A thought for Iraqi Women on International Women’s Day
March 8, 2009 at 11:52 am | In Turkmens |
Tags: Nawal al-Sammarai, Prostitution in Iraq, Sex trafficking in Iraq, Violations of Women's rights, Women trafficking, Yanar Mohammed
On International Women’s Day, a thought for all theIraqi women and young girls who are victims of bad treatments, rape, trafficking and exploitation as the consequence of the invasion, destruction and occupation of their country by the U.S. and its accomplices.No room for taboos!!!
The facts are there, in the name of “Justice” and “Honour” the Iraqi decision makers must act immediately to stop these crimes against Iraqi women.
See the following article:
Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
By Rania Abouzeid / Baghdad
Saturday, Mar. 07, 2009
She goes by “Hinda,” but that’s not her real name. `
That’s what she’s called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country.
They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.
That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price.
The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. “The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it’s like the trade in cattle,” Hinda says.
“I’ve seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters.” (See pictures of Iraq since the fall of Saddam.)
The trafficking routes are both local and international, most often to Syria, Jordan and the Gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked illegally on forged passports, or “legally” through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she’s travelling with her “husband.” The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work. (See Iraq’s return to “normalcy”.)
Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sexual slavery since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and there are no official numbers because of the shadowy nature of the business. Baghdad-based activists like Hinda and others put the number in the tens of thousands. Still, it remains a hidden crime; one that the 2008 US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report says the Iraqi government is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, “offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country.”
While sexual violence has accompanied warfare for millennia and insecurity always provides opportunities for criminal elements to profit, what is happening in Iraq today reveals how far a once progressive country (relative to its neighbors) has regressed on the issue of women’s rights and how ferociously the seams of a traditional Arab society that values female virginity have been ripped apart. Last month Baghdad’s minister of women’s affairs, Dr. Nawal al-Samarraie, resigned in protest at the lack of resources provided to her office by the government. “The ministry is just an empty post,” she told TIME. “Why do I come to the office every day if I don’t have any resources?” Yet even Samarraie didn’t think sex trafficking was an issue. “It’s limited,” she says, adding that she believed the girls involved chose to engage in prostitution.
That’s a view that infuriates activists like Yanar Mohammed, who heads the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. “Let me take her to the nightclubs of Damascus and show her [trafficked] women by the thousands,” she says. To date, the government has not prosecuted any traffickers. For the past year it has also prevented groups like Mohammed’s from visiting women’s prisons, where they have previously identified victims, many of whom are jailed for acts committed as a result of being trafficked, such as prostitution or possessing forged documents.
A thought for Iraqi Women on International Women’s Day
March 8, 2009 at 11:52 am | In Turkmens |
Tags: Nawal al-Sammarai, Prostitution in Iraq, Sex trafficking in Iraq, Violations of Women's rights, Women trafficking, Yanar Mohammed
On International Women’s Day, a thought for all theIraqi women and young girls who are victims of bad treatments, rape, trafficking and exploitation as the consequence of the invasion, destruction and occupation of their country by the U.S. and its accomplices.No room for taboos!!!
The facts are there, in the name of “Justice” and “Honour” the Iraqi decision makers must act immediately to stop these crimes against Iraqi women.
See the following article:
Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
By Rania Abouzeid / Baghdad
Saturday, Mar. 07, 2009
She goes by “Hinda,” but that’s not her real name. `
That’s what she’s called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country.
They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.
That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price.
The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. “The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it’s like the trade in cattle,” Hinda says.
“I’ve seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters.” (See pictures of Iraq since the fall of Saddam.)
The trafficking routes are both local and international, most often to Syria, Jordan and the Gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked illegally on forged passports, or “legally” through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she’s travelling with her “husband.” The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work. (See Iraq’s return to “normalcy”.)
Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sexual slavery since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and there are no official numbers because of the shadowy nature of the business. Baghdad-based activists like Hinda and others put the number in the tens of thousands. Still, it remains a hidden crime; one that the 2008 US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report says the Iraqi government is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, “offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country.”
While sexual violence has accompanied warfare for millennia and insecurity always provides opportunities for criminal elements to profit, what is happening in Iraq today reveals how far a once progressive country (relative to its neighbors) has regressed on the issue of women’s rights and how ferociously the seams of a traditional Arab society that values female virginity have been ripped apart. Last month Baghdad’s minister of women’s affairs, Dr. Nawal al-Samarraie, resigned in protest at the lack of resources provided to her office by the government. “The ministry is just an empty post,” she told TIME. “Why do I come to the office every day if I don’t have any resources?” Yet even Samarraie didn’t think sex trafficking was an issue. “It’s limited,” she says, adding that she believed the girls involved chose to engage in prostitution.
That’s a view that infuriates activists like Yanar Mohammed, who heads the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. “Let me take her to the nightclubs of Damascus and show her [trafficked] women by the thousands,” she says. To date, the government has not prosecuted any traffickers. For the past year it has also prevented groups like Mohammed’s from visiting women’s prisons, where they have previously identified victims, many of whom are jailed for acts committed as a result of being trafficked, such as prostitution or possessing forged documents.
A thought for Iraqi Women on International Women’s Day
March 8, 2009 at 11:52 am | In Turkmens |
Tags: Nawal al-Sammarai, Prostitution in Iraq, Sex trafficking in Iraq, Violations of Women's rights, Women trafficking, Yanar Mohammed
On International Women’s Day, a thought for all theIraqi women and young girls who are victims of bad treatments, rape, trafficking and exploitation as the consequence of the invasion, destruction and occupation of their country by the U.S. and its accomplices.No room for taboos!!!
The facts are there, in the name of “Justice” and “Honour” the Iraqi decision makers must act immediately to stop these crimes against Iraqi women.
See the following article:
Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
By Rania Abouzeid / Baghdad
Saturday, Mar. 07, 2009
She goes by “Hinda,” but that’s not her real name. `
That’s what she’s called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country.
They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.
That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price.
The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. “The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it’s like the trade in cattle,” Hinda says.
“I’ve seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters.” (See pictures of Iraq since the fall of Saddam.)
The trafficking routes are both local and international, most often to Syria, Jordan and the Gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked illegally on forged passports, or “legally” through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she’s travelling with her “husband.” The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work. (See Iraq’s return to “normalcy”.)
Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sexual slavery since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and there are no official numbers because of the shadowy nature of the business. Baghdad-based activists like Hinda and others put the number in the tens of thousands. Still, it remains a hidden crime; one that the 2008 US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report says the Iraqi government is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, “offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country.”
While sexual violence has accompanied warfare for millennia and insecurity always provides opportunities for criminal elements to profit, what is happening in Iraq today reveals how far a once progressive country (relative to its neighbors) has regressed on the issue of women’s rights and how ferociously the seams of a traditional Arab society that values female virginity have been ripped apart. Last month Baghdad’s minister of women’s affairs, Dr. Nawal al-Samarraie, resigned in protest at the lack of resources provided to her office by the government. “The ministry is just an empty post,” she told TIME. “Why do I come to the office every day if I don’t have any resources?” Yet even Samarraie didn’t think sex trafficking was an issue. “It’s limited,” she says, adding that she believed the girls involved chose to engage in prostitution.
That’s a view that infuriates activists like Yanar Mohammed, who heads the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. “Let me take her to the nightclubs of Damascus and show her [trafficked] women by the thousands,” she says. To date, the government has not prosecuted any traffickers. For the past year it has also prevented groups like Mohammed’s from visiting women’s prisons, where they have previously identified victims, many of whom are jailed for acts committed as a result of being trafficked, such as prostitution or possessing forged documents.
A thought for Iraqi Women on International Women’s Day
March 8, 2009 at 11:52 am | In Turkmens |Tags: Nawal al-Sammarai, Prostitution in Iraq, Sex trafficking in Iraq, Violations of Women's rights, Women trafficking, Yanar Mohammed
The facts are there, in the name of “Justice” and “Honour” the Iraqi decision makers must act immediately to stop these crimes against Iraqi women.
See the following article:
Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
By Rania Abouzeid / Baghdad
Saturday, Mar. 07, 2009
She goes by “Hinda,” but that’s not her real name. `
That’s what she’s called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country.
They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.
That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price.
The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. “The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it’s like the trade in cattle,” Hinda says.
“I’ve seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters.” (See pictures of Iraq since the fall of Saddam.)
The trafficking routes are both local and international, most often to Syria, Jordan and the Gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked illegally on forged passports, or “legally” through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she’s travelling with her “husband.” The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work. (See Iraq’s return to “normalcy”.)
Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sexual slavery since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and there are no official numbers because of the shadowy nature of the business. Baghdad-based activists like Hinda and others put the number in the tens of thousands. Still, it remains a hidden crime; one that the 2008 US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report says the Iraqi government is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, “offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country.”
While sexual violence has accompanied warfare for millennia and insecurity always provides opportunities for criminal elements to profit, what is happening in Iraq today reveals how far a once progressive country (relative to its neighbors) has regressed on the issue of women’s rights and how ferociously the seams of a traditional Arab society that values female virginity have been ripped apart. Last month Baghdad’s minister of women’s affairs, Dr. Nawal al-Samarraie, resigned in protest at the lack of resources provided to her office by the government. “The ministry is just an empty post,” she told TIME. “Why do I come to the office every day if I don’t have any resources?” Yet even Samarraie didn’t think sex trafficking was an issue. “It’s limited,” she says, adding that she believed the girls involved chose to engage in prostitution.
That’s a view that infuriates activists like Yanar Mohammed, who heads the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. “Let me take her to the nightclubs of Damascus and show her [trafficked] women by the thousands,” she says. To date, the government has not prosecuted any traffickers. For the past year it has also prevented groups like Mohammed’s from visiting women’s prisons, where they have previously identified victims, many of whom are jailed for acts committed as a result of being trafficked, such as prostitution or possessing forged documents.
2 comments:
This post reminds me of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye...in a world that seems to be senseless, meaningless...where even the women become alienated, not just from the world they are in or the world they belong to, but also from themselves.
Thanks for the timely reminder on Int. Women'S Day!
Take care...
Hi Paula,
This is really sad and sickening as I am sure these poor women, like the comfort women during the period of the Japanese Occupation in Asia, are being recruited solely to serve the carnal desires of the Occupied Forces in Iraq and the foreign tourists in neighbouring Middle Eastern countries as prostitution is taboo among the local inhabitants .
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