Tackling London's sex slave shame

By Alphonso Van Marsh

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Two hundred years may have passed since Britain banned participation in the slave trade, but some argue slavery still exists in the United Kingdom.

"Men, women and children are being trafficked in to the UK and London in particular. Both for forced labor and sexual exploitation," says Anti-Slavery International's Beth Hetzfeld.

"The people who have been trafficked are victims of a crime. Its modern day slavery."

British police recently introduced reporters to one of those victims: A Lithuanian woman forced to work in a brothel for two weeks -- before she escaped.

Renata, not her real name, says an Albanian man trafficked her into England with a promise of a decent paying job.

"When I arrived, he told me I had been sold as a sex slave. He raped me. He forced me to do all sorts of things," Ranata says.

Police say Renata has since been sent back to Lithuania, one of Britain's major source countries for trafficked sex workers. (Watch how Britain is combating sex slavery)

Doville Survilate, a diplomat at the Lithuanian Embassy in London says her country is cooperating with British authorities to repatriate and rehabilitate trafficked Lithuanian nationals.

Concern over the trafficking of women from other countries lured into better jobs and a better life in Britain¹s capital -- then forced to prostitute themselves in spas and massage parlors -- is reaching the top levels of British government.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker concedes he doesn't know how many women are trafficked here, but at the launch of a new London Metropolitan Police unit dedicated to fighting human trafficking this month, Coaker said he was committed to cracking down on an industry that's estimated to sell women for about $3,500 to $4,000 each.

"We estimated about 4,000 women had been trafficked for sexual exploitation," Coaker told reporters, citing the latest Home Office figures from 2003. "We will set out to catch people who are involved in this horrendous, terrible crime," he said.

The 11-member police Human Trafficking Team is starting up as London and other cities across Britain mark the March 25 bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.

Many are hosting exhibitions, remembrances -- and from city councils in former slave trading port cities like Bristol and Liverpool -- official declarations of regret for participating in the trade of human cargo.

But there's protest too.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act effectively banned participation in slavery with Africa (it was another 26 years before Britain banned slavery throughout the then British Empire).

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to express "deep sorrow" for Britain's role in the slave trade, sentiment he first wrote about in an editorial in the British Afro-Caribbean targeted newspaper "New Nation" last year.

"I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was," Blair wrote.

"That¹s not enough. We want a full apology," says Esther Sanford, of the Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe. She's one of many activists who say British authorities must apologize and fund programs to provide educational, cultural and economic opportunities to communities they say still suffer the legacies of slavery.

"Reparations [are] multi-faceted. It is not a paycheck, it is a process," Sanford says.

For much of the 19th century, British docks served as a cornerstone in the so-called "triangle trade:" Salt and other goods from Europe traded for enslaved Africans -- often with the cooperation of local African chieftains -- on the continent's west coast.

The slaves were then sold into slavery on the other side of the Atlantic, the slave ships came back to Europe with sugar, coffee, textiles and profits.

Historians say ships launched from the port city of Bristol, for example, brought more than 500,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas.

It may be no coincidence Blair does not use the phrase "I am sorry" as he condemns slavery in New Nation, writing that "its hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time."

The Pan-Africa Reparations Coalition for Europe suspects an apology could leave the British government exposed to legal claims for financial compensation.

But Mark Ellis, Executive Director of the International Bar Association says given the length of time between the peak of the slave trade and present day, he doesn't think an apology would necessarily open the prime minister up to litigation.

Ellis says the apology debate shouldn't be measured by legalities, but by moral principle.

"From the point of reconciling some sense of relief for victims -- even those who are not direct heirs -- I think that [an apology] is a positive move. I would encourage states, governments and people to do more of that," Ellis says.

Reuters reports that in the second half of the 15th century, Europeans began to trade along the west coast of Africa, and by 1867 at least 10 million -- estimates range as high as 60 million -- Africans had been shipped as slaves to the so-called new world.

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