[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 9936-9937]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON TRAFFICKING IN HUMAN BEINGS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 5, 2001

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, representatives of the governments of Albania, 
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia, 
Turkey and Ukraine recently met in Bucharest to discuss effective 
cross-border solutions to the problems of trafficking in human beings 
and illegal immigration. The United States--represented by FBI Director 
Louis Freeh--as well as officials and law enforcement agencies from a 
number of western European governments also participated. I welcome the 
reports on the conference which indicate that the participants agreed 
not only on the critical need for intensified and coordinated efforts 
to combat trafficking in human beings and illegal immigration at the 
national, regional and international levels, but also that the 
protection of human rights and the dignity of trafficking victims must 
be given the highest priority in such efforts.
  Mr. Speaker, in recognition of his role in both national and 
international efforts to combat trafficking in human beings, my 
colleague on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the 
Helsinki Commission) Representative Chris Smith was invited to 
participate in this regional conference. As we all know, Rep. Smith was 
a prime sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. In 
addition, as co-chairman of the Helsinki Commission and head of the 
U.S. Delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in 
Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, Rep. Smith successfully advanced 
language at the 1999 and 2000 meetings of the OSCE Parliamentary 
Assembly which condemned the trafficking of women and children and 
called for the governments of OSCE participating States to adopt the 
legislation and enforcement mechanisms needed to punish trafficking 
perpetrators and to ensure that the human rights of the trafficking 
victims are protected.
  Due to the congressional schedule, Rep. Smith submitted a written 
statement to the South Eastern Europe regional conference urging the 
governments and parliaments in that region to adopt tough laws against 
trafficking in human beings as well as providing in law adequate 
safeguards for the protection of trafficking victims. I commend my good 
friend and colleague for his devotion to the protection of human 
rights, including his work to end the global scourge of human 
trafficking, and I submit his statement to the conference to be made a 
part of the record.

     Statement of Rep. Christopher H. Smith, Vice-Chairman, House 
  International Relations Committee, Co-Chairman, U.S. Commission on 
                   Security and Cooperation in Europe


    Regional Conference on Trafficking in Human Beings and Illegal 
             Immigration, Bucharest, Romania (May 21, 2001)

       The victimization of children, women and men through 
     trafficking has reached vast proportions in the Balkans and 
     beyond. Human trafficking is a human rights concern, a 
     transnational crime problem, a migration issue, a 
     socioeconomic issue, and a public health issue. Cracking down 
     on the trafficking of human beings deprives transnational 
     criminals of a key source of revenue, strengthens the rule of 
     law, and protects human rights. The attention that this 
     conference brings to the human trafficking problem and to the 
     related, although distinct, concern of illegal immigration, 
     is needed and welcomed. I regret that the congressional 
     schedule prevents my participation in this meeting, but I 
     hope to complement your discussions on fighting human 
     trafficking by addressing the legislator's critical role in 
     ensuring that law enforcers have the legal tools they need to 
     prosecute traffickers and protect victims.
       I commend the organizers of this meeting for recognizing 
     the synergy between the prosecution of traffickers and the 
     protection of victims, and including both subjects on the 
     agenda. Under the current laws and law enforcement strategies 
     in many countries, victims are often punished more severely 
     than the perpetrators. Trafficked persons will not report 
     abuses to authorities if doing so puts their lives at greater 
     risk and if they do not believe that the law enforcement 
     community will protect them. Therefore, successful 
     prosecutions of traffickers cannot happen if we do not 
     protect their victims.
       Efforts to promote victim protection, and later 
     reintegration into their communities, must start by 
     recognizing trafficked men, women or children as victims of 
     crime and potential witnesses, rather than as criminals. When 
     a sex-for-hire establishment is raided, for example, the 
     women (and sometimes children) in the establishment are 
     typically arrested, locked up and then deported if they are 
     not citizens of the country where the establishment is 
     located. This procedure is followed without regard to whether 
     their participation in the prostitution was voluntary or 
     involuntary, and without regard to whether they will face 
     retribution or other serious harm upon return. This not only 
     inflicts further cruelty on the victims, it also deprives 
     prosecutors of witnesses to testify against the real 
     criminals, and frightens other victims from coming forward. 
     The needs of trafficking victims, moreover, do not end when 
     they are freed in a police raid. Authorities have the 
     responsibility for the safety and basic needs of victims, 
     including food, clothing, medical attention, shelter, and 
     safe repatriation, and ideally they can partner with non-
     governmental organizations in providing for the victims.
       In addition to occasional rescue operations, however, law 
     enforcement officers in South Eastern Europe, and indeed 
     throughout the world, must begin to address human trafficking 
     as a priority crime issue. To date, law enforcers have 
     generally failed to recognize the gravity of the violence 
     brought to bear on trafficked persons or the links between 
     trafficking and organized crime. The importance of thoroughly 
     investigating trafficking cases and prosecuting perpetrators 
     cannot be overstated. Trafficking in persons

[[Page 9937]]

     is today viewed as a low risk/high profit business rather 
     than a crime. The prosecution of traffickers serves a dual 
     purpose: it delivers justice to individuals who use force or 
     fraud to trade in human lives and it serves as a deterrent to 
     others who are inclined to pursue human trafficking as a 
     business endeavor, thinking that the potential rewards would 
     outweigh the risks.
       I personally worked for more than a year to create a new 
     law \1\ in the United States mandating severe punishment for 
     traffickers and providing new tools for law enforcement 
     officers to combat this scourge. As a result of the 
     legislation that I sponsored, which was enacted last October, 
     any person who traffics in human beings--or who reaps the 
     profits from this abhorrent activity--now faces up to 20 
     years in prison, or even life imprisonment under certain 
     circumstances. The law also carries a penalty of up to 5 
     years imprisonment, plus fines, for confiscation or 
     destruction of a passport or immigration documents from 
     another person in the course of trafficking; it allows 
     prosecutors to seize traffickers' assets; and it requires 
     mandatory compensation by traffickers to their victims. The 
     new U.S. law recognizes that children, women and men are 
     trafficked into forced labor, involuntary servitude or 
     slavery--not only in the commercial sex industry, but also 
     into industrial sweatshops, domestic servitude, and other 
     exploitive situations. Severe penalties have been created for 
     trafficking into any of these types of exploitation.
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     \1\ ``Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000'' (Public 
     Law 106-386, signed by the President on Oct. 28, 2000), 
     available at <http://www.house.gov/chrissmith/>.
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       This law gives prosecutors the tools to crack down on 
     traffickers, but it also ensures that trafficked persons will 
     be treated as victims of a crime and potential witnesses 
     rather than as criminals. Toward that end, the law requires 
     the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that trafficked 
     persons, while in the custody of the federal government, will 
     not be detained in facilities that are inappropriate to their 
     status as crime victims, the victims will receive medical 
     care and other assistance, will be provided protection if 
     their safety is in jeopardy, will be advised of their legal 
     rights, and will have access to translation services. Law 
     enforcement authorities are also empowered to place 
     trafficked persons in witness protection programs, if needed, 
     which can help protect them from reprisals by the organized 
     crime groups, or the individual thugs, who trafficked them.
       The new anti-trafficking law also includes victim 
     protection measures such as funding for NGOs working to 
     assist trafficking victims in safe integration, 
     reintegration, or resettlement. The law creates a new non-
     immigrant visa which allows a victim of trafficking to remain 
     temporarily in the United States if the victim is a child, or 
     the victim is willing to assist in the investigation or 
     prosecution of acts of trafficking, and would suffer extreme 
     hardship if deported from the United States. In certain 
     cases, trafficked persons can also become eligible for 
     permanent residence after several years.
       As participating States of the Organization for Security 
     and Cooperation in Europe, each government represented in the 
     Stability Pact committed at the Istanbul Summit to 
     ``undertake measures . . . to end ... all forms of 
     trafficking in human beings,'' \2\ including by `promot[ing] 
     the adoption or strengthening of legislation to hold 
     accountable persons responsible for [trafficking] and 
     strengthen[ing] the protection of victims.' The need for 
     legal reforms was also recognized by members of the OSCE 
     Parliamentary Assembly in both the St. Petersburg Declaration 
     of 1999 and the Bucharest Declaration of 2000.
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     \2\ OSCE Charter for European Security, para. 24 (Istanbul, 
     November 1999).
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       Despite these commitments, many criminal codes do not yet 
     recognize the crime of trafficking in human beings. 
     Addressing the legal deficiencies in the U.S. Code took an 
     enormous investment of political will, a careful examination 
     of the laws on the books, and dogged determination to craft 
     legal tools for prosecution of traffickers and for protection 
     of victims. Each government and parliament in South Eastern 
     Europe should undertake a review and strengthening of its 
     domestic laws to ensure that trafficking in human beings is 
     established as a criminal offense and that penalties can be 
     imposed that reflect the grievous nature of the offense. I 
     would be very glad to provide the law which we crafted should 
     the example be helpful to other lawmakers.
       Legal reform is a vital step in the battle against modem-
     day slavery. In the meantime, however, even in countries in 
     which the law does not specifically prohibit trafficking in 
     persons, law enforcement authorities can and should prosecute 
     traffickers by using existing laws against, inter alia, 
     kidnaping, fraud, pandering, falsifying documents, assisting 
     individuals to cross borders illegally, forced labor, 
     assault, or rape. As with all human rights, the 
     responsibility to prevent this particular abuse, to prosecute 
     those who commit the atrocities, and to protect their 
     victims, begins and ends with individual States.

     

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