Bulgaria: Sliven girls - 2009 (26 images)

Nobody outside Bulgaria knows Sliven. Only the vice squads of Brussels and Amsterdam. Even the police could not help but wondering about the amount of prostitutes coming from one single place: Sliven. It is about a run down provincial town where the textile industry created a tradition of female employment. It is about EU labour migration. It is about a heavily damaged society in transition, ruling mafia structures, perverted patriarchal role models and physical beauty so easy to exploit....
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Nobody outside Bulgaria knows Sliven. Only the vice squads of Brussels and Amsterdam. Even the police could not help but wondering about the amount of prostitutes coming from one single place: Sliven. It is about a run down provincial town where the textile industry created a tradition of female employment. It is about EU labour migration. It is about a heavily damaged society in transition, ruling mafia structures, perverted patriarchal role models and physical beauty so easy to exploit. Sliven went the hard way after the regime change of 1989: mafia crime, sex slavery, forced prostitution. Today it is just normal. Everybody knows about it. It is part of the regional economy. Girls leave and come back, send money, pay the mafia bosses, open small businesses. It is just another career, people shrug their shoulders. Or as a 17-year old school girl on main street proudly put it: "Abroad? Sure. Sliven girls are all sooo beautiful!"
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