Japan Sex Industry Ensnares Latin Women

LIMA, Peru (AP) April 30, 2005 - At least 1,700 women from Latin America and the Caribbean are lured each year into sexual slavery in Japan's huge illicit sex industry, according to a new report.

A team of researchers hired by the Organization of American States found that most of the women come from Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru.

The team of researchers — led by Phillip Linderman, an expert on loan from the U.S. State Department — presented the "Rapid Assessment Report" to an international seminar on human trafficking sponsored by Peru's Foreign Ministry on Friday.

The OAS analysis was culled from interviews with presumed victims, Japanese immigration records and crime data.

The 37-page report estimated tens of thousands of undocumented foreign women in Japan, mostly from other Asian countries, are exploited by crime organizations, like Yakuza, Japan's second-largest crime syndicate.

Japan's National Police Agency estimates the sex trade industry there to be worth $83 billion a year

Linderman said governments on both sides of the Pacific paid little attention to the problem until recently.

The Colombian Embassy in Japan stood out, aggressively working to identify and assist the estimated 4,000 Colombians it believes are human trafficking victims.

But Linderman said the figures in his report probably represent only a percentage of trafficking victims, particularly from other Latin American countries like Peru, which is just starting to tackle the issue.

"The ties between Japan and Peru are larger for historical reasons, for migratory reasons, for all kinds of reasons, than they are between Colombia and Japan. And it's our position right now in the preliminary study that there are many more victims here," he told The Associated Press.

He said a typical trafficking scenario is that of Irene Oblitas, a Peruvian who told her story last year to her country's media. She said that in 1998 she boarded a plane with three Japanese businessmen who had promised her a job in a plastics factory.

When she arrived she was raped by all three men and sold to a Yakuza organized crime boss, who branded her across the chest with a 6-inch (15-centimeter) rose tattoo. He forced her to provide sexual services to up to 40 clients a day, she said.

She escaped after eight months with the help of other Peruvian expatriates, according to the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"The scenario of Oblitas' case unfortunately seems to be a typical one," Linderman said.

Oblitas' case was not mentioned in the OAS report. Human rights organizations say she later fled to a neighboring South American country, fearing reprisals after she started receiving death threats.

Japan came under mounting international pressure last year after it was downgraded in the U.S. State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report. It became the only industrialized, developed nation to be placed on a special "watch list" of countries on the verge of falling into the report's lowest category, the OAS study noted.

In response "the government of Japan announced a new national plan to combat human trafficking in December 2004," the OAS report continued.

Chieko Tatsumi, of the International Organized Crime Division in Japan's Foreign Ministry, came to Lima to attend the seminar and said her government launched an aggressive public ad campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking.

"I think the Japanese people are paying more attention to these issues," she said.

But she and other Japanese officials disagreed with the OAS report's assertion that sexual trafficking from Latin America and the Caribbean is a much larger problem than the initial figures indicate.

The full study will not be complete until later this year.