Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08CHISINAU1277
2008-12-31 10:00:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Chisinau
Cable title:  

THE CHANGING NATURE OF TRAFFICKING IN

Tags:  KTIP PGOV PHUM PREL KDEM MD 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO7816
RR RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN
RUEHLZ RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHCH #1277/01 3661000
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 311000Z DEC 08
FM AMEMBASSY CHISINAU
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 7486
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHAD/AMEMBASSY ABU DHABI 0131
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 0147
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 CHISINAU 001277 

SENSITIVE

SIPDIS

STATE FOR EUR/UMB, DRL/EA, G/TIP

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KTIP PGOV PHUM PREL KDEM MD
SUBJECT: THE CHANGING NATURE OF TRAFFICKING IN
MOLDOVA: ANTI-TIP ACTIVISTS DESCRIBE SUBTLER,
HARD-TO-PROSECUTE TRAFFICKING METHODS

Sensitive But Unclassified. Please Protect
Accordingly.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 CHISINAU 001277

SENSITIVE

SIPDIS

STATE FOR EUR/UMB, DRL/EA, G/TIP

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KTIP PGOV PHUM PREL KDEM MD
SUBJECT: THE CHANGING NATURE OF TRAFFICKING IN
MOLDOVA: ANTI-TIP ACTIVISTS DESCRIBE SUBTLER,
HARD-TO-PROSECUTE TRAFFICKING METHODS

Sensitive But Unclassified. Please Protect
Accordingly.


1. (SBU) Summary: Two of Moldova's most
experienced anti-TIP activists met Ambassador
Chaudhry on December 19. They described subtle
but profound changes in the methods used to
recruit and trap victims of trafficking, and the
challenges that these "kinder, gentler" methods
posed to police and prosecutors. They also gave
high marks to the Government of Moldova (GOM) for
its actions in assisting the return and
rehabilitation of victims. End summary.

Strategy and TacticsQthe Best in Moldova
--------------


2. (SBU) Ana Revenco, founder and Director of La
Strada Moldova, heads an organization devoted to
the protection and promotion of women's rights,
and advises the GOM and other governments on
legislative and law enforcement tools used to
combat trafficking. Stella Rotaru, who was
featured in the May 5, 2008, "New Yorker" article,
"The Countertraffickers," has the modest title of
Repatriation Specialist at the International
Organization for Migration (IOM). Her actual
rescue and repatriation work takes her to
destination countries, where she negotiates with
high-level prison, law-enforcement and Moldovan
embassy officials to effect the release of
victims.

Gentler Methods and the Illusion of Freedom
--------------


3. (SBU) Revenco and Rotaru described the most
common profile of female victims in the last few
years: single young females from rural areas,
poorly educated and often mentally slow. (They
also noted an increase in males trafficked for
labor.) Both noted that over 90 percent of female
victims came from families where wives and
children were beaten. Victims, they said, were
increasingly recruited by friends and even family
members. Despite widespread knowledge of the
dangers, they accepted high-risk jobs (nightclub
dancers, even providers of sexual services) as a
temporary necessity. Most were transported
legally across Moldova's borders, with valid
passports and visas (if needed) to the usual
destination countries of Turkey, Russia, UAE,

Israel and Cyprus. Revenco and Rotaru affirmed
that crimes associated with trafficking almost
always took place outside the borders of Moldova.


4. (SBU) According to Revenco, new trafficking
methods co-opted victims, made evidence of crime
harder to collect, and therefore rendered
prosecution more difficult. She stated that
female victims believed they could exercise
choice, were not victims, and were often treated
better as sex workers in foreign night clubs than
they were at home. Rotaru described the
psychological manipulation used since 2005 or so
as profoundly different from the "classic" modus
operandi of trafficking, which involved deception,
imprisonment, and frequent beatings. The more
recent method offered what Revenco called the
"illusion of choice." Victims abroad, she said,
were told that they were free to return to
Moldova, except for the matter of debt to the
trafficker, which must be worked off in a brothel;
victims were told that they could pay off the debt
(typically 6,000 Euros) in several months, and
then would be free to stay on and earn their own
money. Describing initiation rituals, Revenco
said that women were placed in a dormitory room
with experienced prostitutes, who made light of
the work, and offered drugs and alcohol to "make
things easier."


5. (SBU) According to Rotaru, if the victim
continued to disagree, she was threatened with
arrest by police in the foreign country who, the

CHISINAU 00001277 002 OF 003


trafficker claimed, were friends of the
traffickers, and would jail the women
indefinitely. If she cooperated, Rotaru noted,
the victim was allowed to keep a small portion of
what she earned (typically USD 300 per month) and
to call home; if she recruited a friend or
relative, she would be allowed to return to
Moldova. Under such circumstances, Rotaru and
Revenco both noted, the amount of evidence
available for arrest and prosecution was reduced.
In fact, according to Revenco, the victims, who
were almost always the principal sources of
evidence, were reluctant to bring complaints at
all, because they had been manipulated into an
illusion that they had exercised choice. Rotaru
further noted that in many countries, victims
could not legally be treated as victims of
trafficking, and thus made eligible for IOM and
GOM assistance, until they specifically identified
themselves as such. According to Rotaru, in
comparison to the battered lives many of them
lived in bleak, jobless villages at home in
Moldova, the victims stated that they were better
off in brothels in a foreign country than in
hopeless Moldova.

Praise for GOM Efforts, Concern about Transparency
-------------- --------------


6. (SBU) IOM's Rotaru lauded GOM efforts in
assisting the 140 victims abroad, so far this
year, who requested assistance: Moldovan embassy
consular sections granted no-hassle passports, and
the Ministry of Internal Affairs provided
protection to returnees at Chisinau Airport.
Escorts from the Ministry of Social Protection
traveled to Russia and Ukraine in IOM vehicles to
accompany returnees from those countries. The GOM
provided 400,000 lei (USD 40,000) for
rehabilitation in 2008, and has budgeted 500,000
lei for rehabilitation, and a new line-item of
600,000 lei for repatriation, in 2009. The
National Referral System (NRS),which began as a
pilot project in six raions, now covers 19 out of
Moldova's 32 raions. Rotaru added that NRS
services to potential victims, including
counseling and job training, were good. Equally
important to prevention efforts, she said, was
training to the Border Guards, who have used their
new knowledge to interdict several suspect
emigration attempts.


7. (SBU) La Strada's Revenco noted that the
National Committee for the Prevention of
Trafficking in Persons did invite NGOs to their
meetings, and consulted NGO members about laws and
regulationsQbut only at the initial stages. She
said that U.S pressure had been successful in
focusing GOM attention on the problem. She also
expressed hopes that the U.S. would apply pressure
on the GOM to increase long-term NGO participation
in the regulatory scene. Revenco believed that
more NGO participation was required in the
international arena, to assist countries in
regulating migration, providing fair labor
standards and contracts for labor migrants in
destination countries, and establishing police-to-
police contacts.


8. (SBU) Revenco, Rotaru and the Ambassador all
agreed that Moldova had limited resources, which
must be targeted more effectively. Thanking the
Ambassador for his active support in curbing the
menace of trafficking, Revenco and Rotaru
concluded that trafficking in Moldova was no worse
than in other countries in the region, and that
the situation had clearly improved in the last few
years. They noted that prevention efforts were
crucial, given the need to stop exploitation
before it could occur, and given the difficulties
of juridically tackling what Revenco and Rotaru
called the new, "fluid, underground, invisible"
system that lured victims into an illusion of
choice outside Moldova's borders.


CHISINAU 00001277 003 OF 003


Comment
--------------


9. (SBU) Both Revenco and Rotaru confirmed what
Post has been hearing from GOM and other NGO
contacts about the changing nature of trafficking:
the actual crimes (sequestration, passport
seizure, beating, for example) taking place
outside of Moldova; the shift to friends and
relatives as traffickers; and the consequent
difficulty faced by Moldovan law enforcement
officials in finding evidence that can be used
successfully in court. Under these circumstances,
victims become victims only when they are outside
of Moldova, and individual traffickers (as opposed
to large networks) can operate more easily under
the radar of law enforcement. We therefore expect
that trafficking will appear in much lesser
amounts in Moldovan criminal statistics, and that
fewer prosecutions and convictions for trafficking
per se will result.


10. (SBU) Given these tectonic shifts in
trafficking methods, restricting our USG interest
to arrests and convictions for trafficking cases
per se will not give the complete picture.
Widening the category to include the "Al Capone"
factor of trafficking arrests under other
categories (such as illegal migration) will give a
better picture of GOM efforts to stem both
potential trafficking and the means for
trafficking.

CHAUDHRY