Phil@Stop the Traffik

Behind the Gare du Nord in Brussels, there is long street of windows with women in prostitution posing all day. They try not to look bored, but they must be. It's an odd sight, shoppers with children hurrying along a street with women in the windows, and a steady stream of men from the railway station looking for quick sex. That street is the start of the Brussels red light district and we are often in that area working to find out if there has been trafficking.

We were looking around to see if there might be a youth centre we could work with, perhaps as a space where the women could come to learn skills and be out of the pressure of work for a while, when we came across a young woman sitting on the floor, with a toddler on her lap and a four-year-old dancing about next to her. We stopped to talk, and although her French wasn't good and she spoke no English or Dutch, we learned that she was Romanian like so many of the women begging with their children in Brussels (It is curious the segregation that occurs, Bulgarians in the windows by the station, Nigerians in the windows a few streets away, Romanians on the street, using children to attract donations, all depending on who the pimps and the traffickers are that control the turf.). She had been here a few years and although she had somewhere to stay, life was hard. She insisted the children were hers and knew their names without hestitating. Someone was controlling her, and but she seemed to be genuine enough.

As we finished talking with her, and started to walk away, another woman rushed up. Her story was much more dubious and disturbing. Brandishing a piece of paper in our faces, and pointing to a young child about seven years old who stood vacantly next to her, she told us in perfect French that she was a Bosnian refugee who had only been in Belgium for one month. Her daughter, she said, was blind and needed treatment. We looked at her, and indeed her eyes were clouded over with a white film. The doctor's bill she waved in front of us for hundreds of euros was, however, clearly faked. Other questions sprang to mind; how had she learn French so quickly? If she was illegal, how did she get a bank account for this bill to be paid through? How come the bill was faked? We looked again at the girl, and a darker question troubled us. If she could not see, and she was being used to beg, how did she get blinded? It was a very disturbing thought. We tried to direct the woman to local organisations who could help, but she became angry with us.
We saw it on the streets of India, now we are seeing it on the streets of Brussels; children being exploited for money. I pray that the girl was not blinded for the purpose, but certainly she was not receiving proper medical attention. You may have seen the film Slumdog Millionaire, which accurately shows how children are sometimes injured and blinded to get more money from their begging. I hope this is not happening in Brussels, but now I have my doubts.

Another woman who regularly begs alone in the station itself, has a different story. She is very poor, and she also stays in the country illegally and begs all day, but when I enquired about her children, she replied that they were in school. Despite the precarious nature of her existence and the probably control she is under from traffickers and other mafia figures, she has managed to get her children into education. At least when they are in school, they are safe, and out of the environment which seems to trap so many. They will also have the possiblity of a different future. Education for all those children we pass on the street, another goal in the fight to stop the traffik.