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In 2014, thousands of young women crossed the border to be exploited in brothels or subject to forced marriages. Consumerism and materialism are among the causes of this growing trade. The victims are mostly from remote and isolated areas, but middle class girls fall victim as well because of the Internet and social media. Catholics are among those who have come to the defence of the victims.

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Ho Chi Minh
City (AsiaNews) - In Vietnam, one of the modern forms of slavery involves the
trafficking of young women, forced into prostitution in brothels along the
border with China or sold for money as brides to men across the border. In
recent years, trafficking in the Asian country has particularly involved young
women and girls, some just out of puberty, increasingly treated as "new
sex slaves".

On 8 February,
the Church will mark the first day of prayer and reflection against human
trafficking. Recent studies in Ho Chi Minh City have found that "Vietnam
is one of the nations in the Asia-Pacific region with the largest number of sex
trafficking victims".
Most victims
of trafficking come from Vietnam's more remote regions. Often from poor
families with little education, they end up in the hands of "pimps,
traffickers and Chinese businessmen" who use every means to "lure and
exploit girls".
However, young
women from urban areas, from both both middle and lower middle class, end up in
traffickers' net as well because of the Internet and modern technologies of
communication.
For activist
groups and associations trying to rescue the young victims, "one of the key
reasons" for the growing problem is society's widespread consumerism and materialism,
which eventually undermine the basic moral structure of the Vietnamese family.
Traffickers
lure girls with the prospect of a job, with which they can help meet the needs
of their family, but once across the border in China, they end up in brothels
or as brides to Chinese men who bought them.
Before they
leave, the young women are made to sign fictitious employment contracts in
foreign languages (Chinese, etc.) that they cannot understand.
Hundreds of such
so-called workers are hired and sold by unscrupulous traders who exploit the
inability or the complicity of borders administrators and government officials
charged with fighting trafficking.
Young Vietnamese
men and Vietnamese women of Chinese origin are also involved in the trade. They
lure their victims by winning their confidence, and getting them to move to a "new
place" for a job that, in most cases, is linked to the world of prostitution.
In 2014,
thousands of young women crossed the border between China and Vietnam, to be
reduced in slavery and exploited in the sex trade. Last November alone, police
in the provinces of Quang Tây and Vân Nam rescued a hundred young Vietnamese
women, who had been reduced to conditions of semi-slavery in China.
However, there
are still many difficulties, some cultural, in the fight against prostitution
and the sex trade. For instance, smuggling and trafficking are treated the same
way. The net results is that victims are not recognised and the culprits are not
prosecuted.
Something similar
happened in 2013 when, according to sources in Hanoi, at least 982 young women
were "sold" in China, 871 of whom victims of "human trafficking".
Last year on
14 December, the authorities in Lai Châu, with the cooperation of border guards
in Ma Lu Thang, broke up a trafficking ring involving women. About 512 people were
tried with 420 sentenced to at least three years in prison.
Trafficking involves
mostly young Vietnamese women, but some of the victims come from Myanmar, Laos,
Thailand and Cambodia.
For young Vietnamese
men involved in trafficking, especially those living in villages along the
border, trafficking in women is an easy way of making money.
One case
involves two young men, Văn Pan Tao Lu, an ethnic Lu, and Lò Thị Chom. The two were
paid US$ 4,000 per woman.
In another
case, Bùi Đ. Giang, a young Hanoi native, tricked and induced into prostitution
more than 50 young women from the villages and towns on the Chinese border,
mostly from ethnic minorities.
Upon hearing
the news, Bùi Đ. Tuấn, the trafficker's 52-year-old father, said he "did
not know" about his son's activities and "the pain he caused to the
victims," adding that "our family is in shock."
Catholic groups,
both clerical and lay, are in the forefront of the fight against the
trafficking of young women and against all modern forms of slavery.
"I
provided help and counselling to a young victim," a social worker in Ho Chi
Minh City told AsiaNews . "She was
found in a Chinese brothel near the Chinese border and was brought back home."
"After three
years, she ended up in China again because of an unscrupulous trafficker, where
she was humiliated and sexually abused. Her bosses and torturers, men and
women, forced her to take drugs and prostitute herself with Chinese customers."
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Will Everett

On 5/30/15 at 1:47 PM EDT

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The 20-odd men who had come to the party were expecting a dancing boy, or bacha bereesh . Some were drinking while others were smoking hashish in open windows, looking down into the street of the middle-class Kabul district of Karte-Char as they anticipated the boy's arrival.
The 16-year-old Hazara youth was known as "the Chinoise" for his striking oriental features. Many had seen him dance at other parties. He was the jealously guarded "property" of a wealthy Kabul businessman who had promised to bring him around later in the evening.
Then someone's phone rang: The boy had been arrested by Afghan police while dancing at a wedding. Jokes went around about the reception a delicate youth like the Chinoise could look forward to in a Kabul jail.
But a last-minute substitute was found. At around midnight the host threw back a curtain and a dancer leapt through the doorway. He was no dancing boy, but a man of about 40, his face starkly made up, his blue dress covered with tiny bells and sequins.
For a moment the baffled partygoers only stared. Then they began clapping with the music as the middle-aged dancer spun around them in a blur of light and color.
His name is Kamal. When he was 14 his father died and his mother placed him in the care of a family friend. He had never heard of bacha bazi , the practice of wealthy or powerful men conscripting adolescent boys into sexual slavery.
"He was someone I knew and trusted," Kamal says of the man he once called master.
The Soviets had withdrawn from the country and a bloody civil war was under way. When Kamal's mother and siblings fled to Pakistan, his master (or bacha baz ) agreed to take care of the youth. It would be more than a decade before he saw his family again.
"I was his little prince," Kamal recalled. "He used to hold my hand in the street. He told people I was his adopted son."
Bacha bazi flourished in the years leading up to the rise of the Taliban, particularly among warlords and mujahideen fighters. Kamal remembers attending parties where other boys were on proud display, their masters vying to see who had the most attractive boy.
"I wasn't the most beautiful of the boys, but I had one thing most of them didn't have...I had talent."
Kamal is reluctant to talk about the sexual component of his relationship to his bacha baz . "He never hurt me," he insists. "He was always tender. He never traded me around with his friends as some did."
Even the man's wife eventually accepted the arrangement, lavishing attention on Kamal and treating him as a member of the family. It was she who arranged for him to study dance.
Kamal found that he had a natural aptitude for dancing, and was soon in high demand at parties. He says that even the most hardened civil war fighters would watch in a state of helpless rapture.
But when the Taliban took control of the country in 1992, Kamal's master was forced to flee with his family to India. Kamal was not invited to come along.
And like that, it was over—the parties, the dancing lessons, the stand-in family. Like many boys who "age out" of their enslavement, Kamal found he had nowhere to turn, and no marketable skills but one: his dancing. Prostitution, a common fallback for many abused boys, did not appeal to him.
But with the rise of the ultra-Islamic Taliban, music, dancing and even the practice of bacha bazi all went underground. Those were dark years for Kamal.
"I had to become a new person, someone who wouldn't attract attention," he says. "A part of me had to die so that I would not feel pain."
With the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the practice of bacha bazi saw a renaissance. Under the new government many former warlords were able to resume positions of influence, taking young boys as symbols of status and prestige.
A 2014 study by Hagar International found that on average one in 10 Afghan boys they interviewed had experienced some form of human trafficking, including bacha bazi .
Sara Shinkfield , country director of Hagar Afghanistan , called the study "a striking reminder that boys in Afghanistan are even more at risk than girls for trafficking."
Kamal, who now dances professionally at parties and weddings, comes in contact with many abused boys, some as young as 9 or 10. Even at that young age they already carry the emotional scars of rape and violence.
"It breaks your heart," he says. "You look into their eyes and they already look old. Something inside them has died."
Most boys enter into bacha bazi because of extreme poverty. The bacha baz will often pay to sustain a family for years in return for "ownership" of a boy.
Those boys who escape often have no resources to fall back on, and many eventually end up returning to their former master. In rare cases where a victim brings charges against his abuser, it is often the boy—lacking money and influence—who is sent to prison.
While the Afghan government pays lip service to ending the practice, bacha bazi is known to exist among the military, the police and the echelons of government. When the U.N. raised the issue before Hamid Karzai, the president replied, "Let us win the war first. Then we will deal with such matters."
Just as the end of that war seems more and more elusive, the practice of bacha bazi seems unlikely to loosen its current hold. The practice is deeply entrenched in Afghan culture, reaching back to its pre-Islamic past. When Alexander passed through the area he took possession of Bagoas , a Persian dancing boy, with whom he was on intimate terms until his death. Even the 16th century Mughal emperor Babur had a well-known ardor for catamites.
Such quaint historical references are far removed from the contemporary horror faced by many unwilling initiates into bacha bazi . Recruited from among the poorest of the poor, their suffering is often overlooked by the Afghan judiciary, which affords few legal protections to abused boys. With no education or support, many boys become criminals, and some become bacha baz themselves.
While Kamal tries to help such boys when he can, it's often too dangerous. For many abusers, the bacha bereesh is coveted property, and rescue is perceived as tantamount to theft.
"Most of them aren't as lucky as I was," he says. "I received training. I have a job and a life. I have clients calling me every day of the week."
Does he think the practice will end anytime soon? He looks down at his manicured nails.
"It should. It needs to. But it won't."
Will Everett is a journalist and aid worker living in Afghanistan. He is the author of the forthcoming novel We'll Live Tomorrow (September 2015), which addresses the subject of bacha bazi. For more information, please visit, www.willeverett.net .

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Protesters gather outside the Libyan embassy in Paris

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12/4/17

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Footage released by CNN shows men being sold at an auction in Libya.
The footage shows an auctioneer standing in front of a group of young men, shouting: “Big strong boys for farm work. 400? 700? 800?”
CNN traveled to Libya to verify the authenticity of the footage. There, they secretly filmed an auction outside the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Referred to as “merchandise,” the men being sold into slavery were migrants and refugees. Twelve Nigerian men were sold at the auction.
“Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,” one salesman said.
“Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new ‘masters,’” CNN reported .
CNN was informed of the location of nine auctions. However, “there are believed to be many more.”
In a statement, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recently recounted the story of an unnamed Senegalese migrant sold into slavery.
According to the IOM, the migrant “described being ‘bought’ and then being brought to his first ‘prison,’ a private home where more than 100 migrants were held as hostages.”
“He described dreadful sanitary conditions, and food offered only once per day. Some migrants who couldn’t pay were reportedly killed, or left to starve to death.”
A crackdown on people smuggling by the Libyan coast guard has led to an oversupply of refugee passengers expecting to be smuggled, by boat, into Europe.
The European Union’s decision to tighten its borders has also contributed to a backlog of migrants and refugees in Libya.
Those stranded in Libya are forced into slavery by people smugglers. According to the UN, there are approximately 700,000 migrants in Libya.
Migrants who become slaves and are rescued are generally forced to return home empty-handed.
CNN told the story of a man named Victory, who left Nigeria for Libya, intending to travel to Europe for a better life. Having been sold into slavery in Libya, he was released after his family paid ransom.
He was then held by Libyan authorities, prior to his relocation back to Nigeria. “I’m not happy,” he told CNN. “I go bac
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