In our quest to find an offbeat story to add to the column this week, we came across this next story from Thessaloniki and as tragically hysterical as it sounds, it is also alarming since the women who fall victim to this type of brainwashing and manipulation actually believe it and live through terrible ordeals.
Thessaloniki authorities issued several arrest warrants against a ring of pimps who were threatening Nigerian women that they would perform "voodoo" on them unless they worked as prostitutes. Four Nigerian men and two Greek nationals are now charged as being members of the ring.
Authorities cracked down on the ring, after a 23-year-old Nigerian woman found the courage to speak to a friend of hers, and then report the case to the police.
Reports said her ordeal began in February 2010 when a woman from her country, aged 31, persuaded her to illegally immigrate to Greece. The older woman apparently threatened that she would exercise voodoo on the 23-year old and her family if she did not work as a prostitute and so initially the young solicited sex in a bar in the city of Arta and then in apartments in Athens and Thessaloniki until she decided to report the case to authorities.
*Editor's Note - Human trafficking is a crime, as is illegal immigration. Those who support illegal immigration usually are involved in the smuggling and trafficking of women as well. Most of these women are from third world nations, and have never been educated and this is why they fall victim to sex traffickers who use religion to profit off of them. The largest group of prostitutes from Sub-Saharan Africa come from Nigeria, and they are usually recruited through a specific type of trafficking network. Most of these trafficking rings are concentrated in the state of Edo in the South-Central part of the country. A survey by Women's Health and Action Research Centre in Edo's capital Benin City a few years ago showed that one in three young women had received offers to go to Europe. A number of African women have claimed that they underwent terrifying voodoo rituals in Nigeria before they were trafficked into Europe on a promise of work or gaining an education. Sometimes, traffickers will find a corrupt religious official to "sanction" their abuses, or will threaten to expose the victims' "sins" to their loved ones and sometimes they even use Voodoo, a religion mostly followed in Africa and the Caribbean, to enslave these women. The followers of Voodoo believe in the power of such rituals to destroy their souls are are very vulnerable to such abuses. We posted a video by the MEGA series "Protagonistes" which was broadcasted about three years ago and cleverly analyzes this very subject with subject reports from the streets of Athens. It is in the Greek language, and does not have English subtitles, but is definitely a must watch.