KWAT: Women enslaved due to economic hardships

by Phanida

Tuesday, 05 August 2008 23:30

Chiang Mai – The Kachin women's group (KWAT) released a report today on Kachin women being trafficked to China as a fallout of the economic downslide in Burma. The KWAT report called 'Eastward Bound' was released at a ceremony held in Chiang Mai, Thailand and was compiled on the basis of interviews with 163 human trafficking victims from 2004 to 2007, who were sold in China. "When we analyzed the human trafficking cases, we found that 64% are missing, 17% are escapees on the way to enslavement, 4% were sold as housemaids and to the entertainment industry and 37% were sold as wives to foreigner husbands," Julia, a research fellow of KWAT, said. The report also said that most of the victims were sold to Chinese men as wives and 40% are still missing. Julia said that according to their study, 15% of the victims were sold while they were earning, either for themselves or their family members. Some victims were sold while they were seeking jobs as their drug addict fathers could not feed them. Most of the victims were Kachin, Burmese, Shan and Chinese from Kachin State and women from Mandalay, Rangoon and Pyinmanar. The age group of the victims is 14 to 24 and two thirds were from Kachin State while the remaining one third was from northern Shan State. KWAT said in its report that these victims were sold to Chinese farmers at the rate of YMB 13,000 (USD 2,000). The root cause of human trafficking are economic hardship, economic slowdown in the country, human rights violations committed by SPDC and forced relocation, Shirley Seng, the spokeswoman of KWAT, said. She also said that rising commodity prices force the young women to migrate. Though the junta enacted the 'Human Trafficking Law' in September 2005, it could not check human trafficking and could not protect the rights of human trafficking victims, the report said. In the law, the junta stated that the first objective is to check human trafficking as a national task and to protect the victims as this problem will taint national pride and spirit of the Burmese people which should be preserved by all races in Burma. "We can certainly say their law is ineffective to curb this problem because most of the victims are denied protection by the concerned authority when they arrive back on the border and urged the authorities to provide protection. Moreover they were expelled from their offices with abusive words,"  Shirley Seng said. "The number of victims is rising. The human trafficking law will be meaningless under the ruling junta which is systematically violating human rights. Moreover the current policy of the government is forcing the people to migrate," Ma Gwan Khaung, compiler of the report, said. Some victims asked for help at the Burmese embassy in Beijing but they were denied entry to their own country and some were even accused of being human traffickers and a woman was raped during detention, the report added. Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) is receiving these victims and KWAT is providing counseling service, education assistance for those who want to pursue studies, and providing vocational training to these victims. Some of them are now joining KWAT and actively working in its programmes, Gwan Khaung, in-charge of anti-human trafficking, said. According to the study, the root causes of economic hardships, political unrest and human right violations must be resolved first to check human trafficking cases. "We would like to urge the international community to study human trafficking cases. They should not be misled by the bogus anti-human trafficking campaign of the junta and in fact their campaign worsens the human right situation in Burma and encourages more human right violations. There must be a short term solution for this problem and also there must be political change in Burma for a long term solution,"  Shirley Seng said. KWAT also published a report entitled 'Driven Away' in 2005, written on trafficking of Kachin women and being sold in Thai, English, Burmese and Japanese languages. < Prev   Next >