| |
Vietnamese women fall prey to
traffickers
By Ta Thu Giang
BAC GIANG, Vietnam - The move toward more open
market economies in the neighboring communist countries
of Vietnam and China has a dark side: increasingly
sophisticated trafficking of young women lured by false
promises of a better life.
Born into a peasant
family in this province some 50 kilometers north of
Hanoi, Than Thi Dieu is a typical Vietnamese rural
teenager, with a strong body and swarthy complexion. The
16-year-old is clever and self-confident, but gets
embarrassed when meeting people from outside her small
commune.
Than was quite different just three
years ago. She was very thin and pale, recovering from
the gloomy days she spent living in a near but alien
land - China - after falling prey to human traffickers.
One day in 1999, an aunt encouraged her to go
for a new, easier life outside her rural surroundings,
offering her a job at a shop in Vo Chai district some
50km away in the northeastern province of Lang Son, near
the border with China. Eager to discover new worlds
beyond her village, she went despite her parents'
objections.
She was sold three times - twice to
brothel owners and then to a Chinese family across the
border in China's southernmost city of Namning, in
Yunnan province, but later escaped her traffickers.
"Afraid of being forced to become a prostitute,
I made up my mind to flee," Dieu says, recalling with
tears the time she tried to escape from one brothel
owner but was caught and beaten up.
Her ordeal
began when instead of being brought to the shop where
she was supposed to work at the Tan Thanh border gate,
which leads to Pingxiang city in China's Guangxi region,
Dieu's relatives brought her to a brothel owner. This
man sold her to another brothel owner, who then brought
her across the border and then resold her to a Chinese
family in Namning.
On the night she was brought
to the family home, "I climbed over a high gate and fell
down, bruising my left leg. I had to hide every time I
heard a vehicle coming. I was really terrified that I
would be caught again."
Two Chinese girls she
came across the next day brought her to a police
station. Chinese border authorities then coordinated
with their Vietnamese counterparts to arrange her trip
home, and her month-long ordeal finally ended.
At 40, Nguyen Thi My was much older than Dieu
when she was deceived into thinking she would get a real
job at the border with China.
When a friend
promised her a job with a monthly pay of VND600,000
(US$40) at the northern border gate, she leapt at the
chance. "Such an offer was beyond the nicest dream of a
woman villager like me," recalls My, also from Bac
Giang.
After all, she was struggling to look
after her three-year-old son after her husband left her.
She worked hard on crop fields, but could not afford
many of their basic needs.
On the way to the
border gate, she recalls, a man gave her a wet towel and
told her to wash her face. "I did not know anything
after that because the towel had been soaked in
anesthetic. When I woke up, I could hear people around
speaking a strange language that I could not
understand," she adds.
"Finally I realized that
I had been sold to a Chinese man for a forced marriage,"
says My, who ended up living in China's Guangxi
province, which borders Vietnam, for 11 years.
Despite their age difference, Dieu and My had
something in common - they were searching for new lives.
Those most vulnerable to trafficking are not only
experienced teenagers but gullible older women seeking
job opportunities and better lives.
Dieu and My
are but two among the many Vietnamese women sold to
across the Chinese border as sex workers or as wives to
Chinese men, including in places where China's one-child
policy has often resulted in a lack of local brides.
As of May, nearly 10,400 Vietnamese women have
been sold by human traffickers to China. Another 12,000
were trafficked to Taiwan, according to the General
Department of People's Police in Vietnam.
A
further 10,000 Vietnamese women aged 18-40 have been
misled into Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong,
Macau and even the United States. The rise in
trafficking is linked to loose controls at the border,
which have come with freer legitimate trade and the move
toward more open market economies.
Dieu was
lucky because she escaped before actually being sold to
clients. Many other women remain in places like China,
unable to go back to their homes and families.
After her 11 years in China, My returned to Bac
Giang early this year. "I was still lucky as my Chinese
husband was a poor but kind farmer. Sympathetic to my
circumstances and because of my undaunted will, finally
he gave me some money and said I could return home as I
wished," My says.
Like other survivors of
trafficking, My and Dieu found it difficult to put back
the pieces of their lives when they returned home. After
returning to her native village, Dieu discovered that
her parents had separated. Her father had thought that
her mother had sold her to the traffickers.
Similarly, My's joy of reunion with her family
was marred by seeing the impact her absence has had on
the little son she had left behind. "I'm very sad, as my
son remains illiterate," she says, noting that he could
not go to school without his mother's care.
"It
is not easy for returnees to overcome their own
complex," says Nguyen Thi Bac, deputy chairwoman of the
Bac Giang Women's Union. They need support from the
community as a whole and such groups as the local
chapter of the Vietnam Women's Union (VWU), she says. In
May, the union went on a fact-finding trip to the
northern border provinces and to southern China to find
ways to address the cross-border human trade.
Vietnam's national and local governments also
have programs to ease the adjustment of returnees,
providing them job opportunities or soft credit for
small businesses. Efforts are under way to educate women
and children, especially in rural areas, about the risks
of human trafficking.
The VWU has opened in Bac
Giang province a training course on the fight against
trafficking under the United Nations International
Agency Project on Trafficking in Women and Children in
Mekong Subregion.
Better coordination among
law-enforcement bodies is also needed as trafficking
becomes more sophisticated.
In 2000, 213 cases
involving 351 people linked to trafficking were brought
to trial, according to Vietnamese officials. The figures
soared to 256 cases involving 438 people in 2001.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
