Vietnamese Women and Children Sold As "Sex Slaves"

The Vietnam government published a paper this week that documents statistics from 1998 to early 2010 showing that approximately 5,000 women and children have been taken against their will across the borders of Vietnam in the hands of sex smugglers.   Children are being sold in internet auctions to the highest bidder and women are forced off the streets at gunpoint. 

Recently photos of a young Vietnamese woman and two Vietnamese teens were posted on eBay’s Taiwan website.  They each had a starting price of $5,400 and were listed as “items” from Vietnam that would be shipped only to Taiwan to be picked up from there.  An eBay spokesperson responded to outraged activists that the company did not screen auction items before they went live on the site, but it usually halted products that were deemed inappropriate or illegal and reiterated that EBay strictly forbids the sale or purchase of humans, alive or dead

             The practice human trafikking  started in Vietnam in 1987 when Hanoi opened its borders and became a market economy.  Without regulation the opening of the borders  caused widespread corruption involving local authorities and middle class businessmen.    Intervention by NGOs and charities operating in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand has had little effect.

              In 2009, joint interventions by the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments led to the arrest of 31 traffickers and saved the lives of 70 victims that were about to be smuggled across the border into Cambodia.  While this was a sign of progress traffickers still smuggled 981 women and children to Cambodia or China to be sold as slaves.

              The greatest number of women smuggled is at the border between China and Vietnam.  Women are placed into the prostitution market,  sold as brides to the highest bidder or forced to do hard labor in unregulated factories.  Many of the women are taken across the border into Cambodia where they are forced to work as prostitutes.  Cambodia also serves as a transfer place for women to be given over to buyers from England, France and Germany.  In some cases, the victims  are brought to the Vietnam ports of Tan San Nhat and Noi Bai to be shipped off to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau or to  Europe, Africa and the USA.

              When the authorities in Thailand recently started to  crackdown on prostitution, especially child prostitution, Vietnam  became the new base for sex tourism industry in Southeast Asia.   The bars, discos and resorts in Vietnam offer a constant supply of unsuspecting young women for the traffickers to smuggle away.