During the early hours of Tuesday morning in Europe, 117 house searches were performed that involved more than 1,200 police officers. The cause behind these house searches: Smuggling. There were a total of 103 suspects arrested that we part of a people-smuggling network throughout Europe. The suspects were arrested in Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovak Republic, Turkey and Kosovo region. Smuggling is the illegal transport of goods, mainly across borderlines to avoid taxation or to obtain good that are prohibited in the home country or region. The smuggling of human beings is done for financial gain and to control the increasing flow of migrants across borders. The traveling conditions are usually inhumane and very unsafe.
As Europol cracked down on this issue, they highlighted a problem for European authorities, which is that these are migrants that are desperate to escape the current conditions and conflicts of their home country or nation, that have put their fate in the hands of organized criminal gangs without knowing it. However, these migrants were willing to pay a price to illegally cross the borders to escape. These people smugglers have a couple of routes that they take to get these illegal migrants across borders. Such as; Turkey and the Balkans, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia to Italy, and Hungary and Slovenia. The main destinations of the illegal migrants were to France, Italy, Britain, Spain, and Belgium. This week's raid involved operations that were in eastern Europe, France, Germany, and Turkey.
During the raid and arrests, cell phones, laptops, bank statements, a semi automatic rifle with a great amount of ammunition , and more than 176,500 EUR cash was seized as well. Europol has claimed that this is one of the largest coordinated actions made at European level against people smugglers. As stated in the article, although these illegal migrants may travel willingly in search of a better life, people smuggling is not a victimless crime.
I was originally looking for current events that involved human trafficking, but I just so happened to come across this one while searching. This is the first time that I have heard of people smuggling. And as the article stated, this is not a victimless crime even though these victims have willing paid to travel. It was still in the hands of organized crime because these victims that were escaping to better their lives, have to repay the dues for their travel and face abuse from these type of crime gangs. I tried to tie the meaning of smuggling and human trafficking together to see how they possibly relate to one another and what I got out of it was forced labor that the victims have to face. Trafficking occurs for the purpose of exploitation, forced labor, and prostitution of humans. From what I know about human trafficking, the majority of the victims did not do this by their own will. I feel that is also a global issue that should be presented more in the news media cause not most people in America would even know about this type of crime.
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/europeans-dismantle-people-smuggling-ring/
https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/major-people-smuggling-criminal-network-dismantled-across-europe-103-suspects-arrested
http://definitions.uslegal.com/s/smuggling/
Tiara Paylor
1/31/13
9:37 PM
I was originally looking for current events that involved human trafficking, but I just so happened to come across this one while searching. This is the first time that I have heard of people smuggling. And as the article stated, this is not a victimless crime even though these victims have willing paid to travel. It was still in the hands of organized crime because these victims that were escaping to better their lives, have to repay the dues for their travel and face abuse from these type of crime gangs. I tried to tie the meaning of smuggling and human trafficking together to see how they possibly relate to one another and what I got out of it was forced labor that the victims have to face. Trafficking occurs for the purpose of exploitation, forced labor, and prostitution of humans. From what I know about human trafficking, the majority of the victims did not do this by their own will. I feel that is also a global issue that should be presented more in the news media cause not most people in America would even know about this type of crime.
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/europeans-dismantle-people-smuggling-ring/
https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/major-people-smuggling-criminal-network-dismantled-across-europe-103-suspects-arrested
http://definitions.uslegal.com/s/smuggling/
Tiara Paylor
1/31/13
9:37 PM
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