A 55-year-old man, for example, who promises especially young Ukrainian women to take them to Hamburg in his car and is already known to the police for sexual assaults. There is another 29-year-old man who, together with his friend aged 21 and under, targets women travelling alone or with children. And there are two men, aged 50 and 53, in refugee first aid who give money to women from Ukraine to go home with them."
"Unfortunately there are people who take advantage of the desperation and distress of refugees arriving in Germany. Their attitude is so conspicuous that it catches the eyes of both volunteers and the federal police. These cases are few and far between and no illegal act has been committed, no attempt has been successful, a spokesman for the federal police, which guards Germany's train stations, told Deutsche Welle.
Rules for dealing with would-be traffickers
A huge wave of solidarity and willingness to help Ukrainian refugees is currently sweeping Germany. However, with more than 80,000 people having sought refuge in Germany to escape the war, human traffickers now sense an opportunity for action. The daily chaos at Berlin's central train station offers them almost perfect conditions to harass women. "We have just dealt with one case of an angry Ukrainian woman who suffered just that. We even had to remove these men. We have on the one hand a huge number of people who want to help with sincere intentions, and on the other hand people who are exploiting the unrest for personal gain," say police officers. Volunteers say they took after traffickers until they released the women. Police responded and posted warnings in Ukrainian, Russian and English on social media. In the morning meetings at the train station, groups of volunteers are raising awareness of the issue. But is all this enough to protect refugees?
More than 20 years ago, social worker Monika Sischeck-Evans founded "Jadwiga" in Munich, a counselling centre for victims of human trafficking. The Polish version of Hedwig's female name "Hedwiga" as the name of the organisation was deliberately chosen because it is mainly women from Eastern Europe who fall into the clutches of criminals. Sisek-Evans and her team are currently working on a brochure in Ukrainian that will be available at railway stations in the coming days. It includes instructions such as, don't let your passport out of your hand, always have your phone with you, take a picture of your license plate number before getting into a car, show your ID when offered an apartment or room, write down your name and address, be careful if someone promises you a lot of money quickly.
"We are the brothel of Europe"
If anyone can explain how quickly a woman can slip into forced prostitution, it's Huske Mau. The author and activist under this pseudonym worked as a prostitute herself for ten years and has now written an autobiographical book. The title is symbolic of her struggle, "Dehumanization Why we must abolish prostitution". "Every day 1.2 million men go to a prostitute here. Germany is the number one destination country for human trafficking in the entire EU," she says. "We are the brothel of Europe, this should be shameful for us. And because the market and demand is so high, human traffickers and pimps approach Ukrainian women at the dock because they know that refugees can bring them a lot of money." On Twitter and in so-called customer forums German men are already expressing themselves publicly and talking about new "whores from Ukraine", the brothels they frequent and fantasies of rape with Ukrainian "sex slaves".
"An assistant told me that one Ukrainian woman didn't even dare to drink anything on the dock because she was afraid of ending up in a brothel in case someone put a sleeping pill in her glass. Very soon we will see brothels full of Ukrainian women and that is shameful," says Huske Mai. "Many people just intend to be helpful, but Ukrainian women should, when they arrive here, be suspicious that behind every man there is a brothel client." The activist fears that after the terrible experiences during the war, women and girls travelling alone from Ukraine could face the next traumatic experience in Germany.
Source: DW
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