The grim fact that more than 30 women have been found working in enforced prostitution in Scotland is alarming evidence that the trafficking of human beings is increasing at a faster rate in Scotland than the rest of the UK. They were found in private saunas and in private flats used as brothels. That illustrates the main difficulty: the women are hidden away and kept as virtual prisoners, too frightened by brutal treatment and threats to their families at home to alert anyone to their plight.
The grim fact that more than 30 women have been found working in enforced prostitution in Scotland is alarming evidence that the trafficking of human beings is increasing at a faster rate in Scotland than the rest of the UK. They were found in private saunas and in private flats used as brothels. That illustrates the main difficulty: the women are hidden away and kept as virtual prisoners, too frightened by brutal treatment and threats to their families at home to alert anyone to their plight.
Most of them have been brought into the UK from South-east Asia, including China, and eastern Europe, some paying large sums of money to traffickers on the promise of a respectable job, while others have been coerced, essentially as bonded labourers, in payment of a family debt. In the latest cases, the police were able to act after members of the public reported a suspiciously large number of men visiting flats. That is welcome evidence that raising public awareness is beginning to pay off.
As Operation Pentameter is revealing, however, this modern manifestation of the slave trade is carried out by highly-organised international criminals. The latest cases include young women who may have paid up to £20,000 to Chinese traffickers who are in league with Triad gangs involved in organised prostitution. These criminal networks operate not only in the Far East, but across eastern Europe and Africa. A group which works with these exploited women has found women from 26 different countries employed in the sex trade in Scotland. As a result of the UK signing the European Anti-Trafficking Convention last year, women too frightened to talk to the police, can be offered support. This in itself is an important way of gathering intelligence about the pimps and traffickers.
The primary focus of the police investigation is the welfare of the victims, and that must be the first priority, but there must also be prosecutions if we are to stop this dehumanising trade.
New guidelines on classified adverts for premises claiming to be massage parlours or saunas introduced by the Newspaper Society at the urging of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, will make it more difficult to advertise their services. That in itself may be a deterrent to the off-street sex trade which has been allowed to operate unofficially and which has perhaps provided an avenue for the sex traffickers. For Detective Chief Superintendent Campbell Corrigan, chair of the Scottish working group on human trafficking, "the end game is to deter and disrupt". That will take more than two police operations, but there is evidence that disruption is a deterring factor. Careful questioning of women potentially being trafficked at the busiest airports and ports in England is thought to have diverted more trafficking to Scotland. This perception of lax scrutiny north of the border must be challenged. Two hundred years after slavery was made illegal in the UK, public revulsion must also play a part in bringing traffickers in human misery to justice.
