Abpfiff - Deutscher Frauenrat

1
The activists
The initiators
The story of Tatiana from Moldova*
Tatiana was 1 years old when she was offered a job in Turkey. She entered the
country with a few other young women. On arrival she was forced into prostitution
at a hotel. One week later, the police raided the hotel and the young women were
deported back home. When Tatiana arrived at the airport, the police officer in charge
took her passport and gave it to the man who had recruited her. It turned out later
that they were brothers. She was beaten until she agreed to return to Turkey to work
off her debts. There she was apprehended again by the police. This time she was put
on a ship with 2 other young women for Odessa (Ukraine). When the ship arrived
in Odessa, her recruiter was waiting for her. He sent her to Cairo, from where she
was sold to work in Libya and Israel. During this time, her “debts“ rose from 00 to
3500 dollars. When she refused to work, she was locked in a shaft in the middle of
the desert without food or water for three days. In Israel she was again found by the
police and deported. On arrival in Moldova, the same police officer locked her in a
flat where she was told to think about what would happen if she ran away again.
Another young woman in the flat told her that her younger sister had been abducted.
She now had to pay 10,000 dollars in order to get her back. A few days later, Tatiana
was sent to Cyprus. She told the police there that she had lost her passport, and was
deported to Moldova. This time, her recruiter told her that he would send her to a
“civilised“ European country where she could work off her debts easily and go home
soon.
She travelled through Hungary and Croatia with a tourist visa to Germany and
Switzerland, where she was able to flee with the help of an Albanian client. She
went to the police and told them the whole story. Without her consent, the Swiss
authorities contacted the Moldovan Interior Ministry which in turn informed
the police. They contacted her parents and told them that their daughter was a
“desperate prostitute“ who had gone hooking in at least six different countries. Her
parents were devastated. When Tatiana called them from Switzerland, they did not
want to speak with her. In early 2003 she returned once again to Moldova.
* from: La Strada European Network against Trafficking in Women. Facts and Practices. Amsterdam 2005, p.1
The “Final Whistle – Stop Forced Prostitution“
campaign was launched by the Deutscher
Frauenrat (National Council of German Women‘s
Organizations), a federation of more than 50
women‘s alliances and organisations throughout
Germany that acts as a non-partisan and nondenominational
“women‘s lobby“ for policy issues.
The patrons
The initiators, organisers and profiteers of human
trafficking and forced prostitution are primarily men.
As such, they should be the ones to take responsibility
for combating these problems. High-profile men
were therefore targeted to be the campaign‘s
patrons, namely Klaus Wowereit, the Lord Mayor
of Berlin which was the main World Cup city, and
Dr. Theo Zwanziger, the Executive President of the
German Football Federation (DFB) at the time.