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TRAFFICKING
IN
ARMENIA
Team
Reporting Project
Human
trafficking involves forcing men, women or children into
involuntary labor or prostitution through deception, intimidation
or brute force. While forcing women into prostitution
usually attracts the headlines, what amounts to slave
labor--a modern day version of indentured servitude--can
be an even more serious blight. Until recently, government
officials in Armenia have tended to dismiss the suggestion
that trafficking presents much of a problem. The first
legislation to specifically outlaw trafficking and to
provide criminal penalties went into effect in the summer
of 2003. Since then the government prosecutor's office
has launched several high profile cases against traffickers.
In one, mentally retarded adolescents were allegedly being
dispatched to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for sexual
exploitation, or possibly to supply body parts for organ
transplants. The police are not sure and are still investigating.
The prosecutors have been in close liaison with police
in Dubai, where some NGOs estimate that as many as 600
Armenian women may have been seduced, tricked or forced
into prostitution. There has been talk of extraditing
ten suspected Armenian traffickers from Dubai to stand
trial in Armenia. But the fact is that there has been
no systematic study of the full extent of the problem.
In late 2003, the Caucusus Media Center in Yerevan and
New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News
Media hosted a team reporting project in which Armenian
journalists and editors fanned out across Armenia to try
to report on the problem. The team reporting project followed
a seminar on trafficking attended by journalists and government
officials at
the Armenian ski resort at Tsaghkatsor.
last November. As Vicken Cheterian, the Director of the
Caucusus Media Institute, notes below, there are valid
questions about how much of the problem is due to criminal
coercion, and how much is due to the extreme poverty that
is prevalent in many rural areas of former Soviet bloc
countries. The project was made possible by funding from
the U.S. State Department'sBureau of Education and Cultural
Affairs, and it was edited by the Center for War, Peace
and the News Media's William Dowell and the Caucusus Media
Institute's Seda Muradyan--William
Dowell
Human
Trafficking and Trafficking of Ideas
Vicken
Cheterian, Director, Caucasus Media Institute
"Why
did the Caucasus Media Institute work with NYU on organizing
a seminar in Armenia to train journalists on how to report
human trafficking? And did we learn something from this
seminar?....We at the CMI are working for the development
of professional, accurate, critical, independent media,
on the background of a journalism trained for Soviet-style
propaganda. The development of such an independent media
means, among others, that journalists working in countries
like Armenia should be critical not only towards the functioning
of their own government, economic leaders, and the political
elite, but also towards international organizations who
have much influence, and therefore power, over the media.
Journalists should be trained to be critical to the whims
and fashions that comes to this edge of the Caucasus from
Washington, Brussels, Paris and London in the form of
“fighting corruption”, “conflict-resolution”
or why not “reporting on human trafficking”,
as some decades ago used to come from Moscow in the form
of Marxism-Leninism..."
To
read more, click here...
Two
Women Trapped by Desertion and Poverty
Susanna
Shahnazaryan
Goris Press Club
Faced
with absent husbands, and asked to feed their families
in a jobless economy, many women in rural regions are
easy victims of criminal exploitation. When they try to
return to normal society, they are rejected because of
misplaced notions of social propriety.
To
read more, click here...
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A
new generation of Armenian women more alert to
the dangers of the world around them
The
Minister of Justice is skeptical
Marietta
Makaryan, AZG Daily
An
interview with Armenia's Justice Minister David Haroutiunyan:
"...In
my opinion, trafficking does not exist as a phenomenon
in Armenia..."
To
read more, click here...
Two
Cases involving the
United Arab Emirates
Arpine
Haroutinunyan, Hetq
Narine
was desperate to feed her two children, and she trusted
her childhood friend's offer for a job in Dubai. After
8 months of being forced to work as a prostitute, an Arab
client took pity on her and bought her a ticket back to
Armenia. Then she says she met a police detective named
Rambo... Mary was tricked into prostitution by a boyfriend.
when she returned to Armenia penniless and rejected by
everyone, she went back to the only profession left open
to her.
To
read more click here...
In
Sevan City, Trafficking affects Men and Women
Pap
Hayrapetyan, Editor-in-Chief, Sevan Regional newspapers
To
the surprise of local officials, trafficking does exist
in this regional city. A woman finds kindness and support
in the Emirates. Sometimes the people who suffer the most
are men desperate for a job.
To
read more, click here...
A
Case of Survival or Abandoned Honor
Karine
Simonyan, reporter TV3
When Lida kept having children and no one cared, the solution
seemed simple enough: sell them for a fair price. For
Varsik, the choice was much simpler. A market on the border
with Georgia offered easy commerce, and officials didn't
care.
To
read more, click here...
Two
Cases of Slave Labor and Betrayal by a Village Chief
Hamlet
Khachatryan
Editor-in-Chief
“Talin Ashxarh” Newspaper
The
job was recommended by the local village chief who said
you could make a killing in Russia, and who wanted a hefty
fee for making the arrangements. The result was 18 months
of unremunerated slave labor and a starving family at
home.
To
read more, click here...
The
Victims Were Guarded by Bears
Hasmik
Gevorkyan, Reporter for Public Radio
When
Anush's husband left for a dream job in the Russian Siberian
town of Kemerovo, neither he nor his family suspectged
that he was about to be subjected to slave laobor conditions,
or that he and his fellow workers would be guarded at
night by chained bears.
To
read more, click here...
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