The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is the highlight of my year. I go to four to six films a day for the ten days of the festival. Every year I want to diary the best films, but I am so busy, and so exhausted at the end of the day, that I never have. This year I have decided to be willing to throw a diary together, just to get one out there, when I see important films. This is tonights report.
Seeing these independent films and documentaries makes mainstream Hollywood films look even more shallow, if you can believe that. It is a shame more of these films don't reach a wider audience. It took me a while to discover that documentaries with daunting topics--such as, torture or environmental catastrophe--are more often inspiring than depressing. Now I try to see as many docs as I can.
The film this afternoon was not a documentary, but it was the telling of a true story. Very difficult to watch, deeply upsetting, The Whistleblower involves human trafficking in Bosnia. The bad news is that organized crime has a solid foothold in many government programs and agencies, including the U.N. The good news is that there are some incredibly brave and capable people in the world. How much we all care about these things is always a question.
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This raw and dizzying political thriller tells the story of a female Nebraska police officer turned peacekeeper who uncovers a disturbing sex-trafficking underworld in Bosnia and its shocking connection to the UN. As Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) feverishly works to expose the scandal, the UN does its utmost to keep her quiet.
Most impressive was the impact one person can have just from doing her job well. As the film told it, she simply bothered to follow what was happening, checked out stories told her. If she got word of something, she went alone into dangerous situations. As is true with most of these kinds of stories, the film was both deeply upsetting and profoundly inspiring.
The brave woman is Kathryn Bolkovac, whose book of the same name should be out soon. Larysa Kondracki, the director, had little money for the film, but she convinced Ms. Bolkavac that she would tell the story that needed to be told, without making the Nebraska police officer into a hero, just tell the story. She bought the rights to her life for $100. The film is kind to the audience given the subject matter. Enough is depicted to convey the horror, but no more than is necessary. The director said that they had to tone down the film from actual events, because the horror was too unbelievable. They had included dialog that came word for word from clandestine tapings--they were told that it was too unbelievable. In a similar vein, the film was made into a story of discovery by the lead character when, in fact, the girls being trafficked were in evidence from the moment you stepped from the plane. Coffee shops have mattresses upstairs, all sorts of peace keepers and diplomats have "their girls" with them in public places.
As she went up the chain of command with her investigation, Ms. Bolkavac kept meeting obstacles, until finally her investigation was shut down completely from very high authority, probably the State Department. She was fired and is now suing for wrongful termination.
The producers did not have the money to buy the insurance needed to use the actual name of the contractor who fired her in order to stop her investigation, but the name is no secret. The company is DynCorp
According to whistleblower Ben Johnston, a former aircraft mechanic who worked for the company in Bosnia, DynCorp employees and supervisors engaged in sex with 12 to 15 year old children, and sold them to each other as slaves. Ben Johnston ended up fired, forcing him into protective custody. According to Johnston, none of the girls were from Bosnia itself, but were kidnapped by DynCorp employees from Russia, Romania and other places.
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Johnston is not the only DynCorp employee to blow the whistle and sue the billion-dollar government contractor. Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force monitor hired by the U.S. company on another U.N.-related contract, has filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for wrongful termination. DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking.[20] Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. Bolkovac's story was made into a film, The Whistleblower, in 2010.
...In the summer of 2005, the United States Defense department drafted a proposal to prohibit defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor. Several defense contractors, among others DynCorp, stalled the establishment of a final proposal that would formally prohibit defense contractor involvement in these activities.
This film does not have a happy ending. When her investigation was stymied, Kathryn Bolkovac managed to bring evidence to the attention of the world. The reaction has not been the widespread outrage one would expect. According to the director, a Ukrainian-Canadian woman, the issues of trafficking and military contracting more generally, are much more discussed in Europe and elsewhere around the world than here in the U.S.
London Telegraph, April 25, 2002
The former American policewoman claims she was sacked because she sent an email to Jacques Paul Klein, the chief of UN mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which highlighted the sexual exploitation of women by those who had been sent to protect them from the sex trade. She was demoted and removed from front line policing after emailing the claims that ".. women and girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes, and the women who refused were locked in rooms and withheld food and outside contact for days or weeks. After this time they are told to dance naked on table tops and sit with clients. If the women still refuse to perform sex acts with the customers they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and their associates. They are told if they go to the police they will be arrested for prostitution and being an illegal immigrant."
Giving evidence to the tribunal, Mrs Bolkovac said she had discovered "extensive use of brothels" by UN police and other peacekeepers. She said she also found that international staff were helping local police to sell women for the sex trade and she feared this was being "covered up."
"The victims of trafficking were reporting extensive use of the brothels and other criminal acts by the international community and international police task force," she said.
She claimed that Mike Stiers, the international police task force’s deputy commissioner, had flippantly dismissed victims of human trafficking as "just prostitutes."
This attitude led many members of the peacekeeping mission to believe it was acceptable to use sex slaves and go to brothels, she said.
Here is an interview with Ms. Bolkovac.
Times of London article on the sex trade Ms. Bolkovac uncovered in Bosnia.
Kathryn Bolkovac on the Diane Rehm Show.
A Summary of Human Trafficking by the United States Government and the United Nations