JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Jun 28, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Guyana is too small and too poor a country to defy the United States of America. Therefore, for all the grandstanding that is taking over the US State Department’s Trafficking in Person’s (TIP) Report for 2010, the Guyana government will eventually have to take action that would allow it to be removed from the US’s watch list and thus avoid economic and trade sanctions.
If the US’s assessment of Guyana does not improve by next year, an election year, Guyana will face the threat of sanctions. Since there is a time span between the implementation of policy response and their effectiveness, it means that whatever needs to be done cannot wait.
The government cannot continue to hide behind the excuse that it has no control over the Courts and therefore the conviction rate. The US does not expect the government to intervene but the poor conviction rate is a result of limited prosecution, something that is clearly implied in the report and therefore the government has to step up its enforcement efforts and improve its prosecutions of those involved in trafficking in persons.
Trafficking in persons must not be confused with what is known in Guyana as backtracking. Trafficking in persons refers to a whole range of activities but which all involve persons being compelled to provide services, be it prostitution or forced labour, for another.
Prostitution only becomes trafficking in persons if the prostitute is being forced to do things against her will or is forced into such actions by circumstances beyond her control such as poverty or economic hardships.
The TIP 2010 Report does not hide the areas which it has concerns about Guyana. It specifically identifies forced prostitution and forced labour. It speaks about forced prostitution in brothels along the coast, around mining camps, as well as rum shops and Chinese restaurants. It refers to advantage being taken of persons who have to come from the interior to work as well as persons from the countryside coming to live with their better off relatives in the city and the potential these have of evolving into forced servitude.
Guyana cannot bury its head in the sand and not admit that there is a problem in all of these areas, even though the US in typical fashion may be overstating the problem.
There are known whorehouses along the coast where women are brought from the countryside to work. Sometimes they are told that they are coming to work as waitresses but eventually they find themselves having to have sex in order to make ends meet. This has been going on for over six decades in Guyana and is not new. These women, however hardened and street smart they are, need protection.
Then there are private clubs operating within the city where Brazilian women offer striptease and other services. This is public knowledge, but while there is no evidence of these women being forced to sell their bodies or compelled into exotic dances, there are a great many pimps operating in these joints who also exploit local girls. Since prostitution can lead to women being treated as sex slaves, the government cannot wait until there are complaints about such actions. They have to investigate whether the things that happen in these private clubs are legal and determine whether the women are being compelled into providing sex services. They should also examine the activities of sex pimps who operate privately within some joints forcing their girls to sleep with clients.
The Ministry of Labour should be given more resources to police night clubs, rum shops and Chinese restaurants where liquor is sold, since in many of these places women are employed as servers and in some instances the women are asked to wear revealing clothing. When the male patrons get drunk they molest these women by placing their hands under their skirts and rubbing their behinds. Some of these girls are too young, poor and helpless to say anything. They know that if they protest they are not going to get their tip, (not TIP). These things are known and what is required is for greater policing so that those men who molest these waitresses are jailed and those employers who pay these girls next to nothing and thus force them to certain behaviour are dealt with by the law. We have a problem and we must deal with the problem. It is not as isolated as we think.
Some of our women are also forced into prostitution in Suriname. So we have to also look at the movement of our citizens across the borders and find out just why some of our women are leaving and who is responsible for taking them overseas to sell their bodies and be exploited.
To be continued.

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