521556ANN research-article2014
The Annals of the American AcademyHuman Trafficking in Bulgaria
Human Trafficking in Eastern Europe: The Case of Bulgaria
By Georgi Petrunov
Eastern Europe is among the major sources of migrants who travel for work to other European nations. In this research, in-depth interviews and analysis of legal cases of migration in Bulgaria reveal that the typical kinds of human trafficking in the region are sexual exploitation, labor exploitation, forced servitude, and trafficking of pregnant women for the sale of their babies. For each type, I examine victim profiles, recruitment strategies, transportation, and the types of control and exploitation that traffickers use. Comparisons are drawn between the Bulgarian findings and patterns in other Eastern European nations. Keywords: human trafficking; organized crime; Eastern Europe; Bulgaria
E
astern European countries are among the most affected by human trafficking. Due largely to socioeconomic conditions in these nations, they are major sources of migration from the East to richer countries in Western Europe. Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine are among the most important source countries of human trafficking within Europe, according to Europol (2009) and the International Labour Organization (2005). Researchers point out that human trafficking exploits both restrictive migratory policies and the desire of people to seek a better livelihood (Cameron and Newman 2008; Dinan 2008). Trafficking flows from Eastern Europe run parallel to general migration patterns in the region: trafficking is higher in high-migration areas because traffickers benefit from lower recruitment costs (due to preexisting networks) and because traffickers can more easily deceive Georgi Petrunov is chief assistant at the University of National and World Economy and research fellow at RiskMonitor. He is a member of the Expert Group of the National Commission for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Council of Ministers, Republic of Bulgaria. DOI: 10.1177/0002716214521556
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those wishing to depart high-migration areas (Omar Mahmoud and Trebesch 2010). After the Communist regimes collapsed in Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century, there was a sharp increase in migration flows (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski 2005; Mansoor and Quillin 2006). Between 1990 and 2000, for example, more than ten million people from the Balkan peninsula (e.g., Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova) migrated to other countries, out of a total population of some eighty million in this region (Baldwin-Edwards 2006). The reasons for this mass migration included the lifting of the ban on free movement of people living under the previous Communist regimes in these countries, as well as low income, increasing unemployment, and (in some of the countries) political repression. In the early 1990s, large sectors of the population were marginalized and their living standards fell abruptly (Marc and Kudatgobilik 2002). Research shows that poverty, scarce jobs, and social inequality were and remain the main drivers of both migration and trafficking in Eastern Europe (Akee et al. 2007; Anastasijevic 2008; Aronowitz 2001; Bruckert and Parent 2002; Cameron and Newman 2008; Chand 2008; International Organization for Migration [IOM] 2006). In addition to these socioeconomic conditions, other factors (illiteracy, corruption, and certain policies and laws) increase migrants’ vulnerability to fraud, trafficking, and exploitation (Demir 2003; Pizarro 2008; Rajbhandari 2008; Shahinian 2008). Recent studies of migration and trafficking from Eastern Europe to the West suggest that many migrants do not consider themselves victims even if they experienced some degree of deception or coercion in the process (Agustín 2007; Breuil et al. 2011; Davies 2009; Siegel and Bovenkerk 2000; Siegel and Yesilgoz 2003; Verhoeven and van Gestel 2011). Trafficking operates within the context of people’s desire for work, and many trafficking victims depart their countries on a voluntary basis but may be unprepared for the risks they experience during and after the relocation process (Demir 2003; ILO 2005; Omar Mahmoud and Trebesch 2010; Surtees 2005; Tyuryukanova 2005). Regarding migration into sex work, researchers point out that the decisions to migrate are often motivated by a desire for personal advancement or to support family members back home and that many women were already working as prostitutes in their home countries (Agustín 2007; Aronowitz 2009; Kapur 2008). The main reason for working in the sex industry is the relatively large amount of earnings compared with what these individuals would earn if they stayed in their home country (Agustín 2007; Kligman and Limoncelli 2005; Skilbrei and Tveit 2008). But migrants are also at risk of exploitation by other actors. Eastern European countries have been identified as sites where transnational criminal organziations are involved in human trafficking. According to Europol (2011), Bulgarian, Romanian, Chinese, and Nigerian crime groups are actively involved in the European Union (EU). They exploit the strong desire of residents to improve their standard of living and employers’ demand for cheap labor or for sex workers (Mansoor and Quillin 2006; Omar Mahmoud and Trebesch 2010; Shelley 2010). This article explores human trafficking in Bulgaria—which reportedly is among the most affected countries in Europe—in terms of causal factors for migration, the types of trafficking, and the trafficking trends.
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Data and Methods The primary data used in this article are drawn from 211 interviews conducted by the author: 117 victims, twelve traffickers, thirty-five police officers, sixteen prosecutors, eleven investigators at the National Investigation Service, seven judges, one customs officer, and twelve representatives of nonprofit organizations (NGOs). These semistructured interviews were conducted in eighteen regions in Bulgaria. Representatives of local social service agencies assisted the author in gaining access to individuals who participated in the study. Service providers were paid for initiating contact with respondents, and victims and traffickers were paid for their participation in the study. I was able to establish good working relationships with some of the authorities, victims, and traffickers, which made possible a number of subsequent visits and conversations on topics related to the research. Interviews with police and court personnel were arranged by written requests, with official permission given from the respective agencies. Two other data sources were used to provide a fuller picture of human trafficking: (1) information from research on schemes for money laundering from trafficking and (2) court decisions involving Bulgarian trafficking victims (see also Petrunov 2010a, 2010b). The author reviewed forty-three such documents, including reports from investigations of trafficking, prosecutorial activity, protocols used in interrogation of victims and traffickers, and court cases. Access to these documents and assistance with analyzing them was provided by contacts at the Prosecutor’s Office, the Union of Judges, and the National Investigation Service. Most of the data presented here were drawn from cases of sex trafficking (which is the most common form of trafficking in Bulgaria), but other types of trafficking are also included.
The Bulgarian Context For Bulgaria the problem of human trafficking began after 1989, when the Communist regime was ousted. The political and economic chaos in the country in the aftermath of regime change created a favorable environment for the emergence and development of organized crime groups, just as democratization and economic reforms generated major social changes and disruptions throughout the country. According to Eurostat (2012), Bulgaria is now the poorest country in the EU, with the lowest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita: only 45 percent of the EU average. The average monthly income per person in a household was approximately €200 ($266) in 2012, just above the poverty line of €100 ($133); and one-fifth of Bulgarian households live below the poverty line (Open Society Institute, Sofia 2012). Unemployment is a serious problem (11.2 percent in 2011), especially among young people, with one-quarter of Bulgarians 15 to 29 years old being neither employed nor in school (Eurofound 2012). After 1989, a worsening economic environment, rising unemployment, declining income, and increasing poverty catalyzed many Bulgarian’s desire for
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emigration. These socioeconomic push factors intersected with the end of visa restrictions for travel to EU countries in April 2001, and the subsequent inclusion of Bulgaria as a member of the EU in 2007 opened the door to mass emigration. In the 1990s about 20,000 people left the country each year; in 2000–2003 the average annual number of nonreturning Bulgarian migrants to the EU increased to 100,000 and remains high today: 80,000 in 2011 (Bezlov et al. 2007; Novinite 2011). Low income, low education, and a lack of skills are especially pervasive in Bulgaria’s Roma population, which is the group most vulnerable to human trafficking; a significant portion of the traffickers are Roma as well (Europol 2011). A report by Amnesty International (2008) found that 65 to 70 percent of Bulgaria’s Roma population is unemployed, 65 percent have not completed high school, and 18 percent are illiterate; half of Romani homes have no access to running water and 20 percent of Romani children have never attended school.
Human trafficking from Bulgaria Using data from past studies (Petrunov 2010a) and reports provided by police officers, investigators, and prosecutors (Dikov 2012; Dochev 2009; National Investigation Service 2005), we can identify four main phases in the evolution of human trafficking from Bulgaria: • Genesis: in the aftermath of the fall of Communism in the first half of the 1990s, some Bulgarians migrated to other countries in search of work; • Isolated episodes (1995–2001): the use of violence is the main method of recruitment and control of the victims; in many cases they were sold to foreign traffickers; • Large-scale activity (2001–2007): began with the elimination of visa restrictions for Bulgarian citizens travelling to EU countries. Bulgarian traffickers gained experience and international contacts; violence decreases and has largely been replaced by partnerships between the migrant or victim and the trafficker; • Stability (since 2007): Bulgaria joined the EU; traffickers obtained large segments of the most profitable markets in Europe; physical abuse in the recruitment of individuals is reduced and participation in the majority of trafficking cases is voluntary. In 2002, “trafficking in human beings” became a felony offense under the Bulgarian Criminal Code. Article 159a defines a human trafficker as: “Anyone who recruits, transports, conceals, or admits particular individuals or groups of people with the purpose of using them for sexual activities, forced labor, removal of bodily organs, or keeping them in forceful subjection, regardless of their consent. . . .” Bulgarian law does not regard the consent of the victim as a relevant factor, which is the same as laws in Hungary and Kosovo, where human trafficking is a felony regardless of the victim’s consent (Dikov 2012). According to a
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Table 1 Officially Identified Victims, by Type of Trafficking (in percent)
Trafficking for sexual exploitation Trafficking for forced labor Trafficking of pregnant women for the sale of baby Trafficking for forced servitude Trafficking for organ removal Total*
2010 (N = 432)
2011 (N = 541)
2012 (N = 684)
87.9 7.9 1.4 1.4 1.4 100.0
74.7 16.8 5.4 3.1 0.0 100.0
83.9 10.4 5.6 0.2 0.0 100.0
SOURCE: Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation, Bulgaria. *Percentages are rounded.
judgment of the Supreme Court of Cassation, for an indictable crime it is sufficient to establish that the perpetrator has recruited, convinced, or persuaded an individual to follow him or her. The consent of the “victim” does not exonerate the perpetrator, and it is not necessary to prove the use of fraud, force, coercion, deception, kidnapping, deprivation of freedom, the promise of material benefits, or abuse of power.1 According to the statistics on indictments provided by the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation, the number of officially identified victims of trafficking increased in the past few years. In 2010, the official number of victims was 432 (394 women and 38 men, of which 64 were aged 14–18 and 6 were under 14 years of age). In 2011 the number increased to 541 (448, 93, 57, 13, respectively), and in 2012, 684 (632, 52, 44, 21, respectively). It should be kept in mind that the statistics relate only to victims identified in cases investigated by the prosecution. As in most countries, there are no reliable estimates on the total number of Bulgarian trafficking victims.
Results: Profiles of Human Trafficking in Bulgaria Bulgaria, like the rest of Eastern Europe, is a source country for trafficked persons who mainly relocate to other EU countries. The main types of trafficking are for sexual exploitation, forced labor, forced servitude, and trafficking of pregnant women for the sale of their babies.2 Table 1 shows the number of victims identified by prosecution agencies during a three-year period (2010–2012) by type of trafficking. The following sections examine each of these types.
Trafficking for sexual exploitation The main destination countries for Bulgarians trafficked for sexual exploitation are Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.
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Victims are trafficked especially from certain regions in Bulgaria to specific destination countries, and traffickers have managed to take over a substantial part of the market in specific cities of the destination countries. For example, a news report found that in Brussels, 200 out of 250 of the window prostitutes were Bulgarian, 180 of whom came from the city of Sliven. Similar “nests” of Bulgarian prostitutes exist in some other Western European cities, according to my research.3 This pattern most likely was shaped by organized crime groups who established chain-migration trafficking channels over time. This research suggests several types of sex trade operators: (1) loners who work with a woman with whom they often have a relationship and live; (2) independent traffickers who provide locations and work for two to five women in the destination country; (3) partners who work collaboratively in groups, each in charge of one to seven women; and (4) organizations that contain large, hierarchical structures with a clear separation of functions and tasks. Some organizations manage more than 100 prostitutes who either work for them or pay a fee. These organizations are often involved in other criminal activities in addition to human trafficking; and some are run by people in public office—e.g., the bosses of one organization were municipal councilors in the city’s parliament.4 Of the ninety-two interviews conducted with victims of sexual exploitation by the author (ninety-one women and one transgender), their profiles differed significantly. They represented the three largest ethnic groups in Bulgaria: Bulgarians, Roma, and Turks. Half (49 percent) stated that they were first recruited at the age of 18 to 20 (the youngest was 13, the oldest 32). One-fifth (21 percent) were students when they were trafficked. In the cases where respondents had worked before getting into prostitution, they were involved in the service sector, as waitresses or barmaids (22 percent) or saleswomen (14 percent); 27 percent had neither worked nor were in school at the time they were recruited into prostitution. Experts interviewed for this study noted that in Bulgaria the trafficker-victim relationship in recruitment and relocation has evolved over the years: “soft” methods are now most often used rather than the coercion that was typical in the 1990s. In most cases, consent of the trafficked person is obtained and the division of earnings is prenegotiated. Most individuals have been informed about the purpose of the trip and the type of work they will be doing at the destination; the promise of material gain appears to be the main factor in the recruitment. About three-quarters of the ninety-two respondents reported that they had not experienced physical coercion during the recruitment process (see Table 2). But a sizable number had experienced some coercion after they began working in the destination country. The main recruitment methods include the following: Intimate relationship or boyfriend recruitment. The most common type of recruitment—about one-fifth of the cases—involved a boyfriend or intimate partner. In this method, the girl falls in love with a trafficker or has a boyfriend who is a trafficker. One respondent said: “I was very much in love. … He told me that he wanted to marry me, that he wanted to have a family … that it would be great if we had our own business, to open up our own car wash. … In order to
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Table 2 Recruitment Techniques: Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation (in percent)
Recruitment Technique Intimate relationship or a boyfriend Offer from a prostitute girlfriend Offer from an acquaintance Self-recruitment Working prostitute recruited by a pimp Sold or recruited by a relative Deceived about working or traveling abroad Debt bondage Abduction Working or studying abroad, contacted by pimp Total*
No Physical Coercion Physical Coercion (n = 67) (n = 25)
Total (N = 92)
14.1
5.4
19.5
15.2 14.1 12.0 6.5
0.0 0.0 0.0 4.3
15.2 14.1 12.0 10.8
4.3 0.0
4.3 6.5
8.6 6.5
4.3 0.0 2.2
2.2 4.3 0.0
6.5 4.3 2.2
73.0
27.0
100.0
SOURCE: Interviews conducted by the author with victims of sexual exploitation. *Percentages are rounded.
earn this money I had to work as a prostitute abroad for a year. … At first I refused, but then I agreed.”5 Another respondent said: I thought that he really loved me. … We were together for a few months and he told me that he owed a lot of money which he could not repay. … He said he was pressured and something terrible would happen. … He begged me that if I loved him I would agree to go and be a prostitute in Germany, that his cousin was there and he would help us. … It was supposed to be for a few months only, so he could return the money he owed and then until we earned enough to buy an apartment together. … I heard about two other girls he had told the same lie.
In a few cases, when the respondents refused, they were forced with violence. Offer from a prostitute girlfriend. In 15 percent of the cases, women who were already working for the traffickers recruited women in Bulgaria. A respondent said: “I was working as a waitress but I didn’t have enough to cover my expenses. … A friend of mine had just returned from abroad; one could tell she had a lot of money. … She told me what she did there; she said her bosses were reliable people who kept their promises. She promised to connect me and that’s how I got into this.” One court document described two women who worked as prostitutes, recruited a mutual friend and trafficked her to Spain and later to France.6 Another respondent shared the following story:
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Two acquaintances from the ballet studio [the girl had been a ballet dancer for years] had just got back from abroad and we met. … They told me they danced at a striptease bar and sometimes they’d have sex with the clients; they were very happy with the money they earned. … They introduced me to their people but they sent me to a different place; that’s how I got caught up in human trafficking.
Offer from an acquaintance. In one-seventh of the cases, acquaintances convinced the women with the promise that they could earn a lot of money by selling sex. One person explained: “I was looking for a lucrative job and an acquaintance from the neighborhood told me that I could earn a lot of money from prostitution abroad and that he could connect me with the right people. … We met, talked, he even played me a video of the club in which I would be working and of the place I would be staying in. … I agreed and in the beginning everything was as shown.” Some criminal organizations enlist individuals for the purpose of recruiting others by becoming their acquaintances. For example, a man who participated in the recruitment of young women remarked: I was working as a bartender. … A person approached me with an offer: he’d pay me to bring him girls. … A lot of village girls came to the club. I judged them by their appearance, age, attitude, and I gave them money, clothes, gifts, took them to restaurants. You sleep with her once so you can get under her skin, and then you give her to the man.
One court case involved a famous Bulgarian singer who was eventually convicted for human trafficking.7 Together with his cousin and father, he trafficked many girls to Western European countries, twelve of whom testified at the trial that they were recruited to prostitute for the singer and were promised a salary of €2,000 per month to start and up to €5,000 per month afterward. Self-recruitment. With self-recruitment (as it sounds), the women who were enticed to earn a lot of money took the initiative to leave the country. A respondent who worked as a hotel receptionist and knew the pimps who brought girls there said: “I wanted to buy an apartment of my own, but I couldn’t afford it with a receptionist’s salary. … I knew he also took girls abroad where the money was very good, so I told him that I wanted to work for him.” We found a similar selfrecruitment method in the case of a woman who worked as a bartender and needed more money; she contacted a trafficker. The court dossier describes the recruitment of fifteen girls who also sought contact with this trafficker; others accepted the offers for prostitution, attracted by the promise of money.8 One respondent said: I was unable to support my children. … I had heard that I could make money as a prostitute abroad, so I replied to an escort ad I saw on the Internet. … A man picked up and confirmed that, in fact, a lot of money could be made. He asked me to meet, asked me why I wanted to go and some other stuff. He told me what the conditions would be and that he would help me with the documents and the expenses. … After a few days I left.
A Bulgarian newspaper journalist confirmed that this type of recruitment takes place when she called a phone number listed in an ad for work in Hamburg
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and London. The Bulgarian pimp, who answered her call, asked: “Are you convinced that this is what you want to do, this is the way you want to earn your money? I have never forced anyone to do this job. I am only a manager. If you want money, I will give you the opportunity to make money” (quoted in Lazarova 2013). The woman’s consent seemed to be very important. Working prostitute recruited by a pimp. In this method, traffickers recruited women who were already involved in selling sex in Bulgaria, and they facilitated their working outside the country. One respondent told us: I got into the professional high school in Pazardjik [small Bulgarian city] and I had to leave my village and rent a place in the city. My family was very poor and couldn’t help me much, so I had to manage by myself; but sometimes I didn’t have enough money even for food. … I was a sophomore when I met an older man with whom I had an intimate relationship for six or seven months. … During this time he helped me financially, gave me gifts and money to buy whatever I wanted. … I got used to the good life, so when we broke up I wanted to find a way to keep this living standard. … That’s how I started to offer sex for money to men I met at the night clubs. … I met a man who turned out to be a pimp. He told me that he could help me earn good money regularly. … Until I graduated high school I worked in Bulgaria and then he took me abroad.
Another respondent said: “I started as a dancer in pubs and nightclubs, where clients would offer me money to sleep with them; that’s how I earned some extra money. … One day a client came and told me I couldn’t continue like this and that it would be better to go work for him abroad.” This type of recruitment can be quite coercive. One woman, who at first worked independently in night clubs, shared: “I had a client who invited me to his place. … We left in his car but he stopped the car in the middle of the road where more people were waiting. … They started to beat me, raped me. … Told me that I owed them money because I had worked without paying them. … They wanted me to go abroad to work so I could pay them back the money.” Sold or recruited by a relative. This recruitment method was evident in more than 8 percent of the cases, usually in extremely poor Roma families with many children, where a daughter is sold or forced into prostitution. One respondent said: “My husband left me and the kids. … I had no job, no money, nothing, so I went back to my parents. … I was 16 years old and my father gave me to the traffickers. … My father had also given my sister to traffickers and they gave him money monthly.” Another woman stated, “My stepfather wanted to sell me to the traffickers. At first I refused but he beat me and made me do it. … He sold me for 4,000 Bulgarian leva [€2,000 or $2,666].” One court case I reviewed describes a victim who was sold to traffickers by her uncle for €400 and was then trafficked to France, where she worked as a prostitute.9 Deception. A few women (6.5 percent) were deceived about the real purpose of the trip outside the country; they believed they would be working as waitresses, maids, nannies, or that they were going on vacation. One respondent recounted: I had no job and I had heard that you could earn good money abroad, so I called an Internet ad for nannies in Spain. A woman answered and told me the conditions were very good. …
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I met her and we talked in detail about me and the job; she explained what documents I needed and she asked for a service fee. … She told me when to depart and that her colleagues would be waiting for me at the bus station. … A man and a woman were waiting for me and told me they would take me to the family for whom I would be working. They took my passport to arrange the paperwork. … They drove me to a house. …They wanted me to prostitute. … For several days, I was beaten and raped by two men. … I refused to prostitute. … During the months I was prostituting they didn’t let me leave the house.
Similar stories are described in many court cases. In one case, the traffickers recruited a victim by promising her a job on a farm, but once at the farm she was forced to prostitute. The victim managed to escape and returned to Bulgaria; however, the traffickers found her and beat her almost to death.10 One interviewee told us about her trafficker: We had a relationship for a few months. … He said he had a surprise for me, a trip to Greece for my eighteenth birthday. … We traveled in his car; he offered to visit some friends of his on the way. … When we entered the house I realized it was a brothel. … He sold me for €6,000. … To make me prostitute, they raped me, beat me, starved me. … They made me call my mother and tell her I had found a job in Greece and that I’d stay.
Debt bondage. In this method of recruitment, comprising 6.5 percent of the cases, the woman owed money to an acquaintance or trafficker, which she could not repay. One respondent recounted: “Money was always short and my parents couldn’t help me, so when I needed money I would ask my boss for a loan. … He asked me to return the money I had borrowed so far, but I didn’t have enough. … He then said the only way to repay the debt was to work for him as a prostitute abroad, and that’s what happened.” Another girl left her home after she had had a fight with her parents: “I went to an acquaintance who lived with her boyfriend. I lived there, they bought me food, and sometimes they would give me money. … After three weeks they told me that they had found work for me as a prostitute, that I owed them money, and this way I could repay them.” Abduction. In a few cases, traffickers used physical force to compel individuals into prostitution. Four percent were kidnapped and forced to prostitute by threat or violence. One respondent was kidnapped when she was 14 years old: My friend and I met older boys and we started sprucing up. They drove us around, bought us nice things, took us to places I had never been to before. … I was a virgin and for two months there was no problem. … I slept with him and after two or three days everything changed. … He wanted me to have sex with other boys. I refused. … The next day, he called me and apologized. I went down in front of the building. We got into his car. He took me to an apartment and locked me in. … There were other men in the apartment and they raped me and beat me; this went on for two weeks. … I fainted a few times. They told me, “You either work for us or we will beat you.”
A respondent who had worked as a singer in a small club described a similar story: “They kidnapped me from the club and took me to a house. While we were still driving, they started beating and threatening me. … They took me to Poland and forced me to prostitute.”
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Working or studying abroad. Bulgarian nationals who study or work abroad are sometimes recruited by pimps. Most often, it is women who seek contact with the pimps because they need money. One of the respondents and her friend left Bulgaria to seek work as waitresses or bartenders. At the destination (in Germany), they met a Bulgarian girl who worked as a prostitute at a club: “She explained that here prostitution was legal and introduced us to another Bulgarian who took us to the traffickers’ club.” Another respondent was a student who also worked: “I worked in a bakery but the money wasn’t good considering the work I had to do. I met a boy, also a Bulgarian, we had a relationship and he asked me to move in with him. … With his friend, they arranged for me to work for clients. … Allegedly, we were to collect money together, but he lied, took everything and started to threaten me.” The data indicate that traffickers usually cover the cost of the trip for those they have recruited. The women work in different locations: in the streets, highways, squares, parks, brothels, and bars. Traffickers familiarize the women with the working conditions, the sexual services they will offer and their prices, and how to account for the money they have earned. In almost all cases, the exploitation begins immediately upon arrival in the foreign country. The women work 25 to 30 days a month, and most work 6 to 12 hours a day. One woman said: “We worked at night and when we came home in the morning, we split all the money fifty-fifty. But I had to pay for accommodation and other expenses; I bought everything myself.” In most cases, the victim and the trafficker split the money fiftyfifty. Despite the large sums of money the victims can earn, they usually have to pay for their accommodation, food, clothing, and accessories; they may also be charged a fee to work at a given place. In addition, traffickers impose financial penalties for various violations—for example, being late for work or not wearing proper clothes or makeup. As noted above, the majority of violence and coercion occurred not during the recruitment stage but after the victim had been relocated to the destination country. At the destination, traffickers typically control the women by promising or withholding benefits. In some cases, traffickers do not allow the girls to move freely and threaten to hurt their families if they disobey orders. Another tactic is to confiscate the victims’ personal documents so that they cannot seek help from local authorities. For rule-breaking, traffickers punished women by withholding their earnings for a period of time, engaging in physical violence, clipping the women’s hair, or depriving them of food. To deter others from violating rules, the victim was often punished in front of all the girls. However, some respondents in the study said they had never been punished or heard of anyone who had been punished.
Trafficking for forced labor Trafficking for forced labor in Bulgaria is mainly oriented toward Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, and the Czech Republic; but there are also cases of labor trafficking to northern European nations. Compared to sex trafficking, the Bulgarian government has identified fewer cases of labor trafficking. The reasons
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that fewer cases have been identified vary: the victims of labor exploitation often have no contact with people other than their exploiters and are thus less likely to come to the attention of the authorities; they are often illegal immigrants; and their lack of knowledge of the local language makes it difficult to report to local authorities. Labor trafficking involves mostly single traffickers, not big organizations or partnerships. In most cases, labor traffickers are brokers who transport undocumented migrant laborers to a destination and supply labor to an employer for a fee. Young to middle-aged men and women with low education and no job or seasonal workers are most vulnerable to this type of trafficking. Victims of labor trafficking are from the country’s three main ethnic groups: Bulgarians, Roma, and Turks. There are several ways to recruit victims for forced labor. Common recruitment methods are through job advertisements or acquaintances who introduce a person to a broker. Recruiters often use fraud, promising the victims legal jobs with good wages and accommodation in the country of destination. Many of the victims sign a contract, which is often in a foreign language. Sham “recruitment” agencies offer job-seeking services for a fee. One victim, a mother of three children, who was introduced to an agency by an acquaintance, said: “I had to pay a service fee of €500 to get an international passport and to cover the travel expenses. I had to borrow money, more than €1,500.” Transportation to the destination is most often done legally; the victims cooperate as they believe they are going to work at a legitimate job. Usually the people who recruit the victims accompany them on the journey to the destination. One victim, a 42-year-old kindergarten teacher, explained: “She [the recruiter] bought the bus ticket for me. There were eight women with me, with an average age of 40 to 50 years, also traveling to Greece. Elena [the woman who offered the job] accompanied us to Athens. Upon arrival, one Greek person was waiting for us; we all boarded a minivan and were taken to a farm. I had no idea where we were. Elena said something to the Greek and left.” Once they arrived in Greece, the victims found that the conditions were quite different from what they had been told, but they were assured it was only temporary. Bulgarians usually become victims of labor trafficking in the agriculture sector (e.g., fruit picking) or the food processing industry. Women are also trafficked to work in sewing companies and men in the construction and logging industries. Victims work in conditions close to slavery. Police officers who were interviewed for this study said that they had victims who were kept in cages and were given food in dog bowls. One respondent described the place where she lived: “We had to sleep in a wooden building like a barn. There was no flooring, only cement. There was a battered cupboard and a table with three chairs. There was no place to bathe, the toilet was terrible.” The working conditions were even worse: “Even on the first day we were driven to pick olives. The workday was long, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a 30-minute break for lunch. One man was circling around and shouting at us; I only understood that he wanted us to work more. We were like in prison, even worse.” The victims stated that they were forced to work 10 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. They were under constant supervision. When they were given food (rarely) it was of poor quality and insufficient. There was no
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drinkable water. The payment was far below what they had been initially promised: “We were supposed to receive €20 a day but we only got €7. We couldn’t save any money because we spent it all for bread and something else to eat.” The traffickers forced the victims to work for little or no wages. One victim we interviewed received only €7 a week. In a different case, Bulgarian blueberry pickers who were taken to Sweden were promised a fixed amount for every kilogram collected. Since nobody recorded how many kilograms and how many hours each person worked, the workers received no money. A similar case was investigated with victims from Eastern Europe who worked in an asparagus greenhouse in the Netherlands. One respondent said: “This hell lasted three months. We didn’t have a single day off, I lost nearly 27 pounds. For the whole time I was paid €630. … I did not know how to claim my rights since we didn’t have anything on paper.” In many cases, the employers told the victims that they would be paid at the end of the season, forcing them to stay until the season’s end. The victims had to pay for their accommodation and food, so the cost of living sometimes exceeded the money earned. In one case, the employer charged €550 for monthly rent and €110 for utilities per person for a miserable room housing four people. Other victims who worked on a farm reported that they were forced to buy products only from the farmer at an exorbitant price. Labor traffickers control their victims in different ways: victims are threatened with no pay if they decide to leave and with legal action for their illegal residence and work in the destination country, and their personal documents are often taken. Often, the victims accrued debt because of the money they had borrowed for the trip and the cost of their stay in the destination country. They were forced to work until they paid off their debt, yet their debt kept increasing due to expenses for food and accommodation. Very often the victims lived with the traffickers and were under constant surveillance, which reduced their freedom of movement. In some cases, the traffickers also used physical violence. For example, a group of Bulgarian men in the Czech Republic were forced to work as loggers. The Ukrainian employers supervised the workers and beat them when they thought the men were not working hard enough. The men were essentially slaves.
Trafficking of women for sale of newborn babies Greece, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are among the destinations where late-term pregnant women are trafficked for the purpose of selling their newborn babies. Over the last few years, Greece has become a major destination for this type of trafficking. Traffickers operate in networks that include: (1) recruiters, commonly Bulgarians of Roma origin, who recruit the victims and transport them to the country of destination; (2) organizers, usually Bulgarian Roma husbandand-wife teams and their family members residing in the destination country, who organize the recruiters, accommodate the victims, assist with the birth, and transfer the baby to a buyer; (3) traders, sometimes lawyers, who find families seeking to acquire babies and prepare the necessary paperwork; and (4) doctors
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who deliver the babies. Once such a network is established, it may traffick for years. One of the chains, for example, was in operation for 10 years before the authorities discovered it. While the network was under police surveillance, more than twenty pregnant women were trafficked to Greece. The organizers started by selling their own babies and subsequently began to look for other victims. Victims of this kind of trafficking were mostly Roma women, 18 to 40 years of age. The victims lived in extremely poor Roma ghettos and some had many children. One victim, who was 24 years old when she was trafficked, said: “There were nine of us living in one room, in a run-down house, with no running water or a toilet. … I had six children.” The victims had very little education and were often illiterate, unemployed, with little or no income, and the pregnancy was often unwanted. Some victims of such trafficking also had been involved in forced prostitution and had become pregnant by a manager or customer. The main way to recruit victims for this kind of trafficking was by promising material benefits. Several of the respondents said that an acquaintance proposed the idea of giving birth abroad and then selling the baby. Usually the women were offered around €5,000–€6,000 for the newborn, a relatively large amount in the Bulgarian context and an opportunity to provide for their families and cover immediate expenses. One respondent shared her motivation: “He promised to give me €6,000; he would arrange for my passport and pay the transportation round-trip to Greece. I agreed to go because I had no job and money and I had a child, whom I was raising with difficulty. I agreed to go to Greece and give the baby up for adoption.” If a sex worker became pregnant by her pimp, she would often ask the traffickers to negotiate the sale of the baby. In some cases a pregnant woman and her husband were both looking to sell the baby to traffickers, but in other cases the victims were forced to give up their babies against their will. One respondent shared that she was deceived by her acquaintance with the promise to work abroad: “He said he had a job for me for one month, to pick olives, and I believed him. I decided to go. … I was kept in a basement with bars on the windows. … When I gave birth, they took my baby and I never saw it again.” Some of the victims or their families had accumulated huge debts—money that they owed to Roma loan sharks—that they could not repay. To pay off the debt or earn extra money, they volunteered the sale of their newborn baby. Investigators identified a victim of trafficking who had borrowed a €100 from the traffickers to fix the roof of her house where she lived with her five children in extreme poverty. Two months later the traffickers asked her to repay the debt, charging €300 in interest. The victim had no money. The traffickers told her she could go to Greece to give birth and sell the baby for €2,000. The woman initially resisted but the traffickers threatened her and her family, so she agreed and the traffickers organized the trip, paying for the bus fare to a Greek city and her passport fee. In Greece, she was met by two Bulgarian nationals, a man and a woman. They let her stay with them for four days and then took her to a university hospital where she gave birth.11 In most cases, women were transported to the country of destination around the seventh month of the pregnancy. Traffickers would warn the victims not to go
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to a doctor in Bulgaria so that the pregnancy would not be registered there. In many cases, the victims did not know exactly to where they had been transported: “We drove in a car. I couldn’t tell where we were,” one victim recounted. The victims were housed in places that the traffickers owned, including basements and trailers. Some of those who were prostitutes lived in the same place as the traffickers; the women were forced to prostitute until they went into labor: “When he found out I was pregnant he beat me up and forced me to go to Greece. … I had to work in Greece until a few weeks before my due date. … They took my baby and forced me back on the street.” Usually, the buyers and future parents were identified before the victim gave birth. In some instances, the victims would stay in the home of the adoptive parents, where the living conditions were nevertheless abusive: “I never went out and I didn’t meet with anyone except when I had to go to check-ups. They always took me to the same private doctor. Meanwhile the wife began to wear loose clothes, pretending that she was expecting a baby. … I gave birth to a girl. I never saw my child again.” For the delivery, the victims were taken to a hospital, and after the birth they were released together with the baby. In the cases I examined, no hospital authorities identified anything suspicious about the births. Traffickers used various schemes to obtain parental rights for the adoptive parents. Typically, the birth mother and the adopting father would be listed as the child’s biological parents. The adopting father, the buyer, would claim the child and list himself as the child’s biological father. While in the hospital, the victim would sign a statement waiving her parental rights, leaving the baby in the custody of the father. Two to three months later, the mother would return to the country of destination to finalize the procedure. At this point, the female buyer would file for adoption of her husband’s child. In one particular case, the pregnant victim used the ID of the female buyer and was registered under the latter’s name in the hospital. Using such schemes allowed the adoptive parents to get a baby much faster than if they used the conventional legal procedure for adoption. Other cases revealed a less typical practice. In one case, thirteen Bulgarian women gave birth in a Bulgarian hospital and their babies were sold to Greek clients.12 Between 2003 and 2005, these traffickers operated as an organization, registered as an official agency for international adoptions. The organization’s license was later revoked. From 2007 through 2009, the traffickers worked in a network that identified prospective Greek parents via a website, and pregnant women were lured by the promise of good money if they agreed to sell their babies. Each of the women claimed a Greek buyer, the potential adoptive father, as the child’s biological father. After the child’s birth, both the mother and the father authorized a lawyer who was part of the trafficking ring as their legal representative. The lawyer arranged for the baby’s birth certificate, international passport, and other necessary documents. When the paperwork was finalized, the newborns were transported to Greece, without the Bulgarian mothers. The selling price for newborn babies varied, with higher prices for boys. In one of the identified cases, the price for a boy was €25,000, compared with a maximum of €18,000 for a girl. The Greek families paid the traffickers between €20,000 and €40,000 per baby, but the victims usually received only
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€5,000–6,000. Some received less than €2,000. On occasion, the traffickers paid the victims nothing, which led to conflict given that the traffickers charged the women for passports, travel, accommodation, food, and hospital fees. The traffickers controlled the pregnant women by seizing their identification documents and forbidding them to leave the house in which they were living while pregnant. Traffickers rarely used physical violence in the destination country, because the victims were motivated by the promise of large payments after the birth. Victims usually received their payment after they returned to Bulgaria and only then discovered that the payment was less than what had been promised.
Trafficking for forced servitude Forced servitude must be differentiated from forced labor, because most often victims of forced servitude are used as pickpockets and beggars rather than laborers per se, and many are youths. Mostly of Roma origin, those involved, both as traffickers and victims, operate as families or clans. Underage minors of a clan or family are recruited and compelled to work as apprentices in organized criminal activities. In such forced servitude, the minors’ well-being and livelihood depend on their continued participation in economic activities at the instruction of their masters. The main destination countries for forced servitude are Austria, Britain, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Traffickers involved in forced servitude are highly mobile and often change the country of destination. Organized pickpocketing typically involves young people, seven to fourteen years old, who work under adults. Pickpocketing by Bulgarians is feminized: children are specially trained from an early age by the women in the clan. For some clans, pickpocketing has been their way of life for decades or years. One respondent said: “I do it because I was taught this way. All my older sisters do it so I do not see why it is so bad.” The criminal conduct is seen as a natural part of one’s upbringing. One prosecutor described a case in which a large, weathly Roma clan had adopted children and trained them to pick pockets. However, the children were forced to live in miserable conditions in a shack in the backyard. The trafficking of children to other countries (to be used as beggars) is often accepted because in many cases the parents are part of the scheme and/or clan, or they have given their consent for the children to travel unaccompanied. In the country of destination, pickpockets usually roam in groups of three to five well-dressed females of different ages. The role of the child is to steal, the second woman distracts the victim, and the third is a lookout. Once the child steals an item or money, one of the women immediately gets rid of it by passing it to another group member. Usually pickpockets steal in places where there are large crowds, such as stores, the subway, or during major sporting events. The oldest woman in the group collects and keeps the money, and hands it over to the men in the clan; the men divide the money among the members of the group. The earnings can be substantial: Bulgarian journalist Magdalena Gigova travelled with a group of pickpockets to different countries and described her
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observations: for only four days during the Christmas holidays in Brussels one pickpocket earned about €13,000 (Gigova 2007, 16). Globally, minors are usually subject to lesser legal punishments than adults, which makes them ideal perpetrators for this type of crime. Even if they are caught, the children cannot be forced to testify against their relatives. As one respondent said: “I’d never testify against my family, they are my family after all. … Sometimes I wish they didn’t make me take things from people. I imagine that if someone took something from me I would be sad. However, I have to listen to my mom and what she says.” Traffickers also participate in forced begging, which, like forced servitude, usually involves children and adults of Roma ethnicity. The victims may be adults, an adult’s own children, or children without parental care who live in public care institutions. Among the victims are also people with disabilities; traffickers force them to beg, luring them with promises of good pay or better social care in the country of destination. Some of the victims have begged in Bulgaria before being recruited. Traffickers transport and accommodate the victims in deplorable conditions in the destination country, and they typically confiscate the victims’ identification documents. The money earned by the beggars is collected by the traffickers; on the street, they keep the beggars under watch and protect them from others. In most cases, the victims are threatened and physically abused if they fail to collect enough money or do not follow the traffickers’ orders. A police officer whom I interviewed described a case where a victim tried to escape from his traffickers. They caught him, brutaly beat him, broke both of his legs, and refused to let him go to the hospital for two weeks.
Conclusion This article shows that human trafficking in Bulgaria involves organized criminal groups. Most of these groups are clan-based and use well-established transnational trafficking channels. For the most part, the poor socioeconomic conditions in Bulgaria generate migration to other countries, where some migrants fall prey to traffickers. Bulgarian traffickers use less physical violence in recruiting their victims today than during the initial years after the fall of the Communist regime. This article corroborates the findings of studies of other Eastern European nations; that is, the types of trafficking identified in Bulgaria occur in other Eastern European countries as well (Gerasymenko 2011; IOM 2006; Jolluck 2012). Trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is the most prevalent type officially reported in Bulgaria and in other Eastern European countries, followed by trafficking for forced labor (Europol 2011; Eurostat 2013). Less prevalent in the region, according to official reports, are cases of domestic servitude, pickpocketing, and forced begging. Also consistent with other research (e.g., Jolluck 2012), this study identifies trafficking for the purpose of selling babies in Bulgaria and Romania. Another finding from this study (that is not discussed
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above at length) is that Bulgarian traffickers adapt well to the changes in demand and the opportunities for new forms of exploitation. Some are adept in multiple forms of exploitation: for example, a victim trafficked for sexual exploitation, then, when pregnant, forced to sell her baby, and then forced back into prostitution. In addition, a few isolated cases have been identified of ongoing exploitation of children, starting from an early age with begging and pickpocketing and transitioning into prostitution when they are teenagers. Other results are compatible with findings regarding Eastern Europe (e.g., Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights 2000), specifically with respect to the motives to migrate (i.e., better economic conditions) and the methods used by the traffickers to recruit their victims. A common pattern identified in the recruitment practices in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries is that traffickers prey upon poor and vulnerable people, promising them a lucrative future. The drastic disparity in income among social strata in Bulgaria generates enclaves of deep poverty and marginalizes the most vulnerable people, creating a fertile ground for human trafficking. In the majority of trafficking cases, both the victims and the traffickers are from Roma communities in Bulgaria as well as other Eastern European nations, especially Romania (Caunic et al. 2012). To a large extent, this is due to the sizable percentage of Roma in the population of these countries and the poor economic and living conditions they face (European Roma Rights Centre 2010; United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute 2005). There are further similarities between human trafficking in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries with respect to the groups at risk for trafficking: those most vulnerable to trafficking for sexual exploitation are young women, while those vulnerable to trafficking for forced labor include both young and middle-aged men and women who are unemployed and have little or no education (IOM 2006). Studies show that women suffer disproportionately from the worsening economic and social conditions in Eastern European countries; they are the most affected by cuts in public spending or maternity leave (Jolluck 2012). In addition, there is evidence of a marked increase in the number of female-led households, widespread domestic violence, sexist attitudes, and growing gender discrimination in the workplace and throughout society. Dysfunction of the economic systems in the former Communist countries is coupled with a weak rule of law, pervasive corruption, and the growth of organized crime networks (Jolluck 2012). Weak institutions (including corrupt officers, lack of information, and poor law enforcement) are further factors that create favorable conditions for human trafficking (IOM 2006). The complexity of the problem requires complex measures to combat it. For such measures to be effective, it is necessary to collect a substantial amount of empirical information about the problem from both the victims and perpetrators. Emphasizing only the use of force and threats conceals the complexity of the problem; it is necessary to draw attention to the larger causes of this activity, including the motives that drive people to leave their homes and seek the services of the facilitators. This suggests that human trafficking cannot be solved only with criminal proceedings against the perpetrators but must also include addressing a
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host of social, political, and economic problems in Bulgaria. Until the problems of poverty, unemployment, and the lack of decent job opportunities are tackled, it is likely that Bulgaria, and other countries in Eastern Europe, will remain a major source of trafficking victims.
Notes 1. Interpretive Judgment No. 2, Supreme Court of Cassation, Republic of Bulgaria, July 16, 2009. 2. There are few cases of trafficking for the purpose of removal of organs, but no interviews were conducted with such victims. 3. The cities include Vienna, Groningen, Dortmund, Nice, Cologne, Strasbourg, and Mannheim. 4. District Prosecutor’s Office Varna v. Ivan Slavkov, Yanko Kolev, Nikolay Hadjimihaylov, Peycho Peev, and Svilen Nikolov. Case 1157. Varna, Bulgaria, 2008. 5. All quotations are from the author’s interviews with victims, unless otherwise noted. 6. Regional Prosecutor’s Office Pazardjik v. Tanka Atanassova and Aneta Simonova. Case 236. Pazardjik, Bulgaria, 2007. 7. District Prosecutor’s Office Plovdiv v. Ivan Glavchev, Dimitur Rachelov, and Petar Glavchev. Case 225. Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 2003. 8. District Prosecutor’s Office Varna v. Evelin Dimov, Alexander Ivanakiev, Mitko Panayotov, Dimiter Dimitrov, Todor Todorov, Krassimir Todorov, and Yanko Dimitrov. Case 2111. Varna, Bulgaria, 2007. 9. District Prosecutor’s Office Russe v. Ventsislav Atanassov and Dessislava Atanassova. Case 1633. Russe, Bulgaria, 2007. 10. District Prosecutor’s Office Sofia v. Atanas Mundev, Kolyo Ivanov, Valery Raykov, Selim Kadirov, Ivan Iliev, and Petar Petrov. Case 1142. Sliven, Bulgaria, 2008. 11. Regional Prosecutor’s Office Burgas v. Vesko Shterionov and Bogdan Shterionov. Case 4937. Burgas, Bulgaria, 2010. 12. Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office v. Emil Kostadinov, Dilyana Stoyanova, Albena Cheremy, and Michaela Stoyanova. Case 830. Sofia, 2009.
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