Human Trafficking in [Taiwan Street Children in [Taiwan] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Taiwan] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
first ten years of the 21st Century -
2000 to 2009
Taiwan is primarily a destination for men, women, and children
trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual
exploitation. To a far lesser extent, it is a source of women trafficked to
Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States for sexual
exploitation and forced labor, as well as a transit area for People’s
Republic of China (PRC) citizens seeking to enter the United States
illegally, some of whom may become victims of debt bondage and forced
prostitution. Most trafficking victims are workers from rural areas of
Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, employed through
recruitment agencies and brokers to perform low-skilled work in Taiwan’s
construction, fishing, and manufacturing industries, or to work as domestic
workers. NGOs continued to report an
increase in the number of boys rescued from prostitution, mainly discovered
during police investigations of online social networking sites suspected of
fronting for prostitution rings. - U.S.
State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Editorial:
The human cost of cheap labor The trafficking scene in Taiwan
revolves largely around Southeast Asian and Chinese workers. In addition,
legal immigrants can end up illegals susceptible to
rights abuses. Many foreigners take up legal employment,
but leave their jobs for various reasons, including mistreatment by employers
who ignore contracts and labor rights, the promise of earning better wages,
and trickery by criminal rings. As a
result, many foreign workers end up in deplorable and inhuman working
conditions, of which forced prostitution is perhaps the most widely known and
condemned. But it would be unfair to discuss
trafficking without mentioning the disturbing context that allows it to
flourish. The tragic reality of poverty abroad, combined with the vast market
here for cheap labor and prostitution, is what drives human trafficking. Each
and everyone in a privileged land who for his or her own comfort and economic
benefit takes advantage of cheap labor at the cost of human rights,
contributes to the victimization of workers not protected by the same rights
we take for granted. Taiwan cracks human-trafficking ring, rescues 35 Indonesian women According to police, the ring
arranged for the Indonesian women to come to Taiwan in arranged marriages,
but turned them into slaves after they had arrived on the island. 'They would confiscate the Indonesian
women's passports and force them to work in factories, sometimes for up to 18
hours a day, and hand over part of the salary to the human traffickers,' Lai Ching- tzung, spokesman for the
Keelung Police Bureau, told reporters Luciana, one of the victims, said she did not know it was a trick because she had a bona fide wedding with her Taiwanese husband in Indonesia. 'But after he had brought me to Taiwan, he vanished, and the criminal ring forced me to work in a factory in central Taiwan,' she said on TV. The Plight Of Vietnamese Women There are, at present, around
200,000 Vietnamese women in Taiwan. Most of them are 17- and 18-year-old
girls trying to escape poverty by agreeing to marry Taiwanese men of various
shapes and sizes. These grooms may be old and crippled. Even when the
girls’ families end up with only $500 most of the brides said that they would
still do it again despite their black years in Taiwan. They would do it
for their peasant families in rural Viet Nam, leaving aside the cosmic
question of how one could practically sell oneself for a mere $500. ***
ARCHIVES *** Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – NGOs reported that fraudulent marriages were increasingly
used as a vehicle for human trafficking, in part because the penalties for
the fake husbands were lenient. Foreign brides, mainly from the PRC, but also
increasing numbers of women from Labor trafficking was
a problem. NGOs reported that families hired female foreign workers to care
for elderly persons (for which the government provides subsidies to families)
but that when the workers arrived they were forced to do other tasks,
including: childcare, working in family shops or businesses, cleaning houses,
and helping other family members with domestic work. In other cases, foreign
laborers were hired overseas as domestic workers but then sent to work in
factories when they arrived and paid only a fraction of the local prevailing
wage. Penalties for such violations were light. In one case, an inspector
discovered a domestic caretaker was working in the employer's flour factory.
The inspector returned the foreign worker to the employer's family and fined
the employer $1 thousand (NT$30 thousand). The employer was allowed to
continue using the foreign worker as a housekeeper. Labor authorities remove
an employer's right to hire domestic caretakers only after a third offense. Officials
crack down on human trafficking ring www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/10/10/2003425457
The National Immigration Agency
(NIA) recently cracked down on a Taiwanese human trafficking ring that was
smuggling children from In its investigation, the agency
discovered that the crime ring had bought the identity of Taiwanese children
from parents who were in financial difficulty. The parents sold their children’s
IDs for NT$90,000 each, the agency said.
The investigators had discovered that the crime ring employed the
strategy seven times in the first half of this year, smuggling 18 children to
the US. Human
trafficking still a problem in Taiwan On human trafficking, Taiwan was
primarily a destination for Southeast Asian and Chinese nationals trafficked
into forced labor or sexual exploitation, the report said. There were
numerous reports of women -- mainly from Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines
and Thailand -- being forced or coerced into the commercial sex trade after
receiving fraudulent offers of employment or marriage from dishonest labor or
marriage brokers, the report said. On abuse of foreign workers,
brokers and employers regularly impose high brokerage fees and other charges
on foreign workers, frequently using the debt as a tool for involuntary
servitude, the report said. Victims
to get job skills training Zhang cited a case she had worked
on recently as an example. "Six
Vietnamese women came to Taiwan as migrant workers," Zhang said.
"Although the broker in Vietnam told them they would be preparing food
at a lunch box factory, they were sold into the sex industry
instead." Although they were
considered by police and prosecutors as victims, "they were not treated
as victims," Zhang said. Southern Africa: Human Trafficking Concern for 2010 www.genderlinks.org.za/article/human-trafficking-concern-for-2010-2007-11-29 allafrica.com/stories/200711300860.html Human trafficking is a pervasive
global problem, and strong laws are vital to preventing and prosecuting it,
as well as caring for survivors. Take the case of Mary Jiang*
who left her home in Vietnam to go and work in Taiwan, anticipating a good job with a salary that would give her
the chance to improve her life and that of her family. However, when she arrived she found the
promises were false, and she suffered inhuman treatment by her employers who
forced her to work gruelling 16-hour days. When one
of the 20 machines she worked on at once caught Jiang's
hand, she waited 45 minutes before her hand was freed, suffering sever
injuries. After two days in hospital
her employers told her to sign some forms, they were taking her to a better
hospital. Once signed, they took her back to a company building and locked
her in a small, dirty room. Bill
to combat human trafficking NEW APPROACH - To stop the sale of human
beings, academics said that criminal law is important but not enough.
Rescuing victims must also be part of the plan. Holiday
project focuses on sex crimes, trafficking Sun, who is one of these
prosecutors, spoke about two cases that she has worked on. In one case, a young woman from China was
brought to Taiwan under the guise of a fake marriage. While she was here, she
was kept in a small hotel and all her ID documents were confiscated by the
traffickers, Sun said. In addition to
a trafficking fee of around NT$300,000 (US$9,000), she also had to pay a
NT$30,000 monthly fee to her fake husband, who forced her into prostitution
to pay off her debts, Sun said. In
another case, a young student was sold into prostitution by a
"friend" that she met online, Sun said. Editorial:
The human cost of cheap labor The trafficking scene in Taiwan
revolves largely around Southeast Asian and Chinese workers. In addition,
legal immigrants can end up illegals susceptible to
rights abuses. Many foreigners take up legal
employment, but leave their jobs for various reasons, including mistreatment
by employers who ignore contracts and labor rights, the promise of earning
better wages, and trickery by criminal rings.
As a result, many foreign workers end up in deplorable and inhuman
working conditions, of which forced prostitution is perhaps the most widely
known and condemned. But it would be unfair to discuss
trafficking without mentioning the disturbing context that allows it to
flourish. The tragic reality of poverty abroad, combined with the vast market
here for cheap labor and prostitution, is what drives human trafficking. Each
and everyone in a privileged land who for his or her own comfort and economic
benefit takes advantage of cheap labor at the cost of human rights,
contributes to the victimization of workers not protected by the same rights
we take for granted. Human
trafficking likely to worsen, experts claim But the charities helping
exploited foreign laborers and prostitutes say that treating trafficked
foreigners with care is exactly what Taiwan isn't doing. Le My-nga,
policy and planning director at the Vietnamese Migrant Workers and Brides
Office in Taoyuan County, said local immigration
authorities "still criminalize [trafficked] victims" and
"aren't addressing the root causes of human trafficking." "They're still in damage
control mode," she said, referring to the attitude of immigration
officials since 2005, when the US added Taiwan to a "watch list"
for countries that aren't doing enough to combat human trafficking. Trafficking
victims detained for protection Taiwan has been a common target of
human smuggling operations originating from countries in southeast Asia and
mainland China, often under the guise of marriages to Taiwan citizens. On Wednesday, 51 suspects were arrested in Keelung for smuggling Indonesian girls into Taiwan using
false marriage certificates. Police rescued 35 Indonesian
girls, who were arranged by the human smuggling ring to work in small
restaurants and as caregivers for families who could not hire legal foreign
caregivers. The girls said that they
had to work 18 hours a day with no days off, and said that they were beaten
when they did not obey orders from the ring leaders. Group
urges aid for trafficking victims Some labor trafficking victims
enter Taiwan and work illegally because of false information from
traffickers, Gau said. Other victims could have entered the
country to work legally but become victims of abuse, and then runaway to
escape the abuse, thereby breaking their contracts and the law, she
said. Since there is no law that
specifically addresses human trafficking, its victims are usually treated as
lawbreakers, Gau said. Public
awareness of rise in human trafficking is low Human-rights activist Reverend
Peter Nguyen Van Hung, a 48-year-old priest, told the stories of some of the
victims that he had worked with. There was the case of a
19-year-old Vietnamese man who signed a contract to work in Tai-wan as a
caretaker and promised to pay US$5,000 to the broker. After arriving in Taiwan, however, the
Vietnamese man was sent to work in a factory. The broker took his salary each
month as payment for his debt. Seven months later, the Vietnamese died in an
accident. "He didn't even get a
cent [from his salary]," Nguyen said. Another girl approached Nguyen
once, telling him that her employer had raped her repeatedly. When Nguyen offered her help, she turned it
down because she was afraid of retaliation from her employer. "She went back, knowing she would be
raped again that night," Nguyen said. Nguyen has run a human trafficking
victim shelter in Taoyuan County since 2004. Among
the 80,000 Vietnamese migrant workers and 100,000 Vietnamese brides in
Taiwan, an average of 8 to 10 of them went to Nguyen for help every month
last year. Taiwan
cracks human-trafficking ring, rescues 35 Indonesian women According to police, the ring
arranged for the Indonesian women to come to Taiwan in arranged marriages,
but turned them into slaves after they had arrived on the island. 'They would confiscate the Indonesian
women's passports and force them to work in factories, sometimes for up to 18
hours a day, and hand over part of the salary to the human traffickers,' Lai Ching- tzung, spokesman for the
Keelung Police Bureau, told reporters Luciana, one of the victims, said she did not know it was a trick because she had a bona fide wedding with her Taiwanese husband in Indonesia. 'But after he had brought me to Taiwan, he vanished, and the criminal ring forced me to work in a factory in central Taiwan,' she said on TV. Taiwan's
human trafficking issue Police in Taoyuan
recently announced they had busted a smuggling ring run by a former national taekwondo athlete who had brought young women into Taiwan
from southeast Asian countries and China under the pretense of arranged
marriages but then forced them into prostitution. One of the women was an
AIDS patient from Indonesia who has been in Taiwan for five years and had
engaged in unprotected sex with customers more than 10,000 times. Some victims are forced to become
sex workers without receiving any compensation. Instead they must deal with strict
supervision and the threat of violence. Foreign laborers are conscripted into
long-term commitments, swapped between employers without warning, never
receive any pay and are always at risk of being turned into sex workers www.vitalvoices.org/desktopdefault.aspx?page_id=317 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
For example, the
number of women from Southeast Asian, especially Vietnam and Cambodia, who
are brought to Taiwan as "brides" but rapidly forced into
prostitution shortly after "marriage" has surged sharply in the
past two years. In addition, many
women from the PRC are smuggled into Stopping
an 'Epidemic' -- Vietnamese Priest Reaches Out to Sex Trafficking Victims NGOs key players in stamping out trafficking english.www.gov.tw/TaiwanHeadlines/index.jsp?categid=8&recordid=83064 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Taiwan
has the dubious distinction of being a major importer of women for sexual
exploitation, with a recently released report by the U.S. Department of State
downgrading Taiwan from "tier one" to "tier two," signaling
that the island has not even met the lowest requirements for protecting
victims of trafficking. The
Plight Of Vietnamese Women There are, at present, around
200,000 Vietnamese women in Taiwan. Most of them are 17- and
18-year-old girls trying to escape poverty by agreeing to marry Taiwanese men
of various shapes and sizes. These grooms may be old and crippled. Even
when the girls’ families end up with only $500 most of the brides said that
they would still do it again despite their black years in Taiwan. They
would do it for their peasant families in rural Viet Nam, leaving aside the
cosmic question of how one could practically sell oneself for a mere $500. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 1 Status: Free Hui-Jung Chi, 2005 Taipei, Taiwan Kellogg’s Child Development Honoree [DOC] http://woc.vct.net/index.php/honorees/59-hui-jung-chi www.worldofchildren.org/Chi%20Ms.%20Hui-Jung%20Bio%20-%20Kellogg.doc For the past 13 years, former
journalist Hui-Jung Chi has played a tremendous
role at the forefront of social reform and child advocacy in Online
auctions the new frontier for human trafficking It's been billed as the world's
biggest marketplace...eBay, where if you're on-line, all you need is a
credit-card and you can buy almost anything. But there are questions now
about the merits of trading this way....after eBay was forced to halt an
auction and pull details from its site, when it emerged that the goods for
sale were in fact alive and human. Rights Group Sues E-Bay, Taipei Chef over Vietnamese Women www.rfa.org/english/news/social/2004/04/08/132348/ At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
A In The Press -- Crime/Organized Crime usinfo.state.gov/eap/east_asia_pacific/chinese_human_smuggling/smuggling_in_the_press/crime.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
AUGUST 27, 2004 - Potential for Trafficking by Marriage Brokers Called Serious NGOs and other sources provide
anecdotal evidence of this connection. Recent reports reveal trafficking of
women from Vietnam to Taiwan through which Vietnamese women were married
legally to Taiwanese men they did not know until they were transported to
Taiwan. In these cases, marriage brokers appear to be used — advertising and
recruiting women who seek a foreign marriage as a means to improve their
lives, only to be forced into sexual servitude in brothels in Taiwan. Precursors
and pathways to adolescent prostitution in Taiwan Indentured juvenile prostitution
is a cultural legacy for Taiwanese lower-class families dating back to early
immigrants from China of Chinese decent (Han Chinese) in the 18th century.
Common motives for Han parents to indenture their daughters were survival,
emergency needs, and debts from gambling (Chiou,
1999; Hong, 2001; Hsieh, 1972). Girls as young as 7 were either directly
indentured into brothels or sold off to adoptive families who intended to
sell them into prostitution. Former prostitutes were among those who adopted
girls to pass on their profession and to ensure income for old age (Chiou, 1999; Hsieh, 1972). Dossier
childhood and preadolescence's condition - CHAPTER 2 - the difficulties and
the abuse POINT 12 - YOKOHAMA: THE STARTING
OR DEPARTURE POINT? -
Every year, approx. one million minors, mainly between the ages of 13 and 18,
are introduced to the sex trade. The problem is common in countries both in
the north and south of the world: 100,000 in the Philippines, 400,000 in
India, 100,000 in Taiwan, 200,000
in Thailand, between 244,000 and 325,000 in the United States, 100,000 in
Brazil, 35,000 in western Africa, 175,000 in eastern and central Europe. The
observers report a worrying drop in the age of these sexually exploited
minors who are mostly little girls. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin,
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Human Trafficking in [Taiwan Street Children in [Taiwan] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Taiwan] [other countries]