Greece to Crack Down on Sex Traffickers

Greece is poised to pass draconian legislation to fight Europe's burgeoning trade in people-trafficking, after revelations that one in two Greek men has used a sex slave.

Outrage at Greece's reluctance to combat the trade has been compounded by growing evidence that the country is the transit route most favoured by traffickers dealing in women and children.

Girls as young as 12, often abducted and then held in debt bondage, are among an estimated 40,000 trafficked females serving more than a million Greeks - a third of the sexually active male population - every year.

"Greece's geographic position as a frontier state, at the crossroads of east and west, has made it the centre of trafficking in Europe," criminology professor Grigoris Lazos said.

Most victims come from the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and, increasingly, Africa. In Albania, Moldova, southern Bulgaria and Romania, entire towns have been robbed of their young female populations, sociologists say. While some victims are kidnapped at gunpoint, others are lured by promises of marriage, jobs and better living conditions.

"At least one in two men, and half of all married men here, go with prostitutes who are mainly foreign women forced into the sex trade," Thanos Askitis, a socialist MP said.

Last year Greece was criticised by the US state department for its failure to combat the trafficking, protect victims or even acknowledge that the trade exists within its borders.

Legislation drafted by the government four months ago was seen as falling far short of international anti-trafficking standards and excluded many victims, including "traffic light children" coerced into labour at roadsides, such as selling flowers or washing cars, and women enslaved as domestic servants.

"Greece is a very conservative country," added Prof Lazos, who helped to amend the legislation being debated by parliament's human rights committee. "For a long time words such as 'prostitution' and 'trafficking' were regarded as too dirty even to raise in the house."

Smugglers are increasingly using tourist beaches as landing points. From there the victims are taken to border towns and villages where, in the case of sex slaves, they are put to work in bars and discos.

Corrupt police, border control and state officials facilitate the industry.

The trade has spread as the Greek underworld has been infiltrated by mafia groups from eastern Europe.

"The introduction of the common currency in Europe has made this terrible trade that much easier," Prof Lazos said. "Trafficking has also flourished as borders have receded in importance."