"It's the girl in the countryside who would do this kind of thing," said another
woman, a publicist for a cosmetic company. "No one in the city would go. I
mean, it's hard work in the rice field. Besides, who is to say their Vietnamese
husbands won't beat them just like their Korean or Taiwanese one?" Her friends
murmured in agreement.
Unfortunately, not all trafficked women end up in real marriages, even if their
paperwork says so. According to Huy Phan, who is part of a group of Vietnamese
Americans trying to help victims of trafficking, "the scheme is, the brothel or
mafia finances a man to go to Vietnam to buy a wife.But the marriage is a ruse,
and the girl ends up as a prostitute or indentured servant when she gets to
Taiwan. It's a way to legalize trafficking."
In June, the U.S. State Department released the "Victims of Trafficking and
Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report." Vietnam was
classified as a "tier two" country, meaning that the government of Vietnam,
according to the report, makes some effort to eliminate the problem but "does
not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking."
In March 2004, a Taiwanese tried to sell three young Vietnamese women on E-bay.
The starting bid was $5,400. Vietnamese living abroad protested, and E-Bay
quickly pulled the auction page. But the language used on that page, along with
the images of the three young, hapless women smiling to the camera, bespoke of
modern-day slavery: "Products will be delivered only to Taiwan," the page said.
A typical trafficking scenario in Saigon goes something like this: A group of
men come in from a foreign country, Taiwan or Korea, perhaps, and are
chauffeured to a designated bar where young women and teenage girls await. The
girls are lined up. The men pick and choose their brides, and pay around $5,000
to $10,000 dollars depending on the "quality" of the bride, which depends
largely on whether she is a virgin. Soon these so-called brides are taken to
unknown destinies. Their families back in the rural areas receive around $500
dollars for the sale. The rest goes to middlemen and to grease the legal
machine.
Girls and women may also be promised jobs in Cambodia, Laos or China, only to
end up as sex slaves once they cross the border. Recent raids in Cambodian
brothels came up with Vietnamese girls as young as 5 years old. Young boys,
too, are bought, and are highly prized in China, especially for families that
have no children and want to adopt.
Many problems help perpetuate this form of exploitation. First are rising
population pressures. There are now 82 million people in Vietnam. Two out of
three Vietnamese are under 35, and there are an estimated 1.5 million abortions
each year. The rural-urban gap is widening. Peasants trying to survive become
easy prey.
Second is corruption. Government officials can be bribed to look the other way
or, worse, actively assist the sale of these women by stamping their exit
visas.
Third, and most important, Vietnamese people themselves have developed a
lackadaisical attitude about the plight of trafficked women. After all, when
there are approximately half a million prostitutes in Vietnam trying to make
ends meet, who cares if a few hundred thousand more are plying their trade
abroad?
Thien-Tam Tran, another Vietnamese American activist, remembers a scene in the
airport in Taipei, Taiwan. Three Vietnamese girls were waiting to be taken away
by gangsters. "I asked them if they wanted help but they wouldn't talk. They
were very afraid. When the gangsters showed up the girls finally realized what
would happen to them and started to weep. One girl, about 17, held onto me. But
it was too late."
In Vietnam, self-sacrifice is still perceived as the highest Confucian virtue,
but few seem to notice that to sell or induce one's own offspring into slavery
is an absolute evil - and highly un-Confucian. "Some women and girls are raped
by their captors, husband, and/or male members of the family," Tran notes
sadly.
Unless human rights become a real dialogue in Vietnam and the urban rural gap
is seriously addressed, the nation seems fated to play a role that many
activists working against human trafficking refer to as "a supply country."
