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South African girls smuggled to East
By Carel van Dyk
May 19, 2004
Cape Town - South African women have been smuggled to the Far East as sex
slaves since 2000.
This is according to the latest newsletter of the Pretoria office of the
International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which claims that women are
smuggled to Macau, a former Portuguese colony and currently under the
administrative control of China.
Young women with experience as strippers or sex workers are apparently lured to
Macau with promises of money and luxury accommodation. The island is known as
the Las Vegas of Asia, and is famous for its many nightclubs, casinos and
bathhouses.
Advertisements are apparently placed in local newspapers and on websites of the
South African sex industry.
The newsletter claims that local agents are people involved in the Johannesburg
sex industry.
It says young women are given drugs to make it easier to convince them to fly
to Hong Kong, after which they are taken to neighbouring Macau by boat.
Jonathan Martens, project manager at IOM, said he has known about this human
trafficking for the past few years. He said IOM was not sure how many South
African women were smuggled to the Far East every year.
In its latest newsletter, IOM published an interview with a 23-year-old
Johannesburg woman who managed to escape from Macau.
The woman, known as Nicola, said she met nine other black, coloured and white
South African women, aged between 18 and 21, on the island.
Some of these women have allegedly been held there for the past two years and
are regularly sold to other bathhouses.
In reaction, the South African Police Service said it was investigating the
revelations in the newsletter, but has not acquired any evidence or sworn
statements to back up the claims.
National police spokesperson, Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht,
said parents should personally check the credibility of travel agencies dealing
with their children's travel arrangements.
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