FINLAND: UPDATE ON TRAFFICKING-IN-PERSONS; FINLAND

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 HELSINKI 000407

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR G/TIP, EUR/PGI, AND EUR/NB

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM SMIG SOCI FI
SUBJECT: FINLAND: UPDATE ON TRAFFICKING-IN-PERSONS; FINLAND
RELEASES LONG-AWAITED NATIONAL ACTION PLAN

REF: A. HELSINKI 00274

B. HELSINKI 00353

Summary
--------------


1. (U) This supplemental report provides additional
information about trafficking and Finland, in particular
Finland's newly released National Action Plan, which centers
on victim assistance. The 66-page plan was released on March

31. An English language translation of the entire plan is
expected in the near future, but this cable summarizes many
of the key points. We also address various questions post
received from EUR and G/TIP after Ref A was submitted. End
Summary.

Finland's New National Action Plan
--------------


2. (U) Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja unveiled Finland's new
National Action Plan (NAP) to combat trafficking-in-persons
on March 31. Speaking at a televised press conference before
Finland's national press, and flanked by the members of
Finland's anti-trafficking interagency working group,
Tuomioja said that Finland had been "too sanguine" in the
past about human trafficking, and that the NAP was a strong
signal that Finland was aware of the problem and ready to do
its share along with other EU countries. Tuomioja described
the NAP as a "human rights-based and victim-centered"
approach aimed at preventing human trafficking, protecting
and assisting victims, and ensuring that those guilty of
human trafficking are prosecuted and punished.


3. (U) Johanna Suurpaa, the working group's chairperson and
Director of the MFA's Human Rights Unit, told reporters that
identification of TIP victims was the most difficult and
important issue in the short term; the lowest possible
threshold should be set as regards investigating situations
where trafficking is suspected. She also said that demand
reduction campaigns needed to feature as prominently as
victim assistance and investigations. (Note: This was a
point particularly stressed by Finnish President Halonen in
the June 2003 conference on combating trafficking that was
co-sponsored by the Embassy and the GoF.) Suurpaa added that
a new telephone hotline would be set up in Finland for TIP
victims -- or anyone else with information about suspected
trafficking.


4. (U) Major Ilkka Herranen, Regional Commander of Finland's
Frontier Guard, told reporters that the USG has been correct
in pointing out that Finland has a problem with
trafficking-in-persons. (Note: Herranen is scheduled to
participate in the June 2005 European regional International
Visitor program on combating trafficking in persons.)


5. (U) Members of the press asked the Finnish officials
several pointed questions about the recent case in which a
busload of Georgian women was stopped at the Finnish-Russian
border and the passengers ultimately denied entry into the
Schengen area (Ref B). Reporters wondered whether the police
had acted inappropriately by taking the women into protective
custody. Tuomioja and the other officials present strongly
defended the police's actions, and said that investigating
the suspicious situation had been the right thing to do.
(Note: As reported Ref B, it was first suspected that the
women were being trafficked for sexual purposes. GoF
ministries drew on the as-yet-unpublished NAP to guide their
response, housing the women passengers at a refugee-asylum
center and interviewing them over the course of several days
to attempt to determine whether they were trafficking
victims, rather than returning them outright.)

A Victim-Centered Approach
--------------


6. (U) Finland's NAP is based on three principles: 1) all
efforts against human trafficking must be grounded in human
rights and must focus on the victim, 2) emphasis must be
placed on the "gender perspective" and the particular
vulnerability of women in certain trafficking situations, and
3) intra-governmental cooperation within Finland, and
bilateral and multilateral cooperation among like-minded
partners, are essential. The NAP covers the entire chain of
human trafficking. The need for continued
government-sponsored demand reduction efforts is highlighted,
as is the need to aggressively implement Finland's new
anti-TIP law, enacted last August. However, the NAP's core
consists of new guidelines for victim assistance. Highlights
of the NAP's victim-centered approach include:

-- Temporary Residency: The EU Council Directive
(2003/81/EY) -- stating that by August 6, 2006 EU members
must pass legislation guaranteeing some form of temporary
residency to victims -- will be enacted. It may be possible
to amend Finland's current "Alien's Act" to specifically
provide temporary residence for victims. TIP victims would
not be returned or deported while the permit was being
processed, even if they were illegally in the country.
Victims would also be able to work inside Finland without
having to obtain a standard labor permit. Victims would be
given time before having to decide whether they wished to
apply for the residency permit or return to their home
country.

-- Witness Protection: A witness protection program will be
set up to enable victims to testify anonymously at trials of
traffickers. Protection would extend to the victims'
families as well. This will require new legislation, since
persons accused of any crime in Finland have the right to
"face their accuser" in court, and there are no exceptions in
current Finnish law for special circumstances like
trafficking.

-- Housing: Certain safehouses and shelters will be dedicated
for TIP victims; they will also be able to live in private
dwellings if they have the resources and so choose.

-- Income/Support: Victims will have the right to earn income
and receive support while in Finland.

-- Education: Victims will have the right to language
training, basic literacy skills training, and vocational
training.

-- Integration: The Social Affairs Ministry will be
responsible for designing an integration program for victims
to help them live and, if they so choose, eventually
assimilate into Finnish society. Part of this will be the
appointment of a National Rapporteur for Trafficking Victims.

-- Psychiatric Services: Victims will receive psychiatric
services and counseling from the national health service,
particularly recognizing the trauma that victims of sexual
exploitation have gone through.

-- Health: Victims will eligible to use the full range of
Finland's national health services.

-- Legal Assistance: Victims will have, and be advised of,
the right to legal assistance and counseling.


7. (U) The NAP will now be sent by the Foreign Minister to
the Council of State for adoption as GoF policy; no
objections to the NAP are expected as the key ministries
involved were all a part of the interagency working group
that drafted the plan, and as both President Halonen and
Prime Minister Vanhanen have voiced support. A new
interagency working group, co-chaired by the Interior and
Social Affairs Ministries, will be appointed to oversee the
Plan's implementation.

Addressing the Department's Questions on
--------------
the Scope of Trafficking in Finland
--------------


8. (U) Embassy understands that there may be some confusion
about the number of women entering Finland for prostitution
each year. Post reported in Ref A that police and NGOs
estimate there were 6000-8000 entries into Finland each year
by women for prostitution. Since many women enter Finland
multiple times each year to engage in prostitution, the
actual number of women involved would be lower than
6000-8000; some of these might have been trafficked into the
country. The 6000-8000 entry estimate, or similar estimates,
have been quoted for several years in press and NGO accounts
of prostitution and/or trafficking in Finland. However, no
hard figures exist. While preparing this supplemental
report, post pressed both GoF and NGO contacts about the
accuracy of this commonly cited 6000-8000 range. Without
exception, these contacts backed away from the estimate and
said that there was no way to know the actual incidence of
prostitution or trafficking in Finland since neither the
police nor NGOs have conducted any systematic surveys. Post
now believes that the previous 6000-8000 figure was more the
result of self-referential feedback from government and NGO
contacts than a scientific estimate.


9. (U) Finland's National Action Plan states that while the
actual incidence of TIP in Finland is unknown, there could
"possibly be hundreds" of women and girls trafficked to and
through Finland each year. Johanna Suurpaa, the Director of
the MFA's Unit for Human Rights and chairperson of the
interagency anti-TIP working group, admitted to PolOff that
even this number is ultimately a guess and not based on a
survey. The IOM office in Helsinki declined to speculate as
to the incidence of trafficking into and through Finland.
According to Lucy Laitinen, the IOM's regional anti-TIP
coordinator, there has never been a systematic survey done in
Finland to estimate scope or incidence. She said that the
IOM had no current cases open in Finland. The IOM has
submitted a proposal to the GoF to undertake a survey of
trafficking in Finland.

10. (U) Reftel B cites new information that as many as 1500
women may have been trafficked or smuggled through Finland
from Georgia since 2002. It is not known whether these women
were involved with commercial sex trafficking, labor
trafficking, or labor smuggling/illegal immigration, although
the GoF has stated that it believes "at least some" were part
of the commercial sex trade. Some Georgian officials and
media have subsequently criticized the GoF for its handling
of the case, claiming that the women were legitimate tourists
and were victims of police discrimination.

Prostitution vs. Trafficking
--------------


11. (U) All Embassy contacts in Finland cite the difficulty
in disaggregating prostitution from trafficking as a main
reason no hard estimates exist as regards TIP. It is
believed that most foreign prostitutes in Finland come from
nearby countries and voluntarily enter Finland to engage in
prostitution. There are a small number of known cases, such
as that cited in Ref A section 18 (B) detailing a Latvian
minor who was duped by traffickers into believing that she
would be offered a job picking strawberries only to be forced
into prostitution. Such cases may be the exception rather
than the rule, however. When trafficking for purposes of
sexual exploitation occurs in Finland, it is almost always
because women who have become involved with organized crime
syndicates find themselves coerced into continuing to work as
prostitutes after their "contract" has been altered and the
conditions in which they work have been changed (negatively).
According to police, such coercion may be violent,
aggressive (taking away passports or threatening the victim's
family),or more psychological and subtle. Finnish police
cannot say how many foreign prostitutes may be subject to
such coercion, thereby making them TIP victims. However, the
police do report that they do not believe that a majority of
foreign prostitutes in Finland are subject to such coercion.
NGOs inside Finland seem to agree with this assessment. Lucy
Laitinen of IOM told PolOff that the Finnish situation was
"one of the most difficult" that IOM was working with as
regards the disaggregation of trafficking from prostitution;
as mentioned above, she would not even speculate as to the
number of women possibly trafficked to and through Finland
each year.


12. (U) As reported in Ref A, Finnish police report that
there were 12 investigations in 2004 that led to multiple
arrests and the break-up of prostitution rings; there were 31
total prosecutions from these cases (for pimping). Since
these crimes occurred before Finland's new TIP law came on
the books, it is unknown how many of these cases might
actually have involved trafficking.


13. (U) Since Finland's new TIP law was enacted last August,
three investigations into possible trafficking have been
initiated and are still underway; the investigations have not
yet been referred to prosecutors.

The Estonian Connection to Trafficking in Finland
-------------- --------------


14. (U) Finnish officials and NGOs agree that, as reported in
Reftel A, most foreign prostitutes in Finland come from
Russia and Estonia; the GoF and NGOs presume that this also
holds for most trafficking victims, although they can provide
no numbers to back this up. Major Ilkka Herranen, Regional
Commander of Finland's Frontier Guard, told PolOff that he
believes perhaps "75% of foreign prostitutes in Finland are
Russian and 25% are from Estonia," but declined to provide
actual numbers. Herranen also opined that given the ease
with which Estonians can travel to and from Finland, there
were probably more Russian trafficking victims than Estonian.
Herranen and other Finnish authorities said that Estonian
prostitutes in Finland were generally better educated and
"more sophisticated" than Russian prostitutes and seemed less
likely to become victims of trafficking; the Russian women
were much more isolated and cut off from their home
communities, whereas the Estonian women could communicate
more effectively (given the close relationship of the Finnish
and Estonian languages),could maintain close contact (even
daily) with friends and family in Estonia via mobile phones,
and were only a 90-minute ferry ride away from their
homeland. Because of this, Herranen opined that most
Estonian prostitutes were associated with crime rings or were
freelancers, but were not victims of trafficking.


15. (U) Finland's Frontier Guard reported that in 2003, 150
Estonian women were denied entry into Finland for suspicion
of prostitution; most had entered Finland multiple times and
made contradictory statements about their trips during
secondary inspection. Some confessed to coming to Finland to
work as prostitutes, although some maintained their
innocence. Few women showed any inclination to cooperate
with Finnish authorities, and most asked to return to Estonia
on the next ferry. The Frontier Guard report only ten such
cases in 2004. Herranen attributed the drop to Estonia's EU
accession. He said that Estonians entering Finland are no
longer subject to the same screening procedures as before,
and that only extremely suspicious persons or persons already
entered into Finland's law enforcement database would be
questioned. Given the paucity of information about possible
Estonian trafficking victims in Finland, post defers to
Embassy Tallinn's reporting for more definitive information.


16. (U) In addition to Russia and Estonia, other countries
that have been cited as possible source countries for
trafficking to and through Finland in recent years include
Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, and
most recently China, Thailand, and other "unspecified Asian
countries." There are no numbers for how many women from
these countries might have been trafficked to and through
Finland other than the Georgian case detailed in Ref B and
the Latvian minor mentioned in Ref A.


17. (U) In conclusion: Now that Finland has a National Action
Plan in place, one that engages the GoF and local NGOs in
victim assistance, we would expect that over time more
concrete information on each of the issues raised above will
develop. We also expect this process of clarification to be
aided by the new U.S.-funded anti-trafficking NGO project
involving an Estonian NGO with Finnish partners (Ref A para
(19)(C)).
MACK