Amnesty International welcomes the success of Operation Pentameter 2 in Northern Ireland, a PSNI exercise to tackle sex trafficking.The PSNI rescued five trafficked Women's rights's rightss rights's rights's rights's rights from brothels and made six arrests.

This was part of a UK-wide operation which uncovered 167 victims of sex trafficking and led to the arrest of over 500 suspected traffickers.

Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland Programme Director of Amnesty International said:
“For the last two years Amnesty has been saying publicly that we feared sex trafficking was taking place in and throughout Northern Ireland and now we have the proof that this is a serious problem. However, Amnesty is concerned that we do not know the fate of these five vulnerable Women's rights's rightss rights's rights's rights's rights who were rescued. The Government needs to protect the victims of this brutal industry as well as catching the traffickers.”

"At the moment these Women's rights's rightss rights's rights's rights's rights have no guaranteed protection in Northern Ireland. The law treats them as illegal immigrants and people here would be appalled to know that many of them are just deported. They are then at serious risk of re-trafficking.”

"The UK government must ratify the European Convention Against Trafficking which guarantees emergency housing and medical care for victims and gives them a month to recover from the trauma and make some decisions about what they need to do next.”

"Victims of trafficking have had all of their very basic human rights violated - we must turn the system around so that they are recognised as the victims and not the perpetrators of crime."