No.861
ENGLISH & SPANISH:
Heinz Dieterich
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Marchas masivas en EE.UU. en contra de la ocupación
de Iraq
Por: BBC Mundo
Publicado el Lunes, 27/10/03 12:07pm |
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| Miles de personas marcharon por la capital, Washington |
| Sunday, Oct 26, 2003 | 
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By: Venezuelanalysis.com
Last Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), refused to extend the October 3rd injunction in favor of the Venezuelan TV station Globovision, which demanded that the Venezuelan government return the microwave transmission equipment confiscated from the station due to their illegal use of the radio electric spectrum.
On October 3rd, Venezuela's Telecommunications Commission, Conatel, confiscated some microwave equipment used without permission by TV station Globovision to make transmissions through frequencies in the 7 GHz band. The action did not impair the station's ability to broadcast, and it hasn't gone off the air. Conatel has invited Globovision to fill the paperwork to request legal authorization to use the microwave transmission bands, and to use the 12 GHz band for which they are authorized.
The ICHR based their decision on the fact that it is up to the Venezuelan legal system to decide in this case.
“After carefully reviewing the documents, as well as opinions and statements, we decided not to renew the injunction with regard to the seizure of equipment or [microwave] links, because taken in isolation this measure does not constitute irreversible damage to them [Globovision],” said José Zalaqquet, the president of the ICHR.
Zalaqquet also said that Globovision cannot request actions by the Inter-American Court because they must exhaust all the judicial resources in their jurisdiction.
The IHRC adopted a modified non-binding injunction asking the Venezuelan government to decide promptly on the seizure of Globovision’s equipment.
A triumph for Venezuelan ministers
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, Minister of Infrastructure Diosdado Cabello, and the Minister of Communications and Information Jesse Chacón, attended several meetings in Washington DC, with the purpose of explaining the government’s law enforcement actions in the case of Globovision.
Last Wednesday, the ministers along with Venezuela’s ambassador in the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, gave a press conference to explain the details of their visit to Washington DC.
The main goal of the government officials was to meet with the IHRC, and as Minister Cabello said, "the mission was fulfilled successfully,” proof of that is Friday’s favorable decision from the IHRC. During the meeting, which took place behind closed doors, the ministers gave the IHRC commissioners a series of legal and technical documents that proof the administrative and legal aspect of the procedure against Globovision
According to Jesse Chacón, the injunction issued by the ICHR was rushed and it was only based on the version given to them by Globovision, who claimed that the government was closing down the television station, and that it was violating their free speech rights. Chacón lamented the quickness with which the commission acted in the case of Globovision, which contrasts with its lack of action in the case of the closing of Caracas’ community TV station Catia TVe, shut down by the Mayor of Caracas, an active opposition politician.
According to Diosdado Cabello, he and Chacón exposed the inconsistencies of the ICHR actions, and its lack of fairness when making similar decisions. “We are still waiting to hear from the ICHR on the injunction to protect the life of President Chavez that was requested after the coup d’etat of April of 2002. Also, we asked for information on the case closing of the state TV channel Venezolana de Television by opposition Governor Enrique Mendoza during the coup d’etat. Also, we still don’t have any information on the closing of Catia TVe, nor on the broadcast of subliminal messages by some commercial television channels. The injunctions in those cases haven’t been approved, and that sharply contrasts with the injunction in favor of Globovision, which was approved immediately.
After the injunction was issued in favor of Globovision, the Venezuelan government provided evidence to the IHRC and asked them to reconsider the decision. Cabello complained about the time that the ICHR has taken to review the decision, and said that the delay in these bureaucratic proceedings leaves many doubts about the legitimacy of the injunction in favor of Globovision.
On the other hand, minister of Communications and Information Jesse Chacón, said "it worries us that the ICHR acts very diligently in some cases and in others they don’t. In Latin America most countries have acted against the alternative press by applying mechanisms that prevent the communities’ access to the airwaves. In Venezuela, a law has been approved to guarantee the communities´ access to the airwaves, and already there are more than 60 community radio and TV stations legalized, which has been recognized by the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters as the only viable model in Latin America for the development of alternative media. Nevertheless, the ICHR has not acted on those other cases in Latin America."
Chacón emphasized that in the case of Bolivia, where recently more than 70 people died and where radio, television and newspapers were censured; the ICHR only issued a statement, but did not issue an injunction to prevent the censorship. Nevertheless in the Venezuelan case they did issue one, although the government’s action is completely legal.
"Clandestinity has no rights"
"The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has initiated actions similar to those by CONATEL against Globovision, and has seized illegal transmission equipment. The International Union the Telecommunications CITEL, the telecommunications advising group of the OAS, invites governments to act against the clandestine use of the airwaves, because the telecommunications sector depends on that.
Chacón said that Globovision was told they were using those microwave frequencies without authorization and he told them that they had to apply for authorization.
Article 183 of the Telecommunications Law stipulates the seizure of communications equipment in the case of the clandestine use of frequencies.
"We asked the ICHR if Globovision showed them the documents to reserve of the frequencies, and that document does not exist because they never applied at CONATEL to transmit in the frequencies of the 7 GHz bands, which were the ones that CONATEL found to be used illegally."
Globovision's arguments easy to rebate
Chacón also said that in the meeting with the ICHR, the Globovision lawyers presented two main arguments. The first one was about the fact that Globovision is not a clandestine company. "CONATEL has never said that Globovision is a clandestine company, but that it is making illegal or clandestine use of the spectrum according to article 189 of the Telecommunications Law."
The other argument presented by Globovision was that an authorization is not required for this type of operation according to article 75 of the Law of Telecommunications, which allows the use of the spectrum through an special authorization, as long as it is used for a maximum of three days. "We told the ICHR that this was not the case, and that even if it was; Globovision did not applied for that special authorization. Also, the microwave equipment that was seized, had permanent connections and have been used for more than a year."
The minister said that last year Conatel approved all the microwave transmission permits requested by Globovision in the 12 GHz band, so the TV station can legally used that band.
The ministers invited the ICHR to consult the FCC website, so that they can verify the number of similar procedures initiated by them against illegal use of airwaves in the US.
"We don’t know why the IHRC did not consulted with the International Union the Telecommunications (CITEL), which advises the OAS. CITEL, in its principles invites governments to guarantee the legal use of the airwaves, that is, to fight illegal use of it," said Chacón.
The minister said to be preoccupied by the ICHR injunction because "it seems as if they are supporting illegality. In other words, they are saying to the world that equipment can be seized from a cellular phone company that is using the airwaves illegally, but not from a television company."
Chacón said to be convinced that the commissioners understood the arguments presented by them.
The IHRC refusal to extend the injunction in favor of Globovision vindicates the arguments presented by Chacón and Cabello, and it represents a hard blow the opposition TV station.
| http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1079 |
Heinz Dieterich
Rebelión
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“No substantial study on the trafficking of children in Europe based on empirical research has yet emerged.”
“Since this is a clandestine activity, there is little hard statistical information... It is especially difficult to gather statistical information on children.”
—End child exploitation: Stop the traffic!, UNICEF report, July 2003
Each year, some 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide, according to the United Nations. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe estimates that 200,000 individuals are trafficked annually from eastern Europe, a significant proportion being children. Some become unpaid domestic servants, or work in sweatshops, but many more—boys, girls, teenagers—are forced into prostitution and crime.
A Channel Four television documentary, “Cutting Edge: The Child Sex Trade,” screened recently in Britain, showed how the authorities largely ignore the trafficking of children from eastern Europe.
Romanian filmmaker Liviu Tipurita returned to Bucharest, where he met up with 15-year-old Laurentiu, who has lived on the streets for most of his life. Three years earlier, Tipurita had filmed the boy living in a cardboard box with only a sweatshirt to wear. Laurentiu and his friends have a precarious existence. Of the little money they earn, mainly from begging and selling sex, much is spent fuelling their addiction to sniffing glue.
The documentary exposed how Western pedophiles were coming to Romania posing as tourists, and were then procuring boys for underage sex. “Tom,” from Britain, had originally come to Bucharest in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ceausescu regime to work in an orphanage. Using hidden cameras, Tom was shown discussing his Internet business—a web site offering to introduce men to Romanian boys. His clients came from throughout western Europe—Britain, Holland, Switzerland. He boasted that he had even supplied boys to a German judge.
From Bucharest, Tipurita travelled to Milan. In one district of Italy’s most prosperous city, the film showed how Romanian boys, some as young as 10, were being pimped for underage sex, often by their own fathers, brothers and cousins.
Posing as a potential customer, and using a secret night-vision camera, Tipurita asked one young boy how much it would cost for one hour. He said he would have to ask his father. Thirty euros ($35), came the reply. Suddenly, a police car drove by, but they were only interested in looking for “illegal immigrants,” Tipurita commented.
International federation Terre des Hommes estimates that 6,000 children between the ages of 12 and 16 are trafficked from eastern Europe each year, with more than 650 being forced to work as sex slaves in Italy. The price of a girl trafficked to Italy can be between $2,500 and $4,000, with up to $10,000 being paid if she is a virgin. According to the French human rights organisation, Albania is the county most involved in the sex trade, with women and children being lured to go to the West with false promises of marriage, jobs or education. When they get there, there is no husband, no job and no education. Alone in a foreign land without any means of support, violence and coercion ensure they are soon earning money for their new “owners.”
A recent article in the Guardian newspaper reported the case of a retired Italian couple who had been arrested for buying a three-year-old Albanian boy, paying $6,000 to the trafficking gang that specialised in “underage merchandise.” The boy had allegedly been traded for a colour TV set by his father.
Detectives working on the case say they have identified 67 other Albanian children less than 14 years old trafficked into Italy by the same gang. One of the arrested gang members was a member of the Albanian intelligence service.
In a follow-up article, Guardian reporter Sophie Arie travelled to Albania to find the parents of the little boy. His mother, Fatimira, said that four years ago her husband had brought the Italian pensioner Angello Borelli to their home, a former pigsty. He said he wanted to adopt a child, and chose their son, Oracio.
“Of course I miss my child,” Fatimira told the journalist, “but we live like animals. I’m glad they took him. He has a chance to have better conditions in Italy.”
Italy is not the only destination for children and young people being trafficked. An article on the Terre des Hommes web site notes that 80 percent of the young women and girls brought to Germany by smuggling rings come from eastern Europe. It has also found an increase in the number of young boys being introduced into the sex market.
In 1998, Romanian gangs brought 250 children from Romania to Germany to be used as “Klaukinder,” or juvenile thieves.
The Greek government estimates that there are some 3,000 unaccompanied Albanian children in the country, with more coming during the summer months. In oral evidence about the trafficking of Albanian children to Greece, given to the Commission on Human Rights, Terre des Hommes representative Eylay Kadjar-Hamouda said, “A child earns a minimum of €30-€50 per day and gives all the money to his boss. A very small percentage is sent back to his family in Albania but in a very irregular way. Generally several children are exploited at the same time by a boss.”
“In the country of destination, Greece, the children are not considered as victims but as guilty of having illegally entered the country,” Kadjar-Hamouda noted. “Terre des Hommes is particularly concerned that some of the children placed in centres in Greece simply disappear.”
This concern is not limited to Greece ands points to the most sinister aspect of the trade in children.
“We notice that the number of children going missing in the east does not tally with the numbers we trace in Europe”, said Marina Rini of Terre des Hommes in Italy.
“We know that gangs offer children for sale dead or alive. We can only conclude that the missing children die or are killed for their organs.”
Thousands of eastern European children and teenagers are being reduced to commodities in a trade in human misery. They are bought and sold like chattels to satisfy perverted sexual appetites, to provide slave labour, or, worst of all, to be “harvested” for their organs and body parts so that the rich and their children can live at their expense.
UNICEF put the global value of human trafficking at over $12 billion a year, just $2 billion less than Albania’s gross domestic product.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and its Stalinist satellites throughout eastern Europe was hailed by the political elite in the West as heralding a new dawn of liberty, democracy and prosperity. The thousands of children trafficked from the former “Eastern Bloc” countries are testimony to the bitter reality of poverty and social brutalisation.
The global increase in poverty is most evident in eastern Europe, rising from 1 million to 24 million people between 1987 and 1998—defined as those forced to live on less than $2 a day. The percentage of the population below the poverty line is 30 percent in Albania and over 44 percent in Romania, according to the CIA World Factbook.
The introduction of the “free market” into the former state-controlled economies in eastern and central Europe has had its most devastating impact on family life. Millions of breadwinners have lost their jobs, Western imports have forced out domestic production leading to rising prices, and welfare provisions have been gutted.
According to Terre des Hommes, “Living conditions for the majority of the approximately 150 million children in the East European states and the Soviet Union have worsened since 1989.”
After decades of suppression under the brutal Stalinist regimes that existed in Bucharest and Tirana, the population has been plunged into “shock therapy”—the reintegration of these states into the global capitalist economy. The rule of Nicolai Ceausescu and Enver Hoxha has been replaced by the IMF and the World Bank, which have presided over restructuring (factory closures and mass layoffs), reforms (axing spending on education, health and pensions), and the encouragement of enterprise (the private acquisition of the few profitable state concerns at fire sale prices or through downright theft).
The process of European Union (EU) integration has meant efforts to transform the East into a reservoir of cheap labour and close to zero corporate taxation, while at the same time making the EU’s external borders even tighter—clamping down on so-called “illegal immigrants,” denying even basic welfare provisions to those that often make long and hazardous journeys to escape persecution or grinding poverty. To legitimise this policy, the universal scapegoating of asylum seekers and refugees by all the establishment parties turns victims into villains. Not least, led by the US, the West has waged war and fomented civil war across the Balkans, forcing hundreds of thousands into exile and creating conditions where human trafficking can flourish.
The governments of the European Union avert their gaze when it comes to trafficking children, despite having signed on to the Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Trafficking and Child Pornography. A 2002 report by Europol, the European Law Enforcement Agency, on the trafficking of human beings into the EU, shows that most of the 15 member states keep no relevant statistics at all. Only four provide any concrete information, with the majority reporting that figures are “not available” or “not given.”
UNICEF: End child exploitation
http://www.endchildexploitation.org.uk/
Terre des Hommes
http://www.terredeshommes.org/
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There is mounting evidence that the United Nations has carried out a cover-up of the role played by its personnel in human trafficking and prostitution in Bosnia—a trade that has grown astronomically since the establishment of the Western protectorate seven years ago.
An American woman who served with the International Police Task Force (IPTF) in Bosnia recently won a case of unfair dismissal against a US State Department sub-contractor, after she was sacked for reporting an alleged prostitution racket involving other serving officers.
Kathryn Bolkovac was an employee of DynCorp Technical Services, one of the US government’s top 25 service providers with 23,000 employees worldwide. In Bosnia DynCorp provides maintenance support for the US military, as well as recruiting American officers for the international police force through its UK subsidiary, DynCorp Aerospace Operations Ltd. DynCorp has earned $1 billion since 1995 for providing maintenance to the US military worldwide. The contract to provide recruitment for the IPTF is valued at $15 million.
The case against DynCorp Aerospace Operations Ltd was brought under the UK Public Interest Disclosure legislation, known as the “whistleblowers charter”, which protects employees who make disclosures about malpractice within their company. Bolkovac had been posted to Sarajevo in 1999 to investigate traffic in young women from Eastern Europe who were forced into prostitution.
“When I started collecting evidence from the victims of sex-trafficking, it was clear that a number of UN officers were involved from several different countries, including quite a few from Britain,” she said. “I was shocked, appalled and disgusted. They were supposed to be over there to help, but they were committing crimes themselves. But when I told the supervisors they didn’t want to know.”
Bolkovac first drew attention to the abuses in October 2000 in an email to DynCorp management. She was first demoted and then six months later sacked. On August 2, in a 21-page judgement, the Southampton Employment Tribunal found in favour of Bolkovac and against DynCorp Aerospace Operations Ltd. The company’s claim that her employment was terminated because of gross misconduct was firmly rejected. Evidence of falsifying time sheets was dismissed as “sketchy to the point of being non-existent”. Charles Twiss, the tribunal chairman stated, “We have considered DynCorp’s explanation of why they dismissed her and find it completely unbelievable. There is no doubt whatever that the reason for her dismissal was that she made a protected disclosure and was unfairly dismissed.”
Bolkovac is not the only employee of DynCorp to seek legal redress for unfair dismissal. An American aircraft maintenance technician, Ben Johnstone, filed a lawsuit against his sacking in 1999 after he also disclosed information about the involvement of co-workers and supervisors in the sex trade at the DynCorp hangar at Comanche Base, one of two US bases in Bosnia. The allegations included sex with minors, rape and buying and selling women for sex.
His allegations led to a raid on the base by the 48th Military Police Detachment on June 2, 2000. The operation by the US Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) began to uncover evidence supporting the claims made by Johnstone. However, the investigation was wound up after the CID determined that, under the Dayton Agreement, UN officials and contractors enjoyed immunity. Two of the employees named by Johnstone and most heavily implicated in the abuses were sacked, but escaped criminal charges.
Johnstone was sacked the day before the raid for disciplinary reasons that were unsubstantiated—he merely received a letter of discharge for bringing “discredit to the company and the US Army while working in Tuzla, Bosnia-Hercegovina.” Since 1998, eight DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia, three have been dismissed for using prostitutes, and none have been prosecuted.
Bolkovac made disclosures to the UN chief in Bosnia, Jacques Paul Klein, and the UN’s police commissioner in Bosnia in November 2000, but IPTF Deputy Commissioner Mike Steirs described her as “stressed and burned out” and her contact with the UN was terminated following her sacking.
The disclosures came at a very sensitive time. Bolkovac’s memos coincided with a number of controversial raids on brothels in Prijedor by UN monitors and police. The owner of the brothels subsequently alleged that the raids were mounted after he refused to pay protection money to the officers. Six officers were sent back home on the grounds that they had exceeded their duties, but a charge of improper conduct was withdrawn. In a press statement in May 2001 Klein stated: “During my tenure, there have been no cover-ups and I have implemented a zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual and other serious misconduct.”
Despite these denials, there are tensions between those bodies that are supposed to be dealing with the criminal aspects of sex trafficking and those monitoring human rights issues. Madeleine Rees, the representative for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia, stated: “The truth about the Prijedor raids and the subsequent resignation of the officers involved has never been made apparent.”
In February 2001, David Lamb, a former Philadelphia police officer who worked as a UN human rights investigator until April of that year, conducted an investigation into allegations against six Rumanian, Fijian and Pakistani officers stationed in the town of Bijeljina. The preliminary results provided evidence that merited a full-scale criminal investigation. However, Lamb and his co-workers complained of obfuscation and intimidation by senior figures in the IPTF. Lamb was quoted in the Washington Post stating, “I have to say there were credible witnesses, but I found a real reluctance on the part of the United Nations ... leadership to investigate these allegations” (UN Halted Probe of Officers’ Alleged Role in Sex Trafficking, September 27, 2001).
Lamb’s evidence was based upon interviews with Bosnian police sources and women who had fled from the brothels and were awaiting repatriation. The investigation team established the identity of one of the officers who admitted to purchasing working documents from the Rumanian embassy for two women, but warned them to end the inquiry. A confidential internal affairs report claims that a follow-up investigation by a Canadian officer, Rosario Ioanna, was hampered by Rumanian officers who attempted to remove four trafficking victims and to intimidate them under questioning.
Based upon interviews given by informants it was established that in return for tip-offs about police raids the brothel keepers gave the IPTF officers gifts. A list of around 10 other Rumanian officers involved in patronising the brothels was compiled based upon the evidence of one trafficking victim. The UN’s Ukrainian police chief of staff Oleh Savchenko ordered Ioanna to close the investigation and concentrate on the charges of sexual misconduct of a less serious nature, such as soliciting prostitutes, against five police officers from Fiji and Pakistan. Four of these officers were sent home and the other left the mission. The inquiry into IPTF involvement in human trafficking was left hanging in mid-air. The inquiry into UN police involvement in sexual trafficking—promised by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Mary Robinson—never came to pass. After an initial inquiry by two investigators sent by the Office of Internal Oversight to Bosnia on June 26, 2001, a further criminal investigation was ruled out. This decision was made after only two weeks. At no time did the UN contact Lamb or Bolkovac and none of the women who had initially made the allegations were traced after having left the country.
The IPTF has sought to deflect criticism by being seen to play a more active role against sex trafficking. The Special Trafficking Operations Program (STOP) was set-up by UN in July 2000. The think tank, International Crisis Group (ICG), describes it as a body “to guide and monitor local police, to rescue women from sexual bondage and to keep UN staff on the straight and narrow” (emphasis added). In the period between March 1 and July 25, 2001 the IPTF accompanied local police on more than 200 raids on brothels. According to its progress report for the year published on August 1, 2002, a special unit of UN and Bosnian police has conducted 600 raids on some 200 bars and clubs suspected of using trafficked women for prostitution. Half were closed down and 182 women, mainly from Rumania, Ukraine and Moldova, were returned home. However only a fraction of the 56 bar owners sentenced to jail have ended up there. Despite being identified as centres of prostitution, 78 bars were allowed to stay open on the basis of legal technicalities. According to an ICG report published in May 2002, only seven people had been convicted of trafficking related offences. They received custodial sentences of between four and 30 months and fines from KM 1,200 ($US600) to KM 10,000.
According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) between 6,000 and 10,000 foreign women have been coerced into prostitution in Bosnia. Sources put the figure of establishments where sex can be bought at 900. Figures compiled by the IOM in May 2000 showed that more than 50 percent of the women came from Moldova while the remainder originated from other former republics of the Soviet Union such as Ukraine and Belarus, and a significant number from Rumania. More than two thirds had never worked in prostitution before.
Many are lured by promises of finding work in the West as waitresses or nannies. Once isolated from their families, the sex traffickers take their passports and sell the women to pimps for between $500 and $1,500. At some venues, like the nightclubs in Brcko, near the Bosnia-Serbia border, women are auctioned like cattle to brothel owners. The area is known locally as the “Arizona market” in recognition of American influence. It was established as a zone of separation following the partition of the republic into two entities and is policed by NATO troops. The US provided finance to establish it as a free trade zone and it has long been a centre for trade in illicit goods.
The IOM provides shelter and helps repatriate women who have been abducted and forced into prostitution. Since August 1999, it has assisted 429 women and girls, repatriating most and helping one to resettle in a third country. Of these, 12 were minors—with the youngest being just 12-years-old. Following a police raid on a nightclub last December, a 15 year-old girl was found. The girl reported that she had been kidnapped in Rumania on her way to school.
The overseas personnel and officials of the UN and NATO have provided much of the demand for prostitution. Madeleine Rees claims, “When the civil war ended in 1992 there were few curfews and ordinary people didn’t have cars or money.” In addition to approximately 20,000 NATO troops and aid workers that were stationed in Bosnia, there are some 1,600 officers from 48 different countries serving with the IPTF.
A similar development has taken place in Kosovo where prostitution was relatively small-scale before the establishment of the protectorate. While it is estimated that internationals account for 30 percent of the clientele, they provide 80 percent of the revenue, making them the most important patrons. The province has some 120 strip-clubs. One of the first to open was the Apache club, named after the US helicopters used in the 1999 conflict, only 14 kilometres from the massive US military base Camp Bondsteel.
The two protectorates have provided a major impetus in the growth of sex trafficking and also serve as a general transit route to Western Europe. Poor law enforcement, corruption and porous borders offer favourable conditions. The IOM estimates that around 250,000 women from Eastern Europe are trafficked through Serbia and other neighbouring states. When they arrive in Serbia they are divided into two groups. While a large number end up in Kosovo or Bosnia, many are destined for the West via Montenegro and northern Albania.
Many Bosnian women end up in the shelters that give aid to those escaping prostitution. If they have not been abducted, economic and social deprivation has a coercive influence. A recent report produced by the “Anti-Poverty Action Plan” reveals that only one in eight families in the Muslim-Croat Federation earns enough for a reasonable standard of living, while in the Serb entity only one in 25 families live above the poverty line. The unemployment rate is the highest in Europe.
Many of the criminal gangs that had been involved in gun running and drug trafficking have turned to sex trafficking because it is extremely lucrative and carries lighter criminal penalties. Collusion between the criminal underworld and those in officialdom—mainly nationalist politicians in both entities of Bosnia—is evidenced by the fact that many of the trafficked women have work permits designating them as “waitresses”, even though the unemployment rate in the protectorate is estimated officially at 40 percent.
The Dayton Peace Accords gave the UN “complete and unimpeded movement” and “no liability for damage to property”. Annex B gave NATO personnel legal immunity for their actions “under all circumstances and at all times” and made them subject to the “exclusive jurisdiction of their respective national elements” regarding any criminal or disciplinary offences in Bosnia. This has clearly been extended to cover all those serving within the Western protectorate. In short, the Western powers rule Bosnia like the colonial masters of old.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/aug2002/bosn-a21.shtml
