World Day Against Trafficking: China still is a “Tier 3” Nation
WRIC July 30, 2020
Today is World Anti-Human Trafficking Day. The State Council’s “Human Trafficking Report 2020” lists China as one of the most serious criminals in the world. China remains a “third-tier” country-it once again enjoys the same status as North Korea and South Sudan.
Seng Moon was only 16 years old when she was trafficked from Kachin State in Myanmar to southwest China and sold to a Chinese family as a bride. She was lured by his sister to work as a well-paid chef in China. In the car, her sister gave her something she called motion sickness. After Seng Moon woke up in China, his hands were tied behind his back. A few months later, she was transferred to a Chinese family, where she was tied to a room for another month or two. She said: “Every time a Chinese man takes me to dinner, he rapes me.”
Burmese women are often lured to China by promising jobs. (Human Rights Watch)
“Two months later, they dragged me out of the room. The Chinese man’s father said, ‘This is your husband. Now you are a married couple.’” Seng Moon soon gave birth to a son. When she asked to return home, her husband said: “No one is going to stop you. If you want to go home, you can. But you can’t take my child.”
Through determination and luck, she was able to escape the kidnappers and returned to Myanmar with her son. They are hiding in camps for internally displaced persons. Her terrible experience of becoming a forced bride will never leave her. She said: “I’m afraid the Chinese family will try to find me.” According to a detailed and destructive report by Human Rights Watch, all of this indicates: “Give us a baby and we will let you go.”
These crimes are often carried out with the assistance of Chinese officials: “Although law enforcement officers continue to benefit from sex trafficking and forced labor and allow or directly facilitate them, the government has not reported any investigations, prosecutions or convictions. Law enforcement on suspected crimes personnel.”
According to the TIP report, China’s trafficking of women and girls in China, neighboring countries, and as far as Africa is “forced marriage leads to forced and fraudulent marriages to Chinese men, leading to forced birth and sex trafficking”. China is not only an endless market for sexual slavery but also a major provider of sexual slavery in the world: “Traffickers in at least 60 other countries subject Chinese men, women and children to forced labor and sex trafficking.”
Zhang Jing, Women’s Rights in Chian president said: “Reports about sexual slavery in China are heartbreaking. They are an inevitable legacy of the “one-child policy”. Due to China’s national family planning policy, the choice of the sex of the baby has caused serious problems. China has 300 to 40 million more males than females. At the same time, the Chinese tradition of patriarchalism has revived. The reason for the collapse of the marriage market may be the reason why the Chinese government has turned a blind eye to the sex trade-in some cases it has even contributed to it.
We call on the Chinese government must be severely punished those officials in collusion with sex traffickers should stop prosecuting victims of sex trafficking as criminals, end-all mandatory population control measures, and take effective measures to protect the lives of female infants. We also call on them to end the abhorrent targeting Uyghurs offense.