Video above: How the Myanmar and Chinese governments failed to halt trafficking of ethnic Kachin women. Courtesy Human Rights Watch
According to a new (HRW), trafficking survivors claim that people they trust – including family members living in China – lured them away from Myanmar with the promise of work. Once in China, survivors reported being locked away and raped so they would fall pregnant. Traffickers charge Chinese families anywhere between $3,000 and $13,000USD for sex slaves.
A Kachin woman who was trafficked as 16-year-old by her sister-in-law told HRW:
The family took me to a room. In that room I was tied up again. … They locked the door – for one or two months. When it was time for meals, they sent meals in. I was crying…Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me.
Survivors reported the Chinese families they were sold to were more interested in having a baby than a “bride.” After the trafficked women and girls gave birth to a baby, they were sometimes able to escape their captors, but usually at the cost of leaving their child.
China’s one child policy attributed to the demand for ‘brides’, with a preference for boys creating a population gap between genders.
Conflict in Myanmar also forced women to look abroad for work, leading to the perceived opportunities in China.
“Myanmar and Chinese authorities are looking away while unscrupulous traffickers are selling Kachin women and girls into captivity and unspeakable abuse,” said Heather Barr, acting women’s rights co-director at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.
“The dearth of livelihoods and basic rights protections have made these women easy prey for traffickers, who have little reason to fear law enforcement on either side of the border.”
The HRW report found law enforcement authorities in China and Myanmar made little effort to recover the trafficked women and girls. In some cases, those who escaped and went to the police in China were sometimes apprehended for immigration violations rather than being treated as victims of crime.
“The Myanmar and Chinese governments, as well as the Kachin Independence Organization, should be doing much more to prevent trafficking, recover and assist victims, and prosecute traffickers,” Barr added.
“Donors and international organizations should support the local groups that are doing the hard work that governments won’t to rescue trafficked women and girls and help them recover.”
