Human Trafficking

Copenhagen's red light district pulsates with neon lights. Women stand on nearly every corner -- many from Africa -- aggressively making their pitch to men walking by. Inside one particularly loud bar, young Thai women sit on the laps of male customers. And Stockholm? Well, you might walk right by its equivalent and never notice. Malmskillnadsgatan is a commercial area, the address of several banks. In its heyday, dozens of girls used to ply their trade here. Now, you can find only three or four women who work the street.

The following is a letter from the Romania Ministry Of Administration And Interior, General Inspectorate Of Romanian Police. To the Editor: The General Inspectorate of Romanian Police and the National Agency against Trafficking in Persons believe that the central premise of the CNN.com Opinion piece "Romania a global center for human trafficking" is subjective and false. The view that "Romania has become a major transit for the sale of people into the European Union. Victims as young as 12 years old are trafficked into Romania from destinations as far-reaching as Honduras, Afghanistan, the Congo, and China" is not supported by our research.

Romania has become a major transit for the sale of people into the European Union. Victims as young as 12 years old are trafficked into Romania from destinations as far-reaching as Honduras, Afghanistan, the Congo, and China. Once they reach Romania, many of these victims are assigned for passage beyond into Western Europe. While Romanian law officially prohibits all forms of human trafficking, the country's strategic geographic location -- a crossroads between East and West -- makes it a source, transit and destination country for the people trade.

A secretly taped video by a male and a female posing as sex traffickers purportedly shows a Planned Parenthood employee in New Jersey telling them how to secure abortions and contraception for underage girls, anti-abortion activist Lila Rose told CNN Wednesday. In response, Planned Parenthood described the January 13 video by Rose's anti-abortion group Live Action as a scheme to "take down" the abortion-rights organization, Planned Parenthood spokesman Stuart Schear said in a statement.

A top fugitive wanted by U.S. immigration officials on charges that include human trafficking, forced labor, alien smuggling, money laundering, extortion and conspiracy was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Thursday, officials said. Veniamin Gonikman, 55, was detained in Ukraine on Wednesday before being deported to the United States, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Ivan L. Ortiz-Delgado said in a written statement Thursday. Gonikman is accused of forming a company with co-conspirators that facilitated the trafficking of Eastern European women in the U.S. The statement said the company, Beauty Search Inc., was used to exploit and abuse women "by forcing them, through threats, coercion, and isolation, to work as exotic dancers for the economic benefit of the Beauty Search partners.

A Turkish doctor arrested in an investigation into an alleged human organ smuggling ring protested his innocence Wednesday. "There is no such crime. There is no organ trade," Yusuf Ercin Sonmez told reporters outside a courthouse, according to Turkey's semiofficial Anatolian news agency. "There can't be evidence for something that doesn't exist," he added. He was arrested Tuesday in Istanbul's Kartal district, an officer with the financial crimes department of Istanbul Police told CNN. Sonmez, 53, was the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant issued by the District Court of Pristina in Kosovo.

A suspected human trafficker who recently was profiled on "America's Most Wanted" was arrested at a Connecticut casino last week, federal authorities said Tuesday. An Soon Kim, 52, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents on the floor of the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville. An arrest warrant had been issued for Kim, alleging she engaged in a wide-ranging human trafficking ring operating throughout the northeastern United States, the agency said in a news release.

During my final week in Nepal, I explored a disturbing mix of labor abuses. The first sector involved forced labor in the stone breaking industry. To reach the villages, I had to hike for several hours through steep and steamy foothills about a two-hour drive from Kathmandu. Along a shallow riverbed, I explored seven different villages caught in forced labor, debt bondage, and child labor for stone breaking. The broken stones are primarily used for construction in Kathmandu.

Six job recruiters have been indicted in federal court in what the FBI has called the largest human-trafficking operation ever to result in charges in the United States. An indictment unsealed in Hawaii on Thursday accuses employees of a California-based company of luring about 400 people from Thailand with false promises of lucrative jobs. Many of the imported workers wound up laboring on farms under substandard conditions, had their passports confiscated, and were threatened with deportation.