United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP) facilitates a stronger and more coordinated response to human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: February 5, 2006
United Nations
Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region
(UNIAP) facilitates a stronger and more coordinated response to human
trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Myanmar,
Thailand and Vietnam).
UNIAP
Regional News
Summaries for January 2006
UNIAP- Summaries of Regional
News Articles: Month of January 2006
Regional News Summaries: January
2006
The following English news summaries from January 2006 are sourced from the UNIAP
weekly news digests from the six UNIAP country offices. For further information
and subscription to these news digests, please contact the following:
Regional news digest:
melissa.stewart@un.or.th
Cambodia news
digest: kristy.fleming@undp.org
China news digest:
uniap.china@gmail.com
Lao news
digest:
phadsada.chanthavong@undp.org
Myanmar news
digest: ayhtut.uniapmm@undp.org
Thailand news
digest uniap_thai@un.or.th
Vietnam news
digest: uniapvietnam@vnn.vn
Cambodia
·
Woman Gets Seven Years for
Trafficking Virgins, The Cambodia Daily, January 25, 2006
·
Trafficking Suspects Linked With
Hotel To Be Tried, The Cambodia Daily, January 25, 2006
·
Charges Against Massage Parlor Staff
Dropped, The
Cambodia Daily, January 18, 2006
·
Anti-Trafficking Campaign Set to
Start, The
Cambodia Daily, January 13, 2006
·
Trafficked Victims to go to
Palau, Not
Saipan,
The Cambodia Daily,
January 4,
2006
·
Public hearing on safe-haven
regulations today , Saipan Tribune, January 4 2006
China
·
Human Smuggling Cases on Rise in
Guangxi, China.org,
January 24,
2006
·
Trafficked women sold as
spouses, Xinhua,
January 18 2006
·
Trafficking victims savour fresh
start, China
Daily, January 6,
2006
Lao PDR
·
Tourism authority slams door on
paedophiles, January 23, 2005
·
Domestic abuse refuge opens in
Vientiane,
Vientiane Times,
January 16
2006
Myanmar
·
Thailand-Myanmar sign pact in
Malaysia to fight transnational
crime, Associated
Press, January 17
2006
·
Burmese sex victims
repatriated, The
Nation, January 11
2006
Thailand
·
Japanese human trafficker arrested,
The Nation,
January 20
2006
·
Parlour shut down,
The Nation,
January 20
2006
·
Ex-air chief jailed,
The Nation,
January 22
2006
·
MSDHS concerns salon is a key
starting point of human trafficking, Matichon, January 24 2006
·
Chonburi prepares MOU of
anti-trafficking for 8 eastern provinces, Manager online, January 26 2006
·
Second Chances,
Bangkok Post, January 24 2006
·
Fighting human trafficking,
Bangkok Post,
January 20
2006
·
Human trafficking is our
responsibility, Bangkok Post, January 20 2006
Vietnam
·
Vietnam slaps restrictions on
nightclubs, other recreation, Thanh Nien Daily, January 21 2006
·
Police get gear to fight crime,
Vietnam News
Agency, January 20
2006
·
Vietnamese woman rescued from
traffickers in China,
Thanh Nien Daily,
January 11
2006
Cambodia
Woman Gets Seven Years for
Trafficking Virgins
The Cambodia Daily, 25 January, 2006
Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday sentenced a woman
to seven years in prison after convicting her of trafficking two Cambodian
virgins to an unidentified US national. Presiding Judge Iv Kimsry convicted Chum
Sreypov of selling a 20-year-old woman and a 23-year-old woman, whose names were
withheld, after Deputy Prosecutor Ngeth Sarath said she had made a deal with the
American to sell the two for $1,000. Chum Sreypov denied the charges. The
sentence for the Oct 8 incident was handed down despite one of the allegedly
trafficked women having testified in court that Chum Sreypov had not tried to
sell her, and the woman’s father having said he had not filed a lawsuit against
the defendant.
Trafficking Suspects Linked With
Hotel To Be Tried
The Cambodia Daily, 25 January, 2006
Four trafficking suspects connected to the
scandal-wracked Chai Hour II hotel are scheduled to stand trial on Feb 7, lawyer
Yin Wengka said Tuesday. Yin Wengka said his clients—hotel owner Pao Ly and
manager Sam Leng—will stand trial for illegally possessing weapons and for
conspiring to traffic humans. He said Khun Navy and Sam Srey, both 21, will also
stand trial for attempting to sell a 16-year-old girl to hotel customers. The
four were arrested in the aftermath of police and NGO workers raiding the hotel
in December 2004 and taking 83 women and girls to a shelter run by the NGO
Afesip. The next day, the shelter was attacked and the females removed.
Following the raid, the US government downgraded Cambodia to the bottom tier of its global anti-trafficking
watchdog list. US Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle declined comment, except to say
that the US welcomes “recent steps the Cambodian government has
taken to combat trafficking.” (Prak Chan Thul and Whitney
Kvasager)
Charges Against Massage Parlor Staff
Dropped
The Cambodia Daily, 18 January, 2006
Three staff members at Phnom Penh’s World One massage parlor who were charged with
debauchery in June following last year’s largest anti-trafficking raid have been
released from Prey Sar prison, a senior prison official said Tuesday. World One
manager Chroeung Trang, 32, cashier Chhun Sok Lay, 25, and employee Lim Vichka,
also 25, were released Saturday after about six months in detention, prison
director Hak Vat said. Municipal anti-trafficking police raided the
establishment on June 28, removing 88 women and making several arrests. It was
Cambodia’s largest anti-trafficking operation since the
Dec 7,
2004 raid on Chai Hour
II Hotel, in which 83 women and girls were taken to a shelter run by the
anti-trafficking NGO Afesip.
Anti-Trafficking Campaign Set to
Start
The Cambodia Daily, 13 January, 2006
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is planning to launch an
anti-trafficking information campaign in five northeastern provinces later this
month, officials said. The campaign—set to start on Jan 23—aims to educate
people on how to avoid human traffickers in Preah Vihear, Ratanakkiri, Stung
Treng, Kratie and Mondolkiri provinces, officials said. During the campaign,
villagers will be shown an educational video that depicts an ethnic minority
girl being tricked into the sex trade and then rescued. “Human trafficking and
sexual exploitation still happen every day, and we have no exact number of how
many women and children have been smuggled locally and across the border,” Sy
Define said.
Trafficked Victims to go to Palau,
Not Saipan
The Cambodia Daily, 4 January, 2006
After reportedly attempting to bring Vietnamese
trafficking victims rescued from brothels in Cambodia to the US-administered island of Saipan, a US-based organization now plans to bring the women
to the Republic of Palau instead, according to news reports. Representatives of
the little-known United States International Mission have said that they are
caring for 30 young girls whom they rescued from forced prostitution in
Cambodia. Dai Nguyen, a member of the controversial
organization, told Radio New Zealand International that the girls might now be
placed in Palau, a series of tiny volcanic islands near
Saipan. He and other USIM representatives have refused to say
whether the girls are still in Cambodia. (Samantha Melamed)
Public hearing on safe-haven
regulations today
Saipan Tribune, 4 January 2006
The Attorney General’s Office will hold a public hearing
tonight on the much-discussed proposal to establish a safe house in the CNMI for
Vietnamese girls rescued from human trafficking and forced prostitution in
Cambodia. The AGO will be taking written or oral comments on the proposed safe
haven regulations at the public hearing. The purpose is to allow the
citizens/residents of the CNMI to voice their views on said proposed
regulations. The proposed safe haven regulations have been the topic of much
discussion since Sen. Pete P. Reyes brought it out in the public earlier this
month. Reyes, the project’s most outspoken critic, has started a signature
campaign against the proposal. He has already submitted 100 signatures along
with his written comment on the draft regulations to the AGO.
China
Human Smuggling Cases on Rise in
Guangxi
http://service.china.org.cn/link/wcm/Show_Text?info_id=156182&p_qry=trafficking
China.org, January 24, 2006
Southwest China‘s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has reported 125
cases of smuggling women and children in 2005, up 123.2 percent year on year,
according to the region’s public security department. In last July, police in
Guangxi, collaborated with their counterpart in Vietnam on cracking down on
cases of trafficking women and children, cleared up 12 smuggling rings, arrested
37 suspects and rescued 105 smuggled Vietnamese women and children, who have now
been consigned to their own country, the department said. Since 2001, the
regional police have cracked down on 100 women trafficking cases and arrested
nearly 200 suspects. The number of the rescued Vietnamese women adds up to
1,800, according to sources from the region’s public security department.
Guangxi borders on Vietnam by water and land. As economic and cultural ties
between China and Vietnam have been enhanced, cases of cross-border crimes in the
region are also on the rise. According to the Chinese laws, those who are
convicted of smuggling women or children can be jailed for five to ten years,
and those who are involved in grave or major cases can get life imprisonment or
be sentenced to death. (Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2006)
Trafficked women sold as
spouses
www.chinaview.cn, January 18 2006
Want a wife in Inner Mongolia? Just 3,600 yuan, or US$450, will buy a wife to cook,
clean, feed the animals and share a bed. Nineteen women were saved, and four
suspected snakeheads were captured by police in Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia, after an 18-month probe. It was the biggest case of
women trafficking in the autonomous region in recent years. Police broke up the
trafficking ring in December, according to Chinese media. On June 10, 2004, a woman surnamed Chen dialed the police
hot line 110 for help in Inner Mongolia. She said she was taken from Baotou to Hohhot, but she originally came from Yunnan Province in southwest China. Two Yunnan men, surnamed Zou and Yin, pretended to offer her a job
in May. But they allegedly sold Chen as a wife to a farmer in
Wuchuan County, Inner Mongolia. She resisted the arrangement and was sold for 3,600
yuan to a man surnamed Yang in Baotou. Chen escaped when she went shopping with Yang.
(Source: Shanghai Daily)
Trafficking victims savour fresh
start
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/07/content_510203.htm
China Daily, January 6, 2006
In 1988, an 18-year-old Xu Wanping, left her
Jingxian Village home to go looking for work at the Jiuyanqiao Labour
Market in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. A man approached her and said he could help her find a
job. But when they got to Suining County, Jiangsu Province, the trafficker forced Xu into a common-law
marriage with a 37-year-old farmer who paid 2,000 yuan (US$247) for her. “By
day, he forced me to work long hours in the field. By night, I was locked in a
dark cellar with no means of escape,” said Xu. The launch of a nationwide
crackdown on human trafficking in 1994 handed Xu the first of her three lucky
breaks. In 2002, a glimmer of hope came when Renshou County, which administers Xu’s township, was chosen to pilot a
programme by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). There were 1,325 women
trafficked out of Renshou County between 1995 and 2001, and there were also 1,223 women
brought to Renshou by traffickers from other provinces. With an estimated
US$500,000 aid from UNICEF since 2001, the Ministry of Public Security and
All-China Women’s Federation have operated 60 anti-human trafficking programmes,
mainly in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Sichuan and Henan provinces.
Lao PDR
Tourism authority slams door on
paedophiles
January 23, 2005
The National Tourism Administration in cooperation with
Child Wise, Australia ‘s leading child protection agency, launched an anti
child-sex tourist campaign in a bid to protect children from sex tourism last
Friday in Vientiane . The Director General of General Administrative Department,
Mr Bounphone Soulithone, said stickers and posters would begin appearing at
prime tourist destinations across Laos this week. He invited all tourism operators to display
the campaign materials in prominent positions in order to protect children.
“Children are our future and we must protect them. When we unite to protect
children, we also protect our growing tourism industry. So, we must send a clear
message that child sex offenders are not welcome in Laos ,” said Mr Bounphone. Everyone can assist the effort to
protect children thanks to the Lao government’s participation in an ASEAN-wide
regional advertising campaign to prevent child-sex tourism. The new campaign
sees the culmination of almost a decade of partnership between ASEAN countries,
the Australian government and Child Wise resulting in improved laws, better law
enforcement, heightened surveillance, and jail terms for offenders, according to
a press release from Child Wise.
Domestic abuse refuge opens in
Vientiane
Vientiane Times, 16 January 2006
The Lao Women’s Union, in cooperation with the Ministry of Labour and Social
Welfare, has opened a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic
and sexual abuse, human trafficking and other such problems. The centre
was established as the result of grants from the Japanese government and people,
UNICEF and the Asia Foundation. The new counselling and protection centre in
Nonsengchanh village, Xaythany district, opened for service last week. The
centre’s main responsibilities are to reduce victims of violence in
Vientiane and also to provide information to women and children,
preventing them from falling prey to human traffickers. The centre will also
offer occupational training to develop skills alongside acting as a place of
rehabilitation and treatment for the women and children.
Myanmar
Thailand,
Myanmar sign regional pact in
Malaysia to fight transnational
crime
Associated Press, 17 January 2006
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia- Thailand and Myanmar joined eight other Southeast Asian countries Tuesday in
signing an agreement to strengthen cooperation against cross-border crime. Thai
Attorney General Pachara Yuthithamdamrong and Myanmar’s ambassador to Malaysia, Myint Aung, signed the Treaty on Mutual Assistance in
Criminal Matters in Kuala Lumpur, saying it would help the region battle problems such
as terrorism, human trafficking and drug smuggling. The other eight
members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed the pact in
November 2004, but Thailand and Myanmar had to introduce new laws before they could do
likewise. The agreement provides for governments to cooperate in investigating
and prosecuting crimes, including making arrangements to locate witnesses, share
documents and gather evidence. Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam have also ratified the treaty over the past year as
part of the final step to enforce it. Other ASEAN members, including
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines, are expected to do so by the end of
2006.
Burmese sex victims
repatriated
The
Nation, 11 January
2006
About 100 women
who were rescued from sexual exploitation after being trafficked to
China, Thailand and Malaysia were repatriated to Burma last year, a senior police officer said yesterday.
Police Colonel Sit Aye, head of the Department of Transnational Crime, said
young women who have been smuggled into China were forced into marriage while many of those taken to
neighboring Thailand and to Malaysia were smuggled for the purpose of prostitution. The
number of women returned to Burma is almost certainly as tiny percentage of those
trafficked. Burma introduced an anti-human trafficking law in September
last year imposing a maximum penalty of death. Under the law, victims of
trafficking will also be protected and aided. Sit Aye said due to cooperation
between Burma and neighboring China, some trafficking rings on both sides have been broken
up, and 37 people involved in human trafficking along the border with
China border have been arrested and are facing charges in
Burma.
Thailand
Japanese human trafficker
arrested
The Nation, 20 January 2006
A Japanese fugitive accused of recruiting of Thai
women to work as prostitutes in Japan has been arrested in the Philippines, the Immigrating Bureau said yesterday. Yukio Oneda,
57, is to be deported to Japan, the bureau said in the statement. He was arrested at
Manila airport on Tuesday as he stepped off a commercial
flight from Bangkok. A judge in Nagano prefecture issued a warrant for
Oneda’s arrest in August for allegedly recruiting Thai women who were then
forced into prostitution in Japan.The accused had visited Thailand at least 54
times since January 2002, the bureau said.
Parlour shut
down
The Nation, 20 January 2006
La Defense massage parlour on Rama 9 Road was closed for 30 days
yesterday for employing underage girls and illegal immigrants as masseuses.
Three seniors officers at Wang Thonglang police station have been transferred in
inactive posts while an investigation is conducted. They are station chief
Colonel Susak Phakkamakul and lieutenant-colonels Sitthiphorn Phankhongchuen and
Natthaphongthorn Phoolphol. Two other lieutenant colonels, Amornnat Malai and
Natthaphanop Watcharassewee, are facing investigation on serious disciplinary
matters. A police source said the two officers narrowly escaped being
transferred. Another investigation was being carried out to determine whether
human trafficking charges could be laid against the owners of
La
Defense.
Ex-air chief
jailed
The Nation, 22 January 2006
A retired Air Force commander was among three
members of a human trafficking ring sentenced by the Criminal Court to the
maximum of 18 years in prison for luring five Thai women into prostitution in
Japan. Wing Commander Atchariya Wirojsiri, his wife Rungnapha
and Thantawan Kato were each jailed for 18 years, while a fourth member of the
ring, Samart Phromthes, was sentenced to six years for supporting the three. The
four, who had pleaded not guilty, were refused bail by the court pending their
appeals. According to the indictment report, the four tricked five women aged
18-28 into traveling to Japan to work in a variety of jobs, and later sold them for
Bt2 million each to local karaoke bars where they serviced an average of three
men a day for many years. The five unidentified women later escaped from the
bars and returned to Thailand in 2002. They filed complaints with the Crime
Suppression Division and the four accused were arrested on March 9, 2003
MSDHS concerns salon is a key
starting point of human trafficking
Matichon, 24 January 2006
23 January – Mrs Napa Sethakorn, Deputy
Director-General of Department of Social Development and Welfare (DSDW),
Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSDHS), stated that
consumerism and poverty had made being a prostitute overseas a copy-cat
behaviour. As a result, human trafficking spreads into every sector. For
example, in beauty salon, both staffs and clients are taking turn to trick each
other to travel overseas and end up in prostitution. Nowadays various methods
are used. These include offering job overseas, marriage to foreigner, Internet
matchmaker. Most of these often lead to prostitution and slavery domestic
worker.. “Victims of human trafficking in Thailand usually are from the 5 neighbouring Mekong region. Statistic shows most of them were sent back
from Japan, Malaysia and South Africa”. From 2001 till present, DSDW has provided assistance
to 610 victims, excluding Thai who came back on their own and those assisted by
NGOs,” said Napa. (Note:
Extract translation from Thai to English by Thitiporn Winijmongkolsin- Media
Assistant, United Nations Population Fund)
Chonburi prepares MOU of
anti-trafficking for 8 eastern provinces
Manager online, 26 January 2006
Mr.Somchai Sirorat, Chonburi Provincial Social
Development and Human Security Department
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