Flesh trade targets natives
Monday, September 29, 2008
By TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2008/09/29/6917856-sun.html
TORONTO -- On the street corners of Canada's largest cities, thousands of women are bought and sold every night.
Most of them, experts say, are aboriginal and an alarming number are trafficked.
Poverty, abuse, racism and troubled historical relations have all been cited as reasons for the Aboriginal population falling victim to Canada's flesh trade at a far higher rate than non-Aboriginals.
Given the total lack of statistics gathered on domestic trafficking in this country, it is no wonder there is nothing to accurately illustrate exactly how many Aboriginal people are being trafficked. But this is what is known:
- More than 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada over the last few decades.
- According to research conducted by gang expert Michael Chettleburgh, 90% of the teenaged, urban prostitutes in Canada are Aboriginal.
- About 75% of Aboriginal girls under 18 have been sexually abused, says Anupriya Sethi, who has researched the issue. Of those, half are under 14 and nearly a quarter are younger than seven.
"According to the Department of Justice and other witnesses, Aboriginal girls and women are at greater risk of becoming victims of trafficking within and outside Canada," notes the February 2007 report on human trafficking from the Standing Committee on Status of Women.
Trafficking triangles through which Aboriginal victims are moved: Saskatoon-Edmonton-Calgary-Saskatoon; Saskatoon-Regina-Winnipeg-Saskatoon.
In big cities like Montreal, Aboriginal girls from northern communities are plucked right from the airport, Sethi says.
"Traffickers often know someone in the community who informs them about the plans of the girls moving to the city. Upon their arrival at the airport, traffickers lure the girls under the pretext of providing a place to stay or access to resources," she notes in her report.
While experts have cited instances of Aboriginal victims being recruited by Asian and Somali gangs, says Chettleburgh: "There's no shortage of Aboriginal on Aboriginal victimization in the country." He points to Winnipeg where large gangs such as Indian Posse, Native Syndicate and Red Alert "are definitely running the girls on the street."
"Things like this don't happen without racism being the core cause," Daniels says with emphatic frustration. "The number one killer in this country for Aboriginal women isn't diabetes or cancer. It's rape-slash-murder. It can grow to such horrific heights and still, what's happening? Where's the human outcry? If it happened to soccer moms, it would be a completely different story all together."
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