Opinion (Rogério COPETO): OR HUMAN TRAFFICKING
O Human Trafficking (TSH), in its various aspects, is not a recent phenomenon nor confined today to the borders of certain countries and / or regions of the world told poorest, constituting a serious violation of human rights, in that affects especially vulnerable groups such as women and children anywhere in the world, not being immune our parent networks to TSH.
Rogério COPETO
Lieutenant Colonel of the GNR, Master in Law and Security and Homeland Security Auditor
Head of the Education Division / Command Doctrine and Training
It is known that TSH takes many forms, can be seen in the perspective of obtaining forced labor, transplant and illegal sale of organs, illegal adoption of children and sexual exploitation of women and children.
If the labor exploitation anyone can fall victim to forced labor in agriculture, in construction or in factories, the sexual exploitation victims are mostly women and children, that target prostitution.
As part of fulfilling its mission to GNR, is responsible for ensuring the defense of the rights and freedoms of citizens, ensuring the legality and the highest standards of security and public tranquility, in the respective areas and matters within its responsibility.
To carry out its tasks, GNR has several units and agencies, that highlight the Territorial Units, located in every continent of the Districts and Islands who perform all police functions, legally assigned, in the areas of their responsibility.
The Territorial Units GNR, through its Territorial Offices, Sections of Special Programs and the Criminal Investigation Centers, They have the burden to carry the signaling, identification and monitoring of criminal cases, including under the TSH, promoting when necessary, specialized and personalized attention and appropriate and possible protective actions for victims.
The patrol system oriented to the problem allows certain situations is the subject of a specific police approach, by conscious and military alerted to problems as, able to identify situations, signaling them with the competent bodies, for a preventative monitoring and early possible.
In the specific cases of TSH theme, this action translates into guidance policing actions and operations, often combined with other Forces and Security Services, to places where they are likely to be cases of trafficking for sexual exploitation (bares, switch houses and other nightlife establishments) and labor exploitation (construction activities and public works, seasonal activities and domestic services).
The detected cases are forwarded to the respective court, determining the investigative actions to be undertaken, by the competent criminal police (expected Trafficking Crime and punishable under article 159 CP is a crime whose investigation is the exclusive powers of the judicial police and the Foreigners and Borders Service).
The performance of GNR makes up always taking into account an integrated view of criminal problems, which also includes the aspects of prevention and victim support, which include the application of appropriate measures for their protection.
This particular will be referring to the Centers for Research and Support of Victims Specific, whose military receive specific training and specialized criminal investigation and victim support. This valence, aimed particularly at prevention, monitoring and research (when the investigation of the crime is the responsibility of GNR) of exercised violence situations for victims with specific needs, which includes victims of trafficking, GNR has allowed to improve their operational response under the violence committed against them tend to be more vulnerable groups and constitutes an emerging social phenomenon of high complexity. It is also the GNR perform routing victims to the bodies of the victim support network best suited to each specific situation, under existing partnerships.
The GNR in their specific action under the TSH collaborates with various organizations and institutions related to this issue, notably with the other services and security services through established coordination mechanisms and governmental entities and organizations and non-governmental.
For training GNR collaborate in the implementation of the Second National Plan Against Trafficking in Human Beings, where in the framework of the implementation of its measures, It has been given to the military training of the Guard on the subject.
Also through the partnership with SOS TSH project has been given training to the military of the GNR, that this project has the task to assist the victims and refer them to the Association for Family Planning, manager of the project entity, as happened recently in the Beja area, where several Romanian citizens were being exploited by their fellow citizens.
TSH in other crimes the complaint is compulsory for all those who are aware of situations in which nationals or foreigners are enticed to dream job postings, high salaries promises, even if they come from people known to the victims. Also as warning signs are motion control and deprivation of liberty, even if not explicit, the obligation to hand over identification documents, the direct or indirect threats and the most severe form, bodily and sexual offenses, there almost always pecuniary debts to the supposed employers, that must be paid by victims.
In Portugal, the crime of trafficking in human beings is punishable by imprisonment of up to 12 year old, aggravated when victims are minors, and the crime committed by bidder, deliver, recruit, entice, accept, transport, harbors or receives a person for the purpose of exploitation, including sexual exploitation, the exploitation of labor, a mendicidade, slavery, organ harvesting or exploitation of other criminal activities, exercising violence, rapture, abuse of authority or taking advantage of a mental incapacity of the victim.
