Wensday, May 19 2004

East of Prut, children are sold or rented as slaves, while authorities are watching passive or are even participating in this bargain.

The happiest children among the ones sold in Moldova get to do farming as slaves. The less lucky ones are used for begging and prostitution. Moldavian officials approve this sort of trade, and some of them are even making money on the trafficked children. Moldova is far behind as child protection legislation is concerned, but even flagrant cases are ignored by authorities. After almost half of the active population in Moldova left the country to work in Western countries, children have become an important income source for the ones left behind to live in poverty.

Stefan Candea, stefancandea@crji.org
Sorin Ozon, sorinozon@crji.org
Vitalie Calugareanu
Photo: Mihai Vasile

Romanian farms alongside the Eastern border with Moldova , have been getting for some time now students with the elementary schools and the high schools across the border. “They have respect for their teachers, who accompany them every time and they are well disciplined,” explains the administrator of a huge apple orchard near Iasi . We have also found out that, besides the fact that they are very cheap, the Moldavians students are also efficient: “We have harvested more than 100 tons using 70 children, in only one week. After they left, using local labor force, it took us twice that time to harvest the same quantity” goes on the same administrator. Crossing the border, we have found out that in Moldova is still compulsory for the students to do agricultural internship. School starts every year with a month of internship for all agro-industrial high schools and even polyvalent high schools. Even if, normally, students should do their internship in their area, some entrepreneurs found a modality to make some money on the children. Romanian farms concluded contracts with intermediary companies and the schools, not directly with the children. Thus, in all Moldova , schools send the children to do their agricultural internship in Romania and even in Ukraine . We went to Ungheni, at the Agro-Industrial High School , the place where children left to go working at the farm in Bucium, near Iasi . We posed as Romanian farm owners in need of students' labor force. Even if the high school went through an immense scandal last September, the management is still willing to send children to work in Romania . “You must speak to the junior manager, Andrei Grigoriu or to the manager Alexei Popovici. They kept sending to work children from the high school or from the boarder school”. When contacted by telephone, the managers agreed to make an appointment for setting up all details, but refusing to talk about the issue on the phone. We have also contacted the management of the school for children with special needs from Balti, this time as journalists. They all refused to give any details on September case, the only statement we managed to get being: “Romanians were mistreated us”, referring of course to the fines they have to pay and to the obligation to get all children off work.

We have to mention that during our trip through Moldova we have been guided several times to principals in elementary schools and high schools, when we posed as Romanian farmers looking for child labor force for Romania.

There isn't such a difference between Romania and Moldova , as juveniles used in agricultural works are concerned. You can see everywhere children working on field or in farms. But there are frequent cases of parents sending their children to work in farms from Moldova , Ukraine or Russia . These cases are so often met, that authorities don't even pay any more attention to them. Many of the children going to work in farms are in the end sold several times successively and they are grabbed hold of by begging and prostitution networks, especially in Russia . Moldavian children travel easily in the former soviet republics, without a passport. They have to posses the birth certificate and a notary declaration stating the agreement for the trip of one of the child's parents. The birth certificate has no photo on it, which makes it easier for several children to travel using the same birth certificate. Parents, in exchange of $100, make the notary-legalized declaration. From that moment on, the child is no longer theirs.

One of the cases we have been watching closely involves two sisters, of 12 and 13 years, Anastasia and Valentina Sapoval from Rezina. Cases as the one mentioned here happen in number of hundreds in Moldova , and the route followed by the two little girls is now routine. We have to mention that Moldavian police wasn't even interested in these cases, not until now anyway. The end of the story is even more shocking.

Their mother sent Anastasia and Valentina to her brother, therefore their uncle. The latter lives in the village of Ploti , which is in Transnistria. The girls' uncle, Boris Supostat took them two weeks to work in the house for him. Afterwards he lent them to a family of gypsies living in the same village. Inga and Angela, both over 18 years old, were careful enough so that the little girls were put to work in the house. After a short time, Angela called another gypsy family in Soroca , Moldova , which sent a team to buy the sisters Anastasia and Valentina. A certain Tiulika from Soroca paid $ 200 for the two girls. He kept in his house in Soroca for a month, where the girls did some household work. Meanwhile, Tiulika's messengers went to the girls' mother, accompanied by a police officer, Vadim Luca. They asked for the birth certificates of the girls, but they didn't get but Anastasia's. Moreover, the girls' mother was taken to a notary in Soroca where she signed a delegation agreeing for an unknown person to accompany her girls abroad. Valentina says that she and her sister were taken to Ulfa, a town in Russia . Tiulika and another two men accompanied them. Two months later, Valentina managed to escape together with another Moldavian girl and she returned home. Anastasia remained in Ulfa and no one in the family knows what happened to her. Nor Valentina or her mother want to talk about what happened in the two months spent by the girl in Ulfa. Sources from the Soroca Police Department stated that Tiulika is an important mob man in the region, dealing mostly with organizing the prostitution networks for Russia .

To understand how the traffickers network functioned in the case of the two girls, we crossed the border to Transnistria and we pretended to be looking for children to work in Romania . We didn't manage to find the girls' uncle in the village of Ploti , but we talked to his son, who remembered his cousins not that gladly: “They were up to no good, especially Nastia (Anastasia). We won't even welcome her here anymore, she stole money and vodka from our parents.” We have found out by surprise that Anastasia has returned little time ago in Ploti and she is living at Inga, with the gypsy family that had sold her in the first place. In no time we found in Ploti the little girl and Inga and from the discussion we had with the latter, who had proclaimed herself “the master of Nastia”, we found out that the little girl was sold in Ulfa for prostitution. Inga kept Anastasia by her side during the discussion. Even if she is now only 13, Anastasia looks much too old. She knows exactly what documents she needs to get out of the country and where are the respective documents. Inga doesn't waste time to listen to our entire story and she offers us Anastasia: “You talk about her only with me. I am now her mother. You pay me in advance $100, and then you send me periodically her salary. I get the birth certificate for you and I accompany you to the notary for the rest of the documents.” Inga assures us that Anastasia is experienced: “She has previously worked in Soroca and in Russia , and she is a hard working girl. If she weren't so, we wouldn't keep her around. In Russia there were some problems with the documents, but we sorted that out. You just tell me when you want to take her.”

We went to Soroca to discuss with the notary who had made the delegation from the mother of the two girls. The notary, Ticu Boldescu, was really surprised by the journalists' visit. He stated that he hadn't that many cases of parents coming to sign delegations as the one made by the two girls' mother. But from all the examples he gave us, it resulted that Boldescu had signed more delegations that he liked to admit: “There are many parents coming from Soldanesti, Floresti and Rezina, because they are recruited by the gypsies in Soroca. I make delegations for all of them, because it is in accordance with the law. For example, a mother come to me little time ago and she complained that her daughter would be sold after I had legalized the delegation, but I couldn't help her.” The notary also said that gypsy families come with their own children and draw up delegation that they use afterwards to traffic children from villages near Soroca. “I can't do a thing, I even have to sign the delegations and even when only one parent shows up”, concludes the notary Boldescu. Naturally, he doesn't recall the case of the two sisters and he doesn't know anyone named Tiulika. Sources from the local police told us that the two of them have extremely profitable business together, one of the profs being the immense house in construction downtown, that belongs to the notary.

We have also discovered cased when neither of the parents had been asked by the traffickers whether they agree or not on the departure of their own children. In Cahul, Southern Moldova , we have talked to Nina Psotenko, mother of two girls, both trafficked for prostitution outside Moldova , both at the age of 16. The youngest of the girls, is Elena, now 18 years old, was fooled to leave for Volvograd, in Russia . She wrote to her mother regularly, assuring her that everything was all right and that she is doing agricultural work. In fact, Elena was forced to beg dressed as a nun during the day and to prostitute during the night. The traffickers, Feraru and Nastia, are living in Ialoveni and have the same business. They forced the girls to write home that everything was fine. At some point, Elena managed to add a note in one of the letters dictated by the traffickers in which she begged her mother to get her out of the hell she was living in. The police was announced and the girl's photo was posted though the Interpol. “I was still in Volvograd when a dirty police officer came to the traffickers and showed them the picture, warning them that I was searched by the police. They bribe many police officers, including the sheriff in Volvograd, and even the priest in the town.” Further on, Elena said that the traffickers got her across the border in Russia , bribing customs staff and border policemen, that didn't even ask for her passport. The girl's mother said that the police didn't do anything else and Elena was set free only because the foundation “Save the Children” from Chisinau managed to contact the traffickers. “I have another girl that is also a prostitute in Italy . At the age of 16 she was lured into doing farming, but she ended up as a prostitute in Italy . She managed to escape and now she is making a living from harvesting olives” also told us the trusting mother of the two girls.

No reaction

Maria Ianachevic, vice-president of “Save the Children”, told us that children trafficking from Moldova to Russia and Ukraine took such a worrying proportion: “In the Ukraine , children are taken to do agricultural works. While the ones repatriated from Russia are also mentioning agricultural work, they mostly talk about begging and prostitution”. Ianachevic is mainly accusing the freedom of children to travel outside Moldova , but also the authorities' lack of reaction regarding this phenomenon: “We have a criminal code, but based on it, it is very hard to prove that a child was trafficked. Moldova has signed the Palermo Convention and the additional protocol in 2000, but it wasn't approved yet. In this protocol the notions of human trafficking, children trafficking and juvenile prostitution are very well defined. That means that we don't have an internal weapon to fight this phenomenon.” In 2003, almost 3,000 children, victims of human trafficking organizations were repatriated to Moldova . For that period of time, the police recorded only 15 felonies, as children's trafficking is concerned. We must state that none of the above-mentioned cases was the object of any investigation. Moreover, important officials from Chisinau, like the Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev and the SIS principal, Simion Rusu, stated in public that public workers are involved in the children trafficking networks. Corruption is widely spread among the public notaries, policemen, border policemen and custom staff. Ion Bejan, chief of the Department for Fighting Against Human Trafficking, declared that he can't mention exactly how many officials are involved in human trafficking networks, and neither how spread this phenomenon is.

A recent study issued by The Institute for Public Policies mentions at least 5,000 children trafficked every year from Moldova , only for prostitution. The study also points out the proportion taken by the phenomenon of children exploitation trough different forms of work since 1999. Meantime, authorities found someone to blame for their incompetence: “There were founded many NGO's in Moldova, which are said to fight against human trafficking, but actually, they only get money from supporters, and they aren't doing anything about it. NGO's only print some booklets, which are very expensive, but they are useless, because they don't reach villages or all Moldavian towns”, stated Ion Bejan.

Mariana Ianachevici, vice-president of “Save the Children” has a different opinion: “Last year I had a discussion with the chief of the border police, Igor Colenov, and I asked him to allow us to post some informational material on the fight against human trafficking in the airport area. He answered us that as long as the law of the state border doesn't mention anything on this issue, we won't be allowed to post anything and we won't be permitted to spread any leaflets”.

Investigation lead by CRJI (The Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism) and financed by FUJ (The Association of the Danish Investigative Journalists). www.crji.org