Human traffickers abandon Baltics

Nils Niitra
, reporter
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Photo: Margus Ansu / Postimees

Regular images of Vietnamese sneaking across the boundary line from recent years will become more scarce; the number of people crossing the border illegally is falling also in Latvia and Lithuania.

Seven Vietnamese people crossed the Russian-Latvian border as recently as Thursday night. One of them strayed over to the Estonian side and was apprehended here.

Another recent case is from September 24 when two suspicious-looking men asked to stay for the night and continued moving towards Riga in Misso parish, Võru County. It seems the locals already know what to do in such cases. Border guards apprehended the Syrian and Egyptian and determined where they had crossed the border. The men were taken to the Harku detention center.

The last real case of human trafficking happened on April 12 when border guards caught 11 citizens of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and nine smugglers in Põlva County. One Vietnamese national attempted to gain entry as a passenger in an Estonian citizen's car at the Luhamaa border point on June 13 but was sent back to Russia. The latter case does not fall under human trafficking.

Risk of being caught has forced traffickers to find safer routes than the one leading across Estonia's southeastern border as too many have been arrested and sent to jail. Tartu County Court convinced two Russian citizens, Andrei Sokolov and Mihhail Smirnov, of trafficking on September 1. Both were sentenced to 10 months in prison and were additionally handed conditional sentences of four years and two months.

The men were also handed five-year entry bans. Sokolov and Smirnov had smuggled eight Vietnamese across the border last December. Their task was to get the refugees across the border, where others would meet them to take over.

Cut by magnitudes

The year cannot be compared to previous ones, however, despite the fact the new boundary line is only cleared and real construction work will begin next year. The border guard registered 64 illegal land border crossings in 2014 of which 28 cases concerned immigration or transmigration, or put more simply the desire to get settled in the European Union. Persons concerned numbered 62.

There were 63 border crossings last year of which 23 with the aim of immigration or transmigration – 60 persons all in all. Only 30 attempts of crossing the border have been registered in the first eight months of 2016. Attempts at immigration or transmigration number just three and concern 20 people. That is to say the number of border crossing attempts has fallen several times even before the year is out. The majority of immigrants have been Vietnamese in 2016, while the picture has been far more versatile in previous years.

Head of the integrated border administration bureau of the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) Helen Neider-Veerme said that colleagues in Latvia and Lithuania say the pressure on their borders is much greater. Postimees contacted journalists in Latvia and Lithuania who said that even so the number of illegals is falling also in the two southern Baltic countries.

Latvia has a much longer land border with Russia, which is why it is inevitable the country has to deal with a lot more people. Latvian border guard caught 476 illegal immigrants last year of whom 309 were Vietnamese. The authorities also arrested 87 human traffickers. Illegals have numbered around 300 so far this year, with 185 of them Vietnamese.

Lithuania shares its eastern border with Belarus. Even though there is no recent data, 389 illegals crossed the border in 2014 and only 264 last year. 

Serious punishments

Head of the Southern Police Prefecture's organized and severe crime unit Rain Vosman said that there is a difference between independent fortune hunters and people brought to Estonia by smugglers.

«We have arrested six groups of human traffickers in Southern Estonia since the end of 2014,» Vosman said. «It has later turned out these groups have acted on at least 15 different occasions, and that their victims might number around 200.»

The construction of the southeastern border will begin next year. By today more than 90 percent of the border has been cleared of trees and bushes. Recent efforts already make it much more difficult to cross the border unseen as movable cameras can pick up illegal border crossing attempts on the clear boundary line.

Vosman said that the fact human trafficking carries a serious punishment – up to 15 years imprisonment – and risk of being caught combine for the main reason traffickers steer clear of Estonia. «Even the lowest ranking workers of the criminal scheme have been handed five-year prison sentences of which they've served almost a year in Estonia,» Vosman said.

«After they are deported, there are periods of prohibition and entry bans. The punishments are impressive and the message has reached human traffickers.»

Vosman added, however, that it is probable smugglers will simply look for other avenues for bringing people into the EU. «They will search for a place where their activities are easier,» he said. People from Vietnam have primarily been headed for Poland or Germany.

Human traffickers form a chain with many links that begins in Vietnam. Different links in that chain are located in different parts on the long journey transporting the «goods» to other criminal groups.

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