Update
GEORGE NEWS - In a stark wake-up call to the residents of George, the Hawks arrested woman (34) on Saturday 16 December for her suspected involvement in human trafficking.
The arrest follows after information was received by the Hawks last Wednesday, indicating that three young girls, concealed inside a shipping container and given fake passports, had been trafficked from West Africa to South Africa a few months ago.
These victims were reportedly advertised on an escort website and confined to a residential complex in George.
"The Serious Organised Crime Investigation team operationalised the information and a search was conducted at the premises," said a spokesperson for the Hawks, Lt Col Siyabulela Vukubi.
"They found four females, whom the Hawks suspected to have been trafficked. The victims who are between the ages of 21 and 47 were rescued and kept in a place of safety after they were taken for medical assessment."
The suspect, who was allegedly the caretaker of the girls, made her first court appearance in the George Magistrate's Court on Monday 18 December on charges relating to human trafficking. The matter was postponed until 22 January 2024 for formal bail application. She remains in custody.
Not only in the movies
Human trafficking is a harsh reality, even in our local communities.
Imagine your daughter goes off to study, leaves on an exchange programme, or a great work opportunity crosses her path, and she disappears into thin air, never to be seen again. She lands in the hands of human traffickers and is forced to become a sex worker, a drug mule or a victim of organ harvesting.
This is not a scene from a Hollywood horror movie, this is the reality of human trafficking - one of the fastest growing crimes in the world - and it happens here in South Africa, and right here in George.
Some 23% of global trafficking takes place in Africa with the DRC and Libya having the highest number of victims. Most of these victims are children between the ages of 12 and 16 that are recruited as soldiers, or sold for prostitution or forced labour. South Africa remains a key source, transit, and destination for trafficked people.
Between December 2007 and January 2022, an estimated 11 077 human trafficking cases countrywide were reported to the police.
Every five hours a child goes missing in South Africa and currently there are between 155 000 and 300 000 people enslaved in South Africa alone.
Only 44 were successfully prosecuted and the majority of these (36) were sex trafficking cases. Only 77 traffickers were convicted - 39 were men and 38 women. Fifty of them were South African.
Red flags for a potential trafficking situation:
- Living with employer
- Poor living conditions
- Multiple people in cramped space
- Inability to speak to individual alone
- Answers appear to be scripted and rehearsed
- Employer is holding identity documents
- Signs of physical abuse
- Submissive or fearful
- Unpaid or paid very little
- Under 18 and in prostitution
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