VIETNAM
Vietnam's global human trafficking an inhuman epidemic
San Francisco Chronicle
The "Tale of Kieu," written by Nguyen Du (1766-1820), remains the most loved and treasured of all Vietnamese epics.
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Vietnam's global human trafficking an inhuman epidemic
The "Tale of Kieu," written by Nguyen Du (1766-1820), remains the most loved and treasured of all Vietnamese epics.
It tells of the saga of a virtuous woman named Thuy Kieu who sold herself into prostitution to pay off her father's debt. Having served as concubine to myriad men, she came back to her family years later only to find her true love married to her younger sister.
Kieu's suffering resonates on many levels in a country that knew only warfare and colonial rule for centuries. Her fate is an allegory to the story of Vietnam itself. Vietnam, passed on from one superpower's hand to another --
China, France, Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union -- often played a subservient role to foreigners, near and far.
But mostly, the "Tale of Kieu" is relevant to contemporary Vietnam because, two centuries after it was penned, it still tells the story of the Vietnamese people. In order to save their families from destitution, Kieu's contemporaries sell themselves en masse -- except now they are doing so on the global stage.
In December, while in Ho Chi Minh City, better known as Saigon, I asked a group of well-educated young women for their thoughts on Vietnamese women sold as concubines abroad. Their answers were surprisingly complacent and 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."
"Still, if your parents and siblings are starving, you've got to do something," said Thuy Le, who is 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 cosmetics 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, these Vietnamese brides don't 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 in Taiwan, "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."
How big is the problem?
In March 2004, a Taiwanese man tried to sell three Vietnamese women on eBay with a starting bid of $5,400. After Vietnamese living abroad protested, eBay quickly pulled the auction page. The language on that page, along with the images of the three hapless young women smiling to the camera, bespoke of modern-day slavery: "Products will be delivered only to Taiwan," the page said.
Since the Cold War ended, Vietnamese women and children have been steadily trafficked abroad. 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.
According to UNICEF, at least 60,000 women were trafficked across China from Vietnam into the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region between 1998 and 2001. That traffic has increased since then. The Vietnamese Ministry of Justice, meanwhile, estimates that about 100,000 Vietnamese women and children have been trafficked to Cambodia for sexual exploitation.
The hottest spot since 1999, when Vietnam and Taiwan signed a labor agreement that increased the flow of all sorts of workers, has been Taiwan. According to the Rev. Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese Australian priest working in Taiwan to provide shelter and legal help to dozens of overseas female workers from Vietnam, "Many have been victims of rape and sexual assaults by their employers or tricked into prostitution and managed to escape from the brothels.
"The problem is getting worse. It's an epidemic."
In June, the U.S. State Department released "Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report." Vietnam was classified as a Tier 2 country, meaning that its government makes some effort to eliminate the problem but "does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking."
Nguyen said that the only reason Vietnam was not classified as Tier 3 -- a country that does nothing about human trafficking -- is that "Vietnam promised that it will do better. But there's no evidence that it has. If anything, the Vietnamese government makes money from sending Vietnamese abroad, and some officials are in cahoots with foreign employers."
It should be noted that women who escape brothels and abusive employers in Taiwan no longer seek the aid of their Vietnamese representatives in Taipei because they are afraid of being returned to their abusers. Instead they run to Nguyen's legal aid organization, Vietnamese Migrant Workers Office, for shelter.
A typical trafficking scenario in Saigon goes something like this: A group of men from a foreign country such as Taiwan or Korea, perhaps, are chauffeured to a designated bar where young women and teenage girls are lined up. The men choose their brides, paying $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the quality of the bride -- mostly whether she is a virgin.
Soon these so-called brides are taken out of the country, and their families in the rural areas receive around $500 for the sale. The rest goes to pay 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 discovered Vietnamese girls as young as 5 years old. Young boys, too, are bought. They 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 82 million people in Vietnam. Two out of 3 Vietnamese are younger than 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.
There is also 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 approximately half a million prostitutes in Vietnam are trying to make ends meet, who cares if a few hundred thousand more are plying their trade abroad?
In Vietnam, self-sacrifice is still perceived as the highest Confucian virtue, but it's seldom noted that consigning one's own offspring to a life of slavery is highly un-Confucian.
Kathleen Bui, who runs Little Saigon Radio in Orange County, recently visited young Vietnamese women who had been victimized in Taiwan. "Many come over as maids, others as laborers, and many had to pay for their own way to get there," she said. "When they get there, their papers are taken away. They are forced to have sex. If they refuse, they are beaten and tortured."
Some are maimed, and others are blinded, she said. One became front-page news in Taiwan when she was beaten to near death and thrown into a garbage dump by her husband. Many have been gang-raped.
In the 21st century, Vietnamese still memorize the epic "Tale of Kieu," but compared with many who continue to disappear abroad, Kieu is luckier by far. She at least was liberated from her bondage and reunited with her family after years of separation.