Smashing The Snakeheads | My Sinchew

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2009-11-21 17:07

Zhao Xianming, a narcotics control officer for Mengla county in Southwest China’s Yunnan province, remembers July 25 clearly.

Around midday that Saturday, he received a call from a senior police officer of Phongsaly province, northern Laos, urging him to stop a bus going from Laos to Mengla.

“I was told that a Laotian woman suspected of trafficking two girls was trying to bypass border check points,” recalls Zhao.

The two victims, cousins aged 14 and 15, had been excited about the prospects of working at a restaurant in a neighbouring province in Laos promised by the Laotian woman, who was married to a Chinese man. They never imagined that they were actually heading for China.

“Thanks to timely communication, the two girls were rescued at the border crossing and handed to the Lao police the same day,” says Zhao.

Mengla is Yunnan’s southernmost county and shares a 677.8-km border with Laos in the south and east. It is separated from Burma on the west by just a river. With 46 land crossings, 14 market places for border residents, as well as five motorways to Laos and Burma border, it is regarded a major passageway to Southeast Asia.

People living on the Laos-China border tend to share the same customs and speak the same language. But differences in economic levels on either side of the border have sparked cross-border migration, and with this has emerged human trafficking.

In the 10 years that he has worked in narcotics control in Mengla, Zhao has been involved in rescuing and returning more than 10 victims of trafficking from Laos.

“Most victims are teenage girls from mountainous areas in northern Laos, who were lured by job or marriage prospects on the other side of the border,” says the Kunming Army Academy graduate who is fluent in the Lao language.

Although economic factors are the driving force in cross-border migration, Zhao also cites the gender ratio that is skewed in favour of men, as a reason.

With more Chinese farmers engaged in growing rubber trees or other cash crops to help the locals weed out poppy production in Laos—which is part of the notorious Golden Triangle—a clandestine cross-border match-making service has emerged. This is reinforced by the growing demand for brides smuggled from Laos, according to Zhao.

Says Wang Wei, police chief in Mengla, since 2000 the police have received 31 reports of trafficking from Laos. Of these, 19 were tracked down to Hunan, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong. Some were even found as far as Suzhou in East China’s Jiangsu province.

Although trafficking along the China-Laos border is not as bad as along the China-Burma and China-Viet Nam border, the opening of the Kunming-Bangkok highway (via Mengla) last year is cause for concern.

“We have to brace ourselves for more cases,” says Hang Lintao, of the Yunnan Public Security Bureau.

A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons released this February by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that almost 20 per cent of all trafficking victims were children. In some parts of the Mekong region including China, it noted, children formed the majority. Sexual exploitation and forced labour are the most common forms of human trafficking, it noted.

The latest report by the United Nations Children’s Fund titled Child Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia: Reversing the Trend warns that child trafficking continues in East and Southeast Asia.

“Poverty does not cause trafficking. The demand for cheap or exploitable labour, child prostitutes, women or girls for marriage and practice of adopting children illegally, all contribute to the trafficking phenomenon,” it said.

The recently-inaugurated liaison office in Mengla is one of a series of steps taken along China’s southwest border to fight cross-border trafficking through the sharing of information and investigating, as well as repatriating the victims.

The China office of Unicef started its pilot project on China-Viet Nam cross-border trafficking in 2001 and since then it has supported the Chinese government in setting up border liaison offices in Dongxing, Pingxiang, Jingxi in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and Ruili, Hekou, Longchuan and Mohan in Yunnan province.

Two ad hoc anti-trafficking operations between Chinese and Vietnamese police in 2005 and 2006 have resulted in the rescue and return of hundreds of victims.

Rehabilitation centres were also established in Dongxing and Ningming in Guangxi, and Kunming in Yunnan, where victims of trafficking are attended to and healed physically and mentally before their transfer back home.

“Trafficking victims used to be regarded as criminal suspects, having crossed borders illegally,” says Wang Daming, child protection specialist with Unicef-China. Now, child protection has been placed at the heart of anti-trafficking efforts.

He Ye, a Yunnan-based anti-trafficking project manager for Save the Children, an international charity for children, sees changes in cross-border trafficking patterns.

Since 2002, Chinese girls from Yunnan looking for jobs or visiting relatives across the border are being trafficked to Malaysia or Thailand and end up being sexually exploited. Meanwhile, girls from Laos and Viet Nam were trafficked to China and sold as brides.

Since 2004, says He, Save the Children has rescued 50 Chinese girls from Thailand and Malaysia, with the help of police and the women’s federation in Yunnan province.

Says Li Ping, director for communications at Save the Children (China): “As child trafficking is taking on varying forms, such as a shift of boys trafficked for adoption to sexual exploitation, a holistic view of rights protection should be taken to address the root cause. No link in the trafficking chain should be missing.”

Due to rapid economic development in the border region, growing migration and improved transport network, women and children are becoming more vulnerable to trafficking.

According to Kirsten di Martino, chief of Child Protection Section with Unicef-China, although media figures of cross-border cases appear quite low, “it is in fact only the tip of the iceberg”, as ‘good mechanisms’ to report and follow any trafficking incidences are lacking.

In 2004, six countries sharing the Mekong River—China, Laos, Viet Nam, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand—signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation Against Trafficking in Persons in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

To better coordinate anti-trafficking efforts, the Chinese police have over the years signed memorandums of understanding with its counterparts in Viet Nam and Burma.

Last year, China’s State Council unveiled a four-year National Plan of Action on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children, mobilising the involvement of more than 30 government departments. Meanwhile, an anti-trafficking office has been set up in the ministry of public security (MPA).

This May, the MPA launched a DNA database for trafficked or missing children, linking 236 DNA laboratories across the country to fight trafficking.

But, Zhao Xianming, the police officer from Mengla county, says it’s crucial to incorporate the DNA information of cross-border trafficking victims into the national database.

He also calls for a clear legal clarification of trafficking and marriages among border residents.

“Rescue efforts would be pointless if the victims choose to reunite with their ‘buyer husbands’,” he says. (By Ma Guihua in Mengla (Yunnan)/ China Daily/ Asia News Network)

10 things you need to know about trafficking

1. Girls are trafficked into many industries besides brothels

Women and girls are being trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation but it is also a fact that many women and girls are trafficked for other purposes.
2. Trafficking is visible; trafficking is accepted

Wherever any of these labour exploitation situations occur, a small to medium percentage of the workforce are likely to be victims of trafficking. They are working in mainstream and visible industries, including restaurants, street scavenging, begging, domestic work, agriculture and factory labour.
3. Dirty jobs fuel trafficking demand

Worldwide, labour known as ‘3D’—dirty, dangerous and degrading—attracts people who are desperate for work. And it is this desperation that feeds the trafficking industry.
4. People smuggling is not considered trafficking

Most trafficking takes place within the framework of migration, where the trafficker/facilitator has initial consent from the victim. Once the victim is coerced or tricked into exploitative labour or the denial of their rights, trafficking has occurred.
5. Trafficking victims most often ‘rescue’ themselves

Victims of trafficking are often portrayed as powerless people who are incapable of changing their situation. However, many of them do challenge or escape their captivity, prosecute or speak out against their traffickers, and find the strength to move forward in freedom and confidence.
6. Adoption is still a trafficking risk

Amidst unconfirmed reports of the sensational and sinister—babies adopted by brothels or trafficked into organ donation—‘babysnatching’ into the homes of childless couples is still a trafficking reality.
7. As many as one in five trafficking survivors fall prey a second time

One reason for this is weak social integration after being trafficked. When a trafficking victim returns home, either through official channels or their own initiative, life can be even worse than when they left.
8. Boys and men are trafficked too

The vulnerabilities of men and boys have rarely been addressed in past anti-trafficking efforts. The misconception has been that men are in control of their migration while women and children are trafficked.
9. Disability is attractive to traffickers

People with disabilities are often worth less to their community and potentially more to traffickers, especially in the begging industry or in brothels.
10. There is no one profile of a trafficker

The profiles of the traffickers are hard to detect and analyse. They often involve people who know the victims well enough to invite trust.

To know more about the realities of trafficking in the region and how you can help, go to World Vision Asia-Pacific at http://wvasiapacific.org. (World Vision Asia-Pacific/ Asia News Network)


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