VIETNAM: No Red Lights for Trafficking Women to China
Date Posted: 2/14/2006

Ho Chi Minh City , Feb 10 (IPS) - Searching Nguyen Thi Hien's house in the northern province of Lai Chaau, last November, police discovered a diary in which she had meticulously recorded the names of 142 Vietnamese women that she had sold into sexual slavery in China.

Hien was caught after two young girls from Quang Ninh province charged her with luring them to China, on promises of employment, and then selling them to a brothel. Unfortunately for Hien, the girls escaped and managed to make their way back home.

Hien confessed to Lai Chaau police that she was part of a gang that trafficked young women to China. For each girl delivered across the border, Hien got 4,000- 8,000 Yuan (500-1,000 US dollars) depending on the 'quality of the merchandise'.

On Dec.28, police in HCM City reported joint operations with their counterparts in the northern border provinces of Mong Cai and Quang Ninh in cracking down on a gang that trafficked children, including newborn babies, to China.

The number of known cases of women and children trafficked from Vietnam to China and Cambodia has increased significantly in recent years.

According to China's Xinhua News Agency, the number of uncovered traffic cases in 2005 was more than double that of the previous year. Some 125 cases of trafficked Vietnamese were detected in Guangxi alone.

Such has been the growth of the trade that analysts believe, in a few years, China will overtake Thailand as the hub of the region's trafficking industry.

Attributing the rise in the number of reported cases to the close cooperation between China and Vietnam, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has in a report said that the ''two countries have set up better organisations to detect trafficking.''

Over the past few years, China and Vietnam launched several joint-programmes to crack down on trafficking and share information on victims and the trafficking gangs.

In June 2004, the two countries launched 'United Against Trafficking', the first joint campaign to stop trafficking in women and children, in the border towns of Mong Cai (Vietnam)and Dong Xing (China) with technical assistance and support from UNICEF.

In 2005, a second campaign was carried out by the Women's Union in Vietnam and its counterpart in China in the border provinces of Quang Ninh, Lang Son, Thanh Hoa and Nghe An in Vietnam and Guang Xi in China. TV spots, leaflets, posters, stickers, T-shirts and caps were distributed throughout the provinces ensured that the anti-trafficking messages reached as many people as possible.

In July alone, police in the two countries worked together on a series of raids that led to more than 100 victims being rescued and about 12 smuggling rings being broken up.

But as Nguyean Tho Hoat, deputy director of the Lang Son Women's Union remarked: ''The campaign has been successful in detecting cross-border women and children trafficking, but it has not stopped it yet.''

In Cambodia, the situation is no better. Although there are no official figures of Vietnamese women and children trafficked to that country, independent observers believe that the number is rising significantly.

In a report, independent researcher Aaron Cohen said the sheer number of Vietnamese girls working as 'sex slaves' in massage parlours and brothels in Svay Pak, Seam Reap, Battambang and Phnom Penh proved that there existed a whole system to sell Vietnamese children in Cambodia. ''There are some young girls that are sold to agents by their own relatives,'' Cohen noted.

He reported a case where dozens of Vietnamese girls were rescued by local police but were afterward found again in the grip of traffickers, leading him to suspect a high-degree of collusion between local authorities and traffickers.

Cohen was inclined to blame the governments of the two countries for failure to stop the racket. He also thought the U.S. state department should not have removed Vietnam from the 2004 list of countries that needed to be monitored closely on the human trafficking issue.

Hoat said poverty, family conflict and social discrimination were the main reasons that drive Vietnamese women to fall into the clutches of traffickers.

Young, single women with little education and information on the risks of trafficking are especially vulnerable. "Some have been lured by the prospect of a good marriage, of a good job. Some are pushed by an unhappy family life to take the risky journey abroad," Hoat said. ''These poor women are at high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS or being raped and abused.''

Hoat reported cases of trafficked women who managed to return to Vietnam but had little access to counselling and support while their children, fathered by Chinese men, could not be registered as citizens and so could not go to school.

Julie Bergeron, a UNICEF Vietnam expert, also reported that many returned women had been rejected by their own families and communities; they could not find any decent job because people always looked down on them as 'prostitutes in China'.

As they saw no future at home, some returned women joined traffickers to China, and worked as decoys to lure other young women to accompany them. ''Some trafficked women return to Vietnam to trick other women and sell them to traffickers,'' Hoat said.

Hien's is a case in point. Sold into China when she was 18, she returned to Vietnam five years later to enter the business of luring other young women to China with false promises of straight jobs.

''As long as the standard of living in rural border areas does not change, we can only hope to limit trafficking but not end it completely,'' Hoat said.