15 June 2004
Colombian Hailed as Hero in Fight Against Trafficking in Persons
Ambassador Sierra calls for greater international involvement
Washington -- On any given day, two or three Colombian women fall victim to the deceit and lies of traffickers and begin a journey that has lured an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 Colombian women to leave home for a better life -- only to disappear into the dark underworld of sex slavery.
Francisco Sierra, Colombia's ambassador to Japan, has made it his personal goal to stop this trafficking in persons that has taken so many women into forced prostitution. For his efforts, Sierra was recognized by Secretary of State Colin Powell on June 14 as one of six heroes in the fight against an illicit industry that preys upon society's most vulnerable members.
Sierra said the women are told they will find a better life by working in other countries such as Holland, Japan, and Spain, but they most often find themselves trapped into working in brothels to pay off their so-called "transportation" fees; such fees may total as much as $50,000 to $80,000. Sierra said that the women are expected to pay their captors roughly $2,000 every ten days or they will be severely punished.
"The reason is [the women] are from a low-income sector of the population with a lack of education and opportunities," Sierra said through an interpreter, when asked why so many women are likely to be exploited in their attempts to go abroad to find work. They are tempted by false promises and become victims of an elaborate network of traffickers.
Thanks in large part to the efforts of Sierra and others who are working hard to save Colombian women from traffickers, Colombia was rated as a Tier 1 country in the 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report issued by the U.S. Department of State. This rating signifies that the Colombian government fully complies with the minimum standards set by the United States government in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003.
In recent years, Sierra explained, a significant number of the trafficked women have found themselves ensnared in Japan's lucrative sex industry. "The girls arrive in Japan and pass through the immigration authorities," Sierra said. "Then the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, take their passports and other documents. Also, they take their tickets."
Without any form of documentation or means of getting home, the women are forced to work for their captors in brothels -- essentially to buy back their own freedom, according to Sierra. And most are prevented from seeking help because they fear for their own safety as well as the safety of their family members in Colombia, whom the women believe the traffickers can harm.
"For that reason, sometimes the women don't even dare to escape. Most of the women are not willing to make depositions or statements or declarations to the authorities," Sierra said.
In recent months, he observed, there has been progress in preventing the trafficking of Colombian women to Japan. The breakthrough came with the arrest of Koichi "Sony" Hagiwara, a notorious trafficker, who helped supply Japan's brothels, and that arrest has encouraged more women to come forward and seek assistance to escape the sex industry.
However, Sierra added, the victims of trafficking are also the primary victims of the legal system in Japan, due to Japan's lack of anti-trafficking laws. "In Japan, currently, the victims of trafficking in persons are [treated as] the culprits ... and are the ones prosecuted because of the violations of the immigration law -- they don't have work visas," he said.
He noted that these women are often arrested for prostitution, despite the fact that they were forced to engage in it. The arrests serve merely to victimize the women even further, he pointed out.
"Meanwhile, those really responsible -- the brokers and traffickers -- are totally free to [pursue] their activities," said the ambassador. The traffickers can only be charged for violating various immigration laws, in the absence of anti-trafficking legislation.
"Colombia is making great efforts to counter trafficking in persons, but Japan specifically has to adopt a law to punish the traffickers," Sierra argued.
He said he is hopeful that the plight of his country's citizens will be more widely recognized by the international community, which would help garner aid and support in combating the trafficking industry.
Sierra's call for international action was echoed by Ambassador John Miller, director of the State Department's office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons.
At the June 14 launch of the 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report, Miller said: "In the last month or two, the government of Japan, at the direction of the prime minister, has started to take an enormous number of steps that we hope will lead to more prosecutions, more investigations, more convictions, more pursuit of organized crime figures and more help for victims. The prime minister has just formed a new ministerial task force that will be chaired by one of the [Japanese cabinet] secretaries, and they are already at work with the parliament on a new comprehensive anti-trafficking law."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
