The recently-published third annual report by the United States Department of State into the trafficking of persons and "the modern-day slave trade" places Finland into Tier 2, amongst some less than savoury companions, including Uganda, Russia, and Albania.

   

The report describes Finland as "a destination and transit country for women and girls trafficked by organized crime syndicates into sexual exploitation, including into enclosed prostitution camps in the northern part of the country".

   

The document examines 116 countries that have a significant number of victims and places them into three separate categories or tiers, on the basis of how effectively the authorities have sought to combat trafficking. Full compliance with minimum U.S. demands on the elimination of trafficking entitles a place in Tier 1. "Significant efforts" at compliance means Tier 2, and the lowest of the low are classified in Tier 3. There is a suggestion that sanctions might be employed - in the form of reductions in aid grants - against countries that consistently fail to address the human trafficking problem.

   

Finland is the only EU country to be placed in the second category, although Greece has handled things in even more slovenly fashion and is in Tier 3.

The report points out

that there are at present no specific legal restraints on trafficking in persons, nor does the Finnish penal code have a reference to the issue of human trafficking. Again, it notes that "high-ranking police officials believe that the absence of anti-trafficking legislation has resulted in insufficient police funding for combating trafficking." The full details of the Finnish section of the report can be found from the link below, but initial reactions from authorities in Helsinki have been less than complimentary.

   

"It doesn't take a weatherman to see that if Finland is put into the same tier with Russia, something is very wrong", commented Minister of Justice Johannes Koskinen (Social Democrat).

   

Koskinen went on to suggest that the paragraph in the report that claimed there was no law on human trafficking in Finland was a straight error of fact. "If we do not have a law that comes under the same precise name as that in the United States of America, it hardly means we do not recognise the crime in question."

   

Another ministry official observed that the information passed to the Americans had clearly not come from them, and that language problems may well have caused confusion. It will now be up to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to dig out where the information has come from and send the right facts to Washington.

   

"The Western trade in women is directed largely towards Central Europe", points out Major Ilkka Herranen of the Finnish Frontier Guard. The biggest problems at present, for instance, are in the area of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Herranen does not deny that things can happen in Finland, or that in some cases the authorities do not recognise the victims of trafficking, as the report also claims.

There have been cases of Chinese girls on forged passports being intercepted at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. These girls have barely known where they were heading, but in all probability it was into the meat markets of Italy or Holland. Both these countries were in Tier 1.

   

Herranen observes that in global terms Finland is way off the beaten track and that any trade in humans is minimal. Prostitution is structured differently here: there are perhaps 10,000 women who come here from Russia and Estonia, but they know exactly what it is they are doing. In some cases a woman who has initially come voluntaily is then made to stay by threats or blackmail.

"What!? Utter rubbish!

We don't have any 'closed prostitution camps'", snorts Detective Chief Inspector Risto Juho, from Kemi in Northern Finland, when he reads one of the more "highflown" claims of the U.S. report.

   

Juho charges that the entire northern region of the country has quietened down a great deal - there are no longer cases of girls being mini-bussed in to log-cabin villages in the north. The girls do still come over the border, but in their own cars and to regular customers. These are described as voluntary "standard-of-living working girls" - nobody is being brought in by force, states Juho.

The details on individual countries

in the State Department report have been gathered on the basis of information collected by local embassies and non-governmental organisations.