Society

 

A good reason for

giving beggars food

rather than money

 

James Wilkie

Tom Gallagher, in his article on the Old Firm (SR, 9 March), '...wonders if the chief constable might not be better advised to consider a summit on the long-term impact on Scottish social cohesion of the arrival of large numbers of Roma from Slovakia and Romania. I have yet to see an article in the Scottish press on the huge numbers of people begging for a living from Leith Walk to Byres Road who have arrived from eastern Europe. What kind of lives do they lead, who are the dominating figures within their ranks?'.
     Having some experience of the central European region, I see this as just another extension of a growing problem that is causing a monumental headache for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as well as for national security authorities all over the European continent. It is not just the Roma who are the victims – they just happen to be the most vulnerable, due to their poverty and lack of education, so that they are easy prey for the mafia criminals who exploit them.
     How, you might ask, do these people from the sunny Balkans and Caucasus come to be in a cold northern land they have probably never heard of in their lives? Who put the idea into their heads? Who paid for their passage? How do they come to be in Scotland with no obvious means of subsistence? The one thing we probably do know about them is the dominating figures behind them – even if we can't put names to them.
     What we are witnessing is almost certainly just one of the aspects of the burgeoning crime of human trafficking, which is rivalling the illicit drug trade worldwide as a source of lucrative wealth for international organised crime.      The City of Vienna Police recently succeeded in cracking one of these criminal bands, and handed over 17 of them to the Romanian justice authorities for prosecution. That was the least of the problem, because the gang left behind another 80 Romanian citizens, mostly handicapped for tear-jerking purposes, who had been bussed into Austria as tourists and then forced onto the streets to beg. The gangsters held onto their passports. 
     Very often these people are trained to simulate disablement in order to extract more cash through sympathy. The business runs parallel to illegal procurement for prostitution and forced labour as a manifestation of modern slavery, and often enough the same gangs are involved.

 

     Colonel Gerald Tatzgern, head of the human trafficking division of the Austrian central criminal office, relates how these people are brutally beaten up if they bring in less than 50 euros a day. In the best prime locations in the heart of the city, at supermarkets and tourist attractions, beggars can bring in over €1,000 in a month by working a 14-hour day in all weathers. Of this, they are allowed to keep maybe €100, with the rest being handed over to the mobsters – and woe betide anyone who tries to cheat. That €100, however, is so far beyond their dreams of wealth, by comparison with their economic circumstances in their homeland, that there are never any complaints, even if they dared. 
      The selection of locations is 'professional', preferably where the most tourists, who don't know any better, are to be encountered. These key locations are ruthlessly guarded. A few years back a native Austrian thought he might as well get into the racket, seeing it was such a gold mine. The organising mafia took a poor view of this enterprise on one of 'their' prime spots, and shot him dead as a warning to others.
     If they are not on day trips – which is hardly feasible in Scotland – they are housed in cramped slum quarters or in illegal tented camps, while the gang bosses have their permanent villas and all the other manifestations of wealth in the target country. The pattern is the same over most of western Europe, due to the now largely open borders and the still vast differences in economic status between east and west.
     Austria has some of the world's finest health and social security services, and there is basically no need for anyone to beg on the streets. The only ones legally allowed to do so are those selling the local equivalent of The Big Issue. Any others are most likely to be in the country illegally. Those who are caught are liable to prosecution and to have their takings confiscated.  
     Similar restrictions are gradually being imposed all over the continent, with public begging increasingly being forbidden outright, as the only feasible means of keeping the human trafficking problem within bounds, at least within this particular field of activity. Col Tatzgern advises people not to give money to beggars at all, because 90% of it will simply go to the mafia bosses. Instead, he recommends giving the beggar something to eat.
     It would seem that, with the European continent gradually becoming a no-go area for this branch of human trafficking, the attention of the mafia has been turning to other possible locations for their activities. Without being adamant, in the absence of concrete information, I strongly suspect that, unlikely as it may seem at first sight, Scotland is now being targeted by the mafia groups because other 'markets' have already become too hot and unproductive for them. 
     The United Nations is screwing up the pressure on the mafia by coordinating the activities of the national security authorities. The UNODC, under its hard-headed executive director Juri Fedotov, formerly Russian ambassador in London, places human trafficking right at the top of the list of major global problems it is having to combat in the face of international organised serious crime. No doubt when this avenue is closed the mafia will open others as profitable. However, there is no reason why the Scots should join the ranks of the suckers who, from the viewpoint of the criminals, are just there to be fleeced.

 

James Wilkie worked for the United Nations in Africa and Asia as well as for the Austrian chancellery and foreign ministry

 

 

Poetry

 

Fukushima Daiichi

 

Alison Prince

All suppressed instinct screams a warning now
that the particles deep at the heart
of structures thought alterable must be
seen as sacrosanct. The fact that we
know how to pulverise them is a key
unlocking a dark box from which may fly
furies that do not know their enemy
but are indiscriminate when freed
from their servitude. Chain-ganged,
their skins are broken and their energy
spills into formless rage that we conveniently
bend to our purposes. Meanwhile, the wind
and the mobile sea, atoms intact, can move
blades and pressure-drums yet still remain
undiminished. What we must decide
is how to judge our power to interfere
with the world’s severe and perfect mind.