[konijn]

Albania soldiers in rape scandal


The trafficking of women is a continuing problem for Albania
Albanian police say several servicemen have been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a 16-year old girl.
The men are accused of raping the girl before selling her to a gang in Kosovo which forced her into prostitution.

UN staff eventually rescued the girl and helped her to return to Albania.

Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Pellumb Qazimi, who issued a public apology to the girl, has suspended the commander of the base in north-western Albania where the men were stationed.

Some reports say four civilians have also been arrested in connection with the case.

The 16-year-old was first abducted at the Bisht Palle naval base in June and sexually abused by soldiers for two months, according to a police spokesman.

She was then "sold" to Albanian hotel owners, before ending up in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren.

UN officials found her in Kosovo with irregular documents and took her to a rehabilitation centre for trafficked women in Durres.

The teenager has decided to bring charges against her abusers, police say.

Crackdown

Human trafficking and the forced prostitution of women continue to plague post-communist Albania.

Attempts by the authorities to address the problems, in an effort to join eventually join Nato and the European Union, have so far been in vain.

Criminal gangs take advantage of police corruption, a weak judicial system and lax border controls to exploit young women.

A new report, co-written by the UN and the 55-nation Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), has estimated that 120,000 women and children are trafficked into the EU each year, most of them through the Balkans.

[2banana]

Let me see if I understand this:

Christan girls are being abducted from eastern european countries (Moldova, Bulgaria and the Ukraine) and are being to forced to work in the sex industries in mostly Muslim countries (Kosovo and Albania). The main customers are UN personnel.

1. If the situation was reversed, would it be headlines news around the world?
2. The UN is one of the most corrupt organizations that man has ever invented.

[gathersnomoss]

I guess the UN had to find other funding options after the Iraq Food for Fuel funds dried up.

[katana]

I'd be interested to know if there has been a war in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age where the presence of troops didn't lead to an increase in the "sex trade". There's a reason why it's called the "World's Oldest Profession".

[GailA]

MASTER LIST UN FOOD/SEX FOR OIL SCANDALS

[Arthalion]

However, Kfor troops and UN personnel are immune from prosecution in Kosovo and those who have been dismissed relating to such offenses have escaped any criminal proceedings in their home countries.

There is the crux of the problem. Very few nations are willing to prosecute their own soldiers for crimes they commit under the UN banner because it's seen as a UN problem. The UN itself operates in Kosovo under a treaty making its soldiers immune to any sort of local law enforcement or prosecution, and the UN has even written itself a dandy law making it a "war crime" to harm or kill a UN soldier in a "UN occupied area" (there isn't even a self-defense clause).

Put this all together and you have a situation where the UN soldiers can effectively play god with the local population with impunity...and when you give people that kind of power, they WILL abuse it.

[My Favorite Headache]

The first thing Bush needs to do after being re-elected is get us the hell out of the UN and show the millions of reasons why. Then form a new organization with Canada,Mexico,Spain,UK,Poland,andItaly...and anyone with balls enough to be part of something that is legit.

[FormerLib]

Gee, the BBC could have just re-run their story from 2003 on this one.

Or the 2002 story...

Or the story from 2001...

Or that story from 2000...

These criminal abuses will come to an end when the Serb Army retores law and order to their province.

Of course, the organized criminals responsible for doing this have a lot of cash to spread around, buying American PR companies to cover their tracks for them and all.