A sinister traffic” “

A denunciation of the sale of babies and the traffic of women and children from Bulgaria to countries of the European Union is contained in the last report of the European Council for Criminality. To tackle the problem, the Assembly of the Council of Europe decided in January to draw up a kind of European Convention for the trafficking of women and children which will protect their rights and facilitate the work of the NGOs that operate in this sector. In four months time 45 countries, including Bulgaria, will be called to sign the document. Meanwhile an electronic calendar was inaugurated in Sofia on 28 February to mark the countdown to Bulgaria’s entry into the EU. Bulgaria will be able to inspect its membership treaty translated into Bulgarian on 25 March 2005. The signing of the treaty is planned for 25 April. So Bulgaria ought to become a full member of the EU on 1st January 2007. In recent times the country has made great strides in the economic field, but there still remains a lot of work to be done. But what is known, inside the country, of the sinister trade in babies, women and children? NeWBORN BABIES FOR SALE. In the course of a joint operation, Italian, Bulgarian and Greek police forces have discovered, over the last year, two channels for the export of newborn babies. They are stories of women forced by deprivation and debts to sell their own children. Some, however, do it of their own free will and explain that people in the West cannot understand why they do so because they do not live in the same situation of poverty. A baby for sale would cost from 10 to 12,000 euros and the price increases if the baby is male. The practice works like this: the woman gets pregnant, often with the collaboration of the head of the criminal organization or someone who forms part of it; then in the fourth or fifth month the woman goes to Italy or Greece as a tourist, remains there to give birth and, while still in hospital, with the help of a doctor, a lawyer and her “protector” who took her abroad, sells the baby to the family that adopts it. Some women are forced by their family or by usurers to sell their child. Most of these women are Romanies from rural areas where unemployment and illiteracy are very high. In this way the sale of newborn infants has become a flourishing business throughout Eastern Europe. “They are isolated cases”, the general secretary of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior Bojko Borissov said in a briefing to the media, but his colleague of the national anti-organized crime agency adds: “it’s a phenomenon difficult to combat because denunciations made to the police only come from women who have been deceived or forced to sell their babies. The others return home with the money, with which they hope to be able to bring up their other children”. TRAFFIC OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. There are also cases in which the family sells a young woman to another Romany family living in Western Europe. A deal is reached between the two families and the price is agreed with the older men of the village. Many girls have been sold more than once to different families or forced into prostitution. That is the story of Anna, as told to a Bulgarian paper: having gone to England to work as a baby-sitter, one day she found herself confronted by four men who dragged her away from the pub where she had gone with some friends. From that moment began her sad story, forced to provide sexual services in saunas and apartments, until she was finally “saved” by some representatives of an English NGO. Another dramatic phenomenon – being discussed in recent days by the Bulgarian media – concerns the traffic of 6-year-old Rom children sold in Germany and then exploited by German paedophiles. WHY? THE VIEW OF Caritas IN Sofia. With regard to the terrible sale of newborn infants, “the root of the problem – explains JOLANTA ZAFIROVA, of diocesan Caritas in Sofia, in a briefing to Sir Europe – consists in the illiteracy and poverty in which these women live”. “They suffer from the lack of any kind of culture”, adds her colleague VIRGINIA DOLAPCIEVA, who has worked with Romany girl mothers for years: “No one ever cared for them. They begin their sexual life at the age of 12 and often follow the example of their mother, who perhaps had dumped her daughter in an orphanage. For them the difference between orphanage and sale is slight. But when you speak with these people you understand that they would have liked to do something fine in life and that if they had had more education things would have been different”. A possible remedy? “We need to try to teach them the minimum of human culture that children usually receive in their family. The solution is not to give just economic or food aid but teach them to earn a living through work”.