Klara Skrivankova: fighting trade in human lives
My guest on One on One today is Klara Skrivankova, who works for the La Strada organisation, a body set up several years ago to tackle the problem of human trafficking. The problem is a growing one - from being a country of origin the Czech Republic is increasingly becoming a country of destination: young women from poorer countries in Eastern Europe are being lured to the Czech Republic and then forced to work in the country's thriving sex industry. Klara Skrivankova is in charge of co-ordinating prevention of human trafficking for La Strada, and when she came into the studio I began by asking her whether she enjoyed her unusual job.
La Strada targets human trafficking. How long has this problem specifically affected the Czech Republic?
"After the 1989 Velvet Revolution it sort of reopened here. It was here before, during the First Republic, in the 20s and 30s."
Really? Human trafficking existed before the Second World War?
"Yes. We even had a branch in Prague of the international office that was dealing with the issue. But then of course [during the Communist regime], the borders were closed and trafficking didn't exist here. In the beginning of the 1990s trafficking returned and the Czech Republic began to be a country of origin, which means that people were trafficked from the Czech Republic abroad. But I would say from the middle of the 1990s the situation has changed, and the Czech Republic is more and more a country of destination and of course because of the geographical location also a country of transit."
Can you give me example of how, say, a teenage girl from Ukraine is lured to Prague and made to work in the sex industry? Tell me how it happens.
"Well most of the time it's through some kind of job offer. It can be either directly in the village, let's say somewhere in Ukraine, where of course the situation is very hard and the possibility of finding a job is basically zero. Either there or in some official place the woman or the girl gets a job offer. It can be a job offer that explicitly says that it involves the sex industry, but it can also be for example a job picking mushrooms. So it's basically a job offer. And then it proceeds through facilitation of transport, getting visas, which are usually taken care of by the traffickers. When the woman gets to the Czech Republic she finds out straight away that either the conditions are completely different or the work itself is completely different than what was promised. So that's the very basic scenario."
What kind of conditions are these women kept in?
"The conditions can be very different, ranging from very hard physical violence to more psychological manipulation and pressure, or debt bondage, or threats. So the conditions vary. But usually the people are in quite a vulnerable position because they are foreigners, because sometimes they don't have papers, they're illegal here, and also because they don't know the environment. They are purposely kept in isolation, so the only contact they have is with the group with which they are kept it. It can range from one extreme to the other."
You mentioned before that human trafficking existed in the First Republic, before the Second World War, I guess then it would have been called the "white slave trade". That sounds like the stuff of romantic fiction, but human trafficking - whatever label you put on it - does sound like slavery in some sense of the word.
"Well it is definitely slavery. Trafficking is defined under the UN Convention as slavery or slavery-like practices or any kind of forced labour. So in fact yes, it is a modern type of slavery, although it probably looks a little bit different than what we read in romantic fiction."
What does La Strada do exactly to address this problem?
"La Strada works in three areas. We do direct assistance to trafficked persons, either Czech people who have been trafficked somewhere and are coming back or foreign women who have been trafficked in the Czech Republic. Then we do prevention activities, which consists of awareness-raising among risk groups, also prevention of re-trafficking - of those who have already been trafficked. And also creating more awareness among professionals who can either further disseminate prevention information or who are themselves in touch with already trafficked persons. That's the prevention side: we also do some kind of political or lobbying work, where we try to tackle the situation from a legal point of view."
Changing laws.
"Yes."
Do you or your colleagues ever come into contact with the people running sex clubs, or the traffickers themselves?
"Not really. On occasions we've accompanied clients when they've been questioned by the police, and we came into contact there. But most often we don't."
So you and your colleagues don't find yourselves following people down dark alleys and that sort of thing.
"No no. That's definitely the role of the police. The role of the NGO is basically to work with the people who are already away from the environment of the trafficking. That's very important."
It still doesn't sound like the safest job in the world, Are you ever concerned for your own personal safety?
"Of course we've developed some ways how to protect ourselves. We keep locations and other things anonymous, when we deal with our clients."
The problem of human trafficking is a problem which has blossomed in the years since the fall of Communism. How will it develop in the future, when the Czech Republic becomes more of a "normal" country, when it joins the EU for example?
"If we look at the EU countries, the country exists there as well. I would say the trend is that the Czech Republic is more and more becoming a country of destination. It's really hard to say how the situation will change or not change. It's not just a problem of the Czech Republic: the problem is international, and that's one of its first characteristics. It's always trafficking from poorer countries to richer countries. So EU enlargement will not change the situation that much. Maybe there will be a move to other countries, but that's just my personal guess. I can't say what will happen."
To find out more about La Strada, see their website:
