Human trafficking in Vietnam shows no letting up, police says

01 Dec, 2010
Earth Times

Hanoi - Nearly 5,000 women have been trafficked from Vietnam over the past six years, usually to work in brothels or as sex slaves, authorities said Wednesday.

According to police, 4,793 victims of human trafficking have been identified over the past six years. Their experiences were discussed at a conference Wednesday recognizing the efforts of Peaceful House, a Hanoi project that helps victims of human trafficking re-integrate communities.

"The situation of human trafficking in Vietnam has not improved yet," said Senior Lieutenant Colonel Tran Dinh Huan, deputy head of the Public Security Ministry's anti-trafficking office. "The situation in some locations is very complicated."

Le Phuong Thuy of the Center for Women and Development, which helped establish the Peaceful House project, said the women were typically tricked or kidnapped and then sold abroad.

Returning home, they often face discrimination. As a result, Thuy said, some of them make money luring other women into the illicit market, thereby becoming traffickers themselves.

Police said they recently had identified more than 1,200 people trafficked from Vietnam, most of them women, and arrested 221 suspects, charged 137 and rescued 77 victims.

Traffickers made extensive use of the internet to exploit young women, police said. They often go online to find girls in debt, invite them to go shopping in border provinces, and then abduct and sell them.

Vietnamese women, girls, men and boys are trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation to countries including China, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, Britain and the Czech Republic.

Vietnam is a also a destination country for human trafficking, authorities said.