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HA NOI – Than Thi Dieu was just thirteen when she was sold to brothel, and then smuggled across the border to China.

The details of her horrific ordeal are etched on her mind with painful clarity.

In 1999, Dieu’s kinswoman Than Thi Nhat asked Dieu to accompany her on a shopping trip to Lang Son Province, on the Chinese border.

Although her mother refused permission, Dieu ran away to accompany Nhat.

At the Tan Thanh bordergate, they met Nhat’s daughter, Long.

“Long brought Nhat and I to a house owned by a women named Lan. The house was unlike anything I had ever seen. There were many small rooms separated by wattles. I was confined in one of these rooms,” Dieu recalled.

Dieu realized that she was being held in a brothel. She asked Nhat and Long to help her meet her aunt, who lived nearby.

“Lan took me to meet a man at a hotel, who she said would help me find my aunt. She forced me to get in the car with him,” said Dieu.

“The man’s home was also a brothel. While his family ate dinner, I climbed the fence… but I was caught and flogged.”

The man sold Dieu to another brothel owner, who sold Dieu to a Chinese family.

“This house looked like a normal country house. At 10pm, I signalled to an old woman that I wanted to go to the toilet. The woman gave me a flash-light and a piece of paper.”

Later that night, Dieu took the flash-light and made her escape.

“I climbed over a high gate and fell down, hurting my left leg. I hid many times when I heard a car coming. I was terrified that I would be caught again.”

The next morning, Dieu collapsed outside a restaurant.

“The restaurant owner gave me some food and money. I ate as I had never eaten before.”

The owner brought a Vietnamese woman to meet Dieu.

“The wife cooked me rice, but said she could not afford to give me money to get home.” Dieu said. “She said I could stay there but was scared of being tricked again.”

“I was very lucky when I met two kind Chinese girls, who brought me to a police station.” said Dieu, “I was returned to Vietnam with help from the Chinese police.”

Dieu is just one of 10,400 Vietnamese women known to have been sold across the Chinese border. In relative terms, she is one of the lucky ones. Many more such women undoubtedly remain there, unable to escape back to their homes and families.

Nor is the problem confined to the Vietnam-China border. The Vietnam Women’s Union (VNWU) reports that thousands of women between the ages of 18-40 who have been sold in Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and even the United States. These women have been forced into prostitution, ‘marriage’, or slave labour.

Nguyen Thi Bac, deputy chairwoman of the Bac Giang Province Women’s Union, said that traffickers prey on a community’s most vulnerable members.

Traffickers often work on both sides of the border at bus and railway stations, convincing women to stay at their ‘boarding-houses’, then selling them to Chinese men or to brothels.

Most at risk are poor, single women who have no family to warn them against accepting suspicious economic opportunities from strangers.

One such victim is 44-year-old Nguyen Thi My.

In 1991, My was struggling to keep her head above water. Her husband had run away with another woman, leaving her to care for her three-year-old son. When a friend offered her VND600,000 to carry some goods to the bordergate, she leapt at the chance.

“You know, that amount of money was a dream for rural villagers like me. I agreed immediately.”

In the care, the man gave My a wet towel and told her to wash her face.

“I did not know anything after washing my face. When I woke up, I could hear people speaking a strange language that I did not understand,” said My.

“Finally, I realized that I had been sold to a Chinese man.”

Eleven years later, after four unsuccessful attempts, My finally made it home.

Women who do escape often find it difficult to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

Dieu returned home to discover that her parents had separated: her father believed her mother had sold Dieu to the traffickers.

For My, the joy of being reunited with her family will always be marred by the knowledge that she has missed out on her son’s childhood.

“I am very sad because my son is illiterate. Without his mother, he did not go to school.” she said.

Many women only find their feet again with the help of the Vietnam Women’s Union.

Nguyen Thi Xuyen, deputy chairwoman of the Viet Yen Commune branch, said that the union lends money, finds jobs, and forms groups for women to share their experiences.

On the national level, this complex problem demands an equally sophisticated response.

The Government has launched sustained educational campaigns to warn women of the dangers of human trafficking.

At the forefront of the fight against human commerce is the VNWU. With help from the UNDP, it is currently trialling a training course in the notorious trouble-spot of Bac Giang Province.

The course focuses on the family’s role in preventing trafficking, and is part of the UN International Agency Project on trafficking in women and children in the Mekong Sub-region.

The VNWU also recently made a working visit to China, the first cross-border initiative on the issue.

Representatives agreed to co-operate on a range of issues, including policing the border area, exchanging information, providing special training for staff in relevant agencies, and improving the repatriation process.

So far, about 700 women and children have been returned to Vietnam through the Mong Cai border gate. – VNS

The story has been sponsored through the media programme ‘Our Mekong: a Vision Amid Globalisation’, run by the Inter-Press Service