It is in the personal stories of trafficked Myanmar girls and women that the pain and heartache can be seen.
If we are alert to the news, we come across examples.
We hear about the case of a 14-year-old girl called Ma Myat Thu (not her real name) tricked into the trade by her own aunt. The girl is a trafficking victim is from Kin Village, Mingun, Sagaing Region. She was sent to the town of Muse in northern Shan State, although she had been told that she was being sent to work in a tea shop in Mandalay, according to the RFA November 29 report.
Social media helped expose her situation after a video of the crying girl was shown, indicating she was a trafficking victim.
The video was loaded on November 26 and on November 27, the victim's parents informed the concerned police station but they were unable to contact the girl.
According to the girl's mother, her daughter said she was alright and that her payment for working in the tea shop will be paid at the end of the month and that she was satisfied and happy. But three or four days later the video popped up with her daughter crying and helpless.
The alleged trafficker is Daw Mu San from Mandalay, Amarapura Township, who is said to be the girl’s aunt. But she is nowhere to be found and cannot be contacted on her normal phone number.
As soon as the girl's mother, Daw Cho, learned about the situation she put in a case of missing person at Amarapura police station and also informed the Anti-Trafficking and Persons Division, responsible for human trafficking, prevention and suppression, and filed a case in Aung Pinle police station, in Mandalay.
According to the administrator of Kin village U Myint Lwin, the prospect of finding the girl and getting her back will be hard, as once she is inside China it is a big country to search without the exact location of the victim.
It is unclear what will happen to victim Ma Myat Thu.
In another case, a total of seven girls, aged between 18 and 20 years, were rescued from a hotel in Ruili (Shweli) border town in China by a Myanmar-China joint team said the police, according to the BBC report of November 30.
One male and two female alleged traffickers were also apprehended.
Reportedly, the joint team was able to rescue the girls on November 26 evening, due to information from a Myanmar charity organization that helps exiled Myanmar citizens. Luckily they were rescued before they were sold.
Five are said to be from Rakhine State and two from Hlaing Tharyar Township in Yangon.
Just how the victims of human trafficking end up in a dire situation varies from case to case.
In the case of the 14-year-old, it appears to be a case of being tricked. But in the case of the seven rescued girls, their motives appear to be different.
According to Corporal Kyaw Nyunt from the human trafficking prevention and protection unit number 17, some are lured into believing that they have to serve as a wife only for one year or six months in order to obtain a lot of money within a short period of time.
The case of bride trafficking happens frequently, even though there have been efforts made to improve awareness and provide education about the dangers, according to the anti-human trafficking teams.
Efforts are being made by the authorities to tackle the problem. A case in point is the operations to deal with human trafficking just this year passing through Muse town in northern Shan State, across the border to Ruili in China. The authorities have reportedly listed 39 cases where 31 males and 105 females were arrested on trafficking charges and 61 victims were able to be rescued.
But so long as the demands are high on the China side and there is abundance on the supply side, with unfulfilled human needs due to civil war and dire economic situations, the bride trafficking trade will go on through deceit or voluntarily, with little to indicate this human trafficking trade will decrease significantly in the near future.
