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	Eastern Europe: Human trafficking "set to rise" by Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies   April 2009   Government officials and international organizations in Eastern Europe are warning of a dramatic increase in human trafficking as the recession begins to bite.   The number of victims of trafficking in Belarus is showing a steep rise already, according to data gathered by the Red Cross Red Crescent, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and local authorities.   More than 800,000 citizens of Belarus are "missing", presumed to be working - voluntarily or otherwise - in Russia which has an open border with its smaller neighbour. In Ukraine - a transit, source and destination country for modern-day slavery - fears are growing of a new wave of emigration as industrial output shrinks (by 30 per cent since September). In Moldova, Europe"s poorest country, one quarter of the population has migrated and things can are set to get worse.   A recession brings new business opportunities for the traffickers, explains Lars Linderholm, the newly-appointed facilitator for migration issues in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Europe zone office. Migrants lose their jobs in western Europe and return home where a cold welcome awaits them.   An advertisement in a newspaper, a friend"s story of foreign streets paved with gold, or a flyer in a nightclub can quickly trap the unwary into months of misery and degradation on a building site in Moscow, a brothel in the UK or backbreaking agricultural work.   Although IOM"s figures show that 99 per cent of people in this part of the world are aware of the phenomena of human trafficking, only 15 per cent think they are vulnerable - a precious state of affairs for the traffickers.   Natasha, from Mogilev, Belarus second-largest city, has a typical story to tell. This articulate mother-of-four had recently become sole provider for her family, and decided to answer an advertisement to work in a factory packing frozen vegetables just outside Moscow. On arrival she handed over her passport and was informed she had to work off the debt she incurred to get the job.   At the end of a month working 16 hours a day, with three toilet breaks and one meal, sleeping on the factory floor, she went looking for her salary. She got nothing, except threats of sexual violence.   It was the same after the second month, when her health was starting to fail due to the intensity of the work and stressful conditions. "We escaped in a car we flagged down and I went home. The police ignored me, then a friend referred me to the Red Cross Red Crescent."   The Belarus Red Cross, working with IOM and the authorities, provides a full rehabilitation service for trafficked persons like Natasha through its five "Hands of Help" centres around the country. When trafficked persons are referred to the centres by the authorities, they are given health checkups as well as psychological support, legal advice, accommodation and vocational training to help get them back to work and reintegrated into communities whose first reaction is often to shun them.   Psychologist Natalia Domarenko works at the Mogilev Hands of Help Centre. In January, she saw 17 trafficked persons and she also expects the numbers to rise sharply now. Although 75 per cent of her clients are women, she estimates that an equal number of men and women are trafficked, with the majority of men duped into slave labour on building sites. (In Russia it is not illegal for an employer to retain someone"s passport, nor is it illegal to employ private security to seal off building sites, keeping the workers inside).   While there is at least some worldwide data on trafficking of men and women for sexual and labour exploitation (although no doubt seriously under-estimated) there is almost nothing on child trafficking for labour, begging and sexual exploitation.   It"s a question that is disturbing Ana Ravenco, the president of Moldovan anti-trafficking organisation La Strada, which has worked closely with the Red Cross Red Crescent.   "We can"t find children via hotlines or information campaigns. Children don"t call hotlines. Once they are trafficked they are often gone forever."   La Strada, IOM and the Red Cross Red Crescent all report a trend towards "soft" trafficking, where the "simulation of a safe environment" is used to lead people to believe they have choices and to make irregular trafficking look like regular migration.   One way to tackle trafficking (particularly in women and children), she believes, is to tackle domestic violence in all its forms - physical, economical and emotional. "I would say 100 per cent of those affected are also victims of violence. Once women have economic independence it is easier for them to get away from an abusive environment."   La Strada is establishing a "trust line" for victims of domestic violence. Meanwhile, the Moldova Red Cross has just begun an information campaign to bring domestic violence out into the open. This is a good initiative in a country where a familiar adage runs "a woman who isn"t beaten is like a house that isn"t cleaned".   Lars Linderholm sees trafficking as a problem for all parts of Europe, both on the demand and supply sides. He will encourage the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to work closely with the authorities and with specialist organizations to inform, detect and rehabilitate victims of a crime that shames us all.
	The American Way by Bob Herbert New York Times USA   April 13, 2009   There is no end to the trauma and heartbreak caused by these horrifying, blood-drenched eruptions of gun violence, which are as common to the American scene as changes in the weather.   On the same day that the three Pittsburgh cops were murdered, a 34-year-old man in Graham, Wash., James Harrison, shot his five children to death and then killed himself. The children were identified by police as Maxine, 16, Samantha, 14, Jamie, 11, Heather, 8, and James, 7.   Just a day earlier, a man in Binghamton, N.Y., invaded a civic association and shot 17 people, 13 of them fatally, and then killed himself. On April 7, three days after the shootings in Pittsburgh and Graham, Wash., a man with a handgun in Priceville, Ala., murdered his wife, their 16-year-old daughter, his sister, and his sister’s 11-year-old son, before killing himself.   More? There’s always more. Four police officers in Oakland, Calif. — Dan Sakai, 35, Mark Dunakin, 40, John Hege, 41, and Ervin Romans, 43 — were shot to death last month by a 27-year-old parolee who was then shot to death by the police.   This is the American way. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country’s attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it — 120,000 dead. That’s nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.   For the most part, we pay no attention to this relentless carnage. The idea of doing something meaningful about the insane number of guns in circulation is a nonstarter. So what if eight kids are shot to death every day in America. So what if someone is killed by a gun every 17 minutes.   The goal of the National Rifle Association and a host of so-called conservative lawmakers is to get ever more guns into the hands of ever more people. Texas is one of a number of states considering bills to allow concealed guns on college campuses.   Supporters argue, among other things, that it will enable students and professors to defend themselves against mass murderers, like the deranged gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech two years ago.   They’d like guns to be as ubiquitous as laptops or cellphones. One Texas lawmaker referred to unarmed people on campuses as “sitting ducks.”   The police department in Pittsburgh has been convulsed with grief over the loss of the three officers. Hardened detectives walked around with stunned looks on their faces and tears in their eyes.   “They all had families,” said Detective Antonio Ciummo, a father of four. “It’s hard to describe the kind of pain their families are going through. And the rest of our families. They’re upset. They’re sad. They’re scared. They know it could happen to anyone.”   The front page of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review carried a large photo of Officer Mayhle’s sad and frightened 6-year-old daughter, Jennifer. She was clutching a rose and a teddy bear in a police officer’s uniform. There was also a photo of Officer Kelly’s widow, Marena, her eyes looking skyward, as if searching.   Murderous gunfire claims many more victims than those who are actually felled by the bullets. But all the expressions of horror at the violence and pity for the dead and those who loved them ring hollow in a society that is neither mature nor civilized enough to do anything about it.   * Below is a link to Global gun related news: April 2009 from the International Action Network on Small Arms. Visit the related web page
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