China joins Mekong countries in fighting human trafficking

During the ten-year since he was on the narcotics control task force under Mengla county public security bureau, Zhao

has been involved in rescuing and transferring over ten abducted victims from Laos

Ma Guihua, China Features

Zhao Xianming, a narcotics control liaison officer for Mengla county in southwest China's Yunnan Province, clearly remembered the circumstances of that Saturday.

Around midday July 25, 2009, Zhao received a call from a senior police officer from Phongsaly Province, northern Laos, urging him to stop an international bus traveling from Laos to Mengla.

"I was told that a Laotian woman suspected of trafficking two girls was trying to bypass border check points," recalled Zhao, who speaks fluent Laotian. The two cousins, aged 14 and 15, and with no identity certificates with them, were excited about the prospects of working at a restaurant in a neighboring county in Laos

promised by the Laotian woman, who was married to a Chinese man. It was beyond their wildest dreams that they were actually heading for China.

"Thanks to the timely communication with the Lao side, the two girls were rescued at the border crossing and handed over to the Lao police the same day," said Zhao, who believed that intelligence and information is the most cost-effective way for efficient and speedy rescue.

Southmost border

Mengla is the southmost border county in Yunnan Province. It shares a 677.8-kilometer borderline with the Laos in the south and east, and is separated in the west from Myanmar only by a river. With 46 land crossings, 14 market places for border residents, as well as five motorways to the Laos and Myanmar border, it is regarded a major passageway to Southeast Asian countries.

Residents at the Lao-Chinese border usually share the same origin, custom and are therefore able to speak the same language. Different economic levels at both sides of the border have sparked cross-border migration as well as human trafficking.

During the ten-year since he was on the narcotics control task force under Mengla county public security bureau, Zhao has been involved in rescuing and transferring over ten abducted victims from Laos.

"Most victims are teenage girls from mountainous areas in northern Laos, who were lured by job or marriage opportunities at the other side of the border," said the police officer.

Although economy is the driving factor for cross-border migration, Zhao also cited the difference in gender ratio at the source and destination areas for human trafficking. As more and more Chinese labors are engaged in helping the locals grow rubber trees and other cash crops to weed out poppy production in Laos, which is part of the notorious Golden Triangle for drug manufacturing and smuggling, clandestine cross-border match-making services also came into being, Zhao added.

Victims

Since 2000, according to Wang Wei, police chief in Mengla, the police have received reports on 31 trafficked victims from Laos, of which 19 were rescued from provinces including Hunan, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong. Some were even trafficked as far as Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province.

"Maybe Laos is only a starting point or transit place for human trafficking. Nonetheless, human trafficking has directly affected social security, it takes bilateral or multi-lateral efforts to address the issue," said Kiengkham Inphengthavong, head of the secretariat of Laos' National Steering Committee on Human Trafficking, under the Ministry of Public Security, during the Laos-China anti-trafficking meeting held in Mengla in mid-October.

A highlight of the joint meeting is the inauguration of a border liaison office for China-Lao anti-trafficking at Mohan land port, about 100 meters from the China-Lao boundary marker.

Compared with human trafficking along China-Myanmar, China-Vietnam border, trafficking along China-Lao border is relatively less serious. However, as the Kunming-Bangkok highway (via Mengla) was open to traffic last year, "we have to brace ourselves for more cases," said Hang Lintao, deputy director at the criminal investigation section, Yunnan Public Security Bureau.

A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons released this February by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that almost 20 percent of all trafficked victims are children. In some parts of the Mekong region, it noted, children are the majority. What's more, sexual exploitation and forced labor are common in human trafficking.

A latest report released by the United Nations Children's Fund titled Child Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia: Reversing the Trend warned that child trafficking still persists in east and southeast Asia. "Poverty does not cause trafficking. The demand for cheap or exploitable labor, sex with children, adoption outside the legal cannels, women or girls for marriage, all contribute to the trafficking phenomenon," it said.

The liaison office in Mengla is one of a series of offices set up along China's southwest border to fight cross-border human trafficking to the effect of information sharing, investigation, evidence obtaining as well as repatriation and victim transfer.

Over the years, child trafficking within China has almost penetrated most provinces. During the 6-month special anti-trafficking operation this year leading up to mid-October, Chinese police have cracked 1,717 cases, rescuing 2,008 trafficked children. In the meantime, cross-border trafficking, however small in numbers, is also on the rise. Zinhua