Portrait of the “Natacha’s”: A Critique of The Whistleblower

A promise of a job can come in many different forms, but for young women in former Eastern bloc countries, there could be danger. Human trafficking has pillaged eastern European countries and preyed on the innocent for the expense of free labor and sexual exploitation. Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower shows a view into that realm where those who you thought you could trust to protect actually are those who try to persecute you.

The Whistleblower focused on the real-life account of the Natacha’s¹ who came from Eastern Europe with the promise of better jobs but who were trafficked into the sex trade. Kathryn Bolkovac (portrayed by actress Rachel Weisz) was the former Nebraskan cop who took the opportunity to become a U.N. peacekeeper in formerly war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. Once in Bosnia Bolkovac uncovered a major trafficking operation of Eastern European women into Bosnia, which was being operated and controlled by U.N. peacekeepers, multinational companies’ contractors and the local police.

Bolkovac risked her reputation and life to try to rescue and protect these women as well as prosecute and stop their perpetrators, even though the U.N. peacekeepers involved had diplomatic immunity. By the end of Bolkovac’s journey the U.N. deported many of the U.N. peacekeepers involved in the trafficking under the premise that they were ‘taking a leave of absence’. The U.N. did this so it could save face. According to the film, the real Bolkovac currently lives in the Netherlands with her partner that she met during her tour in Bosnia, but she has been blacklisted in the international governmental and policing world because of her actions to fight human trafficking.

What was so disturbing but notable about this film were the realistic details of the scenes, sometimes confusing me as to whether I was watching a documentary or a fictional depiction of real events. The scenes that utilized the native languages (e.g. Ukrainian, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) really gave the film a feeling that many of these accounts of criminal activity were based on real circumstances.

Image provided from Google Images

Many historical fiction films that depict international events use English as the base language for the entire film; however, in many instances, English may not be the primary language in that country. For example, In the Land of Blood and Honey used English as the base language, but I think the audience would have had much a stronger connection to the film if the actors had spoken using Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and/or Serbo-Croatian, even to be inconvenienced.

Director Kondracki expressed how she wanted the trafficking and sex slavery scenes to seem realistic as possible in the behind-the-scenes content. Most of the time, I am opposed to explicit nudity in the films, but the photographs of the trafficked European women pictured either topless or displaying some of their backsides played an intrinsic role in the film. It depicted how these women were not the owners of their own bodies and in control of what happened to them; they belonged to their traffickers and their customers. Those explicit pictures depicted how these women were debased to property and commodities to be bought and sold in the sex trade. The objectification of women. Essentially, these images added to the realistic depiction and tertiary source of sex slavery without indulging in the viewers’ gratification of eroticism.

On the contrary, the explicit nudity and sex scenes in In the Land of Blood and Honey were an embellishment of sexual gratification and actually detracted from the main plot of the film in my opinion. Director Jolie could have omitted these scenes and still had continued to depict the horror, chaos and yet every day life of some of the people in Bosnia during the Bosnian war. Relying on sex scenes and nudity to gratify the audience’s erotic sense to maintain their attention during the film does not show the strength of a strong director or a strong film.

But I diverge, and I would like to talk about the major issue of The Whistleblower, which is human trafficking. Human trafficking expert Michele Clark defines human trafficking as “business involving coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power as well as abuse of vulnerability of women and children for purposes of forced labor or prostitution. It is only the trafficker who gains.”² The perpetrators of these crimes usually convince their victims of a falsity like “you will be promised a great job in X country where you will make so much more money” in order to lure them into the trap.

Once the key is in the ignition, it is very hard to rescue the victims from their traffickers because of the secret, black market behavior of the trade and the risk to the victim. But difficult is not impossible as seen by Bolkovac’s efforts.

As seen in The Whistleblower, U.N. peacekeeper Bolkovac’s deliberate and repetitive action to try to save one woman, Raya, from her traffickers transformed Raya’s worth from a basic commodity to a threat to the human trafficking business. If you haven’t seen the film, don’t read the next couple of lines. Because Raya threatened the fluidity of the trafficking and sex slavery businesses, her traffickers and perpetrators decided to do what was best with any bad produce: dispose of it. A gunshot to the head was how Bolkovac and her comrades found her. Raya lay dead in a forest miles from the bar where she was formerly “working”. 

Some people would have said that Bolkovac caused Raya’s death by coming to look for her, transforming Raya into an outlier from the trafficking and coercion business and ultimately a threat to her traffickers and the business. But similarly to physical domestic abuse, trafficking and sex slavery have similar ends: shortened life or early deaths. Whether it is a sexually transmitted disease like AIDS, physical abuse from customers and/or the pimp and/or owner, accident or injury from the labor, or diminished value of the person, leading to disposal of the individual (e.g. systematic and exemplary execution), a sex slave and trafficked individual will most likely find their life greatly shortened by the trafficking scheme.

A trafficked individual can learn to survive if they themselves become part of the system by becoming a trafficker of other individuals, but wouldn’t you consider that another type of death? Becoming the monster that you once feared? And for many women involved, many men run the trafficking scheme and sex slavery world in some parts of the world. In other regions, women control the trafficking and sex slavery schemes in other regions. Ergo, a woman may have less of a chance to become a trafficker in certain parts of the world than in others because of her gender.

But if Raya had chosen to go with Bolkovac, maybe she would have lived. It was a chance, a risk, to go with Bolkovac the first time, and that risk went badly to lead her back to the sex trafficking ring. However, a risk is a risk, which could go positively or poorly, whereas Raya’s status quo was sure to lead her to her death. And it did. Can we measure the strength of fear in one’s eyes? Can we quantify its power over individuals?

As Raya was about to go with Bolkovac, some of the U.N. peacekeepers appeared, who were her perpetrators, and just their stares held her at bay. That scene was the most harrowing in the film because even though these men were not physically touching her at the moment, their threatening eyes expressed every type of pain and punishment Raya would experience if she did not obey their commands. In their eyes, Raya was a tool to be used and then throw away, a sex toy, which was what they expressed in their eyes. As shamefully as they undressed her with their eyes, these men psychologically coerced Raya back into the corner of darkness, fear and shame from whence she came, leaving Bolkovac empty handed. Who can stop this fear?

Christine Caine³ is one woman who is trying to eradicate human trafficking from central and Eastern Europe. Read more about her organization’s (A21) mission at http://www.thea21campaign.org/.

The Whistleblower is only one account of injustice happening around the world in many forms and one woman’s right to stop it for the sake of humans. Each whistleblower case has to be handled according to the situation, but one individual cannot be a bystander as innocent people are sold for human flesh for the sex trade and forced labor. That is the greatest injustice in our time around the world.

[1] Term used by human trafficking expert Michele Clark to describe women from the eastern European countries who immigrated to Israel during the early 1990’s, who were then trafficked into sex slavery. I will also use this term to describe the women from these former Soviet countries who were trafficked into sex slavery in central and western Europe.

2 Michele A. Clark, “Human Trafficking Casts Shadow on Globalization,” Yale Global Online. 23 April 2003. .

3 Christine Caine’s official website: http://www.christinecaine.com/.