Blowing the lid on sex slavery

ALTHOUGH it might be mistaken for a glossy Hollywood thriller, The Whistleblower — which screens this Saturday as part of the Corona Cork Film Festival — tells an alarming, hard-hitting true story of brutality and institutional whitewashing in postwar Bosnia a decade ago, and under the nose of the United Nations.

In 1999, Nebraskan police officer Kathryn Bolkovac answered a recruitment advert by one of the world’s most prominent private military companies, DynCorp. The latter had been contracted to restore order in Bosnia in the wake of conflict there. Bolkovac believed DynCorp’s unit — under the auspices of the United Nations — would be a highly-trained team with a responsible policing agenda. What she encountered was the mercenary attitude of many recruits, and bureaucracy and indifference amongst the organisations stationed in Bosnia, not the least the UN.

She uncovered a sex-trafficking scandal in which young girls from around Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states were being forced into sex slavery, toiling in brothels for a clientele comprised of the international forces sent there to uphold peace and justice. Members of DynCorp’s policing unit were not simply ‘customers’ but involved in the trafficking.

When Bolkovac brought her findings to her superiors, her investigation was smothered and she was fired on the pretext of a falsified time-sheet. Although her dismissal case was successfully contested before a tribunal in Britain (where DynCorp were registered), no redress was suffered by DynCorp for the evidence of human rights abuse that Bolkovac had uncovered.

Her own career in law enforcement was over. In the ten years since the tribunal, Bolkovac has re-skilled, and now works in private sector management in Holland. She is involved in an attempt to push through legislation in the US Congress that would remove the ‘diplomatic immunity’ of those who work for such private contractors as DynCorp and leave them open to prosecution. Bolkovac says the film, and her book (also The Whistleblower), may act as a lightning-rod for the US government, as well as the UN, to change the system.

“Before this, for the past ten years, it’s been like talking to a wall. But now the movie is out there. It’s in people’s faces. The UN actually screened the film a few weeks ago and that brought so much emotion to their members. The pressure and the talk that’s being put out there now is overwhelming and I do think it’s going to force some change,” she says.

The movie, which stars Rachel Weisz as Bolkovac, features characters and situations based on the cases the Nebraskan cop investigated. The Whistleblower screens on Saturday at the Cork Opera House. Kathryn Bolkovac will introduce the film and book-sign.

* www.corkfilmfest.org