Authorities in China and Myanmar are failing to stop the brutal trafficking of young women, often teenagers, from the conflict-ridden Kachin region for sexual slavery, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Most of those taken stop brides by Chinese families are locked up and raped, it says.
Those who do escape are often obliged to leave children fathered by Chinese men behind. The report urges authorities to do more to raise awareness about the risks of trafficking, provide more support for victims who return home, and to prosecute those guilty of crimes against them. The 226 known cases of such trafficking in 2017 were only a fraction of the total number, since many victims are afraid or ashamed to come forward, especially given the lack of support from law enforcement or welfare services, the report says. The group interviewed 37 survivors of such crimes for the report. Twelve of those interviewed were under 18 when they were trafficked.
It said 22 of them were held for a year or longer. Often, the women are drugged and taken captive, left at the mercy of families with whom they can barely communicate. The AP wrote about one such case last year. Heather Barr, author of the report and a co-director for women’s rights at Human Rights Watch. The traffickers are able to lure women with false promises of jobs because of the lack of good options for making a living in camps for displaced people in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state. As of September, there were about 100,000 people displaced inside Kachin, where the Kachin Independence Army, like other ethnic minority armed groups, has been fighting for greater autonomy for decades.
Thousands of women and children have also fled their homes in neighboring Shan state, some across the border into China. The porous border between southern China’s Yunnan province and northern Kachin facilitates such trafficking, and the relative shortage of marriageable women, thanks to Chinese traditions favoring male heirs over girls, has left many families in China desperate for brides. Although Chinese authorities have been battling trafficking inside China as well, the families who buy the women are almost never prosecuted, the report says. Some foreign brides from neighboring countries go voluntarily. But for many, the experience is harrowing.
