|
UK - Africa – Child Trafficking
ME/daj/APA
28-01-2008
APA - London (United Kingdom) A joint operation of the UK police
and a coalition of child rights bodies, over the weekend uncovered
the human trafficking ring through which thousands of young
African children were being sold and trafficked to Britain to be
exploited as ‘modern-day slavery’.
The operations into the illicit trade in children – sold by their
parents, some while still babies, to criminal gangs and people
traffickers - were conducted, using the undercover adopters and
fake traders, who were offered hundreds of children for sale by
their parents in Nigeria: boys aged three and five for £5,000 each,
while teenage girls - including some still pregnant – were willing
to sell their babies for less than £1,000.
The UK police said the swoop followed a surveillance operation
that began in 2007 following a surge in petty thefts and
shop-lifting linked to children in the Westminster district of
London.
In the latest swoop, police say that one international trafficker
tracked down in Lagos, claimed to be buying up to 500 children a
year.
“Impoverished African parents are being lured by the traffickers’
promises of a ‘better life’ for their children, thousands of miles
away in UK cities, mostly London, Birmingham and Manchester. And
once brought to Britain, the children are used as a fraudulent
means to obtain illicit housing and other welfare benefits,
totaling hundreds of thousands of pounds.
From the age of seven, rather than being sent to school, they are
exploited as domestic slaves, forced to work up to 18 hours a day,
cleaning, cooking and looking after other young children, or put
to work in restaurants and shops.
Some of the children are also subjected to physical and sexual
abuse, while others even find themselves accused of being witches
and become victims of exorcism rites in ‘traditional African
churches in Britain.
Now campaigners are calling for the government and the police to
take urgent action to end this “21st century child slavery”.
“These children are being abused under our noses in our own
country” said Chris Beddoe, the director of ‘End Child
Prostitution and Trafficking’, a UK-based coalition of
international charities.
Government statistics show that 25,000 children, including 14 aged
under 12, many of them from Africa, had been trafficked to Britain
over the past year.
The police and campaigners believe, however, that this figure is
likely to double, unless urgent action is taken to curb the
situation, by ditching these predatory traffickers who are cashing
in on their ability to persuade desperately poor and often
illiterate parents to hand over their children.
The children are then sold to families in Britain and other
European and North American cities.
The traffickers use a network of corrupt officials and
co-traffickers to obtain passports and visas, often giving the
children new names.
Many of the young victims are flown directly from Lagos in Nigeria
to London’s airports. Others are taken via other West African
states such as Ghana and Benin, to transit cities, including
Paris, security agents disclosed.
They also said that Britain is overwhelmed by the growing number
of the African ‘slave’ children who arrive in the UK unaccompanied,
as asylum-seekers, or with private foster parents.
Debbie Ariyo, the executive director of the London-based charity
‘Africans Unite Against Child Abuse’, said: “This trade is a
disgrace. These children are not going to loving homes.
|
