The Vietnamese Humiliation



"It took me a long time to find the courage to write this. When I first finished the draft I was thinking of deleting it, but a on second thought I didn't. I realise that being poor is nothing to be ashamed of. Poverty is something that we all need to acknowledge so that we can get rid of it."

As I am writing, I wonder, when you're reading what will be going through your mind. What I am about to show you will not make you happy, if you're a (Vietnamese) female you will feel even more unhappy, it certainly didn't make me very happy……..

Between January 1995 and October 2005, 72 411 Vietnamese women "married" Taiwanese men in hopes of escaping poverty. Each girl that agreed to marry a Taiwanese man was given an amount of $1000 to $3000, an amount that almost none of them could refuse.

When they arrived in Taiwan most, if not almost all of those Vietnamese brides were used by their husband as sex slaves, some were being sold into brothels, but to put it into a simple fact they were brutally exploited. They had been purchased as if they were goods.

On the 02/3/2004 three Vietnamese women had been put on for auction on Ebay wit the starting price of $5416.02. When I first heard about this, I thought it was a joke, but when I saw it with my own eyes the images of three Vietnamese women being put on Ebay for auction I can only say one thing, it's national humiliation.





Last year in Singapore during a fair trade, the Vietnamese women were displayed like products. "It was like a TV advertisement, and it was so humiliating," the Thanh Nien daily reported, quoting a Vietnamese employee at a computer firm in Singapore.



(Photo: 3 Vietnamese women waiting for customer in a "Vietnamese Bride" store in Singapore)


In Cambodia, one third of the estimated 55 000 prostitutes are under 18, most are Vietnamese. In Viet Nam alone there are an estimated 200 000 to 500 000 prostitutes, the numbers were based on the number of prostitutes being arrested, the actual number are more than expected. Around 5% to 10% of them are under 16, that is about 10 000 child prostitutes in Vietnam.

Recently an article in a Korean newspaper caused a massive outrage in Korea and Vietnam. On the 21st of April, 2006, the article "Vietnamese virgins come to Korea-The land of Hope" posted on Chosun newspaper, the newspaper with the highest number of readers. The article contains photos of a few dozen Vietnamese women waiting to be picked by a Korean man. What made the article more offensive is that the writer Che Sung Woo didn't even cover the faces of those women. Nothing was hidden. The writer portrayed the Vietnamese women desperate to marry the Korean man, to escape the harshness of poverty. The writer and the newspaper later made a public apology to the Vietnamese women.


Here is the article (the RE-published version) online: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/new...0604200010.html

There are countless of articles and photos that I don't even have the courage to look at. If you found what I posted to be offensive then I would like to apologise. I regret posting this but I would have regretted it even more if I hadn't.

It amazed me how we could afford to spend thousands of dollars on a car, hundreds on clothes but we can't afford to contribute $1 to save a human life. This society is very modern, so modern that we think that riding expensive cars, or wearing expensive clothes is more important than saving a human life.

As you're reading this, millions of young girls are selling their bodies in order to survive; millions more are dying because they are too poor to stay alive.

As a Vietnamese, even more, as a Vietnamese nationalist I am not ashamed of my fatherland because it is poor, but I am ashamed about the fact that I am and we are doing almost nothing to help millions of our countrymen who are starving.

Giving to charity doesn't make $hit difference.

http://www.vietact.org/

A little difference is better than nothing at all....

The thing is most charities are courrupted, so making a little difference here is to enriching a little bit for the collector, neither does it benifit those girls nor the society.

Charity doesn't make a difference for this case because it doesn't cut the root of the problem, which are crime lords who get lots of money in doing this kind of crap. I don't know how giving to charity is gonna remove these crime lords.

Of course Taiwanese and Koreans are the not only one to blame, there are plenty of Vietnamese criminals who kidnap young girls from China and sell them off in Cambodia which a few were rescued by Vietnamese police recently.

Personally I think the best way to deal with this problem is to have huge penalities for the criminals involved like the death penalty.

If Vietnam can have the death penatly for trafficking drugs, then surely they can do the same for trafficking humans.

I'm not too concerned about Taiwan as most Taiwanese who do buy brides in Vietnam usually pick "Hoa". If you read the article you posted then you can see the names of the girl is "Shen".

You can execute a criminal, but after you do there will be another criminal. By penalising criminal you're not solving the problem, you just shove it aside, and eventually it will reappear again.

Who says that the problem can ever be solved 100%. Every country will have this no matter how rich they are, the best Vietnam can do is just minimize such occurances.

Strict punishment acts as a deterrent to other future criminals that they might die if they commit that crime and thus it minimizes the amount of criminals in the future. By having laws that aren't enforced or aren't strict then criminals are just gonna do it again or more criminals will arise as they won't care abuot the consequenes of their actions.

I don't believe in punishment just for the sake of getting revenge but I do believe in it to deter future crimes.

I edited the post, lets look for solutions.

what is the solution ntn1987? you seem to be posting this kind of subject all the time..i KNOW you have a clue.

<sigh>

this is indeed a humiliation to Vietnamese and Vietnam. where are all the Trung daughters and the Trieu sisters?

hopefully one day i will enslave all these bastards' women and children to work in the biggest canal ever constructed. that will show my mercy towards these people.

Cruel punishments won't solve anything. This is a social problem, and must be dealt with social approach, as many more traffickers will appear.

Revenge doesn't solve anything. Oh and btw, there are already exists some Vietnamese who already kidnap Chinese girls (Who are the same as Taiwanese) to sell to brotels in Cambodia anyway. Just becuase you don't hear about it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. See, revenge doesn't make you feel good.

Besides it's the girls and their parents decision as well. If anything, I would go down and find the parents and kick them in the face for fun. I can understand why strangers would enslave girls but I don't understand why a parent would do it to their children, so the parents are first in line for being punished in my opinion.

Simple: Go to Vietnam, ovethrow the gov, overhaul the suystem, set up severe laws and punishment !

Theyre all almost impossible to be achieve by one person.

This is not a social problem. This is an economic problem. Crime and prostitution is tied in with the economy. If you look at the crime wave of the 1980's in america, it was also a time of recession. Then when you look at the 1990's when clinton was in office, crime dropped. Ask yourself this, social or economic? The answer is very simple. We need to make vietnam a better place. A richer place. We need to rid the place of corruption and then start investing in our motherland. That is how we deal with the problem. Tough legislation does deter but the best deterrent is a good economy. Even if you impose the death penalty for stealing a slice of pizza, if people are hungry, they will steal. End of story!

Both of you are right. It is an economic problem and it also is a social problem. I know women who wants to move out of Vietnam, by marriage, eventhough they are far from poor and well educated. But to start from where it should start, since it is the easiest, economy. Economy is an obvious reason why these women/parents do it. I don't think a lot explenation is needed here. But how about this social problem.

Vietnamese have this distorted view of foreign countries. Especially the rich ones. Partly because of the media or lack of it and partly because there are restriction for young vietnamese to travel abroad. So people almost think that life in a rich foreign country is like heaven. And part of it is true ofcourse. People there are free and tend to have more wealth. Hehehe. But there is a lot of harshness involve too. Especially for the one who just arrive there and can't speak the language. Without having any family or friends there. Even if you are educated, you probably end up with a low level job and working your @$$ off. And that's when you are lucky. There are so many who aren't even that lucky.

Another problem is that vietnamese people tend to compare themself with their neighbours, more than the indivialistic western societies. So for instance, people in small villages see one of their villagers doing good business and buying one of those fance motor scooters. They think to themself why is he having that and i don't. I must not fail in life and be the loser. I also must have a scooter. Being not so smart or hard working or whatever, but having a few daughters and hearing about these exchange work programs or even knowing about prostitution. This guy is off to enlist/sell his daughter. A few days later, he's riding around with this fancy scooter and being the man. Ofcourse others villagers see this too and before you know, you got the whole lot of them running to these exploiteurs of human misery.

And do i have to mention corruption. Vietnamese society is so filled with it. You can almost use it as reason on almost any problem. How can these crimal/semi criminal pratices surfive in a country with an appartus that is keeping people under very strict control. Such practices must have been noticed. The answer is corruption. From the top to the bottom, if they spotted these pratices, they want to jump in and if possible pick their little part of profit out of it, without getting their hands the dirty or getting in the spotlight. I might be a bit paranoid here, but in my recent travel to Vietnam, i've spotted enough of example of corruption. And i really can't stand it. >.< There or anywhere!

So these are, in my opinion, just a few possible reasons why this problem has a social root too.

I guess every nation has its problems.

Ours are very humiliating to take...........

Nope. It's becuase you uncovered dirt in Vietnamese society and paraded it for everyone to see. I can equally find the same dirt for practically every country and do the same, but I don't. You even go as far as take Japanese porn pics or Chinese massacres and try to say they are Vietnamese.

After you proposed the Khmer Krom flag as the Vietnamese flag and other stunts I'm beginning to wonder if you are who you claim to be.

When did i take Japanese porn/Chinese massacres and try to say that theyre Viet? Those are parts of the website (which do not belong to me). What i wantted to show were the photos of beggars and young girls captured in brothel.
I have never see what the Khmer Krom flag look like, the only Cambodian flag i know is its national flag, which look totally different from my designs. If you have seen the Khmer Krom flag then please post it (on the "flag" thread) so i can see it.
I am so ashamed that we spend so much time saying poverty exist in all society but very few of us are actually doing anything to get rid of it. All society have problems but ours are one of the worst!
I am a Viet by blood and spirit, get that straight!

I can see your hatred through what you wrote ( you've written the sentence above many times )

Now that's the Vietnamese spirit. . If you don't like someone in power, kick them in the nuts. Forget what I said about you being a foreigner.

not hatred. but frustration. i think.

and i only wrote it twice. which is good enough, i think.

Poverty does take the dignity out of people.

It's all tied into economic reasons, therefore, more of an economic problem. A good strong economy will fix it. If it was a social problem and vietnam suddenly discovered it had 200trillion barrels of oil under it's sea, the problem would still remain. That is very unlikely in this situation.



This is called keeping up with the joneses'. It's also practiced here in America but you don't see americans selling their daughters for an SUV do you? Again, it is an economic problem.



Corruption is a social problem. It happens in wealthy nations as well. However, with the proper checks and balances and a healthy economy, it can be rooted out and kept at a minimal.

So thent the question is what are those "proper checks and balances"?

And yes, the problem would still exist when Vietnam finds 200trillion barrels of oil. Are you so naive to think that the money of that find will flow into the pocket of the poor people of Vietnam? I don't think it will, at least not as Vietnam is the Vietnam it now is. And without freedom young educated people will still want to flee the country if it was allowed for them to travel abroad. There they think they can use their full potential, grow in life and be succesfull. Ofcourse a few will make their way to the top of the party, but most of them will not since you make a better chance of doing that when you are relative of the sitting members or are a good suck up. And i also wonder what part the government play in this. Are they doing their best to inform the people about this? Or are they waving this away as some minor problem because of the shame of admitting that such things exist in a land as 'beautiful' as Vietnam. Or are they just protecting their own interests?


Did i say that this phenomenon can't be viewed around the world? I can even go as far as to say that you will find this in every country in the world. Even in the induvidualistic western culture. But in the vietnamese group culture, this phenomenon is there with a vengeance. Strong and potent enough to cause the problems mentioned by the poster.


We at least agree on that. ^^

And i also agree with you that, fullfilling the economic needs of the people, will be a large step towards solving the problem. But these social barriers will be there too, to block the road to the solution of the problem.

If we can find the answer to this or agree what it is, then the problem of Viet Nam currently facing will be solved or substantially reduced. Checks and balances what are they, no mucking around?

It could have been an economic problem. But it could have been a problem of uneven distribution of resources.

So you're saying that prostitution would still be around if an oil reserve larger than opec combined was discovered in vietnam? Don't you think there would be a trickle down effect? Sure they are not going to split it evenly but if you look at the rest of the world, the rich control the majority of the wealth, not just in corrupt nations, but in developed nations as well. Nevertheless, it raises the standard of living in that nation. Saudi Arabia has the largest reserves, most belonging to the king but he spends and the money is distributed through his spendings. Look at the bin laden family. They got rich b/c the king was spending tremendous amounts of money on construction.