Bandas internacionales de tráfico de personas ofrecen sus servicios a inmigrantes de Haití , a quienes cobran entre cuatro y cinco mil dólares.
Miles de haitianos indocumentados dejaron atrás lo poco que les quedó tras el terremoto que sufrió su país años atrás y cayeron en manos de bandas internacionales de tráfico de personas, quienes cobran entre cuatro y cinco mil dólares por llevarlos a Brasil. Lo preocupante son las diversas denuncias en contra de las autoridades peruanas.
"Por la altitud de nuestras fronteras, por las características mismas de lo que significa fronteras vivas y fronteras abiertas, es que fácilmente pueden ingresar, sin necesidad de controlarse, por nuestros puestos de control migratorio, estos ciudadanos.
Y ese tráfico ha sido percibido claramente por la ruta que es de Ecuador", señaló el Superintendente Nacional de Migraciones, Edgard Reymundo.
Uno de los puntos más preocupantes, según el programa Cuarto Poder, es que los inmigrantes haitíanos aseguran que los policías peruanos cobran para poder dejarlos continuar con su camino.
"Entre Cusco a Puerto Maldonado había un chequeo de policías en el que nos quitaron los pasaportes y nos pidieron cien dólares o sino no nos devuelven nuestro pasaportes", denunció uno de los inmigrantes.
Asimismo, otra denuncia es contra los conocidos como 'coyotes' a quienes acusan dedejarlos hasta sin ropa, además de quitarles dinero al no cumplir con promesas de llevarlos a Lima, entre otras cosas.
Finalmente, el Gobierno de Brasil hace esfuerzos para evitar el tráfico de personas, ofreciendo medios para que los haitianos puedan llegar a dicho país de una manera ordenada y legal, y de esta manera, en conjunto con el Gobierno de Perú, evitar las malas actitudes de los 'coyotes' y autoridades locales.
http://www.larepublica.pe/04-08-2013/haitianos-indocumentados-denuncian-abusos-al-tratar-de-cruzar-la-frontera-con-brasil
Une fenêtre ouverte sur Haïti, le pays qui défie le monde et ses valeurs, anti-nation qui fait de la résistance et pousse les limites de la résilience. Nous incitons au débat conceptualisant Haïti dans une conjoncture mondiale difficile. Haïti, le défi, existe encore malgré tout : choléra, leaders incapables et malhonnêtes, territoires perdus gangstérisés . Pour bien agir il faut mieux comprendre: "Que tout ce qui s'écrit poursuive son chemin, va , va là ou le vent te pousse (Dr Jolivert)
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est TRAFIC DE PERSONNES. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est TRAFIC DE PERSONNES. Afficher tous les articles
lundi 5 août 2013
mercredi 22 mai 2013
Broward women brought 143 Haitian workers to US for fake jobs, feds say
May 20, 2013|By Paula McMahon, Sun Sentinel
The 143 workers paid as much as $3,500 each, lured to South Florida from Haiti with false promises of steady paying jobs in construction or on farms, the hope of getting permanent residency and making a life in the U.S., they said.
But when they arrived, they found the jobs didn't exist, and they were left to fend for themselves — the victims of a fraud perpetrated by two Broward women, prosecutors said.
But when they arrived, they found the jobs didn't exist, and they were left to fend for themselves — the victims of a fraud perpetrated by two Broward women, prosecutors said.
The plot was so audacious that one of the women, Jetta McPhee, 59, of Tamarac, even went to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince to push for the temporary work visas, according to an indictment issued this month.
McPhee pleaded not guilty to conspiring to commit visa fraud and two counts of aiding and abetting visa fraud Friday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale and was released on a $100,000 bond.
Marie Nicole Dorval, 43, of Coral Springs, already has pleaded guilty to her role in the fraud and is expected to turn herself in next month to serve a two-year federal prison sentence.
Dorval admitted she used her now-defunct Margate company, Manidor Financial Group Inc., to help recruit workers and convince authorities that the job offers were legitimate.
Prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., said the women lied to the federal government about the availability of jobs to get guest worker visas for seasonal work and lied to the Haitian citizens so they'd pay for the opportunity to work here.
The year-long conspiracy began in April 2008 and involved McPhee and Dorval getting a signed letter from the owner of a South Florida construction company claiming that he would hire 150 workers.
Dorval and McPhee offered potential workers a contract that said they'd be paid $8.42 an hour for working on farms or construction sites in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, that free food and housing would be provided for some and they could be eligible for green cards that would let them stay permanently.
When several of the recruits were turned down by U.S. Embassy officials in Haiti, McPhee emailed embassy workers, lied about the contracts and traveled to the embassy in March 2009 to successfully persuade authorities to issue visas for the workers.
When the workers arrived here, they were left jobless for months and told to fend for themselves or live in filthy trailers with no beds and no electricity, records show. Some were moved to farms in Gainesville and South Carolina in July 2009 but were never paid what they were promised, Dorval admitted.
pmcmahon@tribune.com, 954-356-4533 or Twitter @SentinelPaula
Dos mil 106 haitianos ilegales llegaron a Brasil vía Perú en los últimos 4 meses
Tráfico de personasMafiosos les ofrecen 'viaje seguro' por 5 mil dólares. Los trasladan por tierra de Tumbes a Lima y luego los llevan por Madre de Dios y Loreto al vecino país. En lo que va del 2013 la PNP ha detenido a 679 ilegales.
Ernesto Guerrero L.
Los traficantes de personas que ingresan de manera ilegal a
Brasil vienen operando intensamente desde hace tres
años en el Perú. Cientos de ciudadanos de la República de
Haití, agobiados por la pobreza extrema que afecta ese pequeño
archipiélago ubicado en el mar de las Antillas, recorren
clandestinamente nuestro país guiados por mafiosos internacionales que les
cobran hasta 5 mil dólares para llevarlos a territorio brasileño en busca de
mejor fortuna.
Los nuevos ‘coyotes’ que lucran con la desgracia
ajena desarrollan oleajes migratorios por tierra, siguiendo
dos rutas establecidas. Ante el menor indicio de una
posible intervención de las autoridades, abandonan a sus ‘protegidos’ y
desaparecen.
Según la Policía, entre enero y abril del 2013
fueron detenidos en el Perú 679 haitianos que ingresaron con documentos
falsos por la frontera norte. A todos se les ha abierto
procesos penales y ahora, con orden de comparecencia, deambulan en
diversas ciudades.
Durante el mismo periodo –de acuerdo con cifras oficiales reveladas por las
autoridades de Brasil—, otros 2.106 ilegales de la misma
nacionalidad consiguieron acceder a ese país amazónico
procedentes de territorio peruano.
Indagaciones de la Organización Internacional para Migrantes (OIM) –que
nuestro país integra con otros 141 estados– dan cuenta de que las mafias
involucradas en el tráfico de ciudadanos haitianos tienen ramificaciones en
Haití, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, Colombia y Brasil.
Ello fue corroborado por la Dirección General de Migraciones
y Naturalización (Digemin). Portavoces de ese
organismo dependiente del Ministerio del Interior explicaron
que este problema surgió a principios del 2010, como resultado
de la hambruna generada por el terremoto que devastó Haití el 12 de enero de
dicho año.
El número de haitianos de tránsito en el Perú –precisaron–
se incrementó de 162 registrados en el 2010 a
2.253 en el 2012. Por esta razón, a través del
Decreto Supremo 001-2012-RE, el gobierno resolvió exigir a los
ciudadanos de esa nación visas especiales para acceder a nuestro territorio.
Sin embargo, ello no ha sido suficiente.
Rutas del mal
Se sabe que los 'coyotes' captan a sus 'clientes' en las ciudades de
Aquín, Cap-Haitien, Dame-Marie, Petionville, Saint-Louis Du Nort
y Jamil, que son las zonas más deprimidas de
Haiti.
Por un pago único de 5.000 dólares les ofrecen traslado
seguro y puestos de trabajo rentables en campos agrícolas, así como en empresas
constructoras que realizan modernas edificaciones para desarrollar el mundial de
fútbol del 2014 y las olimpiadas de Río de Janeiro del
2016.
Los migrantes parten por vía aérea desde Puerto Príncipe, capital de Haití,
hacia Ecuador, donde no les exigen visa. Allí reciben
documentación falsa para iniciar su recorrido por territorio peruano. Cruzan la
frontera por Tumbes y en buses son desplazados a Lima vía
Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad y
Áncash.
Desde la capital, según la policía, siguen dos rutas distintas. Una por el
sur oriente, que incluye Puerto Maldonado, Iberia,
Iñapari (Madre de Dios) y Brasil por el
Estado de Acre.
La ruta alterna es por el nororiente, a través de Maynas
(Loreto), para ingresar a la nación brasileña por la frontera
tripartita compartida por Brasil, Colombia y
Perú.
http://www.larepublica.pe/21-05-2013/2106-haitianos-ilegales-llegaron-brasil-peru-en-los-ultimos-4-meses
Ernesto Guerrero L.
Los traficantes de personas que ingresan de manera ilegal a Brasil vienen operando intensamente desde hace tres años en el Perú. Cientos de ciudadanos de la República de Haití, agobiados por la pobreza extrema que afecta ese pequeño archipiélago ubicado en el mar de las Antillas, recorren clandestinamente nuestro país guiados por mafiosos internacionales que les cobran hasta 5 mil dólares para llevarlos a territorio brasileño en busca de mejor fortuna.
Los nuevos ‘coyotes’ que lucran con la desgracia ajena desarrollan oleajes migratorios por tierra, siguiendo dos rutas establecidas. Ante el menor indicio de una posible intervención de las autoridades, abandonan a sus ‘protegidos’ y desaparecen.
Según la Policía, entre enero y abril del 2013 fueron detenidos en el Perú 679 haitianos que ingresaron con documentos falsos por la frontera norte. A todos se les ha abierto procesos penales y ahora, con orden de comparecencia, deambulan en diversas ciudades.
Durante el mismo periodo –de acuerdo con cifras oficiales reveladas por las autoridades de Brasil—, otros 2.106 ilegales de la misma nacionalidad consiguieron acceder a ese país amazónico procedentes de territorio peruano.
Indagaciones de la Organización Internacional para Migrantes (OIM) –que nuestro país integra con otros 141 estados– dan cuenta de que las mafias involucradas en el tráfico de ciudadanos haitianos tienen ramificaciones en Haití, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, Colombia y Brasil.
Ello fue corroborado por la Dirección General de Migraciones y Naturalización (Digemin). Portavoces de ese organismo dependiente del Ministerio del Interior explicaron que este problema surgió a principios del 2010, como resultado de la hambruna generada por el terremoto que devastó Haití el 12 de enero de dicho año.
El número de haitianos de tránsito en el Perú –precisaron– se incrementó de 162 registrados en el 2010 a 2.253 en el 2012. Por esta razón, a través del Decreto Supremo 001-2012-RE, el gobierno resolvió exigir a los ciudadanos de esa nación visas especiales para acceder a nuestro territorio. Sin embargo, ello no ha sido suficiente.
Rutas del mal
Se sabe que los 'coyotes' captan a sus 'clientes' en las ciudades de Aquín, Cap-Haitien, Dame-Marie, Petionville, Saint-Louis Du Nort y Jamil, que son las zonas más deprimidas de Haiti.
Por un pago único de 5.000 dólares les ofrecen traslado seguro y puestos de trabajo rentables en campos agrícolas, así como en empresas constructoras que realizan modernas edificaciones para desarrollar el mundial de fútbol del 2014 y las olimpiadas de Río de Janeiro del 2016.
Los migrantes parten por vía aérea desde Puerto Príncipe, capital de Haití, hacia Ecuador, donde no les exigen visa. Allí reciben documentación falsa para iniciar su recorrido por territorio peruano. Cruzan la frontera por Tumbes y en buses son desplazados a Lima vía Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad y Áncash.
Desde la capital, según la policía, siguen dos rutas distintas. Una por el sur oriente, que incluye Puerto Maldonado, Iberia, Iñapari (Madre de Dios) y Brasil por el Estado de Acre.
La ruta alterna es por el nororiente, a través de Maynas (Loreto), para ingresar a la nación brasileña por la frontera tripartita compartida por Brasil, Colombia y Perú.
http://www.larepublica.pe/21-05-2013/2106-haitianos-ilegales-llegaron-brasil-peru-en-los-ultimos-4-meses
Los traficantes de personas que ingresan de manera ilegal a Brasil vienen operando intensamente desde hace tres años en el Perú. Cientos de ciudadanos de la República de Haití, agobiados por la pobreza extrema que afecta ese pequeño archipiélago ubicado en el mar de las Antillas, recorren clandestinamente nuestro país guiados por mafiosos internacionales que les cobran hasta 5 mil dólares para llevarlos a territorio brasileño en busca de mejor fortuna.
Los nuevos ‘coyotes’ que lucran con la desgracia ajena desarrollan oleajes migratorios por tierra, siguiendo dos rutas establecidas. Ante el menor indicio de una posible intervención de las autoridades, abandonan a sus ‘protegidos’ y desaparecen.
Según la Policía, entre enero y abril del 2013 fueron detenidos en el Perú 679 haitianos que ingresaron con documentos falsos por la frontera norte. A todos se les ha abierto procesos penales y ahora, con orden de comparecencia, deambulan en diversas ciudades.
Durante el mismo periodo –de acuerdo con cifras oficiales reveladas por las autoridades de Brasil—, otros 2.106 ilegales de la misma nacionalidad consiguieron acceder a ese país amazónico procedentes de territorio peruano.
Indagaciones de la Organización Internacional para Migrantes (OIM) –que nuestro país integra con otros 141 estados– dan cuenta de que las mafias involucradas en el tráfico de ciudadanos haitianos tienen ramificaciones en Haití, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, Colombia y Brasil.
Ello fue corroborado por la Dirección General de Migraciones y Naturalización (Digemin). Portavoces de ese organismo dependiente del Ministerio del Interior explicaron que este problema surgió a principios del 2010, como resultado de la hambruna generada por el terremoto que devastó Haití el 12 de enero de dicho año.
El número de haitianos de tránsito en el Perú –precisaron– se incrementó de 162 registrados en el 2010 a 2.253 en el 2012. Por esta razón, a través del Decreto Supremo 001-2012-RE, el gobierno resolvió exigir a los ciudadanos de esa nación visas especiales para acceder a nuestro territorio. Sin embargo, ello no ha sido suficiente.
Rutas del mal
Se sabe que los 'coyotes' captan a sus 'clientes' en las ciudades de Aquín, Cap-Haitien, Dame-Marie, Petionville, Saint-Louis Du Nort y Jamil, que son las zonas más deprimidas de Haiti.
Por un pago único de 5.000 dólares les ofrecen traslado seguro y puestos de trabajo rentables en campos agrícolas, así como en empresas constructoras que realizan modernas edificaciones para desarrollar el mundial de fútbol del 2014 y las olimpiadas de Río de Janeiro del 2016.
Los migrantes parten por vía aérea desde Puerto Príncipe, capital de Haití, hacia Ecuador, donde no les exigen visa. Allí reciben documentación falsa para iniciar su recorrido por territorio peruano. Cruzan la frontera por Tumbes y en buses son desplazados a Lima vía Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad y Áncash.
Desde la capital, según la policía, siguen dos rutas distintas. Una por el sur oriente, que incluye Puerto Maldonado, Iberia, Iñapari (Madre de Dios) y Brasil por el Estado de Acre.
La ruta alterna es por el nororiente, a través de Maynas (Loreto), para ingresar a la nación brasileña por la frontera tripartita compartida por Brasil, Colombia y Perú.
http://www.larepublica.pe/21-05-2013/2106-haitianos-ilegales-llegaron-brasil-peru-en-los-ultimos-4-meses
lundi 25 octobre 2010
Dominican street offers brazen come-ons
AVENIDA DUARTE
On one of Boca Chica's main thoroughfares, the price of sex is negotiable, `all ages' are available and customers are plentiful.
BY GERARDO REYES AND PEDRO PORTAL
GREYES@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic -- Daniela leans on the bar of La Criolla, one of the most popular nightclubs on Avenida Duarte. She arrived here in April after paying a trafficker $70 to get her out of Haiti -- nearly four months after a deadly earthquake devastated her homeland.
She says she is 18 years old and has sex with tourists for money. But her two Dominican friends scoff, telling reporters that she's no older than 16.
Daniela said the money she earns she gives to her mother and aunt, who also survived the quake, which killed an estimated 300,000 people.
She and her girlfriends are part of the local tourism industry that thrives on sex and exploitation, brazenly in the open and despite claims from the government that it has intensified prosecutions and sanctions against smugglers.
The girls here offer themselves on the streets, beaches and waist-deep water. Some girls walk up to restaurant patrons and reach for their crotches. Other girls flash tourists from the back of motorcycles while the drivers slow to a crawl or stop to describe their physical attributes or sexual talents.
Ramón Brito, a tourism police spokesman, said officers are taking ``preventive measures'' to stem the practice.
``It is a continuous struggle,'' he said.
But on a recent night, reporters -- and tourists -- watched a police supervisor stand over a teenage prostitute as she rubbed his belly from a chair. The cop and the girl laughed.
Older men walk along Avenida Duarte holding hands with scantily clad girls.
Another young man who introduced himself as a tour guide boasts that he has ``Haitian girls of all ages.'' The young man described in aberrant detail the shape of the developing body of a 12-year-old. ``Her [breasts] are still growing.''
The industry thrives, and has even become competitive to the point where young Dominican prostitutes complain that Haitian girls who arrived after the earthquake are cutting into their business and about to outnumber them.
``Men who have been here before are confident that the police won't arrest them if they pick up the younger girls,'' said one Dominican girl, age 18, who declined to give her name, fearing reproach from her friends for talking to reporters.
Many of the newcomers seem to be younger than 17 and, despite wearing heavy makeup, skintight dresses and stilettos, often appear embarrassed and awkward when they offer tourists their bodies for less than $30.
``Every day they come over, one tells another and so on, but I think that's wrong,'' said Rosa Elina, a Haitian who does therapeutic massages on the beach. ``We know they are minors but if I ask about their age I'll be in trouble''
Almost all have arrived in the country in caravans of hustlers who charge in cash and in kind.
When the tourism police do organize street sweeps, the Haitian children pass fake Haitian passports among themselves that show they are adults, said one of the young Dominicans.
About 30 yards from the beach, opposite the Hotel Don Juan de Boca Chica, a young Haitian girl -- she claims she is 22 and arrived two months earlier -- approached an El Nuevo Herald reporter to offer him sex in a hotel room, price negotiable. She said she was there with her friend Nanún, a 16-year-old Haitian who left Port-au-Prince in April. Nanún stood nearby, flirting on the beach with an American tourist.
``Her parents died and she found herself on the street,'' said Nanún's friend. ``She's crazy.''
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/23/1888708/dominican-street-offers-brazen.html#ixzz13RBzkyaV
On one of Boca Chica's main thoroughfares, the price of sex is negotiable, `all ages' are available and customers are plentiful.
BY GERARDO REYES AND PEDRO PORTAL
GREYES@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic -- Daniela leans on the bar of La Criolla, one of the most popular nightclubs on Avenida Duarte. She arrived here in April after paying a trafficker $70 to get her out of Haiti -- nearly four months after a deadly earthquake devastated her homeland.
She says she is 18 years old and has sex with tourists for money. But her two Dominican friends scoff, telling reporters that she's no older than 16.
Daniela said the money she earns she gives to her mother and aunt, who also survived the quake, which killed an estimated 300,000 people.
She and her girlfriends are part of the local tourism industry that thrives on sex and exploitation, brazenly in the open and despite claims from the government that it has intensified prosecutions and sanctions against smugglers.
The girls here offer themselves on the streets, beaches and waist-deep water. Some girls walk up to restaurant patrons and reach for their crotches. Other girls flash tourists from the back of motorcycles while the drivers slow to a crawl or stop to describe their physical attributes or sexual talents.
Ramón Brito, a tourism police spokesman, said officers are taking ``preventive measures'' to stem the practice.
``It is a continuous struggle,'' he said.
But on a recent night, reporters -- and tourists -- watched a police supervisor stand over a teenage prostitute as she rubbed his belly from a chair. The cop and the girl laughed.
Older men walk along Avenida Duarte holding hands with scantily clad girls.
Another young man who introduced himself as a tour guide boasts that he has ``Haitian girls of all ages.'' The young man described in aberrant detail the shape of the developing body of a 12-year-old. ``Her [breasts] are still growing.''
The industry thrives, and has even become competitive to the point where young Dominican prostitutes complain that Haitian girls who arrived after the earthquake are cutting into their business and about to outnumber them.
``Men who have been here before are confident that the police won't arrest them if they pick up the younger girls,'' said one Dominican girl, age 18, who declined to give her name, fearing reproach from her friends for talking to reporters.
Many of the newcomers seem to be younger than 17 and, despite wearing heavy makeup, skintight dresses and stilettos, often appear embarrassed and awkward when they offer tourists their bodies for less than $30.
``Every day they come over, one tells another and so on, but I think that's wrong,'' said Rosa Elina, a Haitian who does therapeutic massages on the beach. ``We know they are minors but if I ask about their age I'll be in trouble''
Almost all have arrived in the country in caravans of hustlers who charge in cash and in kind.
When the tourism police do organize street sweeps, the Haitian children pass fake Haitian passports among themselves that show they are adults, said one of the young Dominicans.
About 30 yards from the beach, opposite the Hotel Don Juan de Boca Chica, a young Haitian girl -- she claims she is 22 and arrived two months earlier -- approached an El Nuevo Herald reporter to offer him sex in a hotel room, price negotiable. She said she was there with her friend Nanún, a 16-year-old Haitian who left Port-au-Prince in April. Nanún stood nearby, flirting on the beach with an American tourist.
``Her parents died and she found herself on the street,'' said Nanún's friend. ``She's crazy.''
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/23/1888708/dominican-street-offers-brazen.html#ixzz13RBzkyaV
dimanche 24 octobre 2010
Trafficking, sexual exploitation of Haitian children in the Dominican Republic on the rise
Earthquake survivors are being smuggled across the border, then put to work as prostitutes, peddlers and beggars. Trafficking of Haitian children rises since earthquake
A joint investigation by El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald exposes how the trafficking of Haitian children has risen since the January earthquake. The series shows how boys and girls end up in prostitution, shoe-shining, street-begging, window-washing -- with the proceeds often going to adults who give them housing and food.
MIAMI HERALD / EL NUEVO HERALD
Trafficking of Haitian children rises since earthquake
Victimization of Haitian children in the Dominican Republic
Child trafficking problem grows in wake of Haiti quake
BY GERARDO REYES AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
GREYES@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic -- After several days of going hungry, Marie said she surrendered to sexual propositions made by several men in the park where she begged in this resort town in the south of the Dominican Republic.
Marie, 12, said she had sex with ``many'' of those men, sometimes for a dollar, while her cousins, 13 and 10, begged European and American tourists for coins.
``I was hungry, I lost everything; we didn't know what to do,'' said Marie, explaining her decision to sell her body on the streets of Boca Chica.
The three children told reporters from El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald that they left Port-au-Prince with the help of a smuggler after the January earthquake devastated the city.
Today, the children sell boiled eggs for 10 cents all day, walking in the sun along Duarte Avenue, a bustling runway for juvenile prostitution in the heart of Boca Chica, where newly arrived Haitian girls sashay, offering their bodies to gray-haired tourists.
The story of Marie and her cousins has become commonplace: Since the earthquake more than 7,300 boys and girls have been smuggled out of their homeland to the Dominican Republic by traffickers profiting on the hunger and desperation of Haitian children, and their families. In 2009, the figure was 950, according to one human rights group that monitors child trafficking at 10 border points.
Several smugglers told the newspaper that they operate in cahoots with crooked officers in both countries -- their versions verified by a United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF report and child advocates on both sides of the border.
``All the officials know who the traffickers are, but don't report them. It is a problem that is not going to end because the authorities' sources of income would dry up,'' said Regino Martínez, a Jesuit priest and director of the Border Solidarity Foundation in Dajabón, a Dominican border town.
Martínez has denounced the problem from the pulpit, to community groups and to the heads of CESFRONT, the Dominican Republic's Specialized Corps for Borderland Security.
Leaders in both nations, following the catastrophic earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people, pledged to protect children from predatory smuggling, a historic problem.
And the problem became an international scandal after a church group from Idaho tried to bring 33 children from Haiti to an orphanage it was establishing in the Dominican Republic. Yet one month later, without headlines, smugglers moved 1,411 children out of the country, according to one child protection group in Haiti.
EYEWITNESSES
The newspaper found that the trafficking of children remains, with reporters witnessing smugglers carrying children across a river, handing them to other adults, who put the kids on motorcycles and speed off to shanty towns. Border guards, charged with preventing this very operation, witnessed the incidents and never reacted, the reporters found.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive acknowledged that there has been a lack of political will to tighten the porous 230-mile border between the nations, which he called a ``no man's land and an opening for bigger trafficking.''
``There is not one person who feels they have an interest in controlling the frontier,'' Bellerive told The Miami Herald. ``There are people on the Haitian side who are profiting because they are the ones who organize the trafficking. The same on the Dominican side.''
Dominican President Leonel Fernández did not respond to interview requests but his office sent an e-mail, saying that the government has intensified border security, prosecutions and sanctions against smugglers. ``The Dominican government deeply laments cases involving exploitation and trafficking of Haitian minors,'' the e-mail said.
But Dominican immigration records show only two convictions since 2006. And 800 children a month are brought into the Dominican Republic through different northern border crossings by a loose network of dealers, according to figures from Jano Sikse Border Network (RFJS), which monitors human rights abuses along the border. The traffickers charge an average of $80 per person.
Vice Admiral Sigfrido Pared, the Dominican Republic's director of migration, called the figures plausible, even if his own agency does not track trafficking.
``It might be, but whether they are five, 10 or 20 is worrisome because we know that most of the children are [brought here] to be exploited on the streets by Dominican and Haitian adults.''
The smugglers told the Herald they travel hundreds of miles unhindered through both countries, with caravans of children and with the protection of border patrols, soldiers and immigration officials.
Since February, reporters for El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald visited every clandestine station in the scabrous route children are forced to take.
On this journey, children and traffickers told the newspaper, kids go arm in arm through rivers and jungles; they are shoved onto motorcycles or into buses; some are forced to walk as long as three days without food. Other kids are kidnapped to pressure parents to pay the full price of the trip; some -- as young as 2 years old -- have been abandoned by the smugglers halfway through the journey.
Nelta, a slender 13-year-old Haitian, told The Herald that she walked for three days with two other young girls to reach Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. She said a female trafficker left them at a hideout in that town, the country's second-largest town.
``A man raped me in the shelter,'' said Nelta, who said she left Oanaminthe, a Haitian border town, without her mother's knowledge after the earthquake.
``I can't go home empty-handed,'' she said softly, watching her words in front of the woman who took her to the Dominican Republic. She survived by begging on street corners under a red traffic light. In August she returned home.
Her travel buddy, Weslin, 12, said the same man did not rape her ``because I was obedient.''
The buscones [hustlers], as the smugglers are known, not only deliver children on request. They also deliver them a la carte to strangers. ``You choose the age, what sex, skills of the Haitian kid you want,'' one smuggler told an El Nuevo Herald reporter.
Despite the horror stories, scores of Haitians of all ages -- 250,000 this year, according to Pared -- have long turned to the Dominican Republic because they believe there are more jobs in construction, tourism and service sectors.
But the reality is that children end up begging at traffic lights, darting between cars at busy intersections, or roasting peanuts into the wee hours to sell on street corners, all under the watchful eye of adults who pocket the proceeds of the sale.
LAWS IGNORED
Police officers come and go while hundreds of kids shine shoes and wash car windshields. Other children scour through garbage in landfills for valuables or meals and many girls end up as prostitutes in resort towns like Boca Chica.
Tony, an 11-year-old Haitian boy, told The Herald that he and his friend hand over all of the money they make by washing the windshields of cars on busy Lincoln Avenue in Santo Domingo to a 17-year-old.
``He protected us. He gives us some food and we live with him in a house,'' said Tony, who did not want to reveal his last name. His mother is in Haiti.
All this occurs despite the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic signing treaties and laws to combat child trafficking. A U.S. State Department report this year concluded that the Dominican Republic ``does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.''
According to the report, since 2007 the Dominican government has not convicted any traffickers or government officials involved in trafficking.
``Results in the areas of victim protection and trafficking prevention were also limited,'' the report adds.
Pared, the Dominican migration director, called the State Department findings ``exaggerated.'' He said his country passed a law in 2003 that imposed stricter penalties on child trafficking.
According to Pared, the two most recent convictions for trafficking in Dominican Republic are from 2008 and 2006.
``It's indisputable that we are much to blame, but specific efforts are being made to stop trafficking,'' Pared said.
The Herald obtained a UNICEF report, which previously had not been made public in the Dominican Republic, stating that a border-crossing network has existed since at least 2002 involving ``Haitian traffickers, or `passeurs,' Dominican chauffeurs, and Dominican Army soldiers.''
And Herald reporters repeatedly watched smugglers this summer transport children across the borders unhindered.
The bulk of the child smuggling is concentrated in the sweltering northern border of the island of Hispaniola, between the towns of Dajabón, 180 miles from Santo Domingo, and Oanaminthe in Haiti, separated by the Masacre River.
A chaotic, bi-national wholesale market opens every Friday and Monday in Dajabón. Thousands of merchants and buyers show up, allowing smugglers to pass money -- usually $1 -- via Haitian bag men to Dominican officers, who look the other way as the human cargo moves amid the chaos.
Herald reporters watched adults carrying children across the thigh-deep river or via a bridge without giving an explanation or showing immigration documents as required by law.
The smugglers move freely through the streets of both border towns, where safehouses dedicated to hiding the children operate without hindrance. The regional child abuse prosecutor in Dajabón said her office has not tried a single trafficking case during the past year.
``The CESFRONT is not doing its job and I cannot go down to the river to arrest people,'' said Carmen Minaya, prosecutor for the Adolescent Children's Court.
TELLTALE VIDEO
Gen. Francisco Gil Ramirez, the then-director of CESFRONT, asked Herald reporters during an interview for proof that his guards had been bribed to let undocumented kids enter the country. But the general declined to watch videos shot by The Herald, where middle-men are seen taking cash from Haitians who cross the river and later hand it to CESFRONT guards.
Gil called the claims isolated incidents: ``On all borders in the world people commit mischief and when a soldier commits mischief, we, with great responsibility, subject him to the internal institutional regulations.''
Gil left his office in September; Pared could not explain why.
* * *
A hurdle facing investigators is that in some sectors the buscones -- or finders, as the traffickers are called -- are either feared or considered good: For better or worse they help the children avoid a grim future in Haiti, but sometimes at a cost.
``Thank God he [the buscón] did not beat the children on the road,'' said Josette Pierre a woman whose two sons, 5 and 7, were held hostage by a trafficker because she did not have the full amount for the trip.
The earthquake also created a mass exodus, which makes it hard at times to differentiate between smugglers and parents or relatives crossing the border with kids. Exact figures are hard to come by.
Alexis Alphonse, an RFJS coordinator, makes an almost daily census of the undocumented Haitians who cross the border at 10 key points. He does it by hand. At those points, Alphonse said, the smugglers bring the children, teenagers and adults to wait for drivers who will ferry them to the Dominican Republic.
``I can't tell if a child is going with her father or her mother, or with a stranger who wants to sell her or exploit her. It is impossible, it is a business out of control,'' Alphonse told The Herald.
Still, prosecutors explained to the Herald, the checks and balances sit with the border guards who are required to check documents like passports and visas and identity cards.
Alphonse said trafficking is such a normal business that the buscones don't mind when his agency comes to count kids and adults.
Pared, the Dominican migration director, complained that NGOs surveyors never report trafficking to authorities, but instead run to the news media: ``I have spent a year and two months in this position and have not received a single complaint from them. The thing is, [the NGOs] would lose their reason to exist once the issue is corrected.''
* * *
Regardless, both sides agree that the traffickers operate with impunity.
One buscón approached a Herald reporter and photographer offering children. The customer, he said, chooses the age, sex or skills of the Haitian child he wants.
``Do you want them to speak Spanish?'' asked an intermediary who offered to locate at least two children.
Back in Boca Chica, on a cloudless and sunny Saturday, girls in bikinis played like children in the water or sand as adult men came over and propositioned them. One man, about 70 years old, clad in a yellow Speedo as he walked through thigh-deep water, asked two girls for sex.
That same night along Duarte Avenue, girls in tight dresses and pumps danced in groups waiting to corner the tourists with all kinds of sexual propositions.
Nataly, who said she is 19 years old, but looks younger, said she left Port-au-Prince in August with her two children, ages 5 and 3.
The house where she lived with her husband -- a merchant -- was destroyed by the earthquake and he lost his business, she said.
Having no money to pay the buscón, Nataly said she had to sleep with him twice during the voyage. Never before, she said, had she offered her body in exchange for favors or money.
Nataly said she charges tourists $40 to $50 for sex. Of that amount, she must pay a fee to young hustlers in their 20s who get her customers.
Nataly lives with her two sons in a dirty, bug-infested house without doors or windows, in the midst of a large and expensive residential neighborhood for foreigners, Jardines de Bochachica, north of town.
``I will not return to Haiti,'' she said. ``There is no life there.''
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/23/v-fullstory/1888703/earthquake-survivors-are-being.html#ixzz13JJjeUit
A joint investigation by El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald exposes how the trafficking of Haitian children has risen since the January earthquake. The series shows how boys and girls end up in prostitution, shoe-shining, street-begging, window-washing -- with the proceeds often going to adults who give them housing and food.
MIAMI HERALD / EL NUEVO HERALD
Trafficking of Haitian children rises since earthquake
Victimization of Haitian children in the Dominican Republic
Child trafficking problem grows in wake of Haiti quake
BY GERARDO REYES AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
GREYES@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic -- After several days of going hungry, Marie said she surrendered to sexual propositions made by several men in the park where she begged in this resort town in the south of the Dominican Republic.
Marie, 12, said she had sex with ``many'' of those men, sometimes for a dollar, while her cousins, 13 and 10, begged European and American tourists for coins.
``I was hungry, I lost everything; we didn't know what to do,'' said Marie, explaining her decision to sell her body on the streets of Boca Chica.
The three children told reporters from El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald that they left Port-au-Prince with the help of a smuggler after the January earthquake devastated the city.
Today, the children sell boiled eggs for 10 cents all day, walking in the sun along Duarte Avenue, a bustling runway for juvenile prostitution in the heart of Boca Chica, where newly arrived Haitian girls sashay, offering their bodies to gray-haired tourists.
The story of Marie and her cousins has become commonplace: Since the earthquake more than 7,300 boys and girls have been smuggled out of their homeland to the Dominican Republic by traffickers profiting on the hunger and desperation of Haitian children, and their families. In 2009, the figure was 950, according to one human rights group that monitors child trafficking at 10 border points.
Several smugglers told the newspaper that they operate in cahoots with crooked officers in both countries -- their versions verified by a United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF report and child advocates on both sides of the border.
``All the officials know who the traffickers are, but don't report them. It is a problem that is not going to end because the authorities' sources of income would dry up,'' said Regino Martínez, a Jesuit priest and director of the Border Solidarity Foundation in Dajabón, a Dominican border town.
Martínez has denounced the problem from the pulpit, to community groups and to the heads of CESFRONT, the Dominican Republic's Specialized Corps for Borderland Security.
Leaders in both nations, following the catastrophic earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people, pledged to protect children from predatory smuggling, a historic problem.
And the problem became an international scandal after a church group from Idaho tried to bring 33 children from Haiti to an orphanage it was establishing in the Dominican Republic. Yet one month later, without headlines, smugglers moved 1,411 children out of the country, according to one child protection group in Haiti.
EYEWITNESSES
The newspaper found that the trafficking of children remains, with reporters witnessing smugglers carrying children across a river, handing them to other adults, who put the kids on motorcycles and speed off to shanty towns. Border guards, charged with preventing this very operation, witnessed the incidents and never reacted, the reporters found.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive acknowledged that there has been a lack of political will to tighten the porous 230-mile border between the nations, which he called a ``no man's land and an opening for bigger trafficking.''
``There is not one person who feels they have an interest in controlling the frontier,'' Bellerive told The Miami Herald. ``There are people on the Haitian side who are profiting because they are the ones who organize the trafficking. The same on the Dominican side.''
Dominican President Leonel Fernández did not respond to interview requests but his office sent an e-mail, saying that the government has intensified border security, prosecutions and sanctions against smugglers. ``The Dominican government deeply laments cases involving exploitation and trafficking of Haitian minors,'' the e-mail said.
But Dominican immigration records show only two convictions since 2006. And 800 children a month are brought into the Dominican Republic through different northern border crossings by a loose network of dealers, according to figures from Jano Sikse Border Network (RFJS), which monitors human rights abuses along the border. The traffickers charge an average of $80 per person.
Vice Admiral Sigfrido Pared, the Dominican Republic's director of migration, called the figures plausible, even if his own agency does not track trafficking.
``It might be, but whether they are five, 10 or 20 is worrisome because we know that most of the children are [brought here] to be exploited on the streets by Dominican and Haitian adults.''
The smugglers told the Herald they travel hundreds of miles unhindered through both countries, with caravans of children and with the protection of border patrols, soldiers and immigration officials.
Since February, reporters for El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald visited every clandestine station in the scabrous route children are forced to take.
On this journey, children and traffickers told the newspaper, kids go arm in arm through rivers and jungles; they are shoved onto motorcycles or into buses; some are forced to walk as long as three days without food. Other kids are kidnapped to pressure parents to pay the full price of the trip; some -- as young as 2 years old -- have been abandoned by the smugglers halfway through the journey.
Nelta, a slender 13-year-old Haitian, told The Herald that she walked for three days with two other young girls to reach Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. She said a female trafficker left them at a hideout in that town, the country's second-largest town.
``A man raped me in the shelter,'' said Nelta, who said she left Oanaminthe, a Haitian border town, without her mother's knowledge after the earthquake.
``I can't go home empty-handed,'' she said softly, watching her words in front of the woman who took her to the Dominican Republic. She survived by begging on street corners under a red traffic light. In August she returned home.
Her travel buddy, Weslin, 12, said the same man did not rape her ``because I was obedient.''
The buscones [hustlers], as the smugglers are known, not only deliver children on request. They also deliver them a la carte to strangers. ``You choose the age, what sex, skills of the Haitian kid you want,'' one smuggler told an El Nuevo Herald reporter.
Despite the horror stories, scores of Haitians of all ages -- 250,000 this year, according to Pared -- have long turned to the Dominican Republic because they believe there are more jobs in construction, tourism and service sectors.
But the reality is that children end up begging at traffic lights, darting between cars at busy intersections, or roasting peanuts into the wee hours to sell on street corners, all under the watchful eye of adults who pocket the proceeds of the sale.
LAWS IGNORED
Police officers come and go while hundreds of kids shine shoes and wash car windshields. Other children scour through garbage in landfills for valuables or meals and many girls end up as prostitutes in resort towns like Boca Chica.
Tony, an 11-year-old Haitian boy, told The Herald that he and his friend hand over all of the money they make by washing the windshields of cars on busy Lincoln Avenue in Santo Domingo to a 17-year-old.
``He protected us. He gives us some food and we live with him in a house,'' said Tony, who did not want to reveal his last name. His mother is in Haiti.
All this occurs despite the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic signing treaties and laws to combat child trafficking. A U.S. State Department report this year concluded that the Dominican Republic ``does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.''
According to the report, since 2007 the Dominican government has not convicted any traffickers or government officials involved in trafficking.
``Results in the areas of victim protection and trafficking prevention were also limited,'' the report adds.
Pared, the Dominican migration director, called the State Department findings ``exaggerated.'' He said his country passed a law in 2003 that imposed stricter penalties on child trafficking.
According to Pared, the two most recent convictions for trafficking in Dominican Republic are from 2008 and 2006.
``It's indisputable that we are much to blame, but specific efforts are being made to stop trafficking,'' Pared said.
The Herald obtained a UNICEF report, which previously had not been made public in the Dominican Republic, stating that a border-crossing network has existed since at least 2002 involving ``Haitian traffickers, or `passeurs,' Dominican chauffeurs, and Dominican Army soldiers.''
And Herald reporters repeatedly watched smugglers this summer transport children across the borders unhindered.
The bulk of the child smuggling is concentrated in the sweltering northern border of the island of Hispaniola, between the towns of Dajabón, 180 miles from Santo Domingo, and Oanaminthe in Haiti, separated by the Masacre River.
A chaotic, bi-national wholesale market opens every Friday and Monday in Dajabón. Thousands of merchants and buyers show up, allowing smugglers to pass money -- usually $1 -- via Haitian bag men to Dominican officers, who look the other way as the human cargo moves amid the chaos.
Herald reporters watched adults carrying children across the thigh-deep river or via a bridge without giving an explanation or showing immigration documents as required by law.
The smugglers move freely through the streets of both border towns, where safehouses dedicated to hiding the children operate without hindrance. The regional child abuse prosecutor in Dajabón said her office has not tried a single trafficking case during the past year.
``The CESFRONT is not doing its job and I cannot go down to the river to arrest people,'' said Carmen Minaya, prosecutor for the Adolescent Children's Court.
TELLTALE VIDEO
Gen. Francisco Gil Ramirez, the then-director of CESFRONT, asked Herald reporters during an interview for proof that his guards had been bribed to let undocumented kids enter the country. But the general declined to watch videos shot by The Herald, where middle-men are seen taking cash from Haitians who cross the river and later hand it to CESFRONT guards.
Gil called the claims isolated incidents: ``On all borders in the world people commit mischief and when a soldier commits mischief, we, with great responsibility, subject him to the internal institutional regulations.''
Gil left his office in September; Pared could not explain why.
* * *
A hurdle facing investigators is that in some sectors the buscones -- or finders, as the traffickers are called -- are either feared or considered good: For better or worse they help the children avoid a grim future in Haiti, but sometimes at a cost.
``Thank God he [the buscón] did not beat the children on the road,'' said Josette Pierre a woman whose two sons, 5 and 7, were held hostage by a trafficker because she did not have the full amount for the trip.
The earthquake also created a mass exodus, which makes it hard at times to differentiate between smugglers and parents or relatives crossing the border with kids. Exact figures are hard to come by.
Alexis Alphonse, an RFJS coordinator, makes an almost daily census of the undocumented Haitians who cross the border at 10 key points. He does it by hand. At those points, Alphonse said, the smugglers bring the children, teenagers and adults to wait for drivers who will ferry them to the Dominican Republic.
``I can't tell if a child is going with her father or her mother, or with a stranger who wants to sell her or exploit her. It is impossible, it is a business out of control,'' Alphonse told The Herald.
Still, prosecutors explained to the Herald, the checks and balances sit with the border guards who are required to check documents like passports and visas and identity cards.
Alphonse said trafficking is such a normal business that the buscones don't mind when his agency comes to count kids and adults.
Pared, the Dominican migration director, complained that NGOs surveyors never report trafficking to authorities, but instead run to the news media: ``I have spent a year and two months in this position and have not received a single complaint from them. The thing is, [the NGOs] would lose their reason to exist once the issue is corrected.''
* * *
Regardless, both sides agree that the traffickers operate with impunity.
One buscón approached a Herald reporter and photographer offering children. The customer, he said, chooses the age, sex or skills of the Haitian child he wants.
``Do you want them to speak Spanish?'' asked an intermediary who offered to locate at least two children.
Back in Boca Chica, on a cloudless and sunny Saturday, girls in bikinis played like children in the water or sand as adult men came over and propositioned them. One man, about 70 years old, clad in a yellow Speedo as he walked through thigh-deep water, asked two girls for sex.
That same night along Duarte Avenue, girls in tight dresses and pumps danced in groups waiting to corner the tourists with all kinds of sexual propositions.
Nataly, who said she is 19 years old, but looks younger, said she left Port-au-Prince in August with her two children, ages 5 and 3.
The house where she lived with her husband -- a merchant -- was destroyed by the earthquake and he lost his business, she said.
Having no money to pay the buscón, Nataly said she had to sleep with him twice during the voyage. Never before, she said, had she offered her body in exchange for favors or money.
Nataly said she charges tourists $40 to $50 for sex. Of that amount, she must pay a fee to young hustlers in their 20s who get her customers.
Nataly lives with her two sons in a dirty, bug-infested house without doors or windows, in the midst of a large and expensive residential neighborhood for foreigners, Jardines de Bochachica, north of town.
``I will not return to Haiti,'' she said. ``There is no life there.''
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/23/v-fullstory/1888703/earthquake-survivors-are-being.html#ixzz13JJjeUit
dimanche 5 septembre 2010
Deux haïtiens condamnés en Floride pour le naufrage d’un bateau
Jimmy Métellus, le capitaine, et Jean Morange Nelson passeront respectivement 14 et 13 ans en taule après avoir reconnu leur responsabilité dans le décès tragique d’au moins neuf boat people Samedi 4 septembre 2010, Radio Kiskeya
La justice américaine a condamné vendredi à 14 ans de prison ferme un ressortissant haïtien, Jimmy Métellus, capitaine d’un bateau ayant provoqué, en 2009, la mort d’au moins neuf compatriotes qui tentaient d’atteindre illégalement les côtes de la Floride.
Selon le quotidien Palm Beach Post, le juge fédéral de district, Kenneth Mara, a prononcé son verdict contre le condamné après qu’il eut plaidé coupable en juin dernier de trafic d’êtres humains.
Un deuxième haïtien impliqué dans la catastrophe maritime, Jean Morange Nelson, 33 ans, a été condamné à 13 ans de réclusion.
Les rescapés du naufrage survenu en mai 2009 avaient dénoncé le capitaine de l’embarcation qui leur avait promis une traversée sûre et confortable.
25 personnes se trouvaient à bord lorsque subitement le bateau se retourna et coula en face des côtes de la Floride.
Les garde-côtes américains avaient pu recueillir neuf cadavres, dont ceux d’un bébé et d’une femme enceinte.
Chaque année, des centaines de compatriotes poussés par l’insécurité économique cherchent à émigrer illégalement aux Etats-Unis à bord de dangereuses embarcations de fortune. spp/Radio Kiskeya
http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article7014
La justice américaine a condamné vendredi à 14 ans de prison ferme un ressortissant haïtien, Jimmy Métellus, capitaine d’un bateau ayant provoqué, en 2009, la mort d’au moins neuf compatriotes qui tentaient d’atteindre illégalement les côtes de la Floride.
Selon le quotidien Palm Beach Post, le juge fédéral de district, Kenneth Mara, a prononcé son verdict contre le condamné après qu’il eut plaidé coupable en juin dernier de trafic d’êtres humains.
Un deuxième haïtien impliqué dans la catastrophe maritime, Jean Morange Nelson, 33 ans, a été condamné à 13 ans de réclusion.
Les rescapés du naufrage survenu en mai 2009 avaient dénoncé le capitaine de l’embarcation qui leur avait promis une traversée sûre et confortable.
25 personnes se trouvaient à bord lorsque subitement le bateau se retourna et coula en face des côtes de la Floride.
Les garde-côtes américains avaient pu recueillir neuf cadavres, dont ceux d’un bébé et d’une femme enceinte.
Chaque année, des centaines de compatriotes poussés par l’insécurité économique cherchent à émigrer illégalement aux Etats-Unis à bord de dangereuses embarcations de fortune. spp/Radio Kiskeya
http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article7014
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