Victor Malarek - The Natashas

Another key corridor leads from the southern Bulgarian “golden triangle” of Blagoevgrad, Sandanski and Petric to Greece. Young women from Russia, Romania, Georgia and Ukraine are moved by trafficking rings into a number of hotels in these Bulgarian towns. They’re met by Greek gangsters who arrive in a regular stream to choose and place their orders, and even to test them out first-hand. The women are then entrusted to local smugglers, adept at navigating the treacherous mountain routes on the Greek–Bulgarian border, and are delivered to their new owners. Other trafficked women are destined for Turkey, yet another bustling market for Eastern European women, especially Ukrainians. To get to Turkey, traffickers travel overland through Georgia and Bulgaria and on boats from the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa en route to Istanbul and Ankara. Traffickers have also carved out smuggling routes through the Baltic States into the Scandinavian countries.

The geography and circumstance of trafficking women, however, is fluid and ever changing. At the beginning of the 1990s the prime sending countries were Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. A decade later these remain important countries of origin but have also become major destination points. Most of the women trafficked into the Czech Republic and Poland come from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova,

Romania, Georgia and Bulgaria. Meanwhile, the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia—Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan—are now emerging recruitment zones. One-third of the traffic from these regions moves through Central Europe and then onward to other European countries, while the remainder heads to the Middle East and China. In these directions, too, there is no shortage of routes.

Organized crime syndicates have also plotted lucrative and complex routes to far-flung destinations to capitalize on their “goods.” Israel, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Thailand, China and Japan are all key to their prostitution rackets. Canada and the United States are becoming increasingly significant destinations for trafficked women from Eastern Europe, as evidenced by the scores of ads in the back pages of cheesy tabloids in numerous North American cities. “Full-service nude massages by Russian beauties” are offered at $60 an hour—touching is permitted and customers are guaranteed “a release.” The ads also show a huge increase in Russian escort services in New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Montreal and Toronto, and in each of these cities, Russian dancers have become a popular staple in strip clubs and peep shows. The procurers make no distinction between Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian or Lithuanian women. They simply lump them together into one ethnic mold—Russian.

In order to keep one step ahead of the law and the pressure from international authorities to tighten border entry points, organized crime is moving increasingly into internal markets. Many women are being trafficked into the very cities from which the traffickers recruit. Major East European cities such as Bucharest, Prague, Odessa, Kyiv, St. Petersburg and Moscow are offering the burgeoning sex tourism market from North America, Europe and Asia a steady supply of East European women. Women are also being transported to Czech, Polish and Hungarian towns and roadways near the border with Germany and Austria to cash in on the regular cross-border traffic. The most notorious roadway is Highway E-55.

Renowned worldwide, Highway E-55 lies alongside the main thoroughfare between Dresden and Prague just a few kilometers from the Czech–German border. To motorists, this miserable five-kilometer stretch of asphalt boasts one of the highest concentrations of prostitutes in Europe. For those driven by lust, it has been dubbed the “highway of love,” its main customers German and Austrian men driving in for the great “deals.” They come for the cut-rate prices—half of what they pay in their homelands. A half-hour off E-55 or in nearby Dubi costs about $35. For sex without a condom, it’s an extra $10. But it’s not just the Europeans who come here. With the highway’s notoriety plastered on countless websites, sex tourists from as far away as Australia and North America are jetting to Germany, renting cars and cruising in. Every parking spot and meter of roadside is divvied up and controlled by pimps; every shaded lair in the nearby woods serves as an open-air brothel— day and night.

I decided to drive in for a first-hand look and was immediately struck by the sheer numbers of merchants lined up on both sides of the roadway hawking their wares. The scene was surreal. The merchants were unusually young. Some were quite striking. All were women and girls from Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Belarus and Bulgaria. Their wares were their bodies, in various degrees of undress. They posed salaciously in skin-tight, midriff-baring jeans, skimpy halters and stiletto heels. As the steady stream of motorists whizzed by, women pulled up their T-shirts and flashed their breasts. Others shouted at the passersby, promising to do whatever they ask.

Despite the macabre, circus-like atmosphere, what is evident even to the untrained observer is that the majority of these women are not in control of their trade. Prowling the territory in beat-up cars are men in sweat suits with gold chains dangling around their necks. Their only function is to keep a watchful eye on their merchandise and collect the money they make.

As I stared in stunned silence at the hapless sea of humanity on E-55, several women gingerly stepped into the street and yelled at passing drivers, “Warte mal!” (Hey, wait!) and “Ich mache alles!” (I do everything!). A slim, blond woman with shoulder-length hair darted over to my car. As I slowed down in the crush of traffic, she pulled open the door and jumped into the passenger side. With a wave of her hand, she directed me to drive over to a secluded, wooded area where she demanded 1400 Czech crowns in advance. I did as she said but told her that I just wanted to talk. She looked dumbfounded, but shrugged her shoulders and nodded.

Throughout the brief, fifteen-minute encounter, her hard brown eyes never left the dashboard. Picking nervously at her raw cuticles, she spoke in a whisper. The conversation was labored. Her name was Lida. She was Romanian, eighteen years old and had been working E-55 for three months. She was an orphan. As she had been preparing to leave an orphanage just outside Bucharest, a woman showed up claiming to be a relative.

“She was my aunt. The director said it was so. I didn’t believe her but what could I do? She told me she had permission to take me. I went with her. She took me to Stephan and he put me to work on this road. I had no say in the matter. My life is no longer my own,” she said in a resigned tone.

Suddenly her eyes filled with panic. “If he sees me talking to you, he will beat me.”

I asked if she wanted to escape. “I can take you away from here.”

Lida’s hands began to shake. “No. He will find me and then he will kill me. He has sworn that to me. Please, I don’t want to talk anymore.”

The conversation ended abruptly when she suddenly dove under the dashboard, making it appear she was working. From the corner of her eye she’d caught a glimpse of Stephan in the passenger-side mirror. The beady-eyed pimp with oily, kinky black hair and a repugnant sneer cruised by in a white, beat-up Ford Opel. He stared menacingly in my direction. A few minutes later Lida left the car and scurried back to her spot on E-55. She looked troubled and sad. Her pimp pulled up, rolled down his window and began yelling at her. Then he stuck his hand out the window and flicked his fingers. She passed him the 1400 crowns and he sped off. With a smile pasted back on her face, Lida stepped into the road, waved at the next passing German license plate and shouted, “Ich mache alles!”