|
1,700 sex slaves a year lured to Japan
April 30, 2005
At least 1,700 women from Latin America and the Caribbean are lured each year
into sexual slavery in Japan’s huge illicit sex industry, according to a new
report being presented today.
A team of researchers hired by the Organisation of American States found that
most of the women come from Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru.
The team of researchers – led by Phillip Linderman, an expert on loan from the
US State Department – was presenting the Rapid Assessment Report to an
international seminar on human trafficking, sponsored by Peru’s Foreign
Ministry.
The OAS analysis was culled from interviews with presumed victims, Japanese
immigration records and crime data.
It is estimated that crime organisations, like Yakuza, Japan’s second-largest
crime syndicate, exploit tens of thousands of undocumented foreign women in
Japan, mostly from other Asian countries, in what Japan’s National Police
Agency estimates is a $83bn (ˆ64.2bn)-a-year industry, the report says.
Linderman said that until recently, governments on both sides of the Pacific
paid little attention to the problem.
The Colombian Embassy in Japan stood out, aggressively working to identify and
assist the estimated 4,000 Colombians it believes are human trafficking
victims.
But Linderman said the figures in his report probably represent only a
percentage of trafficking victims, particularly from other Latin American
country’s like Peru, which is just starting to tackle the issue.
“The ties between Japan and Peru are larger for historical reasons, for
migratory reasons, for all kinds of reasons, than they are between Colombia and
Japan, and it’s our position right now in the preliminary study that there are
many more victims here,” he said.
Japan came under mounting international pressure last year after it was
downgraded in the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report.
It became the only industrialised, developed nation to be placed on a special
”watch list” of countries on the verge of falling into the report’s lowest
category, the OAS study noted.
In response, “the government of Japan announced a new national plan to combat
human trafficking in December 2004,” among other measures, the OAS report
continued.
Chieko Tatsumi, of the International Organised Crime Division in Japan’s
Foreign Ministry, who went to Lima to attend the seminar, said her government
launched an aggressive public ad campaign to raise awareness about human
trafficking.
“I think the Japanese people are paying more attention to these issues,” she
said.
Comment on this story,
click here.
Copyright 1999-2004, AsianSexGazette.com. All rights reserved. No
content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.
Please contact us via the link below for re-print and syndication policies.
|
|
No
cracks in stiff new sex business laws
4-30-2005
|
