Young girls have been smuggled from Mongolia to forced labor in Norway, with a visa where they were stated to be speed skaters, newspaper Dagbladet.
The trafficking of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors was organized by a speed-skating coach and a former Mongolian junior skating champion. The latter is policewoman and previously found guilty of using fake ID and illegal residence in Norway, the newspaper said.
Dagbladet extracted has extracted the backdrop to this information institutions and authorities including UDI, the foreign committee and the child care. Dagbladet has also aquired evidence from Mongolia, and writes that they know the identity of several people who participated in the smuggling.
– They smuggled us as skaters but we have never skated, a 19 year old young woman says. She also says that she was forced to work without pay. She was smuggled to Norway when she was 15 and currently has Norwegian citizenship and is living at a secret address.
Italian authorities have started an investigation because the girls were issued with special visas for athletes at the country’s embassy in Beijing. The woman Dagbladet describes as one of those responsible for the smuggling, is the mother of the 19-year-old. She confirms that she helped in obtaining visas for the girls, but is not aware that the girls were forced to work in Oslo.
In Norway the Oslo police says that both the woman and skating national team were reported for human trafficking , but that the case was dropped because of lack of evidence.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
