Antislavery Usable Past

Dimitra

2017 (Narrative date)

There are an estimated 89,000 people living in modern slavery in Greece (GSI 2018). Traffickers exploit people from Greece and aboard in the country. Women and children from Eastern and Southern Europe, South and Central Asia, China, Georgia, Iraq, Nigeria, and Russia are subjected to sex trafficking in brothels, on the street, in massage salons and in hotels. While people subjected to forced labour are primarily children and men from Africa, Eastern Europe and South Asia. Debt bondage is reported to occur in the agricultural industry in Greece. And the marginalised Romani children are forced to sell goods on the street, beg, and commit theft. Refugee and migrant travellers are at an increased risk of human trafficking and modern slavery.

Dimitria was kidnapped as a child and her trafficker attempted to sell her organs. She was discovered by police after guests at the hotel where she was being kept made a noise complaint.

Basically, that woman had kidnapped us. She brought us here with the purpose of selling our organs. She basically wanted to kill us.

I was born in Russia. I was in a Russian institution. After that, based on what I know, some woman took me and two other girls. She literally kidnapped us and brought us here with the purpose of selling our organs. She claimed we were her own children. She was keeping us in a hotel. As young kids, we were pretty loud. Hotel guests complained and that’s how we were discovered by the police. They tried to identify us. They managed to find the other girl’s identities. But nothing about me. As a result I go under that woman’s last name. Even now, I go under her last name. This feels foreign to me. It is not my own last name. I want to change it.

I often think back and have terrible memories from what I’ve suffered. I want to leave everything behind and move on. I want to make something of my own, leave the rest behind. I want to move on.

[...]

It’s really hard, because… you can’t help but wonder how cruel our world is. Can someone be that mean? It’s very upsetting and hard.

[...]

I have no identity card. I have no birth certificate. I can’t find a job now that I’ve grown up. I can’t work. I feel like I’m nothing. Nothing, honestly. I can do nothing. If you have no identity, you are nothing. Nothing, zero, nada.

I feel extremely lucky because I escaped a terrible situation. I could have been killed. But I was saved and I feel really lucky.

Narrative credit to VICE

Original source can be found here

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VOICES: Narratives by Survivors of Modern Slavery

This is the world's largest archive of modern slavery survivor narratives. Across more than a million words spoken or written by survivors of modern slavery, we can see why slavery persists in particular hotspots, analyse patterns in trafficking routes, identify vulnerabilities, understand more about the challenges survivors face in liberation, and discover new antislavery solutions. These narratives offer the chance to systematically design new antislavery strategies based on the experiences, ideas and solutions of enslaved people themselves.

The database is searchable by country, name, theme, and narrative date. Narratives can be viewed in list or map form. A short introduction provides context to each narrative. Narrative provenance appears after the main narrative text.

For ideas on how to use this database, please see our accompanying guide.

Project Lead: Zoe Trodd. Team Members: Andrea Nicholson, Lauren Eglen, Rosemary Pearce, Olivia Wright.

Project Funders: AHRC Antislavery Usable Past grant (2014-19), ESRC/AHRC PaCCS Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement grant (2016-19), and AHRC-GCRF Antislavery Knowledge Network grant (2017-2021).

For any queries about the collection please contact: rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk. If you wish to cite a particular narrative, please acknowledge the survivor’s name, the provenance of the narrative and cite: Voices Database, the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham.

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