Sex, lies and psychological scars inside Ukraine's human trafficking crisis

2016/2/10 0:22:12

Desperate to find work, they leave home on the promise of a job only to be ushered into a life of forced labour and abuse. Two Ukrainian women reveal the trauma of trafficking and how a secret hospital is helping them rebuild their lives

 

<Photo: An installation in Kyiv in 2014 aimed to raise awareness of human trafficking the silhouettes represent the thousands of Ukrainians who have been trafficked since 1991, according to the IOM.

 


By Maxim Tucker in Kyiv for the Guardian, Feb 4, 2016

 

The hospital where Dr Olga Milinchuk works has no sign outside and no waiting rooms. The address is a closely guarded secret, as are the identities of her patients. With a team of 18 specialists, she spends every day repairing the shattered lives and minds of victims of Ukraine’s longest-running crisis – endemic human trafficking.

 

When Milinchuk opened this rehabilitation centre in 2002, under the auspices of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), it was dealing almost exclusively with young women who had returned home after escaping sex trafficking. Today, her patients are men and women of all ages who crossed a border on the promise of a job, but found themselves on a journey into forced labour, abuse and debt bondage.

 

Milinchuk, who has treated about 2,000 people at the centre, estimates that 95% of her patients are victims of labour trafficking. They come with gastric and intestinal diseases from malnourishment, sexually transmitted diseases, and psychiatric problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

“The youngest was three years old, trafficked to Poland for work begging with her mother and five-year-old sister,” she says.

 

Forced labour is difficult to detect. Traffickers deceive victims into travelling without valid visas, keep workers trapped in debt bondage and reliant on their employers for food and accommodation, or stop unpaid workers from leaving through violence and intimidation.

 

 “They take a mother with two children, then lock one child away so that when the mother is out begging, the traffickers know she will return for the other,” she says. “The mother had been promised a job in agriculture and was told to bring the children for kindergarten.”

 

Trapped in conflict with Russia and weakened by decades of government mismanagement, Ukraine is suffering a deepening economic malaise. It is the second poorest country in Europe by GDP; only its tiny neighbour Moldova is poorer.

 

“The economic crisis is now so deep we see so many people are willing to accept any offer, risky offers, just for the chance to work abroad,” says Hanna Antonova, the IOM’s counter-trafficking programme coordinator in Ukraine.

 

For complete text of the article, link below:

http://www.theguardian.com/global-dev ... -human-trafficking-crisis

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