BREAK THE CHAINS OF OPPRESION AND THE YOKE OF ...

EXPLoita Tion
formation and counsel for a culture of mutuality and co-humanity as well as for
loving relations between women and men having equal rights in our societies.
Between 700,000 and 2,000,000 people are traded each year throughout the
world. The profits from human traffic across the world are estimated at about €
12 billion annually. A large part of this commerce in human trading serves the
purpose of sexual exploitation of women and children in the sex industry. 1 The
great rise in prostitution and human traffic in the Czech Republic took place directly
following the fall of the Iron Curtain and was marked by the special migration
circumstances of that period at the beginning of the 1990s. Above all,
women from Eastern Europe became sought-after wares on the markets of the
western countries, among them many Czechs. In the Czech Republic about
30,000 people are active in the sex industry. Of these admittedly some 70% are
foreigners. With the eastern expansion of the European Union the Czech Republic
also became a main destination for women who were traded here from
countries beyond the eastern frontier of the European Union. The Czech police
have observed since this period a remarkable rise in the number of young women
from Eastern European countries as well as from Asia who are forced to the
Czech Republic into prostitution and often are traded on further from there
through the whole of Europe. And it is men from western countries, above all
from Germany and Austria, who use this market as so-called sex tourists or as
customers in their homeland. Children and young women from socially disadvantaged
families and groups on the edge of Czech society slip under the social
pressure of their miserable living conditions into the undertow of the sex market
dominating the Czech region bordering on Germany and Austria. In particular,
trade in commercial � sex �in clubs, �bars and brothels � appears � to not a few women
from these weak social strata as the ultimate escape from impoverished living
conditions that offer no perspective. In the border regions this business offers
work and apparently lucrative conditions. This is met half-way by a shift in public
attitudes to sexual morality and prostitution. In these areas erotic clubs and
the huge market in sex services have become everyday normality.
1 “It is not easy to express statistically the exact scope of this problem, and therefore the
estimates of the number of victims vary significantly. Various international studies indicate
that 700,000 – 2,000,000 persons are traded annually around the world, while
300,000 – 500,000 persons are traded annually within Europe. It is estimated that the
global annual proceeds from human trafficking are € 8,500 – 12,000 billion.” Ministry
of the Interior, National Strategy of the Fight against Trafficking in Human Beings,
2005-2007, Prague 2005, 7 (http://aplikace.mvcr.cz/archiv2008/dokument/2005/
strate-gie.pdf last access 12.5.2009; cf. also http://aplikace.mvcr.cz/archiv2008/dokument/
2006/komercni06.pdf last access 12.5.2009) with reference among others to International
Organisation for Migration, the US Department of State, the Europol,
loc.cit., 7, n. 2.
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– IN THE MIDDLE OF EUROPE –