VZCZCXRO7816
RR RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN
RUEHLZ RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHCH #1277/01 3661000
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 311000Z DEC 08
FM AMEMBASSY CHISINAU
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 7486
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHAD/AMEMBASSY ABU DHABI 0131
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 0147

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 CHISINAU 001277 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EUR/UMB, DRL/EA, G/TIP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KTIP PGOV PHUM PREL KDEM MD
SUBJECT: THE CHANGING NATURE OF TRAFFICKING IN 
MOLDOVA: ANTI-TIP ACTIVISTS DESCRIBE SUBTLER, 
HARD-TO-PROSECUTE TRAFFICKING METHODS 
 
Sensitive But Unclassified.  Please Protect 
Accordingly. 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  Two of Moldova's most 
experienced anti-TIP activists met Ambassador 
Chaudhry on December 19.  They described subtle 
but profound changes in the methods used to 
recruit and trap victims of trafficking, and the 
challenges that these "kinder, gentler" methods 
posed to police and prosecutors.  They also gave 
high marks to the Government of Moldova (GOM) for 
its actions in assisting the return and 
rehabilitation of victims.  End summary. 
 
Strategy and TacticsQthe Best in Moldova 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) Ana Revenco, founder and Director of La 
Strada Moldova, heads an organization devoted to 
the protection and promotion of women's rights, 
and advises the GOM and other governments on 
legislative and law enforcement tools used to 
combat trafficking.  Stella Rotaru, who was 
featured in the May 5, 2008, "New Yorker" article, 
"The Countertraffickers," has the modest title of 
Repatriation Specialist at the International 
Organization for Migration (IOM).  Her actual 
rescue and repatriation work takes her to 
destination countries, where she negotiates with 
high-level prison, law-enforcement and Moldovan 
embassy officials to effect the release of 
victims. 
 
Gentler Methods and the Illusion of Freedom 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) Revenco and Rotaru described the most 
common profile of female victims in the last few 
years:  single young females from rural areas, 
poorly educated and often mentally slow.  (They 
also noted an increase in males trafficked for 
labor.)  Both noted that over 90 percent of female 
victims came from families where wives and 
children were beaten.  Victims, they said, were 
increasingly recruited by friends and even family 
members.  Despite widespread knowledge of the 
dangers, they accepted high-risk jobs (nightclub 
dancers, even providers of sexual services) as a 
temporary necessity.  Most were transported 
legally across Moldova's borders, with valid 
passports and visas (if needed) to the usual 
destination countries of Turkey, Russia, UAE, 
Israel and Cyprus.  Revenco and Rotaru affirmed 
that crimes associated with trafficking almost 
always took place outside the borders of Moldova. 
 
¶4. (SBU) According to Revenco, new trafficking 
methods co-opted victims, made evidence of crime 
harder to collect, and therefore rendered 
prosecution more difficult.  She stated that 
female victims believed they could exercise 
choice, were not victims, and were often treated 
better as sex workers in foreign night clubs than 
they were at home.  Rotaru described the 
psychological manipulation used since 2005 or so 
as profoundly different from the "classic" modus 
operandi of trafficking, which involved deception, 
imprisonment, and frequent beatings.  The more 
recent method offered what Revenco called the 
"illusion of choice."  Victims abroad, she said, 
were told that they were free to return to 
Moldova, except for the matter of debt to the 
trafficker, which must be worked off in a brothel; 
victims were told that they could pay off the debt 
(typically 6,000 Euros) in several months, and 
then would be free to stay on and earn their own 
money.  Describing initiation rituals, Revenco 
said that women were placed in a dormitory room 
with experienced prostitutes, who made light of 
the work, and offered drugs and alcohol to "make 
things easier." 
 
¶5. (SBU) According to Rotaru, if the victim 
continued to disagree, she was threatened with 
arrest by police in the foreign country who, the 
 
CHISINAU 00001277  002 OF 003 
 
 
trafficker claimed, were friends of the 
traffickers, and would jail the women 
indefinitely.  If she cooperated, Rotaru noted, 
the victim was allowed to keep a small portion of 
what she earned (typically USD 300 per month) and 
to call home; if she recruited a friend or 
relative, she would be allowed to return to 
Moldova.  Under such circumstances, Rotaru and 
Revenco both noted, the amount of evidence 
available for arrest and prosecution was reduced. 
In fact, according to Revenco, the victims, who 
were almost always the principal sources of 
evidence, were reluctant to bring complaints at 
all, because they had been manipulated into an 
illusion that they had exercised choice.  Rotaru 
further noted that in many countries, victims 
could not legally be treated as victims of 
trafficking, and thus made eligible for IOM and 
GOM assistance, until they specifically identified 
themselves as such.  According to Rotaru, in 
comparison to the battered lives many of them 
lived in bleak, jobless villages at home in 
Moldova, the victims stated that they were better 
off in brothels in a foreign country than in 
hopeless Moldova. 
 
Praise for GOM Efforts, Concern about Transparency 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
¶6. (SBU) IOM's Rotaru lauded GOM efforts in 
assisting the 140 victims abroad, so far this 
year, who requested assistance:  Moldovan embassy 
consular sections granted no-hassle passports, and 
the Ministry of Internal Affairs provided 
protection to returnees at Chisinau Airport. 
Escorts from the Ministry of Social Protection 
traveled to Russia and Ukraine in IOM vehicles to 
accompany returnees from those countries.  The GOM 
provided 400,000 lei (USD 40,000) for 
rehabilitation in 2008, and has budgeted 500,000 
lei for rehabilitation, and a new line-item of 
600,000 lei for repatriation, in 2009.  The 
National Referral System (NRS), which began as a 
pilot project in six raions, now covers 19 out of 
Moldova's 32 raions.  Rotaru added that NRS 
services to potential victims, including 
counseling and job training, were good.  Equally 
important to prevention efforts, she said, was 
training to the Border Guards, who have used their 
new knowledge to interdict several suspect 
emigration attempts. 
 
¶7. (SBU) La Strada's Revenco noted that the 
National Committee for the Prevention of 
Trafficking in Persons did invite NGOs to their 
meetings, and consulted NGO members about laws and 
regulationsQbut only at the initial stages.  She 
said that U.S pressure had been successful in 
focusing GOM attention on the problem. She also 
expressed hopes that the U.S. would apply pressure 
on the GOM to increase long-term NGO participation 
in the regulatory scene.  Revenco believed that 
more NGO participation was required in the 
international arena, to assist countries in 
regulating migration, providing fair labor 
standards and contracts for labor migrants in 
destination countries, and establishing police-to- 
police contacts. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Revenco, Rotaru and the Ambassador all 
agreed that Moldova had limited resources, which 
must be targeted more effectively.  Thanking the 
Ambassador for his active support in curbing the 
menace of trafficking, Revenco and Rotaru 
concluded that trafficking in Moldova was no worse 
than in other countries in the region, and that 
the situation had clearly improved in the last few 
years.  They noted that prevention efforts were 
crucial, given the need to stop exploitation 
before it could occur, and given the difficulties 
of juridically tackling what Revenco and Rotaru 
called the new, "fluid, underground, invisible" 
system that lured victims into an illusion of 
choice outside Moldova's borders. 
 
 
CHISINAU 00001277  003 OF 003 
 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶9. (SBU) Both Revenco and Rotaru confirmed what 
Post has been hearing from GOM and other NGO 
contacts about the changing nature of trafficking: 
the actual crimes (sequestration, passport 
seizure, beating, for example) taking place 
outside of Moldova; the shift to friends and 
relatives as traffickers; and the consequent 
difficulty faced by Moldovan law enforcement 
officials in finding evidence that can be used 
successfully in court.  Under these circumstances, 
victims become victims only when they are outside 
of Moldova, and individual traffickers (as opposed 
to large networks) can operate more easily under 
the radar of law enforcement.  We therefore expect 
that trafficking will appear in much lesser 
amounts in Moldovan criminal statistics, and that 
fewer prosecutions and convictions for trafficking 
per se will result. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Given these tectonic shifts in 
trafficking methods, restricting our USG interest 
to arrests and convictions for trafficking cases 
per se will not give the complete picture. 
Widening the category to include the "Al Capone" 
factor of trafficking arrests under other 
categories (such as illegal migration) will give a 
better picture of GOM efforts to stem both 
potential trafficking and the means for 
trafficking. 
 
CHAUDHRY