Sexual Trafficking at the World Cup
Suki (star girl)
June 29, 2006
Fans party as raped girls suffer. A (London) Guardian article (May 30) reports that roughly 40,000 girls from Eastern Europe, Russia, and Asia are being trafficked into mobile brothels in Germany to serve the World Cup fans this month. Since there has been little mention of this in the U.S media (but quite a bit on the European front), it seems it’s up to me to bring this up. The Guardian piece gives a depressing portrait of the ‘stalls’ in the ‘Mega-Brothel’ set up beside the Berlin stadium: these small spaces, where the girls are doing the sex, are called ‘perfomance boxes’ and they’re about the size of ‘toilets,' according to the Guardian. Cribs of the old American West all over again. And ‘toilets’—how appropriate since prostitutes have been called ‘toilets.’ I once heard a joke from a soldier—“the only difference between a toilet and prostitute is that you don’t have to flush her—she flushes herself.” (Military humor tends to be a bit rough.)
Since prostitution is ‘legal’ in Germany, the Guardian says it is difficult for anyone to help the trafficked girls, even though they have been through the ‘works’: in case you’re not familiar with trafficking, the procedure involves beating, burning, starvation, and collective rape, to make the girls submissive and compliant. (See, for example, Italian writer Paola Monzini’s recent book, Sex Traffic, for descriptions of what trafficked girls endure.) Apparently, a lot of London police are going there, but since the event is taking place on German soil, they can’t bust British men for using prostitutes where it’s legal. Not even if the girls are enslaved? Or underage, as many trafficked girls are? Is there some international agenda of human rights that transcends the rights of nations?
So, while the World Cuppers party, these most vulnerable and tortured of human beings are suffering. (And their ‘owners’ are pulling in the money.)
All of this buying of sex is simply regarded as ‘normal’ fun, a recreational activity for the horny male fans—but in reality it is the sanctioning of legal rape. Now, I wouldn’t take work away from the legal German prostitutes at the World Cup, but isn’t there something pathetically brutal about drunk, crude World Cup fans partying around the raped bodies of the trafficked? (And what do the women fans think of all this?)
The Guardian article says the customers are not always able to tell the difference between the ‘trafficked’ and the ‘free.’ (The ones crying are the trafficked.)
When I lived in Tokyo during the Olympics, it was rumored that prostitutes (mainly indigent girls held in debt bondage) were given as 'gifts' by the Japanese government to athletes. Shades of the Korean Comfort Women.
What will happen in Beijing in 2008, with the heavy increase in the sexual enslavement of women which we are seeing in that country? No one ever talks about this underside of big sporting events.
Since prostitution is ‘legal’ in Germany, the Guardian says it is difficult for anyone to help the trafficked girls, even though they have been through the ‘works’: in case you’re not familiar with trafficking, the procedure involves beating, burning, starvation, and collective rape, to make the girls submissive and compliant. (See, for example, Italian writer Paola Monzini’s recent book, Sex Traffic, for descriptions of what trafficked girls endure.) Apparently, a lot of London police are going there, but since the event is taking place on German soil, they can’t bust British men for using prostitutes where it’s legal. Not even if the girls are enslaved? Or underage, as many trafficked girls are? Is there some international agenda of human rights that transcends the rights of nations?
So, while the World Cuppers party, these most vulnerable and tortured of human beings are suffering. (And their ‘owners’ are pulling in the money.)
All of this buying of sex is simply regarded as ‘normal’ fun, a recreational activity for the horny male fans—but in reality it is the sanctioning of legal rape. Now, I wouldn’t take work away from the legal German prostitutes at the World Cup, but isn’t there something pathetically brutal about drunk, crude World Cup fans partying around the raped bodies of the trafficked? (And what do the women fans think of all this?)
The Guardian article says the customers are not always able to tell the difference between the ‘trafficked’ and the ‘free.’ (The ones crying are the trafficked.)
When I lived in Tokyo during the Olympics, it was rumored that prostitutes (mainly indigent girls held in debt bondage) were given as 'gifts' by the Japanese government to athletes. Shades of the Korean Comfort Women.
What will happen in Beijing in 2008, with the heavy increase in the sexual enslavement of women which we are seeing in that country? No one ever talks about this underside of big sporting events.