U.S. KEEPS ARMENIA ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING ‘WATCH LIST’
By Emil Danielyan
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
June 6 2006
The United States has placed Armenia on its human trafficking
“watch list” for a second consecutive year, citing the Armenian
government’s failure to take tough action against prostitution rings
and law-enforcement officials allegedly connected with them.
In its annual Trafficking in Persons Report released Monday, the U.S.
State Department said Armenia remains a “major source and, to a
lesser extent, a transit and destination country for women and girls
trafficked for sexual exploitation largely to the United Arab Emirates
and Turkey.”
“While the government increased implementation of its anti-trafficking
law, it failed to impose significant penalties for convicted
traffickers,” reads the report. “The government failed to vigorously
investigate and prosecute ongoing and widespread allegations of public
officials’ complicity in trafficking.”
The report covering the entire world is a further blow to the
credibility of Yerevan’s assurances that it is doing its best to tackle
the problem. Armenian officials point to a toughening of punishment
against the practice and a rise in the number of relevant criminal
cases brought by law-enforcement bodies.
The Armenian Prosecutor-General’s Office estimates that criminal groups
sent at least 140 Armenian women abroad, mainly to the UAE, for sexual
exploitation last year. It says it opened 30 trafficking-related cases
in the course of 2005, resulting in 14 prosecutions and 17 convictions.
The State Department dismissed these figures, saying that both Armenian
prosecutors and courts remain too lenient towards traffickers. “During
the reporting period, only a few convictions resulted in actual
imprisonment; the remaining offenders received suspended sentences,
corrective labor and fines,” says its report.
“Lack of public confidence and allegations of official complicity
continued to hurt the credibility of the government’s anti-trafficking
efforts.”
The report specifically mentions media reports that accused a senior
prosecutor of closely collaborating with Armenian prostitution rings
active in the UAE. A series of investigative reports that appeared
in the Hetq.am online publication last year quoted several unnamed
Armenian prostitutes in Dubai as saying that they and their notorious
pimp paid the official, Aristakes Yeremian, thousands of dollars
in bribes.
Yeremian strongly denied the allegations in an RFE/RL interview in
April 2005. He said he met Armenian pimps in Dubai in September 2004
only to “question” and warn them against continuing their illegal
activities. He was cleared of any wrongdoing in an official inquiry
conducted by the Prosecutor-General’s office earlier this year.
Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian ordered the inquiry following
an embarrassing “interim assessment” of the situation with human
trafficking in Armenia which was released by the State Department
on February 1. The document noted that “a government official, who
has been frequently criticized by victims and NGOs for trafficking
complacency, remains in his position within the Prosecutor General’s
anti-trafficking task force.”
The authorities largely ignored the problem of human trafficking until
the State Department included Armenia in 2002 into its Tier 3 group of
nations which Washington believes are doing little to prevent illegal
cross-border transport of human beings and can therefore be stripped
of U.S. economic assistance. Armenia was removed from the blacklist
and upgraded to the Tier 2 category the next year after what the State
Department described as “significant efforts” taken by its government.
However, the department went on to downgrade the country to a Tier 2
“watch list” in June 2005, citing the Armenian authorities’ “failure
to show evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking over
the past year.” Its latest report draws very similar conclusions.
Furthermore, the 2006 report expresses concern at a “dramatic” increase
in profits reportedly made by the Armenian traffickers over the past
year. It also notes that Armenian law-enforcement bodies and courts
are often hostile toward trafficking victims. “Some victims continue
to receive poor treatment during court cases, reducing the likelihood
of future victims willing to come forward to testify against their
traffickers,” it says.