Football and Trafficking – The World Cup Scandal
By Pam Perraud , NGO Director
Sports, booze and sex. They usually go together but this year’s World Cup championship in Germany set off a firestorm of controversy. Why? Because prostitution is legal in Germany and the well-organized Germans have gone to extraordinary lengths to anticipate and make sure that visitors to the World Cup would have they would need during their stay in German— plenty of food, liquor and of course, sex. FAWCO has joined many other groups in protesting these measures.
It has been estimated that some 40,000 women, many under age, will have been be illegally trafficked into Germany for the World cup games. Germany, like most countries, has had a problem of illegal trafficking for some time but what is unusual is the scale of the trafficking and the fact that Germany is making so many plans to encourage it.
In Berlin, close to the Olympic stadium, a new mega-brothel has just opened. Covering some 400 square meters, it houses a health club, restaurants, and some 70 rooms where up to 600 clients a day may be serviced. Similar brothels in Cologne and Dortmund will open before the games begin. Other cities have set up drive-thru centers, nicknamed “ Verrichtungsbox” roughly translated as “performance boxes” where sex will be performed in small cubicles to ensure the anonymity of the clients.
One outspoken critic, Kate Quinn the Executive Director of Prostitute Awareness and Action Foundation (PAAFE) of Edmonton Canada put it this way, “These soccer actions shacks are the ultimate in sexual consumerism. We are saying to our 18-year-old sons that it is okay to buy women. That’s what it means to be a man in a consumer society.”
As early as January of 2006, the European Union warned Germany about the increased risks of trafficking during the games. Many women’s groups both inside and outside Germany have been speaking out and organizing petitions to protest these actions and have called upon the German government to take strong measures to prevent trafficking.
In Germany, Ulrike Helwerth, head of the non-governmental German Women’s Council, which represents over 50 organizations, including not only women’s groups but also trade union and political parties, has been lobbying the government as well as the German and world football leagues. The organization wants the government and the football leagues to condemn the human trafficking process and to take stern measures to combat it during the games. The German and international football league(FIFA) have maintained that trafficking is not in their domains and that it is the work of governments to do. Sweden’s opportunity ombudsman, Claes Burgstrom called upon the Swedish team to withdraw to protest the German position; however, that has not happened although some individual football players have spoken out about the issue.
At the annual FAWCO conference in Berlin, FAWCO’s UN Director Pam Perraud and Rebecca Fry, President of the American Women’s Club of Amsterdam, urged FAWCO delegates to sign a petition that was sent to Angela Merkel, German Chancellor asking her to step up law enforcement of human trafficking, particularly during the World Cup The petition was also sent to the head of FIFA condemning the mixture of sports and trafficking. Over 120 FAWCO members signed the petition and many others joined in signing the online petition organized by the Coalition Against Human Trafficking. For more information about this topic, check out Coalition Against Trafficking’s website at www.catwinternational.org and the US State Department’s own website devoted to information about human trafficking, which includes fact sheets on trafficking.
http://.usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issues/human_trafficking.html