Central Europe's Bangkok
It's always interesting to see how other countries view the Czech Republic. From an article it The British Telegraph on Sunday entitled "Czech gangs kidnap women as sex slaves", it seems that the image of the Czech Republic abroad is not all it could be. Prague is getting the reputation of "Central Europe's Bangkok".
But the British reporter did not invent that label. Those are the words of the head of the Prague police vice squad: Major Petr Vosolsobe He pointed out to the reporter that Prague alone has 300 brothels holding some 15,000 prostitutes, and discussed the sex slave industry in the Czech Republic in general.
Czech police estimate that about 70% of all missing women between the ages of 10 and 40 have been abducted and sold into sex slavery. That adds up to thousands of women. Thousands. No one knows who will be the next to go missing, and few can say where she will end up.
The article in the Telegraph also highlights the efforts of Eva Tomanova, a Czech researcher who works with women who have escaped from the underworld of sexual slavery. The stories the escapees tell of repeated rape, brutal beatings and torture are stomach-turning.
One girl told of being kidnapped off the street, crushed into a car and driven to a sex slave auction in Chomutov. After being repeatedly raped by her pimps, Lenka was forced to wave down passing tourists from a brothel window. Whenever she refused, she was beaten severely. The researcher Tomanova has heard many similar stories from those like Lenka who were lucky enough to escape, and Tomanova is developing a relatively clear picture of this underworld.
Czech girls are abducted right off the street and sold to various buyers at auctions. Sometimes the buyers are local Czech pimps who force girls like Lenka to work the sex tourists in Czech brothels. They are kept locked up and prevented from escaping through violence and threats of violence not only in "the Central European Bangkok" of Prague but also in the border regions.
Other abducted girls are sold to foreign buyers and simply disappear forever. Perhaps the girls that are sold to Europeans end up starving in some basement like the victims unearthed last year in Belgium. On the whereabouts of those sold to the Middle Eastern buyers, Allah only knows what has happened to them. Belgians finally woke up to what was happening around them when the starved carcasses of little girls were dragged out of a basement dungeon. Belgians responded with the massive "white marches" protesting against this horrifying sex slave industry and the official corruption which protects it.
In the Central European Bangkok, I wonder what event or whose mutilated body it will take to finally get the Czechs into the streets over this issue.
Perhaps it will be your daughter.
