Vietnam and China wage war on trafficking of women
04 June 2004

MONG CAI, VIETNAM: Five years ago, Hoang Hong Tham was sold by her mother's friend to a Chinese man.


The Vietnamese woman, now 23, lived in China for more than four months before her father paid four million dong ($NZ415) to get her back.

"It was hard living there, as I did not know the language," said Tham, who became on Thursday the public face of a UN-led anti-people smuggling campaign launched at a busy border crossing between Vietnam and China.

Vietnam says thousands of its women and children are smuggled across the border, mostly for the 70 million bachelors in China unable to find wives. Men outnumber women in China as a result of the country's long-running, one-child policy, which led to many foetuses of girls being aborted because parents favour boys.

Tham was sold by her mother's best friend, but some Vietnamese girls, seeking an escape from wrenching poverty, are willing to be smuggled to China, lured by false promises of good jobs and marriages.

Chinese and Vietnamese representatives from the UN children's charity, Unicef, declared war on people trafficking on Thursday in the border town of Mong Cai, 327km northeast of Hanoi.

Meher Khan, the Unicef Regional Director for East Asia and Pacific, said more children were sold in Asia than anywhere else in the world.

"The people who are trafficked are usually the poorest people who are looking for better jobs, better opportunity and they don't start off knowing that they are to be trafficked, obviously," she told Reuters Television.

The ceremony took place in the middle of the Bac Luan bridge, which runs between Mong Cai and the Chinese town of Dong Xing – one of the crossings along the 1350km border between Vietnam and China.

Authorities in the two countries have stepped up anti-trafficking measures since 2001. Unicef China said that in 2002, 141 Vietnamese girls were rescued and repatriated from Dong Xing, up from just 15 in 2001.

In 2002, 33 traffickers were arrested, including 22 from Vietnam, a jump from a total of seven arrests in 2001, the Unicef statement said.

The Vietnam Women's Union and its Chinese counterpart have been enlisted in the anti-trafficking drive.

Huang Qingyi, the vice chairwoman of the Chinese Women's Federation, said she believed the joint campaign would fundamentally change attitudes toward human trafficking.

"If any country takes action unilaterally, there would not be an obvious impact," she said through a translator.

The campaign will distribute leaflets, posters, T-shirts and caps in a campaign that will target schools.

Vietnam says it has prosecuted more than 30,000 people in the past five years on charges of trafficking women and children, with traffickers jailed for up to 20 years.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2929753a12,00.html


Traffickers should be shot in the head and blow their brains out. They don't need to be jailed for 20 years or anything. Jailing them will waste land, money from the tax payers. They are the scums of the Earth, they are the bugs of the world. They need to be extinct in the next 100 years. These people need to get their brains blown out by a huge cannon, that is the only way that can satisfy me! No more, no less.

Damn traffickers, they ought to be killed before they were even born!

agreed !!

Đầu óc lớn thường thường đồng ý với nhau.


J.k.

ddu'ng ro^`i , great minds think alike

How would you go about doing that?

By developing a pyschic police system like that in Minority Report.

Right...

Another victim of Hollywood's reality distortion.

Of course the statement I made above is just taken out of context. People will say things that exagerate the story. It's like saying "we should have stopped World War 2," but it happened.

All because of China's one child policy

lol , because of the stupid idea that only want boys , no girls.

...I was joking. I haven't even seen that movie, just the trailers and commercials.

Back on topic.

It will be a tough war to fight, sort of like the drug war thats currently being waged in the US. People can blame the drug lords for supplying the drugs, but as long as there is money to be made and a market for the product in question, illegal acts like these will not be easily stopped.

I agree, it's very stupid indeed.

Why don't they just adopt a two child policy like Vietnam? Last I heard it's working wonders in stunting Vietnam's population growth and providing a good gender balance as well.

Because China has more than 1 billion people already.

So what? So does India and they don't even have any policy.

I don't even know why Vietnam even has a two child policy. Germany and Japan have higher population than Vietnam. Hell even the Phillipines has a higher population than Vietnam.

Yet Vietnam is the one to put in a policy.

Think of a bigger picture. Germany and Japan have a higher standard of living than Vietnam. What do you want Vietnam to do with millions of people below the poverty level? Controlling the population is the first place any country would do before stepping into modernization. India does have population control policy. Check it on Google or something, it's just not widely known.

Thank God governments are trying to take actions against this digusting practice.

OCP is not stupid, ever seen a family of 9 begging on the streets?

0.9 billon Chinese are famers, and most of them are very very pooor, wanna try taking care of them? YEs the Chinese traditions of more kids equal happiness prosperity, is cool ( i like it ) but then it will only work on rich families, being a poor famer having 7 kids is just totally idiotic.

If China's population gets any larger, China itself will not be able to produce enough food to feed its population, then since vietnam is right besidies of china, you think vietnam and China's other neighbour will not be sufering from problems?

There are alot of stupid chinese, like one 70 year old man in HK having 6 kids, the oldest being 10, lucky he is in HK, he receives social welfare, up to 30000 thousand dolla a month. Yes our tax money are wasted on some dumb $hit 70 year old horny $hit head. Imagine have milions of cases like that...... obviosuily China is not anywhere near the level rich yet. What is it, the most favorable estimate for china is like 25 years until it can get its butt of being a poor nation.

i dont think vietnam want a thousands of hungry chinese charging into their borders........hungry people do some crazy things................

agreed !! the government of china shouldn't let it happened man , its scary to think about it 1.5 BILLION people in a country

If thousands of chinese cross Viet Nam's borders, we'll just beat them back like last time

WTF?

You make it seem like everyone in China is starving and the whole country is on the verge of collapsing

Try to keep the peace guys.

Hòa bình.

Is that why they eat baby soup?

Man, I read somewhere that once they were so famished that they ate the barks of trees.

<<<SIGH>>>

Let's not say anymore of those.

exactly, ew, shame on them!


its a good thing they're doing something about that !