Child-Trafficking in Guinea-Bissau

“Dortmunder Mitternachtsmission e.V.” is an aid-organisation that helps people who came to Germany through human-trafficking for example by giving them tips which institutions they should address to get support by the state or by giving them material supply. This month a lady died in Haltern am See (Germany) and the newspaper “Halterner Zeitung” says that for her own funeral she arranged that those attending this event shall not spend any money on flowers, funeral wreathes & co. and instead use the amount of money they would have spent on these things for a donation to this organisation.
Donation-account:
Stadtsparkasse Dortmund
Bank-Account: 151 003 168
BIC: 440 501 99
SEPA:DE41440501990151003168
Swift-Bic.: DORTDE33XXX
Stichwort /Keywort /Use /Verwendung /Note /Vermerk: Elli Jörgens

“Domradio” – a German Roman-Catholic radio station – says that the global Roman-Catholic “Caritas” now talked about an issue that nobody would associate with child-labor or child-trafficking: Child-soldiers in armed conflicts! In armed conflicts – like the Syrian Revolution or the fight against the running government of Afghanistan by Taliban-fighters in Afghanistan – it often happens that underage boys and girls alike get forced to fight on the battlefield. In most of these approximately 250.000 cases these children were kidnapped by human-traffickers before and simply sold to armies like these.
To fight this the aid-organisation has the following ideas:
>Start a petition or write letters to your government in which you politely ask them not to export any further arms to countries that are known to be under the influence of some civil-war like armed conflict.
>Become a volunteer for one of those organisations that also make some public service advertising in these countries to inform people about child-trafficking or at least donate to them…or write a letter to governments of countries that are known to have a problem with child-trafficking and encourage them to start their own public service advertising about the dangers of child-trafficking.
>In many developing countries child-traffickers and militant groups that use child-soldiers can easily get away with their crimes as they bribe corrupt police officers and as there just aren’t too many well trained police officers around. Write letters to the governments of these countries or start a petition to encourage them to do something about that…better wages for police officers, more advertising to win young people for this job, stricter punishment for police officers who proved themselves corrupt etc.
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Re-upload: As far as I’m informed, a man planned to smuggle these children to Senegal. Meanwhile this so called “child-trafficking” has become a big issue in developing countries. The “smuggled goods” often are street children, but luckily there are organisations that want to put an end to this, e.g. the organisation, you get informed about on this website: “http://www.streetchildafrica.org.uk/pages/senegal.html”. They are great! They even give YOU the chance of getting involved!
Also “Domradio” says that if you want fair-trade products, you should look for labels that belong to the “Fair Wear Foundation” or “IVN Best”.

This Saturday next to the “Brandenburger Tor” in Berlin hundreds of people took part in the “Walk For Freedom” – a demonstration against human-trafficking. They demonstrated against child-labor, forced prostitution, forced marriage, forced labor, humiliating transportation of refugees by human traffickers, abduction and some more. “Tagesschau” said that!

My comment from January 30th seems to have vanished and I don’t know why. I just don’t understand what went wrong /what I did wrong:
“On Wednesday a member of the German trade union “Faire Mobilität” held a speech in “Seminarraum 9” in the “Theologicum” in Tübingen at quarter past 6PM. The subject was “Human-Trafficking in Germany” which was a subject that interested both my friend Sabine and me so we were looking forward to this:
Migrant workers from Italy, Greece, Spain and the East of Europe are the group of people that are the likeliest to fall victim to human-trafficking in Germany as they don’t know German too well nor have any knowledge considering how Germany as a system works. For example they don’t know much about additional labor costs, German employment protection, about German contract law, minimum wage etc., but all they know usually is that Germany has a health system and offers them work or an apprenticeship. Now your first thought may be that this does not matter as long as these migrant workers find conditions that are as good as or even a bit better than the working conditions in the countries they came from. However it in fact does matter! The lady who made this report says it often happens that migrant workers get paid wages that are so low they can’t even afford a ticket and when against any employment protection Germany has they get dismissed instantly right where they’re standing – which already has happened very often; especially in the German building industry from where also many other cases of unfair treatment were reported – they neither know who could help them juristically seen nor do they have the money to get there – which of course would have been much different where they grew up. Also in Germany prices are so high, because they expect you to at least get some minimum wages which many migrant workers don’t receive. This wouldn’t have happened either in the country where they grew up.
Besides the countries these migrants leave would have urgently needed them. Rumania for example is running out of doctors, because all medicine students come to Germany after their studies, but it’s also running out of engineers, as German enterprises misuse them to do hard physical work for much lower wages than they would pay to a German – as they can do that; after all these Rumanians have no idea that in Germany engineers usually don’t do any hard physical work and are paid high amounts of money.
Actually now that I think of it, it is a shame that this situation went completely unnoticed for decades. People saw no need in founding this organization. It wasn’t until the worldwide economic crises that they felt the need to assist the thousands of Greeks, Spaniards and Italians who now didn’t have a choice, but to find work in Germany. Hundreds or rather thousands of Turkish workers have been living here since the 60’s or even 50’s under similar conditions and as it seems they had none to help them. Even now there are some barriers as in case of unfair treatment of a migrant worker “Faire Mobilität” is not allowed to bring a charge or to assist as a lawyer. They aren’t even allowed to visit the place where the worker got mistreated even if it’s just for picking him or her up after said person received an instant and unfounded dismissal. Sure they are allowed to help the victim of unfair treatment writing his or her bill of indictment and of course they can also give tips, like which lawyer would be best or how they should formulate their arguments while being in court and as every ordinary citizen they can report it to the police if they witness a case of mistreatment of a foreign worker, but that’s it.
Apart from low payment and unfounded instant dismissal – which I already mentioned – other cases of unfair treatment of the workers include: making them work much longer than would be legal every single day, making them work seven days a week, not paying them anything even though they almost managed to do as much as they were required to do within a certain period of time, supervising them all the time, not even allowing them to use the restroom while they work, changing the working-contract very often and usually to the detriment of the worker, not even giving them a rest long enough to drink as much as would be healthy, threatening them with punishment whenever they just make a noise, threatening to dismiss them whenever they complain about something, paying German workers some extra-money for working overtime while denying foreign workers their extra-money if they also start working overtime inspired by these German workers and maybe there are some more things.
There may be statistics saying that within the last few years bad treatment of migrant workers has been increasing, but interestingly the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation doesn’t forcibly see this as a bad sign. They say it could also mean that maybe people start caring for these migrants and make more anonymous reports. Also it is possible that thanks to easier access to the Internet these migrant workers can inform themselves more thoroughly on what working conditions should be like in Germany.
She finished her report by bringing up the question whether or not the bad treatment of migrant workers actually is human-trafficking. According to her conclusion it actually is human-trafficking as there in fact are people deliberately luring them to Germany and to places that have these horrible working conditions. Similar to those human-traffickers who use fake contracts and false promises to lure women into forced prostitution in another country, they also use fake contracts that promise them things which in fact aren’t even true – like that one example where a young gentleman was told that this enterprise would provide him with an acceptable apartment to live in and still provide him with a sufficient amount of money and even an involved apprenticeship, while in reality they made him live in a rundown apartment where the heater wasn’t working, he had little to no access to electricity and he had to share this small flat with some total strangers. Of course the “sufficient” amount of money wasn’t “sufficient” to survive in Germany either, while they made him work until exhaustion. Yes, work! The promised apprenticeship was a lie!
Still the so-called twilight zones are what she calls the worst. Let’s pretend a Polish trucker needs to deliver something to a German enterprise. Should said German enterprise pay him the minimal wages according to their standard or should they perhaps let his Polish employer let him pay the Polish minimal wages? In the end nobody feels responsible for paying him.
Now some tips how you an find out you fell for a human-trafficker:
>They lied to you about which work you are supposed to do, about where you do your work, about the circumstances under which you do your work, where you spend your free time and about who is your employer.
>There are indications that your contract may be fake.
>They constantly change your contract.
>They never made their promise true that later you would be permitted to bring your family over to Germany.
>The police is contacting you, because according to what they know you aren’t even allowed to work in Germany.
>They already lied to you when they told you about the conditions under which you are brought to Germany.
>The would-be human-trafficker seems to be interested in you and promises you that once you join this person in Germany he /she will marry you or alternatively make you his /her heir. Usually this is a trick, but at the latest when he or she hasn’t made good on his /her promise, you may realize that something’s fishy.
>When you come to Germany you realize that the promised apprenticeship actually is just a low-paid job.
>The people promising you work in Germany or your employer is acting violently towards you. In Germany this is illegal.
>The presumed human-trafficker gets paid with you knowing it just for tempting you to come to Germany.
>They force you to come to Germany to work for this or that person – even if it is just forcing by intimidation.
>They tell you to give your identity card, reports or other certificates to them.
>You think you work too hard and yet only receive very low wages.
>They isolate or supervise you.
>They threaten to anounce you to the authorities, the whole community you live in or even a larger public.
>They allow you to bring your family over, but either treat them bad or threaten to do harm to them if you don’t obey to their very commands.
>They forcefully take away money from you while refusing to pay you some extra-money for working overtime.
>The presumed human-trafficker “coincidentally” offers you said employment just when you are in great need of money, better education, a place to live etc.
>You later find out that there was something you did not know when signing the contract. This could be anything from them withholding some papers belonging to the contract from you to not knowing about your legal status here – like that they are not allowed to make you work on Sunday, that there is a minimal amount of money they have to pay to you or that making workers work until exhaustion is illegal or that you have the right to contact the authorities when in serious doubt about your employment.
>They control your everyday life.
>You realize that for unknown reasons they know about psychological issues you have or traumatic experiences you’ve been through. If there really is no other plausible explanation this implies that they’ve been spying before offering you this contract.
>They ask you for something you know is illegal or against public policy in Germany, even though already making you do things your culture considers immoral is illegal.
>They blackmail you with true or false stuff.
>You realize they try to make you depend on them permanently.
>You already are in Germany, but have difficulties in this country – like not feeling integrated into society, discrimination against you while trying to find a job etc. – and then suddenly a stranger comes by and asks you to work for this or that person.”

>“Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker” says that even though most Europeans think that all LDC’s suffer from political conflicts, terrorism, extremism, religious fanatism, intercultural conflicts, in this case human-trafficking etc. – and see this as an excuse not to help these countries as they seemingly just have too many problems to be helped -, there actually are a few countries that are doing quite well giving us hope that other LDC’s like Guinea-Bissau someday will be like that, too. Ghana for example: Most citizens show religious tolerance, they are democratic even according to European standards, the government is elected and the last few elections where the old leading party was replaced by a new one went without any remarkable trouble.
>The reporter implied that almostall African countries have problems like these – also with the production of clothing: “Tagesschau” says that in Ghana 20.000 people already lost their jobs in he textile-branch as it often happens when Ghanan designers create a new pattern someone from China comes, buys a little peace of cloth that contains this pattern and then tells his company to produce their own clothes that contain this pattern. As production in China is less expensive than in Ghana people automatically prefer buying the Chinese copycat-pattern. Meanwhile the government of Ghana even burns these fake products as soon as they end up on markets in Ghana and are reported as copycat-patterns.