Investigators warn that low-cost manicures in Berlin and across German cities are often sustained by labor exploitation and human trafficking networks, particularly involving Vietnamese workers.
Tag: trafficking
Since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian surrogacy clinics have expanded their market to China and the Arab countries and have increased the range of services, including births in Greece, Cyprus and Georgia.
Trafficking people, especially for sex, between Colombia and Mexico is rife and rising, buoyed in part by pervasive social and media contempt for the working-class girls who are among the chief victims.
The crisis of gang violence in Ecuador is being driven by international drug trafficking, a major illicit economy that exists because of the ban on drugs. It and other Latin American countries are paying a high price for this unjust ban, and must unite to call for its end.
Ecuador’s simmering civil war, curiously, appears to also be a byproduct of the disbanding of Colombia’s FARC rebels in 2016. Since then, chaos has reigned through much of Latin American drug trafficking routes, reverberating with criminal elements in Ecuador.
In the Agadez region of Niger, thousands of migrants — many of them children — are waiting in squalid conditions, and at risk of human trafficking, after being turned away from Algeria.
June 26 – July 2, 2023
Staying in a theocracy whose rulers subjugate women was not an option, but trying to get to destinations in Europe and beyond comes with unthinkable perils of its own.
Lebanese have long emigrated to Europe and elsewhere. But not like during this crisis: on clandestine boats, in a perilous trip toward the island of Cyprus.
In Italy, while some agencies put people in touch locally, others help customers find a spouse in Asia — and then fly them over for the nuptials.
Expected to return to Cali after serving prison time, some old gangsters will find a ‘new generation’ of criminals running businesses in town. Will that mean trouble,
HYDERABAD — Sex workers in towns and villages in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are often married off at a young age, or trafficked to larger cities. Statistics released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) place Andhra Pradesh second, behind West Bengal, for the prevalence of human trafficking. Many of those being trafficked are young girls, and the UN office says that in January alone, 939 minor girls were reported missing from the southeastern state. But one positive development is that a growing number of the women who have been victims of […]
Venezuelans are sloshing their way across the Táchira River to seek jobs in Colombia, or smuggle food and fuel. Out of sight, but very much in control, are a pair of powerful criminal gangs.
PUERTO CHIAPAS — In the small Mexican fishing harbor of Puerto Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, drug trafficking boats aren’t that uncommon a sight. At first glance, they look like like regular fishing boats. What sets them apart are the state-of-the-art motors. Chiapas state is one of the most peaceful in Mexico, and Puerto […]
The sale and trade of women in Syria is not a wanton and senseless consequence of war. It is a consequence of a war economy in which nearly all warring parties and even civilians use women to secure profit, weapons, access or leverage in negotiations.
We have seen far fewer grim accounts of rescues and drownings of would-be immigrants in the Mediterranean in recent weeks, as the human trafficking route-of-choice between North Africa to Europe shuts down. But another dangerous route appears to be opening up right next door. The recent efforts to crack down on traffickers operating along the […]
They don’t hide in the abyss of the Dark Web. From Bangui, Beirut, Bordeaux or elsewhere, they use social media to promote their products and services. They are blood diamond community managers from the Central African Republic, traffickers of gems that cannot be legally exported and that are for sale on Facebook and Whatsapp. One […]
Iran’s Islamic regime may have harsh penalties for drug trafficking, but officials are now estimating that the number of “regular drug users’ has doubled in the past six years, from 1.3 million to about 2.8 million. The head of the country’s drug control organization, Parviz Afshar, told Iran’s ISNA news agency that currently “about 2.8 […]
Investigators in Mannheim, in southwestern Germany, have a real whodunnit on their hands, a brutal kidnapping-murder case — but with a twist. The victim is a five-kilogram Humboldt penguin whose lifeless and decapitated body was found last month in a local parking lot. The gruesome discovery came five days after the animal, of South American […]
TEHRAN — Some Iranian legislators want to end the Islamic Republic’s systematic execution of drug dealers, saying it does little to reduce the country’s massive drug abuse problem. More than 150 members of Parliament are preparing a motion to amend the country’s drug enforcement laws and restrict death sentences to particular cases such as recidivism […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Little is known about the financing of terror. Where does it come from? What part did it play in the Paris shootings and Brussels bombings? Are we able to fight it effectively? We are, on all counts, poorly equipped to deal with this challenge. In France and our neighboring countries, there is […]
Among the Berber slaves of Mauritania, property of Arab masters despite their shared Muslim faith.
Former employees from German gun company Heckler and Koch face charges in German court for illegal deals with Mexico. But were government officials complicit?
JALALABAD — It’s early morning in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. Haroon Sarwari, 17, and Manzoor Ali, 18, are wearing their backpacks and walking quickly to get a taxi to reach Kabul on time. These close friends have laid out plans to travel to Europe illegally with the help of a smuggling agent. Haroon’s cousins managed to get to Germany three months before, so his father, Sarwar Khan, supports the plan. “My father sold a few of his cows and borrowed some money from his friends to send me to Europe,” the teenager explains. “He has already agreed with the agent on […]
STOCKHOLM — If you’re not careful, the so-called “sharing economy” can turn your home into a temporary brothel. Swedish police report a growing number of pimps and prostitutes in Stockholm using long-term rentals on the home-sharing website Airbnb without the owner’s knowledge.”We estimate that there are currently about 200 apartments in Stockholm that are used […]
The Colombian writer who once was part of the Norte del Valle cartel had a chance to interview the Mexican drug lord, but unlike Sean Penn, “refused to be a mouthpiece.”
Long after the days of Pablo Escobar and cocaine cartels, Colombia has regained the crown as world’s No. 1 producer of coca. It gives further urgency that FARC-government peace talks succeed.
Bathroom breaks and oxygen tanks mix with kilos of cocaine and money laundering: The “papy connection” trial of aging ex-cons unfolded in a Marseille courtroom.
Tunisia is building a wall along the border with Libya to defend itself against terrorist infiltrations, but it is stirring up hostility from locals on both sides.
Categories
The Mystery Of India’s Vanishing Children
MUMBAI — Night has fallen on Mumbai, and a monsoon fog fills the air as an aging man looks over the vast Indian metropolis from his balcony. Rajendra Dhondu Bhosale retired earlier this year as deputy inspector at a local police precinct, but still lives in dilapidated government housing with walls dampened by the constant […]
Despite the devastation, growing demand among foreign couples continues to feed medical tourism in Nepal, where surrogacy agencies recruit women to carry babies for infertile couples.
Young men who left Eritrea, by way of Libya, may have all ended up in Lampedusa, but they took many different paths getting there.
Pope Francis has been surprisingly progressive on such issues as gay rights. But so far he’s taken the hard line on denouncing drugs. That could change if he sees that legalization is the best chance for reducing violence.
Calais, France along the English Channel has served as a hub for UK-bound illegal migrants for more than a decade. Now Egyptian, Kurdish and Albanese traffickers are fighting for control.
It’s been 20 years since the U.S. had troops in the Philippines. With new plans in the works for a Filippino-U.S. base-sharing, much has changed – both locally and geopolitically.
CUCUTA — It’s 2 p.m., and the borderland between Colombia and Venezuela is sizzling in the afternoon heat. Sweat is the permanent companion of all those crossing the Simón Bolívar bridge linking Venezuela with the Colombian border city of Cúcuta. Mariela* has been sitting for two hours in an endless line of cars, returning from […]
LA JOYA — Juan Castro is trying to keep it together as he tells me this story, but the tears well up in his eyes. “There was this 11-year-old girl from Guatemala who had been raped. I had to ask her how, where, by whom, why and every single detail that could help build her […]
The trafficking of young men as soldiers is on the rise in Syria. One mother thought her 16-year-old was being taken to find medical treatment, until she saw a photo of him in uniform.
Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua offer vivid proof of the ravages that narco-trafficking inflicts on the environment, from clandestine landing strips to roads built to transport illegal drugs.
Categories
Spider Collector In A Web Of Trouble
Main picture: Santa Rosa Press Democrat/ZUMA With great passion comes great trouble: This could be the lesson learnt by a spider-and-bug-lover in northeastern France after he was suspected of trafficking the creepy crawlies. Investigators were puzzled by how the fifty-something man could afford his many trips to Guyana, Brazil and Madagascar despite living off state […]