Times article on trafficking of women is being disseminated among Ukrainians (03/15/98)

Times article on trafficking of women is being disseminated among Ukrainians

by Hanya Krill

NEW YORK - A recent article in The New York Times explicitly exposed to the world another critical issue facing Ukraine: the brutal exploitation of innocent young Ukrainian women as the latest recruits into the business of global prostitution.

The article, written by Michael Specter, has been translated into Ukrainian. It's being published in Ukrainian in Svoboda as a multi-part series beginning Tuesday, March 3, Issue No. 41. Permission for the translation and reprint were granted by The New York Times and the author as part of an effort to inform the Ukrainian-reading public in Ukraine and abroad about the widespread recruitment of young women into criminal servitude.

Awareness of a problem is but the first step towards solving it, and while there are agencies and organizations in Ukraine equipped to deal with this issue, we fear that current efforts, inhibited by low funding levels, are concentrated only in the larger metropolitan areas of Ukraine, thus bypassing the many young women in the provinces who tend to be the most vulnerable to this threat.

We appeal to the readers of Svoboda and the Ukrainian Weekly to cut out the article, make copies and mail them to your family and friends in Ukraine. Help us reach your daughters, your neices, your cousins, your friends in order to present the further loss of young woman to this horrible fate.

This public information initiative is being coordinated by: Hanya Krill of BRAMA - Gateway Ukraine; Olya Stawnychy of the World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations; and Bohdan Vitvitsky of the Ukrainian American Professionals and Businesspersons of New York and New Jersey.

Permission has been also granted to BRAMA - Gateway Ukraine to publish the article on the Internet. For those who have access to the WWW, the article can be found at http://www.brama.com/.

Global Survival Network (GSN), a Washington-based NGO, recently completed a 2-year undercover investigation into the trafficking of women for prostitution from the former repubics of the Soviet Union. Gillian Caldwell, co-director of GSN, worked closely with Michael Specter on The New York Times' article. During the course of the investigation, it was discovered that many Ukrainian "marriage" agencies and travel agencies are merely fronts for trafficking operations.

The organizers appeal to all Ukrainian-oriented websites to examine the links listed on their respective sites and consider the removal of any known links to such agencies. Unwittingly you may be contributing to criminal activities and to the harm inflicted upon innocent Ukrainian women. Hanya Krill can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]