US Report shows Montenegrin officials involved in human trafficking

Montenegro is a source, transit and destination country for men, women and children subjected to sex trafficking, the U.S. State Department has stated.

Montenegrin officials are involved in human trafficking, the State Department’s 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report reads.

Trafficking victims are mostly women and girls from Eastern Europe and other Balkan countries, including Serbia and Kosovo, who migrate or are smuggled through the country en route to Western Europe and are subjected to sex trafficking in Montenegro, the State Department said in the report.

Children, many of whom are Roma, are coerced by their family members into street begging in Montenegro. There have been reports that Roma girls from Montenegro, who are often forced into domestic servitude, have been sold into servile marriages in Roma communities in Switzerland and Germany, it is added in the report.

The State Department stressed that Montenegro needed to vigorously investigate and aggressively prosecute sex trafficking and labor trafficking crimes, enhance judicial understanding of trafficking offenses, and convict and sentence trafficking offenders, “including public officials complicit in trafficking”.

The Government of Montenegro made no reported progress during the reporting period in prosecuting new cases of trafficking offenses, it is said in the report which was presented by the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Opposition Movement for Changes (PZP) leader Nebojša Medojević has confirmed that human trafficking “is only a part of criminal activities done in Montenegro under the state patronage”.

“The report shows a new attitude of the U.S. toward Milo Đukanović, who went from being a partner to being a threat to their national interests. Montenegro has been a money laundering, cigarette, narcotics, arms and human trafficking destination for 20 years but the government cannot arrest itself,” he pointed out.

Belgrade-based Kurir pointed out that the U.S. Department of State had praised the Serbian authorities’ efforts in combat against human trafficking.

The Government of Serbia sustained vigorous anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts in 2011 and increased the number of convicted persons last year and introduced new prevention measures in combat against this type of crime, it is said in the report.