A Dutch tribunal will rule on Thursday in the trial of 11 presumed human traffickers, most of them Nigerians. Their arrest was the result of a wide-ranging international operation.

‘They have debts to pay back. This is at the heart of human trafficking: they run up debts which they have to pay off through prostitution.”
 

Dutch lawyer Wilma Hompe sums up the fate of around 140 young Nigerian women who were presumably forced into prostitution in different European countries after disappearing mysteriously from refugee centres in the Netherlands in 2005 and 2006.

Human trafficking
Only ten of them have been traced, as the mega trial against the suspected leaders of a large Nigerian human trafficking network ends this week in the Netherlands.

For the other 130 women, the standard answer is that they are believed to be working in the sex industry, somewhere in Europe.

Secret investigation
A secret international investigation code named “Koolvis” - meaning "Cod" - was launched after Wilma Hompe and others discovered a recurring pattern in the stories told by Nigerian girls in refugee centres in the Netherlands.

One of them, Grace, recalls a meeting with her “madam” in France:

“She told me you are going to pay 50,000 euro for bringing you and for your passport, and then she said if you say you will not pay, I will do things that will make you mad and go crazy and everything, so with that I had no option but to accept.”

Some of Wilma Hompe’s clients were brought to the woods around Rome to work as prostitutes. “ This simply amounts to rape”, she says.

Groundbreaking model
“Operation Koolvis” led to the arrest and prosecution of 11 suspected traffickers in The Netherlands. With the involvement of Dutch, Nigerian, Italian, French, Belgian, British and US investigators, it has been hailed in The Netherlands as a groundbreaking model for coordinated international investigation.

The biggest challenge for the authorities was to convince traumatised Nigerian girls to laycharges against their presumed traffickers. Grace and nine other girls only complied after being introduced to a Nigerian pastor living in the Netherlands who reassured them that they would feel no harm if they broke the promise they had made during the voodoo ceremony. This was seen as the operation’s most original and successful initiative.

In return, the girls were given renewable one year residence permits in the Netherlands for the duration of the trial.

Temptation
In the absence of prospects for education and jobs in the Netherlands or back home in Nigeria, the temptation to turn to prostitution is strong. Wilma Hompe’s illiterate clients have no access to education programmes, due to the temporary nature of their permits.

Hans Gaasbeek, Vice-President of the international organisation Lawyers without Borders, says that “Koolvis” has focused too much on the perpetrators, to the detriment of their victims. He says much more effort should have been invested in tracing the victims, who were in the care of the Dutch authorities when they disappeared.

“These are children who are smuggled in and ends up into prostitution. I find it incomprehensible that this is not a huge priority. I think that the Netherlands would have reacted very differently if it would have been the case of a dozen or more than 100 Dutch girls. There would still be screaming and shouting of bloody murder. Now I miss the public outrage” says Gaasbeek.
 

New wave of girls
Fellow lawyer Wilma Hompe is worried about the commitment to investigate the background of the new wave of girls arriving this time from China, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and the 13 Indian boys who recently disappeared from a reception centre. Have lessons not been learned from the Koolvis investigation?

“As a lawyer of the victims, I am very pleased with the large-scale investigation, but I also note that there in not much willingness on the part of the police to do carry out further enquiries in cases of victims from other countries” says Hompe.

Known for their great flexibility, human traffickers have been active in Europe for decades and will continue to find the weakest links, unless even more vigilant forces find ways to stop them.