In 2022, the national government rescued and assisted 1,186 people who were victims of trafficking of people, most of them women, and among the most notable operations of the year were the one carried out to dismantle a yoga sect in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Crespoa ransom for labor exploitation in the Corrientes city of Paso de los Libres, and the raid of the therapeutic center The Reason for Living in Córdobaindicated an official report.
The document of the National Program for the Rescue and Accompaniment of People Victimized by the Crime of Human Trafficking Ministry of Justice and Human Rightsto which Télam had access, also highlighted the work carried out to achieve the first reparation for a victim of human trafficking.
The reparation was for a missionary woman, exploited in Santiago del Estero, and it was done through the Direct Fund for Assistance to Victims of Trafficking promoted by the Federal Council for the fight against Trafficking in Persons and for Assistance to its Victims.
Of the total number of people rescued last year, 543 identified as men, 637 as women, and 6 as trans people. While 61 people assisted were minors.
Nineteen arrested in 50 raids against a sect accused of trafficking and other crimes in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Crespohttps://t.co/0tm7wXuAnJ
– Telam Agency (@AgenciaTelam) August 13, 2022
Another fact of the report is that 3 out of 10 people were in a situation of sexual exploitation.
In relation to nationality, 891 are Argentine and 295 foreign.
The agency’s rescue operations in 2022 were carried out in 21 provinces and in the City of Buenos Aires (CABA).
“Only in CABA and the provinces of Buenos Aires, Corrientes and Mendoza 875 people were assisted; 37% of the victims rescued during the program’s interventions in 2022 were in the province of Buenos Aires (443),” the survey indicated.
While, Last year, the free and national telephone line 145, which is for reporting crimes of human trafficking and exploitation, which works 24 hours a day, free of charge, anonymously and nationwide, received 1,589 complaints.
In May of last year, the Gendarmerie raided four farms and two companies in Paso de los Libres to verify the unsanitary conditions in which the staff lived thanks to a complaint received on line 145.
73 people were rescued, including three minors.
In October, after raids on 20 homes in CABA and the Buenos Aires suburbs, a trafficking network that exploited 34 women was dismantled.
While, the rescue of people in a sect that worked in Villa Crespo took place last Augustand on that occasion the coordinator of the program, Zaida Gatti, reported that among the people found in the raided homes, some had been “for decades worshiping the leader of the congregation, a time when their will and autonomy were annulled” and explained that despite the fact that the victims had freedom of movement, what is achieved with this type of practice is “obtaining absolute dependence”.
In November, the judges of the Federal Chamber of Buenos Aires partially confirmed the prosecutions of the defendants for illicit association, money laundering and exploitation of persons in this case, but decided that the defendants should be freed, including the supposed head of the organization, Juan Percowicz.
The historical number of rescues, since 2008, the year of the enactment of Law 26,364 on the Prevention and Punishment of Trafficking in Persons and assistance to its victims, until the last day of 2022, is 18,497 people.
