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Police Break Women Trafficking Ring in Vietnam

Police say they've broken up Vietnam's largest network responsible for trafficking women out of country.

A Taiwanese man and five Vietnamese have been jailed for up to 12 years for trafficking more than 100 Vietnamese women to Malaysia - where a new law designed to combat the trade has recently come into effect.

The women believed they were to wed Malaysian men, but many were tricked into working as sex slaves.

Tran Thi My Phuong and her Taiwanese husband Tsai Hsien are now behind bars after being found guilty by the Ho CHi Min City People's Court for trafficking women.

They were the ringleaders of an operation responsible for trafficking 126 women to Malaysia between April 2005 and March 2006.

Andrew Bruce, the Chief of Mission for the International Organisation for Migration, deals in the human cost of people trafficking.

He tells the story of a Vietnamese woman who found her self in a position similar to the women sold by Tran Thi My Phuong and her accomplices to Malaysian men for a mere $US1500.

"We had a case that we know quite well. We had a woman who was married to a Taiwanese in the normal way these marriages are conducted, and from what we can understand is that she had just turned 18 and he took her directly from the airport to the brothel. So he had come to marry a woman whom he was selling directly into prostitution," Mr Bruce says

Those sent to Malaysia by Tran Thi My Phuong's human-trafficking ring are enduring a similar fate to the young woman sent to a Taiwanese brothel.

"She was, I think two years in a brothel in Taiwan, and was the youngest woman in the brothel and every man wanted her. It was I think pretty terrible what she went through and we are working with her to try and get her head together again," Mr Bruce said.

While Mr Bruce and his organisation tries to deal with the consequences of human trafficking, authorities in Vietnam attempt to stop those responsible. But it's a battle that will be hard fought. Authorities face an invisible enemy that operates across Europe, Asia and the United States.

The scale of human trafficking in Vietnam is unclear - but, according to information from UNICEF and Vietnam's Ministry of Justice, 400,000 Vietnamese women and children have been trafficked overseas since 1990. That figure is believed to account for 10 per cent of women and children trafficked worldwide.

"There is a belief and police keep saying that it is expanding and that there is more trafficking going on all the time and it's hard to get numbers, particularly on the northern border with China. I don't think anyone really has any idea how many women are trafficked into China," Mr Bruce says.

According to Vietnamese government estimates, at least 22,000 women and children were illegally sent to China during the 1990s.

Other countries, or provinces, listed as being targets for Vietnamese human traffickers include Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Cambodia, the United States and Malaysia.

Aegile Fernandez is the coordinator of human rights group Tenaganita's anti-human trafficking campaign, based in Malaysia.

"Over the last two years we have seen an alarming rate of them being trafficked especially within the South-East Asian countries."

Ms Fernandez says it's not just women wanting to escape poverty who are fuelling Southeast Asia's booming trade in human beings. She says Malaysian men are creating demand for these women. "Demands like that, we always tend to overlook. We always blame the women. But a lot of it is the men themselves."

She says that some people are cashing in on the Visit Malaysia Year 07 tourism campaign. "You find that there are tours offering not only tourist places, but also different women for tourists who come here. So the demand is also there."

Ms Fernandez says there are even more sinister elements that exist within human trafficking in Malaysia.

"There are also the sale of babies. And you find that especially in the state of Sarawak where Indonesian women are brought in and then they are either raped or they stay and get pregnant and then these babies are sold."

Malaysia is stepping up its effort to crackdown on human trafficking. But Ms Fernandez believes human-trafficking cannot be stopped by a single country. She says it is a problem that exists across Southeast Asia and as such must be tackled as a regional issue.

"The ideas that not only Malaysia but also the countries of origin where the women come from. I think those countries will also have to play an important role. We have also asked the countries within ASEAN to take a greater role in the whole issue of trafficking, which they are now discussing."

Adapted from: "Police break women trafficking ring in Vietnam." www.radioaustralia.net.au. 31 July 2007.