[Vacets-local-dc] [In the World of Human Trafficking, Vietnam Remains a 'Supply Country']

Wed Jul 20 11:28:09 PDT 2005

 In the World of Human Trafficking, Vietnam Remains a 'Supply Country'
Wed Jul 20, 7:26 AM (PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE)

*
/EDITOR'S NOTE: Human Trafficking in Vietnam shows no signs of abating,
writes PNS editor Andrew Lam, author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on
the Vietnamese Diaspora," forthcoming this fall from Heyday Books.//

/
BY ANDREW LAM, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

SAN FRANCISCO--While visiting Saigon last December I asked a group of
well-educated young women for their thoughts on Vietnamese women being
sold abroad. Their answers were surprisingly tempered.

"Not everyone is going to end up as a prostitute or badly treated by her
husband," said Tuyen Nguyen, a 19-year-old who is attending college and
planning to be a doctor. "I know this one girl who came back wealthy.
It's true, she's one of the lucky ones, but still, it's a better chance
than staying home."

Some observers estimate that as many as 400,000 Vietnamese women and
children have been trafficked overseas, most since the end of the Cold
War. That's around 10 percent of trafficked women and children
worldwide. They are smuggled to Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Macau,
Malaysia, Taiwan, the Czech Republic -- and, to a lesser extent, the
United States -- for commercial sexual exploitation.

"Still, if your parents and siblings are starving, you've got to do
something," observed Thuy Le, a young woman in her mid-20s. "It's the
right thing to do."

"It's the girl in the countryside who would do this kind of thing," said
another woman, a publicist for a cosmetic company. "No one in the city
would go. I mean, it's hard work in the rice field. Besides, who is to
say their Vietnamese husbands won't beat them just like their Korean or
Taiwanese one?" Her friends murmured in agreement.

Unfortunately, not all trafficked women end up in real marriages, even
if their paperwork says so. According to Huy Phan, who is part of a
group of Vietnamese Americans trying to help victims of trafficking,
"the scheme is, the brothel or mafia finances a man to go to Vietnam to
buy a wife.But the marriage is a ruse, and the girl ends up as a
prostitute or indentured servant when she gets to Taiwan. It's a way to
legalize trafficking."

In June, the U.S. State Department released the "Victims of Trafficking
and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report."
Vietnam was classified as a "tier two" country, meaning that the
government of Vietnam, according to the report, makes some effort to
eliminate the problem but "does not fully comply with the minimum
standards for the elimination of trafficking."

In March 2004, a Taiwanese tried to sell three young Vietnamese women on
E-bay. The starting bid was $5,400. Vietnamese living abroad protested,
and E-Bay quickly pulled the auction page. But the language used on that
page, along with the images of the three young, hapless women smiling to
the camera, bespoke of modern-day slavery: "Products will be delivered
only to Taiwan," the page said.

A typical trafficking scenario in Saigon goes something like this: A
group of men come in from a foreign country, Taiwan or Korea, perhaps,
and are chauffeured to a designated bar where young women and teenage
girls await. The girls are lined up. The men pick and choose their
brides, and pay around $5,000 to $10,000 dollars depending on the
"quality" of the bride, which depends largely on whether she is a
virgin. Soon these so-called brides are taken to unknown destinies.
Their families back in the rural areas receive around $500 dollars for
the sale. The rest goes to middlemen and to grease the legal machine.

Girls and women may also be promised jobs in Cambodia, Laos or China,
only to end up as sex slaves once they cross the border. Recent raids in
Cambodian brothels came up with Vietnamese girls as young as 5 years
old. Young boys, too, are bought, and are highly prized in China,
especially for families that have no children and want to adopt.

Many problems help perpetuate this form of exploitation. First are
rising population pressures. There are now 82 million people in Vietnam.
Two out of three Vietnamese are under 35, and there are an estimated 1.5
million abortions each year. The rural-urban gap is widening. Peasants
trying to survive become easy prey.

Second is corruption. Government officials can be bribed to look the
other way or, worse, actively assist the sale of these women by stamping
their exit visas.

Third, and most important, Vietnamese people themselves have developed a
lackadaisical attitude about the plight of trafficked women. After all,
when there are approximately half a million prostitutes in Vietnam
trying to make ends meet, who cares if a few hundred thousand more are
plying their trade abroad?

Thien-Tam Tran, another Vietnamese American activist, remembers a scene
in the airport in Taipei, Taiwan. Three Vietnamese girls were waiting to
be taken away by gangsters. "I asked them if they wanted help but they
wouldn't talk. They were very afraid. When the gangsters showed up the
girls finally realized what would happen to them and started to weep.
One girl, about 17, held onto me. But it was too late."

In Vietnam, self-sacrifice is still perceived as the highest Confucian
virtue, but few seem to notice that to sell or induce one's own
offspring into slavery is an absolute evil -- and highly un-Confucian.
"Some women and girls are raped by their captors, husband, and/or male
members of the family," Tran notes sadly.

Unless human rights become a real dialogue in Vietnam and the urban
rural gap is seriously addressed, the nation seems fated to play a role
that many activists working against human trafficking refer to as "a
supply country."

=====
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
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