Hundreds of babies rescued as Chinese police smash four child-trafficking rings | World news | theguardian.com

Source: theguardian.com


Parents warned against kidnappers using internet or lying in wait at hospitals and schools as 382 infants rescued in crackdown


Read here:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/chinese-police-child-trafficking-baby-rings

The Burmese brides trafficked into China to marry total strangers | Metro News

http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/11/the-burmese-brides-trafficked-into-china-to-marry-total-strangers-3398396/
Source: Metro News

By Graeme Green Monday 11 Feb 2013 7:00 am

Hundreds of women are trafficked from Burma each year (Picture: World Vision)

‘I was afraid. I had no choice. I had no way to go home,’ says Su Thandar from Burma.

When she was 17, she was trafficked against her will from her home near Yangon to China where she was forced to marry a man she’d never met.

‘I was very unhappy. I tried to run away three times. But the Chinese police arrested me and sent me back to my husband. Very often, I was beaten by my husband. I have a scar,’ she says, lifting her chin to show me. ‘I cried a lot. I wanted to go home.’

Su (not her real name), now 22, is one of hundreds of women trafficked from Burma across the border into China where they are forced into illegal marriages and to have children.

A recent report from the Burmese government said 80 per cent of human traffic cases in Burma over the last five years involved women being smuggled to China for forced marriage.

Women are trafficked across other borders too, to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Many are exploited as sex workers or labourers. But the majority are sold as ‘brides’ to China, the trade driven by China’s one-child policy, which has created a gender imbalance and a shortage of females to marry. A trafficked ‘bride’ can be sold for between 30,000 Chinese yuan (£3,000) to 50,000 yuan (£5,000).

‘The situation is very serious,’ said Wah Eh Htoo, who works for the charity World Vision in Burma.

‘We know many rural Chinese men are desperate to find a wife, so they can have descendants.

‘Because of the one child policy, Chinese people prefer to have a male, rather than a female. There’s a big gap. That’s why rural Chinese men are trying to get a bride from other countries, like Burma, Vietnam or Cambodia. Burma is one of the main ones.’

Police Colonel Nyunt Hlaing, from Burma’s Transnational Crime Department’s anti-trafficking unit, said: ‘China’s one-child policy is the main cause of the problem,

‘If a village man has 30,000 yuan, a Burmese or Lao woman can be easily acquired. In some cases, the Chinese men are disabled and have no way to be married with Chinese women, so their parents try to search out Burmese women for child-bearing for the next generation.’

According to the government report, 731 trafficking cases (many cases include multiple victims) were reported between Jan 2006 and Aug 2011, including 585 cases in China.

A total of 1305 people were rescued over the past five years, including 780 from China. It’s suspected the reported figures are the tip of the iceberg.

‘China needs to do more to stop this,’ said Colonel Hlaing. ‘But they’re not very effective for the moment because of the great demand.

‘If Burmese women are found, the police arrest them, seize them for one month in prison and deport them to their place of origin.

‘Therefore, most of the women who married Chinese men are prohibited to go out for any purpose. Very few stay in good conditions. They’re beaten by their husbands, father-in-law, mother-in-law, relatives… and are provided insufficient food.’

This is what happened to Su. She came from a poor family and was tricked by a neighbour who offered to help her get a job in a fabric factory in China to send money home.

She was handed over to traffickers and sent to China. The job evaporated. After days of travelling, she met a man at a train station.

‘With sign language, I was told he would be my husband. I didn’t understand. But a Chinese lady, the wife of a trafficker, phoned me and explained in Burmese I had to marry this guy.’

Su lived with her ‘husband’ for five years, somewhere in Yunnan Province, and had two children, a boy and a girl. ‘I thought I was a child, not child-bearing age, but I had no choice,’ she says.

She tried to escape several times, teaming up with other trafficking victims living as ‘brides’ in the area.

‘I met three Burmese women in the same village. There were a lot of trafficking victims around the other villages.’

Eventually, she succeeded. It took six days to reach Burma and alert the authorities. She was forced to leave her children behind.

Even today, she isn’t sure of the exact location where she was held. Her father died while she was away and she lost the family home. She now works as a cleaner in Yangon.

She’s talked to her children on the phone and is trying to find a way to see them, but it’s difficult.

I hear other accounts of girls as young as 14 trafficked to China. Victims are often beaten, intimidated, imprisoned and tortured, isolated and unable to speak the language, receiving no medical treatment.

One striking aspect of the women’s stories is that 65 per cent of the people who trafficked them were other women.

‘Here, people are very desperate because of poverty,’ said Wah Eh Htoo. ‘Women become brokers because they can approach the young women and cultivate their trust. It’s quite shocking. But people are desperate to get out of poverty.’

As well as poverty in Burma, the demand for brides in China needs to be tackled and the criminals who traffic women need to be stopped.

Burmese police authorities are trying to have discussions with Chinese authorities to set up task forces in border towns, Colonel Hlaing said.

It is hoped a memorandum of understanding can be reached. But much more needs to be done: action, not just discussion. So far, there seems to have been reluctance from China to confront the problem. The Chinese embassy in London did not respond when asked to comment.

Related articles

• Websites Sell Burmese Brides to Chinese Bachelors
• Duped women fight back as Burma gets to grips with human trafficking | Kate Hodal | Global development | guardian.co.uk

Over 24,000 women, children freed in human-trafficking crackdown - The Irish Times - Mon, Mar 12, 2012

Over 24,000 women, children freed in human-trafficking crackdown - The Irish Times - Mon, Mar 12, 2012

SOURCE: The Irish TimesMonday, March 12, 2012

CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

POLICE IN China rescued over 24,000 kidnapped women and children nationwide last year, the country’s public security ministry told the annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, in an ongoing crackdown on human trafficking.

In all, police rescued 8,660 abducted children and 15,458 women in busts of 3,195 human trafficking gangs during 2011, the ministry said.

Girls who are kidnapped are often sold into prostitution and in one high-profile case last year, the police busted a gang that was trafficking women to Angola. In the raid, 19 women were rescued and 16 suspects were apprehended.

Human trafficking is a major problem in China, as the traditional preference for boys over girls, especially in rural areas, and the one-child policy of population control, has seen a rise in the number of boys kidnapped and sold, often to childless couples.

Girls and women also are abducted and used as labourers or as brides for unwed sons, because the one-child policy has seen a massive discrepancy in the birth ratio between the number of boys and girls.

In July last year, 89 children were rescued when police busted two major human-trafficking rings in south China, and the suspects were mostly Vietnamese, smuggling children from Vietnam into China.

The ministry also cited the ministry’s work in helping reunite children with their families, using new technology such as a DNA database for missing children.

The ministry has also opened up a Weibo microblog account to help gather intelligence on missing persons cases.

“The ministry reaffirmed its tough stance on trafficking and vowed sterner crackdowns against such crimes,” Xinhua News Agency said.

The ministry did not give any figures for the total number of women and children abducted last year.

Abductions and human trafficking have become serious public concerns after a string of revelations in past years, including a shocking 2007 scandal in which thousands were forced into slave labour in brickyards and mines across the nation.

The latest big case was on Friday, when police rescued 77 children and arrested 310 suspects after busting four child-trafficking rings, where gangs were buying infants in poor rural areas and selling them to big cities.

More than 7,000 police officers from 14 provinces, including Shandong, Guizhou, Henan, Shanxi, Yunnan and Guangxi, took part in a joint operation.

Related articles

• Lesson Plan | What Is Modern Slavery? Investigating Human Trafficking - NYTimes.com (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Why I Quit My Job at CBS To Stop Human Trafficking (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Human trafficking in Sabah small and under control | BorneoPost Online | Borneo , Malaysia, Sarawak Daily News (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

infoZine - Hotels, Airlines Work to Stop Human Trafficking - Kansas City, Missouri News

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 :: Staff infoZine

By Michael Stainbrook - A woman boarded a plane with two children. When she reached her destination, she handed the children off to a man.

Washington, D.C. - infoZine - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - A flight attendant noticed the strange exchange and alerted law enforcement officials, who stopped the man before he left the airport. Thanks to the flight attendant, a human trafficking ring was busted.

Similar incidents have taken place on flights from Ukraine to Chicago. Last week, flight attendants reported a potential human trafficking operation on a flight from Zurich to Chicago involving 30 young girls.

Such events are commonplace, said Nancy Rivard of Airline Ambassadors International, which works to prevent modern slavery transportation on commercial airlines. The group trains flight attendants and pilots about how to spot potential traffickers and how to respond.

She is not alone in this mission.

All Girls Allowed founder Chai Ling shows a book naming 2,175 Chinese children suspected as being trafficking victims as Deborah Cundy, left, and Nancy Rivard look on. The women testified before a House subcommittee Monday. SHFWire photo by Michael Stainbrook

Advocates to combat human trafficking through private-sector initiatives outlined their efforts to fight forced labor and sexual slavery Monday before the House Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act needs to be reauthorized, and the hearing was to show support for it. The act calls for strict penalties for those convicted of human trafficking in the U.S. and allows for sanctions against countries that “tolerate or condone” such activities.

“We know that organized crime, street gangs and pimps have expanded into sex trafficking at an alarming rate,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who introduced the current law and chairs the subcommittee. “It is an extremely lucrative undertaking.”

The latest version of the law first enacted in 2000 established the Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries’ efforts to stop modern slavery.

Luis CdeBaca, ambassador-at-large and director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, testified that the TIP Report led many developing nations to put prevention, prosecution and victim protection measures in place.

“Leaders in Africa, Latin America and around the world credited the report as a motivating factor for their actions as governments,” he said. He encouraged government leaders to “get out on the road and see these people for yourselves.”

Six business representatives told of their efforts to enforce uniform best practices to intervene in situations in which human trafficking might take place.

Deborah Cundy, vice president of Carlson Companies, said the company was the first major hotel business to sign the code of conduct agreeing to train employees to identify and prevent child sexual exploitation. Hilton Hotels Corp. recently signed the agreement.

“In the travel industry, this abuse is sometimes played out in hotels and tourism sites around the world,” Cundy said. “There are hotels that are complicit in these activities, but often they are unknowing facilitators.”

Rivard said flight crews are trained to spot questionable travel arrangements, such as older men traveling with multiple young girls and not allowing them to use the bathroom.

Delta, U.S. Airways and Jet Blue have cooperated with Airline Ambassadors International, she said, including on a humanitarian trip to the Dominican Republic. On the return trip, crews from all three airlines spotted human trafficking taking place.

“The flight attendants on each airline didn’t know what to look for or how to respond but were anxious to help after we told them what they should do,” Rivard said. “We realized how vital a role airline personnel could play as frontline defense for international security.”

CdeBaca said one roadblock in reaching widespread agreements with hotels and airlines is a fear of associating their brands with illegal activity.

“The notion of having the term slavery associated with them was so nerve-wracking to many of these companies that when we would talk with them, they would say we would love to do something … but we don’t really want anybody to know what we’re doing,” CdeBaca said.

Chai Ling of All Girls Allowed testified about the harmful effects of China’s one-child policy. She said girls are aborted, killed at a young age or sold to allow the family to have a boy. Girls who survive are often sold into marriage to raise money for the child’s family and to appease men who might not otherwise find a wife. Ling said there are 37 million more men than women in China.

Related infoZine Human Trafficking Articles

articlDefendants Plead Guilty in Human Trafficking Scheme That Exploited 600 Thai
Workers

articleHotels, Airlines Work to Stop Human Trafficking

articleUzbek Man Sentenced in Racketeering and Forced Labor Enterprise

articleMexico Travel Warning April 2011

articleCrime and Violence Taking a Staggering Toll on Central American Development

articleLebanon, Missouri Woman Joins Husband and Is Indicted in Commercial Sex
Trafficking Conspiracy

articleColumbia Man, KC Woman Indicted for Coerced Sex Trafficking of Adult, Minor
Victims

articleCritics Questions Motives, Effectiveness of U.S. Human Trafficking Report

articleSpringfield Man Pleads Guilty in Sex Trafficking Conspiracy, Admits Torturing
Woman Coerced As Sex Slave

article100+ Organized Crime Groups Charged

articleAction Against Human Trafficking May Spark Conflict and Progress in 2011

articleSenators Listen to Ideas for Improving Relations with Latin America

articleKC Man Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Trafficking Women Into Forced
Prostitution

articleJury Convicts Ellisville Man in Racketeering Enterprise That Engaged in Forced
Labor

articleMission Kansas Uzbek Man Pleads Guilty to a Racketeering Enterprise That Engaged
in Forced Labor

Source: infoZine

Related articles

• Boss pleads guilty in large human trafficking case (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Activists Blame China's One Child Policy for Rise in Child Bride Trafficking | Asia | English

June 13, 2011

Ira Mellman | Washington

Photo: VOA

According to testimony before a U.S. congressional committee Monday, China’s one child policy is leading to a huge rise in human trafficking.

Chai Ling, the founder of a U.S. based organization called All Girl’s Allowed told a U.S. House subcommittee that China’s one child policy and families' preferences for male over female children has lead to a population of 37 million more men than women.

Many of the families of these men, she said, look for wives. “Even with the child rearing costs, purchasing a child bride is the most economical way to guarantee the son will have a bride when he’s ready to marry. There are simply not enough daughters for all the sons in China," she said.

Ling told the committee that one Chinese province seems to be the center of this trafficking of child brides.

“Fujian province is a hotbed for trafficking. We found, after a month of research, a city with three million people that could have up to 600,000 people who are the result of child bride trafficking. These are very young girls who are trafficked and sold to men in the city as a result of these 37 million excess men who will not be able to find wives because these wives were eliminated under China’s one child policy and a preference for sons," she said.

Watch a related report by Elizabeth Lee:

Ling testified that the city to which she referred is Putien Village which she says is widely known as “Child Bride Village”. But, she says, the Chinese government has not addressed the problem. Ling said almost every family in Putien has seven or eight siblings. Of these, she said, at least a quarter has been trafficked.

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, from the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said China’s one child policy is indeed a major problem which even reaches beyond the borders of China

“This notion of the skewed sex ratio which, as you say, results from these policies, is having a destabilizing effect that we have noted and continue to discuss with the Chinese, especially as we see the importation of women from other countries or the trapping of those who would try to flee the regime in North Korea. It is a problem and it is something we need to continue to push on," he said.

Ambassador CdeBaca said the U.S. State Department has expressed its concern to the Chinese that there has been too little investigation of cases of such trafficking plus trafficking of prostitution and forced labor.

Related articles

• IRIN Asia | MYANMAR: Bride trafficking to China unveiled | Myanmar | Gender Issues | Migration (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• Burma Partnership " Stolen Lives: Human Trafficking from Palaung Areas of Burma to China (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)
• China Police Arrest 18, Free 19 in Child Trafficking Cases (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

Parents descend on Beijing to hunt for China's stolen children - Asia, World - The Independent

Desperate families claim trafficking gangs are selling baby boys for up to £4,000

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

GETTY IMAGES A girl rescued from child traffickers in Guiyang last year

They came from across China to protest under the watchful gaze of the police, brandishing handmade placards with pictures of their missing children. In a sign of growing discontent, the parents' rare demonstration in the centre of Beijing was aimed at pressuring the authorities to do more to investigate the cases of tens of thousands of children snatched and sold every year.

"My wife and I can't sit at home waiting for the police, we keep looking. The longer you wait, the more hopeless you get," said the father of one boy Liu Jingjun, who went missing this year.

Many of China's missing boys are sold to childless couples who turn to criminal gangs to supply the treasured male heir while the girls are trafficked to become prostitutes or brides in rural areas. China's One Child Policy has led to an alarming shift in the gender divide with a major shortage of girls.

Baby boys can sell for as much as £4,000, while girls are sometimes sold for just £300, according to some child welfare groups. Some end up working in brick kilns in the heartland, others as beggars in the booming cities of the east coast. Scandals have occasionally erupted over the sale of abducted children to orphanages for adoption abroad.

The parents protesting in Beijing met through a website called "Baby Come Home" which lists more than 2,000 missing children and led to an informal network of desperate adults. Some were reluctant to give their names in Beijing because of the police presence and many returned home after authorities told them to end the protest.

The authorities responded to the problem in April last year with a high-profile public crackdown on trafficking. Officials say this has led to the break-up of nearly 2,400 criminal gangs and seen nearly 16,000 people detained.

But the US State Department's trafficking report for 2010 said that despite significant efforts, the government did not comply with the "minimum standards" for eliminating trafficking. It said there were continued reports of children being forced into prostitution.

China does not give figures, but an estimate based on reports for a British television documentary suggested that up to 70,000 children were snatched from the streets every year in China.

In a country where the social welfare net is still being constructed, having a child provides security in old age. A preference for males is common in China's rural regions, and families sometimes abort baby girls because they are limited to one or two children by family-planning laws.

But this preference has caused a potentially disastrous gender imbalance in the world's most populous country. In some regions, the male-female ratio can be as high as 130 males for every 100 females, compared to an average ratio of 107-to-100 in industrialised countries.

Daughters become members of their husband's family when they marry and move away, prompting the saying: "Raising a daughter is like watering someone else's fields", whereas boys grow into men who can till the fields and work as migrant labourers in the cities.

The gender gap has created a situation where there are not enough women of marrying-age for China's single men – and organised gangs have moved in to fill the gap.

Police say they have freed more than 10,000 abducted women including 1,100 foreigners, mostly from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Mongolia, since April last year as the widening gender gap fuels bride trafficking and prostitution.

One mother from Datong in Shanxi province lost her daughter Wang Min back in 1997 and has been searching for her ever since. "My daughter was only eight when she disappeared, she'd be 21 now," says her mother, her voice cracking as she spoke. "I went to the police immediately after she disappeared, but since I cannot provide any evidence to the police, they cannot really give any practical help. All I can do is travel to places when I hear of a clue.

"I have another child now, but I still miss Wang Min, I miss her a lot. Maybe I won't even recognise her now if she passed me in the street, but I will never give up hope of finding her," she said.

Li Ni's son disappeared in February 2009 in Xi'an. "A lot of parents have already travelled to nearly all the provinces in China, using all the money in the family," she said.

"I am so desperate to find my son and I will continue to look for him using whatever means necessary, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many hardships I have to endure."

"I believe those who abducted our kids, they are still human beings, they still have feelings just like you or me. I know of one kidnapper who took a kid for a long time, then saw the pain he was causing the parents on the media, so he brought him back because of the pressure from his heart," she said.

"Maybe one day my son will also come back to me in this way, and I will fight for him until that day."

Parents descend on Beijing to hunt for China's stolen children - Asia, World - The Independent

Source: The Independent

Related articles by Zemanta

• China offers hope of easing one-child policy (theglobeandmail.com)
• Jezza Neumann: Police just aren't interested in helping migrant families (independent.co.uk)
• China baby traffickers get death (bbc.co.uk)

AFP: US lawmaker presses China, India over human trafficking

By Alex Ogle (AFP) – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON — A leading US lawmaker on Thursday urged President Barack Obama's administration to ratchet up pressure on China and India over sex-trafficking and modern day slavery that flourishes in both countries.

Congressman Christopher Smith, who led the charge for the landmark 2000 law Trafficking Victims Protection Act, said the two Asian giants were among the world's worst offenders in their disregard for forced bondage and sexual exploitation.

At a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Smith urged the State Department's office dedicated to combating human trafficking to undertake a "comprehensive reassessment" of China and India.

He cited in particular Beijing's failure to prevent rampant trafficking of North Korean refugees.

The countries risk being downgraded in the State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons" blacklist, and could face sanctions including withholding non-humanitarian, non-trade related US aid, he said.

Smith said the problem with trafficking in China has become particularly acute because of the country's "one child" law that has led to a shortage of marriageable women and created "a colossal market for bride selling."

Chinese demographers forecast that by 2020 some 40 million Chinese men will not be able to find women to marry, Smith said, calling the one child policy "barbaric."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has made women's and children's rights a signature issue, in June called human trafficking a "terrible crime" as she unveiled a US report on the subject.

China and India were listed on the report's "tier two watch list," for countries making "significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with minimum standards" on trafficking.

Lawmakers said however that they risk being regulated to the report's bottom rung, alongside long-time violators North Korea and Burma.

As Congress prepares to take up a reauthorization bill to update the 2000 law for the next decade, the committee's chair Howard Berman said huge challenges remain to combat the 32-billion-dollar-a-year industry that sees humans "reduced to machines for production or pleasure."

Of the world's estimated 27 million modern day slaves, two thirds are in India chiefly in bonded labor, the committee heard in testimony. Smith slammed New Dehli's action on the issue as "not even remotely commensurate with the size of its current problem."

The number of prosecutions for sex industry traffickers have risen nominally in some Indian states, said advocate Beryl Ann D'Souza, who heads anti-human trafficking efforts in India for the Dalit Freedom Network.

Even with laws on the books, D'Souza said the sub-continent's approach needs comprehensive overhaul, as only seven percent of India's police force have received any type of anti-trafficking training.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights

AFP: US lawmaker presses China, India over human trafficking

Source: AFP

Related articles by Zemanta

• Join the DC Stop Modern Slavery Walk to Stand Against Human Trafficking (humantrafficking.change.org)
• Victory! Schwarzenegger Signs Bill to End Supply Chain Slavery (humantrafficking.change.org)

Is the New Generation of Comfort Women Chinese? | End Human Trafficking | Change.org

• End Human Trafficking:

Is the New Generation of Comfort Women Chinese?

by Amanda Kloer July 07, 2010 11:30 AM (PT) Topics: Historical Slavery

The great recession may be stalling the housing markets and automobile industries in countries around the world, but in China, one business is booming. The trafficking of foreign women into China for marriage is on the rise, in response to the growing gender gap China's one-child policy has created. Are these unwilling brides modern-day comfort women?

Comfort women, for those not familiar, is the common name given to the (mostly) Korean and Chinese women who were forced into sexual servitude for the Japanese military around World War II. Only in the past few years has the Japanese government even acknowledged the violations which were systematically perpetrated against these women, but have refused to provide any sort of compensation to them. Today, it's China where North Korean, Vietnamese, Filipina, and other Asian women are being trafficked. And while some are forced into prostitution, many find themselves sold into a marriage. And according to some people who work with trafficked women in China, the gender gap that has catalyzed this trafficking is not going away any time soon, and the problem will continue to grow.

Women come to China in a number of different ways. Many of them are offered jobs and a chance to send money home, but find themselves sold into a forced marriage for as little as $700. Others intentionally travel to China to marry, but believe they will have the freedom to stay in touch with their family, hold a job, and exercise other rights their husband ends up taking away. Some are even kidnapped from their homes, smuggled into China, and sold as wives. Much of the bride trafficking of foreign women takes place in the rural parts of China, where the gender gap may be even more pronounced.

Forced marriages driving human trafficking, UN says- Myanmar Times

By Juliet Shwe Gaung
(Volume 26, No. 512)

TWO-THIRDS of human trafficking cases uncovered by the Myanmar Police Force’s anti-trafficking units in 2009 involved women being trafficked into China for the purpose of forced marriage.

Out of 155 human trafficking cases uncovered in 2009, 103 involved the forced marriage of girls and women, the Myanmar Police Force figures show.

Most of the victims were lured by the promise of a relatively high-paying job in China but were then sold off to Chinese men, a spokesperson from the United Nations Inter-Agency Project (UNIAP) on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region told The Myanmar Times last month.

“Most of the trafficked Myanmar women were sold to men in villages and poor communities in China, where Chinese men do not think of this practise as trafficking; instead they consider it as paying a dowry,” UNIAP national project coordinator Daw Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw said.

“Men pay anywhere from RMB20,000 to RMB40,000 (US$2900 to $5800) – or even more – to a broker for a trafficked woman to be their wife, depending on the woman’s looks and age. They even have a wedding ceremony in their village. However, if this happens without the consent of the woman, it is clearly a trafficking case,” she said.

One of the main factors driving demand is that the “dowry” for a Myanmar woman is often significantly less than for a Chinese woman. Myanmar women are also perceived to be obedient and, as foreigners, have little chance for recourse.
However, another factor is China’s one-child policy, which has indirectly led to a population ratio of 120 males for every 100 females and the country is now a major source, transit and destination point for human trafficking.

Of the 155 human trafficking cases uncovered in 2009, 130 cases were trafficking into China. Of the remaining 25 cases, 14 were trafficking into Thailand and 11 were internal trafficking, the figures show.

The forced marriage victims were generally repatriated by Chinese officials for being illegal immigrants.

“I met one woman who was sent back to Myanmar and she said she wanted to go back to China just simply because she missed her two children, who had been left with their Chinese father when she was rescued and returned to Myanmar,” she said.

According to a February 3 report in the English edition of China-based newspaper Global Times, at least 263 Myanmar women were kidnapped and sold into forced marriages in Yunnan Province in 2009, up from 87 recorded cases in 2008.
Prices had also increased, the report said, with Chinese men paying a minimum of RMB38,000 ($5510) for a trafficked Myanmar woman in 2009, up from RMB20,000 to RMB30,000 ($2900 to $4350) in 2008.

“Many parents have no idea their daughters are kidnapped and sold in China, instead they think they are having a better life; therefore they don’t call the police,” said Lin Huiming, the head of criminal police in Ruili on the China-Myanmar border.

Since 2008, at least 489 Myanmar women aged between 11 and 57 have been rescued and sent back to Myanmar, the report said.

“The neighbouring countries admire China’s economic boom; while in China, there is a growing population of men in poorer areas in several provinces including Anhui, Hubei and Sichuan who are desperate to have a wife,” said Li Shunqiong, team leader at China’s anti-human trafficking brigade.

Daw Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw said many of the human trafficking victims were from poor families but that was not always the case.

“[Trafficking] can happen to anyone. We have trafficking victims who are university graduates, people from better-off families, male and married women,” she said.

Those with information related to a human trafficking case should contact the Myanmar Police Force’s Anti Trafficking Unit in Nay Pyi Taw (Tel: (067) 412-201), the Yangon Anti Trafficking Task Force (Tel: (01) 251-438) or Muse Anti Trafficking Task Force (Tel: (082) 528-90).

Forced marriages driving human trafficking, UN says- Myanmar Times

Related articles by Zemanta

• Human Trafficking (slideshare.net)