aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Traficking in women and in foetuses

[Natalia Pylypiuk <natalia.pylypiuk@ualberta.ca>]

(1)
http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm? 
Record=59704&Section=LO&Current=2005-04-17%2000:00:00

*Sex Ring* - Sunday 17, April-2005
by Tony Best

[excerpt]  >>Expensive call-girl sex services, fuelled by the demands  
of rich visitors and facilitated by the trafficking in European women,  
may be a thriving business in Barbados.

At the same time, numerous Caribbean women, faced with economic  
hardship at home, were being lured to Barbados with promises of quick  
money in legitimate jobs but, once in the island, were being forced to  
work as prostitutes.

While the exact number and full scope of the expensive call-girl racket  
remain unknown, reports have surfaced of Russian and Ukrainian women  
becoming prostitutes here. [...<<

[2]
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/ 
0,6903,1461654,00.html?gusrc=rss
Beauty salons fuel trade in aborted babies
Racketeers pay Ukraine women to sell foetuses to quack clinics for  
£10,000 courses of 'anti-ageing' jabs

Tom Parfitt in Kiev
Sunday April 17, 2005
The Observer

[excerpt]:
 >> Aborted foetuses from girls and young women are being exported from  
Ukraine for use in illegal beauty treatments costing thousands of  
pounds, The Observer can reveal.
The foetuses are cryogenically frozen and sold to clinics offering  
'youth injections', claiming to rejuvenate skin and cure a raft of  
diseases.

It is thought that women in the former Soviet republic are being paid  
£100 a time to persuade them to have abortions and allow their foetuses  
to be used in treatments. Most of the foetuses are sold in Russia for  
up to £5,000 each. Some are paid extra to have abortions late in their  
pregnancy.

Border guards stopped a train entering Russia from Ukraine last week  
and arrested a 'mule' carrying 25 frozen foetuses hidden in two vacuum  
flasks. The man said he had bought them from a medical research centre.

Ukrainian law allows an aborted human foetus to be passed to research  
institutes if the woman involved consents and her anonymity is  
protected. But police say staff at state health institutions are  
selling them to private clinics offering illegal therapy.

'It is extremely difficult to detect this because there are corrupt  
agreements between respected doctors and academics,' said one senior  
officer.

Beauty salons in Moscow that buy the aborted material to provide  
'foetal therapy' are flourishing, despite a Russian ban on all  
commercial treatments using human cells other than bone marrow. [...<<


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Dr. Natalia Pylypiuk, Associate Professor
Modern Languages and Cultural Studies  http://www.mlcs.ca
200 Arts, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E6
voice mail: (780) 492-3498

Canadian Association of Slavists
http://www.ualberta.ca/~csp/cas