UK Olympic games should not be magnet for sex trafficking: Home Secretary

LONDON - Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has warned that Prime Minister David Cameron must do more to stop next year’s Olympic Games from becoming a magnet for sex trafficking gangs.

Cooper, 41, said that Cameron, 44, should stop pandering to anti-European sentiments within his party and endorse an EU directive on sex trafficking before millions of people start heading to the UK for the Games.

She has accused the Government of opposing the “sensible” measures only because some Conservatives were anxious about the directive having “Europe” in its title.

And said that it was “baffling” that the UK had not already backed the EU Directive on Human Trafficking because “none of the individual measures will be any serious problem for the UK”.

“I can only assume it is the fact of having Europe in the title that creates anxiety among the Government or among the backbenchers that means they are still opposing what is a very sensible measure,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.he said that studies have showed international sporting events “can be used by criminals, under the cover of tourism, to exploit particularly women and children”.

“I am concerned that we should do everything we can to avoid next year’s Olympic Games becoming a magnet for criminal gangs to force women and girls in to the sex trade, or push men in to forced labour,” she said.

“The Government does need to recognise the risk traffickers will seek to profit from the 2012 Olympic Games,” she added. (ANI)