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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

15 May 2008

In February I wrote about human trafficking and the way people are forced into being imported into the UK for exploitation.

I wrote the article on the day that the Home Affairs Select Committee was launching a major new enquiry and this week the committee is holding further enquiry sessions in the Ukraine.

The UN estimates that 4 million people are trafficked each year, resulting in over £4 billion profit to the criminal gangs and these big profits are fuelling an escalation of this sordid business. One of the areas of the world where trafficking is growing fastest is the former Soviet Union and, in particular, the Ukraine, where a staggering 420,000 women are estimated to have been trafficked in the last few years alone.

We’ve heard evidence confirming that the Ukraine has the sad reputation of being the world’s biggest source of trafficking. Ukrainian women are trafficked to just about every European country you care to think of and also to further away places like Israel and the Far East. During our time in the Ukraine we’ve talked to individual members of the National Border Police and the High Command who are trying to grapple with this enormous problem and crack down on the trafficking gangs. In my view they are making some progress, but it’s at far too slow a pace and despite the Orange Revolution the Ukraine is still failing to meet the established international standards designed to fight trafficking and serious problems still exist.

However, behind all the stark statistics lie lots of human tragedies: tragedies like Olga, the 25 year old girl smuggled out of the country in a wooden box who ended up in a dodgy lodging house in Kent which boarded 50 illegal immigrants. Their duties were to cook and clean during the day and provide sexual services to the residents during the night. After 3 months the poor girl became pregnant and was forced to abort her baby but managed to escape and find her way back to the Ukraine and to a special hospital set up to help the victims of trafficked women.

I visited the hospital today; Olga had arrived just 3 days earlier. At the moment she is too traumatised and psychologically damaged to live independently and her faith in human nature is so damaged that she doesn’t have the capacity to restart her life. The psychiatrists hope they can deal with her acute trauma and then encourage her to return home and make further visits to the hospital for as long as it takes to rebuild her life.

Olga’s story is tragic, but out of all the millions of other victims she’s fortunate to have escaped her traffickers and find help; our task is to uncover the hidden facts of this nasty business and recommend ways of combating it at source. Trafficking is one of the biggest crimes of the century and my colleagues and I are determined to expose it and find ways of dealing with it.