Human Trafficking
Cervantes 1
Kandyce Cervantes
Cullom
WR 121 (Friday)
2 November 2013
Rough Draft Ethnog Part 3
Human Trafficking: Vietnam
Sitting down with Mi, my Informant on Vietnam, was definitely very informative and I am very appreciative of that. To hear about the everydays of her and her countries traditions of the average family was an eye opener, but I cannot help but think about an article I had come a crossed that spoke on human trafficking. I decided to go more in depth on the matter and found that it is a problematic issue. The statistic of Vietnamese victims who have gone missing have considerably grown since 1990 till now (2013) to a total of over 400,000 victims missing (Dale-Harris). The biggest population of these victims come’s come from the towns that border with China.
In contrast to Vietnam’s human trafficking, “China is the demand for an ideal family model which is what fuels the industry,” (Dale-Harris). Children are being sold whether it be, to have a son or a wife, or just to work in garment factories. In China because there is the one child policy the result is in a preference for all males, which ends in a shortage for girls available for marriage (Dale-Harris). There for since Vietnam is on the border of China take full advantage of solving the problem by paying Vietnamese people in kidnapping.
Linh, now 25, was young girl when she was kidnapped and taken to Hekou in China. Most of the kidnapping seems to take place by a relative who cons the children and sells them into the trafficking war. The story says Linh who’s aunt who, never showed her of any interest, one day decided to take her on a shopping trip. The aunt sold Linh to two Chinese women, who then took Linh to a market to be sold as wife to a 30 year old man (Dale-Harris). I could not imagine the horror that a little girl could go through. Thinking she was just going on shopping trip and the next moment taken from your family to be all of sudden be a wife to someone you have never met before, let alone being just a child. Linh job in the marriage was to produce a baby, and when she would refuse to sleep with the man her would then beat and rape her. Linh finally got the courage one rainy day and escaped to a local police station the police who put her into a shelter where she was given a meal and bed. Linh shelter had fifteen other girls, who all had similar stories of their own (Dake-Harris).
With a similar story to Linh, Hieu was a young Sixteen year old boy who lived in a small town in Vietnam called Dien Bien. This is a small mountain town in north-western Vietnam, it is one of the poorest provinces and borders China (Brown). Hieu worked at job making coal bricks when one day a women approached him in the village asking him if he wanted vocational training. Happy to tell his parent that he would finnaly have a chance for a real job to make money he took the womens offer. Hieu and eleven other children were taken by a bus 1,300 miles away to work in Ho Chi Minh, south Vietnam (Brown). The children were sold and then locked up in a small cramped room making clothes for the next two years. The children worked from six in the morning till midnight, with no wages. If mistakes were made the children were beaten with a stick (Brown). Hieu was very fortunate, and one day managed to escape with two other boys who all jumped out of the window of the third floor. The boys all ran as fast as they could, not knowing where they were going, and just ran until morning and found help (Brown).
These children are extremely fortunate to have escaped these harsh conditions. One of the other problem’s the kids are faced with are, once these children have escaped, they are disowned from their families or are no longer able to track down their families so they are left to live in the shelters until they are adults and can survive on their own. Once the kids are kidnapped they are taken far away from their home so that is they are able to escape they cannot just go home. The trafficking target on small rural towns, because the people in these communities do not know of the risks of human trafficking (brown). “The trafficking business is getting worse, because it is so lucrative and other people in the trafficking business want a piece of the pie (Brown). The fact that it is a growing a business is deeply saddening, although that Vietnamese government’s agenda is to increase in the number of prosecutions involving these gang like activities(Brown), I do not see this as a benefit. The problem will still be there.
(Conclusion)
Works Cited
Brown, Marianne. “Vietnam’s lost children in labyrinth of slave labour.” BBC NEWS, ASIA. 27 August 2013. 30 October 2013. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23631923?print=true.
Dale-Harris, Luke. “The Ultimate Betrayal: Human Trafficking in Vietnam.” Huffpost Impact, United Kingdom. 1 July 2013. 30 October 2013. www.huffintonpost.co.uk/luke-daleharris/vietnam-human-trafficking.web.
Vijeyarasa, Ramona. “The State, The Family And Language Of ‘Social Evils’: Re-Stigmatising Victims Of Trafficking In Vietnam.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 12.(2010): 89-102. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
