News / Human Trafficking in and from Poland [80]

I have read this topic within the news for years now, and it finally struck home when I finished a book by a personally known author Jake Adelstein called Tokyo Vice. It's quite popular, you should pick up a copy. Anyway, seeing as how there are so few Eastern European immigrants in Japan...most of them are women... for human trafficking. However this thread isn't about Japan (which ranks among the top for human trafficking) but where one of the most detailed stories roots from in Adelsteins book. Being an American reporter in Japan for the police beat, many years of experience got Jake a job in the reporter vice which was to examine the underground of the Yakuza, Japan and Tokyo's underground. One massive aspect was human trafficking.

In these underground clubs (and can be compared to those in most other countries as well) the foreign (exotic women) are considered the most attractive, attracting the most business and profits. There are literally clubs in Tokyo which esteem purely on Russian women and in the mix include Ukrainian and Polish women, and if not in these clubs they are working the streets or in other clubs. Here is the jist and well put by a Polish girl Adelstein managed to interview:

"I was poor, and had no place to turn to, I saw an ad about being an international call girl that said I could make as much as $44,000 dollars a month with 50-70% of those profits going to my superiors while I got to keep a significant amount and annually this is tons of money. When I responded to the ad, I was sent extraordinary pictures of the club I would be working at, and over time they eventually situated me at a Tokyo club. I was sent to Germany where there was a central point for all european girls looking to go into such business where they would judge us upon our looks and give us certain clothing and so forth. From there I was approved and given paid tickets to travel to Japan to meet up with a wealthy man called Victor. When I arrived Victor wore expensive Jewelry, wore an expensive suit, and drove an expensive car and was from the Netherlands which calmed me down. When I got to the apartment there were other eastern european girls and some from South America and I was told to hand over my passport and personal belongings so they don't get stolen. When I went to the club it looked like a sleazehole in the middle of the tokyo underground and nothing like the photo I was shown in Warsaw. I was told that everyday I was expected to pay $75 for fees to pay off my loans which I was never told about. These included the plane ticket, the horrible apartment I was jammed into with other girls, and the cheap cloths they gave me. I was assigned to give guys massages which made $20, I could give blowjobs which got me an extra $50, and I could sleep with a customer to make $200. If I made less than $100 a day I would be punished. I and some other girls got angry and demanded to leave, some of us got beaten and I was told that we had no passport and were on some Visa, and the police don't care for those on Visa and would just deport me. I didn't speak the language or know the way around this complex city. Here's the catch, Victor said he knows where I live and I didn't want to get deported so that they wouldn't harm my mother and my daughter whom I cared so much about. I was stuck in the end. There was no Polish embassy, there was no Police who cared, and I couldn't go back home to my family to avoid their harm and I had no way to contact them, I tried to get into contact with the Polish police but they just called me a *****."

Weronika was 22, she was from Warsaw, and came to Japan in 2004, she left in 2008 when Victor was arrested. She left with permanent injuries such as a crooked eye and a deformed ear, two of her partner girls she had gone there with had been long killed by individuals that haven't yet been found, and all in Japan a modern first world country. There are millions of human trafficked girls and even men, and thousands of them are Eastern European with a significant number being Polish. So what is to be said of so little that is being done in terms of government and law, and so little social support these people gain to have their rights fully abolished and to be exploited as slaves, since they are slaves.

There is also much trafficking that goes on in Poland: gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Poland.htm