US fears sex trafficking rise for Soccer World Cup

WASHINGTON - The United States is concerned thousands of women may be forced to travel to Germany and work as prostitutes during the soccer World Cup which starts on Friday, a senior US official said.

The US has written to the government and raised its fears in meetings with officials in Germany, where prostitution is legal, said John Miller, the State Department official responsible for the publication on Monday of an annual report on human trafficking worldwide.

"There are reports of thousands of women being transported to Germany for sex during the World Cup," he told reporters.

"All the research and evidence available shows that when you have large flows of women for sexual purposes, there is going to be trafficking. There is a link between prostitution and sex trafficking."

With one million foreign visitors expected to flood into Germany from June 9, the likely sex industry boom has created demand for extra prostitutes who could come mainly from countries in Eastern Europe with major trafficking problems.

Sex workers in Germany can get health insurance, join a union and pay into a pension plan. Surveys put the number of those working as full or part-time prostitutes at around 400,000.

But thousands of other women are also forced to work in the industry.

German authorities want to crack down on this practice during the tournament and there are campaigns to boost awareness of the problem of forced prostitution.

Women's rights advocates in the United States have called on Germany to limit visas, bar commercial sex operators from expanding their business during the tournament and increase "hot lines" for trafficking victims seeking help.

"The German government has said that they are taking measures to stop trafficking. So we will see what happens," Miller said.

But Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who heads a congressional committee on human rights, was not so diplomatic, complaining Germany should have been blacklisted in the US report for doing too little to prevent human trafficking.

"There is a major effort to recruit women from Russia and Slovak countries. Germany should step up to the plate and really crack down on this," Smith, who has held a congressional hearing on the issue, said in a telephone interview.

"Clearly they are not (doing enough)."

- REUTERS