By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
STRASBOURG, France – The outcome of a human trafficking case involving a Russian woman transported to Cyprus has resulted in a significant change in the definition of human slavery and the protection of immigrants for many nations in Europe.
In its ruling on Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) determined that the act of human trafficking violates the antislavery provisions of the treaty for which all nations who are party to the European Convention on Human Rights are subject to. Under this new application of the Court’s jurisdiction, each member nation that is the destination or origin of a sex trafficking case is required to independently investigate this matter.
The events that brought about this change in law centered on Oxana Rancheva, a young Russian woman who died after she had been transported to Cyprus in 2001 for the purpose of working in a cabaret. Rancheva died while attempting to flee in March of 2001 from an apartment building in which she had been held against her while. Following her death, her father brought her case before the ECHR. In review of the facts of this case, the ECHR concluded that both Russia and Cyprus had failed to properly investigate the parties that had engaged in the human trafficking in their respective countries.
The Court found Russia and Cyprus to have violated Article Four of the European Convention on slavery. Cyprus also “violated the girl’s right to life and right to protection under the law” by failing to determine how Rancheva had arrived in Cyprus and what she was doing there, while Russia should have done more to determine how Rancheva was originally recruited to perform in a foreign cabaret. The Court ordered the government of Cyprus to pay damages to the family of the woman involved.
The Court decision was welcomed by immigrant rights groups. Doros Polycarpou, the leader of one such group in Cyrus, commented that the Court’s ruling was significant because “the Republic of Cyprus must finally get the message that we are no longer an isolated village where whatever we do stays between us.”
Rancheva had arrived in Cyprus on an artist visa, a bureaucratic instrument that the Court commented had been used in recent years to allow for the importation of women to the island nation to be exploited. Three thousand such visas were issued in 2007. Calls from international organizations for the elimination of this type of visa loophole resulted in its recent discontinuance.
Prior to the Court’s decision, the national government of Cyprus had publicly acknowledged its violations of international law in regards to this case. However, the ECHR decided to rule on this case anyway, breaking with the court’s past tradition on not hearing cases in which “the defendant admits guilt”.
For more information, please see:
CYPRUS MAIL – ‘Handed over as if she was his possession’ – 9 January 2010
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Rights Court Raises Sex-Trafficking Oversight – 8 January 2010
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE – Cyprus and Russia violated human trafficking laws: court – 7 January 2010
