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'SVOBODNYE NOVOSTI' REFUSES TO REMAIN NONPLUSSED, AFFIXES PLUS. Last month Information Minister Mikhail Padhayny suspended printing of the independent weekly "Svobodnye novosti," after a request from Syarhey Atroshchanka, one of the weekly's four co-founders. "Svobodnye novosti" had a circulation of 36,000 and was known for its criticism of the Belarusian government. Atroshchanka's request was widely publicized in the state media, particularly on Belarusian television. Atroshchanka claimed that the weekly became unprofitable and that the editorial staff operated only thanks to grants from the U.S. Embassy in Minsk. Atroshchanka also charged that the editorial staff received money for publishing articles and materials "ordered" by unidentified clients. "Svobodnye novosti" Editor in Chief Alyaksandr Ulitsyonak flatly denied Atroshchanka's charges, suggesting they were prompted by his intention to launch a separate publication, the weekly "Obozrevatel" (which Atroshchanka did last week). The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAZh) has called on Padhayny to step down, saying that his ban on printing "Svobodnye novosti" was illegal. Meanwhile, Ulitsyonak and his staff -- to sidestep the printing ban -- have launched a new weekly under the name registered with the Information Ministry a year ago, "Svobodnye novosti-plus." At present, the new weekly has a circulation of 8,000 and is distributed only in Minsk, because the editorial staff have not yet managed to settle formalities for nationwide distribution. ("RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 3 September)
TWO JOURNALISTS START JAIL TERMS AS ANOTHER WEEKLY CLOSED. This month, journalists Mikola Markevich and Pavel Mazheyka of the independent weekly "Pahonya," which was closed by a court verdict last year, began serving their one-year sentences for libeling President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in "open-type correctional institutions" far from their home city of Hrodna. "Nasha svaboda" Editor in Chief Pavel Zhuk told Belapan on 27 August that his weekly will close down because the authorities are preventing them from publishing any further issues. A district court in Minsk on 2 August fined "Nasha svaboda" some $55,000 in a libel case brought by Anatol Tozik, chairman of the State Monitoring Committee. Zhuk said the verdict has ruined "Nasha svaboda," as the authorities seized the newspaper's equipment and froze its bank account. An attempt to publish a "Nasha svaboda" issue on 27 August failed after the money transferred to a printing house to cover the printing costs was intercepted by the authorities. ("RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 3 September)
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH LEADER MOVES TO LIMIT CLOUT OF RADIO MARYJA... Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, has issued a decree banning as of 1 October the operation of Radio Maryja bureaus at parishes in the Warsaw Archdiocese (which is directly headed by Glemp), "Rzeczpospolita" and other Polish media reported last week. At the same time, Glemp called on the clergy and believers in his diocese to support another Roman Catholic radio station, Radio Jozef. "The priest on the territory of his parish may not, without permission of the diocese authority, accept offers from other church institutions in the sphere of religious instruction or allow any fund raising. Otherwise, he runs counter to canonical law and undermines the unity of the church," "Gazeta Wyborcza" quoted from Glemp's decree. ("RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 3 September)
...IN EFFORT TO LIMIT ITS EXTREMIST VIEWS... Radio Maryja was started as a local radio station by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk in Torun in 1990; in 1993, the station received a concession for broadcasting nationwide. Today, Radio Maryja claims a regular listenership of 14 percent of adult Poles (some 4 million people) and touts itself as the most influential Catholic media outlet in Poland. Radio Maryja is notorious for its "Roman Catholic fundamentalism," nationalism, and opposition to Poland's membership in the European Union. It also actively participates in political campaigns in the country. Thanks primarily to support from Father Rydzyk's station, the far-right, ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families was able to win 38 seats in the Sejm in the parliamentary election on 23 September 2001. Glemp's decree suggests that the message aired by Radio Maryja does not necessarily concur with what the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in Poland wanted to hear. ("RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 3 September)
...BUT WILL OTHER CHURCH LEADERS FOLLOW? It is not clear at present whether other Polish bishops will follow Glemp's example and try to squeeze out Radio Maryja bureaus from their dioceses. Radio Maryja's parochial bureaus were set up all over the country spontaneously by believers, following an on-air appeal from Father Rydzyk. Their operation is regulated by accords concluded between the Radio Maryja management and individual dioceses. The bureaus are involved in raising funds for the operation of Radio Maryja, as well as for other purposes advertised by the station. ("RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 3 September)
UKRAINE
PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION WANTS PRESIDENT TO BE INDICTED IN GONGADZE CASE. The Verkhovna Rada's ad hoc commission for investigating the disappearance of Heorhiy Gongadze has decided to address a request to the Prosecutor-General's Office to instigate criminal proceedings against President Leonid Kuchma and other current and former top officials over the kidnapping of the journalist, UNIAN reported on 3 September, quoting lawmaker Hryhoriy Omelchenko, the chairman of the commission. "There is sufficient evidence indicating that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Verkhovna Rada head Volodymyr Lytvyn, former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, and lawmaker Leonid Derkach were collaborators in crime as organizers of the kidnapping of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze," Omelchenko said. Meanwhile, police have arrested Serhiy Obozov, the prosecutor of Tarashcha Raion where Gongadze's decapitated body was found nearly two years ago. "Obozov is not the last official to be arrested in the [Gongadze] case," Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun told journalists on 3 September. He did not comment on the charges against Obozov. ("RFE/RL Newsline," 4 September)
OUR UKRAINE: OPPOSITION HAS NO MEDIA ACCESS. Our Ukraine on 29 August publicized an open letter to President Kuchma, warning him against a "systemic crisis of the authority that has hit all spheres of social life," Ukrainian media reported. According to Viktor Yushchenko's bloc, "one has the impression that the parliament, the government, and the media have been leased to the head of the presidential administration [Viktor Medvedchuk] and his oligarchic clan," the letter noted. Our Ukraine also complained that the opposition has no access to the state-run media. According to the bloc, "the situation in the state has been heading toward unpredictability and uncontrollability." ("RFE/RL Newsline," 30 August)
The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (OMCTP), established within the U.S. State Department in October 2001, estimated in its second annual report released in June that between 700,000 to 4 million women, men, and children have been "bought, sold, transported, and held against their will in slave-like conditions." Although this figure includes forced labor, the majority of these slaves are sex slaves.
Poor socioeconomic prospects in their own countries are the main reason why so many women migrate abroad from postcommunist Europe. Between 60-70 percent of the unemployed in Russia and Ukraine are women, who tend to be paid less than men and are usually the first to be dismissed from jobs.
The sex-slave trade, which has been given the name the "Natasha Trade," is more than a human story of modern-day slavery. It generates huge profits for organized crime -- some $83 million a month in Italy alone. It also breeds corruption among state officials involved in collusion in the trade, and destroys morale among peacekeepers who are accused of complicity in, and use of the sex slave trade, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosova. Many sex slaves are sexually underage, orphans, the children of divorced marriages, or runaways fleeing abusive parents.
The sex trade also breeds violence and murder. Only "a tiny percent of those 'sold' manage to return home alive," a Dnipropetrovsk prosecutor's office investigator said. With their passports confiscated, the sex slaves have no form of identification, are sold on to different clients, subjected to torture, and deprived of food and sleep. But if they become physically ill and mentally traumatized they are no longer of any use to their traffickers.
The sex trade also contributes to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Some sex slaves turn to, or are given, drugs to keep them pliant, thereby increasing the number of drug users. Drug users, in turn, are a major source of the spread of AIDS because they often share needles. Sex slaves who have managed to escape and return home are also a source of sexually transmitted diseases as they were often raped and forced to have sex without protection. The trade also spreads AIDS in the countries where the sex slaves are held against their will. Turkish officials and the media have blamed "Natashas" for the rising incidence of AIDS in that country. The reluctance of rural Turkish men to use condoms means they often pass on sexually transmitted diseases to their wives.
The AIDS epidemic is growing faster in the former USSR than anywhere else in the world, and the region has become second only to Africa with 250,000 persons infected last year alone. Although Ukraine has the highest rate of AIDS infection in postcommunist Europe, with 1 percent of the adult population estimated to have HIV, this was ignored until November 2000 when a presidential decree adopted a three-year program.
A recent BBC news report described the Ukrainian port of Odesa as the "AIDS capital of Europe," and AIDS is developing in Ukraine as fast as in Africa. Dr. Aleksandr Sidyachenko, head of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases for the Odesa Oblast health authority, admitted that "We are witnessing the beginning of the AIDS epidemic [in Ukraine]."
Of the 27 postcommunist countries, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Romania are the main source of sex slaves. The second OMCTP annual report found that in Moldova, new amendments to the Criminal Code that were adopted in April have yet to lead to any convictions. Similar amendments imposing penalties for human trafficking went into effect in Ukraine in September 2001. Both countries are classified as "Tier 2" by the OMCTP, meaning they have begun to attempt to deal with the problem of trafficking of women. Meanwhile, in Russia, there is still no legislation against sex-slave trafficking and the country "is not making significant efforts to" undertake any action. Russia is therefore classified as "Tier 3" by the OMCTP.
The transit countries for the trafficked women are Albania and the former Yugoslavia. The major destinations for the "Natasha Trade" are Germany, Italy (half of its 50,000 prostitutes are East Europeans), Turkey, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.
In Israel, Amnesty International reported that 10,000 women from the former USSR became sex slaves in the last decade and until recently the authorities were reluctant to prosecute those involved. In August 2000, four Ukrainian sex slaves died in a brothel in Tel Aviv after an arsonist, suspected of being from an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, set it ablaze. Between 100,000-150,000 women are sold as mail-order brides to Israel each year, an industry that generates $17 billion annually. Some of these women end up as sex slaves.
Ukraine not only has the highest rate of AIDS infection in Europe, it has eclipsed Latin America as the leading source of trafficked women. The 14 August edition of the Ukrainian parliamentary newspaper "Holos Ukrayny" reported on the breakup of a gang that had sent women to the United Arab Emirates and been paid $2,000 for each girl. In the last three years, 125 criminal cases have been instituted in Ukraine against persons accused of the "unlawful employment of Ukrainian citizens abroad."
According to "Holos Ukrayiny," 120,000 young Ukrainian women were trafficked last year alone and a total of nearly half a million in recent years. The International Organization for Migration estimates a higher figure of 1 million Ukrainians abroad who are in danger of being forced into becoming sex slaves. In the brothels of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Greece, and Spain, an average of 10 percent of the women are from Ukraine. In the Netherlands an estimated one-third of the prostitutes are believed to be from Ukraine, while in Greece, the term "waitress" has become synonymous for a Ukrainian woman engaged in prostitution, either voluntarily or as a sex slave.
Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies and adjunct staff in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto.
THOUSANDS MOURN TRAGIC AIR-SHOW CRASH IN LVIV. More than 10,000 people took part in a solemn gathering in Lviv on 5 September to commemorate the victims of the 27 July air-show crash, UNIAN reported. The ceremony -- which took place 40 days after the disaster in keeping with the Uniate and Orthodox Christian tradition -- was attended by Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko, the leader of the eponymous opposition bloc. Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz and Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, although in the city that day, did not attend the gathering. The organizing committee of the mourning ceremony had warned Moroz and Symonenko that their attendance could lead to "unforeseeable political consequences." Some 12,000 people attended a rally in Lutsk earlier the same day at which Tymoshenko, Moroz, and Symonenko solicited support for the upcoming opposition protest campaign. JM
UKRAINE INVITES POLAND TO JOIN GAS CONSORTIUM. Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh has invited Poland to participate in the creation of an international consortium to operate the Ukrainian gas-pipeline system, Interfax reported on 5 September. Kinakh made this proposal at a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller in Krynica Gorska on the sidelines of the Central European economic forum. JM
NEGOTIATIONS ON OSCE DRAFT STALLED IN MOLDOVAN CAPITAL. The collapse of discussions on the draft proposed by the OSCE for settling the Transdniester conflict was narrowly avoided on 5 September at the fourth meeting in the current round of negotiations, which was held at the OSCE mission in Chisinau, RFE/RL's bureau in the Moldovan capital reported. After seven hours of negotiations, OSCE mission chief to Moldova David Schwartz told journalists that the sides agreed to continue negotiating in the presence of the three mediators -- the OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine -- and that "Tiraspol and Chisinau presented divergent opinions on the final document." Schwartz also said that the date for the resumption of the talks has yet to be announced. Moldovan negotiating team chief Vasile Sturza said Tiraspol is again indulging in procrastination tactics and that, instead of being ready to negotiate on the OSCE-proposed document, it insists on a review of commitments assumed by the sides in previous agreements. MS
The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (OMCTP), established within the U.S. State Department in October 2001, estimated in its second annual report released in June that between 700,000 to 4 million women, men, and children have been "bought, sold, transported, and held against their will in slave-like conditions." Although this figure includes forced labor, the majority of these slaves are sex slaves.
Poor socioeconomic prospects in their own countries are the main reason why so many women migrate abroad from postcommunist Europe. Between 60-70 percent of the unemployed in Russia and Ukraine are women, who tend to be paid less than men and are usually the first to be dismissed from jobs.
The sex-slave trade, which has been given the name the "Natasha Trade," is more than a human story of modern-day slavery. It generates huge profits for organized crime -- some $83 million a month in Italy alone. It also breeds corruption among state officials involved in collusion in the trade, and destroys morale among peacekeepers who are accused of complicity in, and use of the sex slave trade, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosova. Many sex slaves are sexually underage, orphans, the children of divorced marriages, or runaways fleeing abusive parents.
The sex trade also breeds violence and murder. Only "a tiny percent of those 'sold' manage to return home alive," a Dnipropetrovsk prosecutor's office investigator said. With their passports confiscated, the sex slaves have no form of identification, are sold on to different clients, subjected to torture, and deprived of food and sleep. But if they become physically ill and mentally traumatized they are no longer of any use to their traffickers.
The sex trade also contributes to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Some sex slaves turn to, or are given, drugs to keep them pliant, thereby increasing the number of drug users. Drug users, in turn, are a major source of the spread of AIDS because they often share needles. Sex slaves who have managed to escape and return home are also a source of sexually transmitted diseases as they were often raped and forced to have sex without protection. The trade also spreads AIDS in the countries where the sex slaves are held against their will. Turkish officials and the media have blamed "Natashas" for the rising incidence of AIDS in that country. The reluctance of rural Turkish men to use condoms means they often pass on sexually transmitted diseases to their wives.
The AIDS epidemic is growing faster in the former USSR than anywhere else in the world, and the region has become second only to Africa with 250,000 persons infected last year alone. Although Ukraine has the highest rate of AIDS infection in postcommunist Europe, with 1 percent of the adult population estimated to have HIV, this was ignored until November 2000 when a presidential decree adopted a three-year program.
A recent BBC news report described the Ukrainian port of Odesa as the "AIDS capital of Europe," and AIDS is developing in Ukraine as fast as in Africa. Dr. Aleksandr Sidyachenko, head of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases for the Odesa Oblast health authority, admitted that "We are witnessing the beginning of the AIDS epidemic [in Ukraine]."
Of the 27 postcommunist countries, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Romania are the main source of sex slaves. The second OMCTP annual report found that in Moldova, new amendments to the Criminal Code that were adopted in April have yet to lead to any convictions. Similar amendments imposing penalties for human trafficking went into effect in Ukraine in September 2001. Both countries are classified as "Tier 2" by the OMCTP, meaning they have begun to attempt to deal with the problem of trafficking of women. Meanwhile, in Russia, there is still no legislation against sex-slave trafficking and the country "is not making significant efforts to" undertake any action. Russia is therefore classified as "Tier 3" by the OMCTP.
The transit countries for the trafficked women are Albania and the former Yugoslavia. The major destinations for the "Natasha Trade" are Germany, Italy (half of its 50,000 prostitutes are East Europeans), Turkey, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.
In Israel, Amnesty International reported that 10,000 women from the former USSR became sex slaves in the last decade and until recently the authorities were reluctant to prosecute those involved. In August 2000, four Ukrainian sex slaves died in a brothel in Tel Aviv after an arsonist, suspected of being from an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, set it ablaze. Between 100,000-150,000 women are sold as mail-order brides to Israel each year, an industry that generates $17 billion annually. Some of these women end up as sex slaves.
Ukraine not only has the highest rate of AIDS infection in Europe, it has eclipsed Latin America as the leading source of trafficked women. The 14 August edition of the Ukrainian parliamentary newspaper "Holos Ukrayny" reported on the breakup of a gang that had sent women to the United Arab Emirates and been paid $2,000 for each girl. In the last three years, 125 criminal cases have been instituted in Ukraine against persons accused of the "unlawful employment of Ukrainian citizens abroad."
According to "Holos Ukrayiny," 120,000 young Ukrainian women were trafficked last year alone and a total of nearly half a million in recent years. The International Organization for Migration estimates a higher figure of 1 million Ukrainians abroad who are in danger of being forced into becoming sex slaves. In the brothels of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Greece, and Spain, an average of 10 percent of the women are from Ukraine. In the Netherlands an estimated one-third of the prostitutes are believed to be from Ukraine, while in Greece, the term "waitress" has become synonymous for a Ukrainian woman engaged in prostitution, either voluntarily or as a sex slave.