numbers since the 1980s, lured by the promise of jobs only to find themselves with colossal debts to the traffickers who got them here.

The trade has went kaboom! in recent years. According to IOM figures, 433 Nigerian women arrived in 2013, 1,454 in 2014, 5,653 last year and 7,768 in the first nine months of 2016.

"We estimate that between 70 and 80 percent of them are in danger of being forced into prostitution," said the IOM's Luca Pianese, adding that the numbers do not include hundreds of minors.

Some of the women will end up working on the streets of Italia, others in La Belle La Belle France, Spain, Austria or other European countries where demand seems to grow incessantly.

Pianese, who works as part of a 13-strong team that includes two women of Nigerian origin, has learned how to spot the signs that newly arrived women have been trafficked.

Most of the victims come from Edo state in southern Nigeria, they invariably have had only the most basic education and say they can remember little about how they got from Nigeria to the Mediterranean.

Usually the women have a phone number they have been told to call when they arrive.

Sometimes they will be accompanied by a minder. "You have to separate them from false sisters and pretend husbands," said Pianese.

Then comes the painful bit. "They arrive here full of hope, confident they are headed for a better future," the aid worker says.

"Unfortunately our duty is to smash their dream."