#6 - JRL 6600
From: Juliette Engel <jengel@speakeasy.net>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002
Subject: Press release

David - attached is a press release from MiraMed Institute and the Angel Coalition regarding the draft anti-trafficking legislation currently in development by the State Duma. Please post this. I have included the text in the message below.

Juliette M. Engel, MD
MiraMed Institute, Founding Director
jengel@miramed.com

For immediate release Dec. 12,
12 noon
Contact: Marianna Solomotova
Tel. 095-730-0063

Sex work lobby loses fight to exclude ‘consensual sex workers’ from proposed legislation
Russian anti-trafficking coalition hails proposed Duma law as major step in war to stop the international sexual exploitation of Russian women and children

MOSCOW—The Angel Coalition, Russia’s largest anti-trafficking NGO consortium, claimed a major victory in its fight against sexual trafficking today, announcing its full support for a proposed anti-trafficking law in Russia that for the first time would criminalize the recruitment and transport of human beings for the purposes of trafficking.

A draft of the proposed bill was agreed to yesterday in Yaroslavl by a working group of Duma deputies, government representatives, and NGO’s. The group is chaired by Elena Mizulina (SPS) who heads the Duma legislative committee.

“We’ve been working towards this goal for more than three years,” Marianna Solomotova, the Development Director of the Angel Coalition said, “the Yaroslavl meeting paves the way for the Duma to formally consider the bill at its February session.”

Solomotova said that the working group still needs to make some changes but that the proposed law now includes key language that agrees with the full U.N Protocol definition of trafficking, which both Russia and the US have signed.

“The pro prostitution lobby and their allies did everything they could to stop us--many of our NGO members have been threatened and intimidated and an intense disinformation campaign was waged up until last week to convince the committee to change the UN Protocol definition of trafficking that would have encouraged the exploitation of thousands of Russian women and opened the door to eventual legalized prostitution in our country, ” she said. “But with Duma Deputy Mizulina announcing in Yaroslavl that Russia will never allow legalized prostitution, we are now confident that legislation supporting the UN Protocol will be enacted.”

“We are grateful for the strong personal support from President Putin,” she said “ but the real heroes are the hundreds of Russian men and women representing more than 40 Russian NGO’s all across Russia who refused to back down.”

“This fight is won, but the battle is not yet over,” Solomotova continued, “the pro prostitution lobby is well funded and aggressive. There are powerful interests here, in the US and in the rest of the world who benefit from the billions traffickers earn from buying and selling women and children—passing a law against trafficking is only the beginning, making sure it will be enforced will be our next challenge.”

Up until just six months ago the official Russian position on trafficking was that it was a minor problem, Solomotova said, despite published data by OSCE (the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe), of which Russia is a member, stating that more than 500,000 Russian women and children have been trafficked in the last decade alone.

“The turning point was after the US released its annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” in June 2002 which ranked anti-trafficking activities in 89 countries around the world. Russia was ranked in the lowest category, Tier 3, ‘doing little or nothing’. Being a Tier 3 country is more than a label, Solomotova explained, “the U.S. anti-trafficking law provides for economic sanctions if Tier 3 countries continue to ignore the issue.”

Solomotova said that the Angel Coalition’s response was to draft a 10-point anti-trafficking plan for President Putin to consider and then make sure it got into the hands of Cabinet members and key Duma officials.” This was followed by a personal letter to Putin, signed by more than 200 international NGO’s and human rights activists “and in August, our President took decisive action to make sure legislation was put back on the agenda.”

Dr. Juliette Engel, MD, the founding director of MiraMed Institute, an American NGO that was the first foreign organization to do extensive trafficking research and prevention education in Russia and helped found the Angel Coalition in 1999, explained why the trafficking debate had become so intensely politicized.

“The defining issue is sexual exploitation of women and children who are prostituted”, she said. “The sex work industry has allies all over the world and many governments are debating the issue of prostitution as ‘legitimate’ labor. Organizations like the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW), countries that benefit from prostitution, like the Netherlands and NGO’s who support legal sex work have all been trying to legitimize prostitution for years,” she said. “Even in the US there are powerful interests in government who support this position. These organizations and individuals aggressively lobby foreign governments to enact anti-trafficking laws that limit the description of trafficking only to victims who have been forced or coerced. They claim that women who make the ‘free’ choice to become prostitutes should not be included in the definition.”

Solomotova said that the key Russian NGO in charge of advising the Duma had received funding from both GAATW and the government of the Netherlands and is the official GAATW representative here. She also said that GAATW’s National Advocacy Project “is a blueprint to accomplish their mission in Russia as well as in five other countries.”

“Legal recognition of ‘unforced’ consensual exploitation and ‘separate protection’ of women and children who are prostituted,” she said, is nothing but a ruse—“all it recognizes is the sex industry, which needs a steady source of new flesh, encourages women to ‘migrate’ for sex work and lays the groundwork for recognizing buyers of commercial sex workers as legitimate ‘customers’. We and the rest of the world believe that all women who are exploited by traffickers, irrespective of their ‘consent’ deserve protection,” Solomotava said. “Now that we have exposed the pro-sex lobby they are in retreat, claiming they ‘always’ supported the UN Protocol and have even changed their websites to ‘prove’ their support.”

The Angel Coalition will be closely monitoring the legislation as it works its way through the Duma. “We know how the pro sex work lobby works. Just because they have changed their stripes,” she said, “doesn’t mean they won’t change back. They and their allies are on notice, our women and children cannot be bought and sold and Russia will not become the new sex tourism capital of Europe”.