Axis of Evil: Human Trafficking

629 Pakistani girls sold as brides to China

By KATHY GANNON

In this May 22, 2019 file photo, Sumaira a Pakistani woman, shows a picture of her Chinese husband in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Sumaira, who didn't want her full name used, was raped repeatedly by Chinese men at a house in Islamabad where she was brought to stay after her brothers arranged her marriage to the older Chinese man. The Associated Press has obtained a list, compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks, that identifies hundreds of girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. 

LAHORE, Pakistan — Page after page, the names stack up: 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. 

The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country’s poor and vulnerable.
The list gives the most concrete figure yet for the number of women caught up in the trafficking schemes since 2018.
But since the time it was put together in June, investigators’ aggressive drive against the networks has largely ground to a halt. 

Officials with knowledge of the investigations say that is because of pressure from government officials fearful of hurting Pakistan’s lucrative ties to Beijing.
The biggest case against traffickers has fallen apart. 

In October, a court in Faisalabad acquitted 31 Chinese nationals charged in connection with trafficking. 

Several of the women who had initially been interviewed by police refused to testify because they were either threatened or bribed into silence, according to a court official and a police investigator familiar with the case. 

The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution for speaking out.
At the same time, the government has sought to curtail investigations, putting “immense pressure” on officials from the Federal Investigation Agency pursuing trafficking networks, said Saleem Iqbal, a Christian activist who has helped parents rescue several young girls from China and prevented others from being sent there.
“Some (FIA officials) were even transferred,” Iqbal said in an interview. 

“When we talk to Pakistani rulers, they don’t pay any attention. “
Asked about the complaints, Pakistan’s interior and foreign ministries refused to comment.
Several senior officials familiar with the events said investigations into trafficking have slowed, the investigators are frustrated, and Pakistani media have been pushed to curb their reporting on trafficking. 

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals.
“No one is doing anything to help these girls,” one of the officials said. 

“The whole racket is continuing, and it is growing. Why? Because they know they can get away with it. The authorities won’t follow through, everyone is being pressured to not investigate. Trafficking is increasing now.”
He said he was speaking out “because I have to live with myself. Where is our humanity?”
China’s Foreign Ministry said it was unaware of the list.

An AP investigation earlier this year revealed how Pakistan’s Christian minority has become a new target of brokers who pay impoverished parents to marry off their daughters, some of them teenagers, to Chinese husbands who return with them to their homeland. 

Many of the brides are then isolated and abused or forced into prostitution in China, often contacting home and pleading to be brought back. 

The AP spoke to police and court officials and more than a dozen brides — some of whom made it back to Pakistan, others who remained trapped in China — as well as remorseful parents, neighbors, relatives and human rights workers.
Christians are targeted because they are one of the poorest communities in Muslim-majority Pakistan. 

The trafficking rings are made up of Chinese and Pakistani middlemen and include Christian ministers, mostly from small evangelical churches, who get bribes to urge their flock to sell their daughters. 

Investigators have also turned up at least one Muslim cleric running a marriage bureau from his madrassa, or religious school.
Investigators put together the list of 629 women from Pakistan’s integrated border management system, which digitally records travel documents at the country’s airports. 

The information includes the brides’ national identity numbers, their Chinese husbands’ names and the dates of their marriages.
All but a handful of the marriages took place in 2018 and up to April 2019. 

One of the senior officials said it was believed all 629 were sold to grooms by their families.
It is not known how many more women and girls were trafficked since the list was put together. 

But the official said, “the lucrative trade continues.” 

He spoke to the AP in an interview conducted hundreds of kilometers from his place of work to protect his identity. 

“The Chinese and Pakistani brokers make between 4 million and 10 million rupees ($25,000 and $65,000) from the groom, but only about 200,000 rupees ($1,500), is given to the family,” he said.
The official, with years of experience studying human trafficking in Pakistan, said many of the women who spoke to investigators told of forced fertility treatments, physical and sexual abuse and, in some cases, forced prostitution. 

Although no evidence has emerged, at least one investigation report contains allegations of organs being harvested from some of the women sent to China.
In September, Pakistan’s investigation agency sent a report it labeled “fake Chinese marriages cases” to Prime Minister Imran Khan. 

The report, a copy of which was attained by the AP, provided details of cases registered against 52 Chinese nationals and 20 of their Pakistani associates in two cities in eastern Punjab province — Faisalabad, Lahore — as well as in the capital Islamabad. 

The Chinese suspects included the 31 later acquitted in court.
The report said police discovered two illegal marriage bureaus in Lahore, including one operated from an Islamic center and madrassa — the first known report of poor Muslims also being targeted by brokers. 

The Muslim cleric involved fled police.
After the acquittals, there are other cases before the courts involving arrested Pakistani and at least another 21 Chinese suspects, according to the report sent to the prime minister in September. 

But the Chinese defendants in the cases were all granted bail and left the country, say activists and a court official.
Activists and human rights workers say Pakistan has sought to keep the trafficking of brides quiet so as not to jeopardize Pakistan’s increasingly close economic relationship with China.China has been a steadfast ally of Pakistan for decades, particularly in its testy relationship with India. 

China has provided Islamabad with military assistance, including pre-tested nuclear devices and nuclear-capable missiles.
Today, Pakistan is receiving massive aid under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global endeavor aimed at reconstituting the Silk Road and linking China to all corners of Asia. 

Under the $75 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, Beijing has promised Islamabad a sprawling package of infrastructure development, from road construction and power plants to agriculture.
The demand for foreign brides in China is rooted in that country’s population, where there are roughly 34 million more men than women — a result of the one-child policy that ended in 2015 after 35 years, along with an overwhelming preference for boys that led to abortions of girl children and female infanticide.
A report released this month by Human Rights Watch, documenting trafficking in brides from Myanmar to China, said the practice is spreading. 

It said Pakistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea and Vietnam have “all have become source countries for a brutal business.”
“One of the things that is very striking about this issue is how fast the list is growing of countries that are known to be source countries in the bride trafficking business,” Heather Barr, the HRW report’s author, told AP.
Omar Warriach, Amnesty International’s campaigns director for South Asia, said Pakistan “must not let its close relationship with China become a reason to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses against its own citizens” — either in abuses of women sold as brides or separation of Pakistani women from husbands from China’s Muslim Uighur population sent to “re-education camps” to turn them away from Islam.
“It is horrifying that women are being treated this way without any concern being shown by the authorities in either country. And it’s shocking that it’s happening on this scale,” he said.

For the women who escape to China from North Korea, a terrible fate awaits them

Some women who cross the border are sold to men in rural areas who cannot find wives. Others are abducted and forced into prostitution
By Hyun-Joo Lim

Even those fortunate enough to escape from their dire situations in North Korea and China are left with agonising worry and guilt about their left-behind children.

As North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and provocative missile tests draw the world’s attention, one crucial reality about the totalitarian regime has been left largely unnoticed: as bleak as life is for most who live in North Korea, it is often far worse for those who flee – most of whom are forced to suffer horrific human rights abuses away from the world’s scrutiny.
Since China shares a border with North Korea, it has become the first destination for desperate North Koreans who risk their lives to escape. 

An unofficial figure estimates that there are between 50,000 and 200,000 North Koreans living in China. 

The Chinese government denies most of them refugee status, instead treating them as economic migrants who have illegally crossed the border to seek work. 

Most have no formal identification or legal status.

In addition, Beijing works together with Pyongyang to capture defectors and send them back, making their lives as escapees completely untenable.
I have interviewed many North Koreans now settled in the UK. 

Many of them told me they had been caught by the Chinese police and repatriated to the north a number of times, but managed to escape again and again. 

The combination of desperation, the denial of legal status and the terror of the Chinese police operation exposes these people to gross exploitation – especially women.
Among those who successfully leave North Korea, women make up the majority. 

In their search for freedom, many of them paradoxically end up being trafficked, detained and treated inhumanely because of their precarious and insecure positions in China as “illegal migrants”.

Vulnerability exploited
Drawn to what they hope is a guarantee of work, some women who cross the border are instead sold to Chinese or Korean-Chinese men in rural areas who cannot find wives due to poverty, undesirable living conditions, disability and the lopsided gender demographics created by the now-replaced one-child policy. 

Other women are abducted in public spaces, such as streets and trains, and forced into prostitution. As a survival strategy, a few women or family members volunteer themselves to be sold. 

Some are lucky enough to find decent and kind men, but they are a vanishingly small minority.
Most are locked up so they cannot escape. 

They are denied contact with their family members or friends, and often a whole village effectively becomes a community of guards to watch them so they cannot run. 

Many of the women forced into these relationships endure physical hardships, forced to work in the fields and do endless household chores. 

Some are trafficked to households with several men, where their keepers take turns to violate them on a regular basis.
During their captivity, many of them also become pregnant. 

If they manage to escape to other countries, such as South Korea, they are forced to leave their children behind – and since these children aren’t officially recognised in China, they are denied basic rights and entitlements, foregoing even basic healthcare and education.
And so even those fortunate enough to escape from their dire situations in North Korea and China are left with agonising worry and guilt about their left-behind children. 

Out of shame, many never talk about the intense pain they feel, instead suffering in lonely silence.

What must be done
A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report on the human rights situation in North Korea criticised the Chinese government for its violation of the human rights of North Korean refugees on a number of counts, including its repatriation of North Korean refugees, its failure to protect them from trafficking, and its refusal to recognise the children of North Korean women and Chinese men. However, the Chinese government rejected the commission’s report and refused to change its stance.
It is therefore time for the rest of the world to change the way it interacts with China. 

International organisations, governments and the media must apply even greater pressure on Beijing to change its policy towards North Korean refugees and the children they have in China; it must recognise that they’re entitled to refugee status by virtue of the human rights abuses they endure at home.
If governments are to act, their citizens and media must pressurise them to make this issue a higher priority. 

If a global campaign can gather enough momentum and strength, the Chinese government will be forced to listen and reconsider.
It may be a significant obstacle, but it is a challenge we can all play our part in. 

By demanding action, we can all support the fight against the sustained human rights abuse of desperate North Korean defectors and their invisible children. 

We might not be able to see it, but we know it’s happening – and we have a human duty to act.

US Navy Destroyer Conducts Freedom of Navigation Operation Near China-Held Island

Just 39 days after a first operation, the Trump administration authorizes a second FONOP in the South China Sea.
By Ankit Panda

On Sunday, a U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, USS Stethem, sailed within 12 nautical miles of a China-occupied island in the South China Sea. 

Specifically, the U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near Triton Island, a China-held island in the disputed Paracel group, also claimed by Vietnam.
Sunday’s operation marks the second freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) by the Trump administration since the late-May operation by USS Dewey near Mischief Reef, which is one of China’s seven artificial islands in the Spratly Group.
According to reports, USS Stethem sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island on Sunday. Though the U.S. Navy has not released any official details regarding what excessive maritime claims the operation sought to challenge, there is precedent for an operation at Triton Island.
The United States previously conducted a FONOP near Triton Island in January 2016, when USS Curtis Wilbur challenged China’s prior notification requirements by conducting an innocent passage around the feature.
The Paracel Islands present a different case from the Spratlys because China has long maintained illegal straight baselines around its features. 

It has additionally occupied the Paracel features since the 1970s.
Beijing’s occupation of features in the Spratlys is more recent and its development of large-scale artificial islands there began in late-2013.
Sunday’s operation will may draw extra scrutiny given a series of other actions taken by the Trump administration in recent days that may be suggestive of a change in approach by the United States to the U.S.-China relations.
As I discussed on Friday, the Trump administration announced a new arms package for Taiwan, slapped a Chinese bank with sanctions for working with North Korea, and had earlier downgraded China’s standing in a human trafficking report released by the U.S. Department of State.
These developments, combined with the unusually short interval of just 39 days between the Dewey operation and the Stethem operation, are suggestive of the United States carrying out the operation to seek leverage over China potentially with regard to North Korea — especially ahead of a scheduled phone call between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on Sunday evening.
The U.S. Navy’s FON program, however, is a legal signaling tool and not designed to either deter or coerce claimants — in the South China Sea and elsewhere.