A Filipino woman was found and freed by Israeli police last week in East Jerusalem. She had been kept captive by the family for almost two years. Israeli police made the announcement that they arrested two people in the case on September 13. 2009.
The woman told
police her passport had been taken away by her employers, confined to the house and forced to work. She also claimed she had been locked in a bathroom at times. While she had been initially been hired to work for the family, she had not been paid. The woman said her employers accused her of stealing expensive jewellery and threatened to turn her in to police. Fearing arrest, the woman complied with them. An Israeli group,
Kav L'oved, a non-profit group that works to protect the rights of vulnerable workers, had learned details about the woman's captivity and passed the information on to the police.
Israel has been
attempting to crack down on human trafficking for years. According to a U.S. State Department
report,
Trafficking in Persons, June 2009, Israel is a "Tier 2" country,
"...a destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Low-skilled workers from China, Romania, Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India migrate voluntarily and legally to Israel for contract labor in the construction, agriculture, and health care industries. Some, however, subsequently face conditions of forced labor, including the unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical intimidation. Many labor recruitment agencies in source countries and in Israel require workers to pay recruitment fees ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 – a practice that makes workers highly vulnerable to trafficking or debt bondage once in Israel. Women from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and China are trafficked to Israel for forced prostitution, often by organized crime groups across the border with Egypt. Israeli women are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation, and small numbers are reportedly trafficked to Ireland and the United Kingdom."
The report went on to say that while Israel does not
"fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so."
Italy, by comparison, is a "Tier 1" country, both a destination for human trafficking, but also a source of human traffickers. According to the report, Kuwait is a Tier 3 country, and is a destination for forced labour.
Earlier this year, Israeli police
arrested 12 people who were part of the biggest human trafficking ring. Police said that the ring had smuggled thousands of women into Israel and forced them into prostitution.
