Girls, Women forced into labor camps; Uyghur, Asia

Uyghur Girls, Young Women Forced Into Labor Far From Home.

WASHINGTON—Several girls and young women belonging to the Muslim Uyghur minority in northwest China are stranded in a coastal Chinese province after “training” programs offered by local officials became effective slave labor, parents and officials have told Radio Free Asia (RFA).

“Two officials from the village came and told us that they would be responsible. They told us that they made a deal with a factory there to train our daughters for one year. They also told us that they would get paid,” Uyghur farmer Tohti, a resident of No. 8 hamlet near Kachung village said.

“But after they took them there, they didn’t pay. Now, the girls are calling, asking their parents to bring them back home. They cannot come back on their own, so they have been calling their parents. The parents are sending what they have to their children, so they can pay for their travel expenses. Many parents are facing huge difficulties and suffering a lot,” Tohti told RFA's Uyghur service.

Reports published on Web sites in the Uyghur region said 213 girls had been co-opted into a work training program by Chinese officials in Yarkand county, near Kashgar, in March.

While their parents—many of whom live in extreme poverty—were reluctant to send them, officials said they would take responsibility for their daughters’ progress. The location of the factory in which the girls were to work wasn’t made clear.

The girls were promised 500 yuan a month at the beginning and during training, the reports said. In later stages, they were promised between 900 and 1,100 yuan monthly, and they were told they would be paid on time.

But the girls went unpaid until June 28, when at least two of them fled into hiding in Urumqi , capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Girls unpaid.

Patigul Yunus, one of the girls from No. 8 hamlet who escaped, was quoted as saying: “When we asked them about our salary, they told us: ‘We have already given it to the man who handed you to us. You will not get paid.’”

The girls’ parents were told that their daughters—who included junior high-school student Kurbanisa Nurmemet and 15-year-old Risalet Turdimemet—would be taken to the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang . Instead, the girls ended up in northern Shandong , a local village official said.

The head of No. 8 hamlet, Tursun Barat, said the parents of the girls, some of whom were as young as 15, opposed the plan.

“I took the farmers to the village—to the village chief. I told him that their parents don’t want them to go. We should not force them,” he said.

“The chief didn’t listen. Instead, he tried to convince them and screamed at me: ‘Why did you bring the farmers? Why didn’t you bring the girls themselves?’ And he also dismissed the chief of the second division from his post because he didn’t bring people,” he said, adding that the girls themselves were actually willing to go.

“Don’t believe what the girls say,” he said. “You must also listen to what we say.”

Tursun Barat said he tried and failed during a visit to Urumqi to meet with Patigul Yunus, who had escaped. He later spoke with the county chief instead.

“The [county] chief said that it was a mistake and to correct the mistake...He said, ‘The government did not force the people, and it has stressed that it was voluntary, but you made a mistake in Kachung. From now on you have to be careful.’”

Asked about reports that some of the girls had been raped, Tursun Barat said: “The government has forced them to go, so the government should respond to this. We have told the chief of the village.”

“It’s true that, at the beginning, we forced them. We borrowed 5,000 yuan for travel expenses for nine girls [from this village], and the girls were supposed to pay that money back. But we don’t know what kind of work they did there.”

“We wanted to give them money if they didn’t have money and bring them back,” he said of his trip to Urumqi .

Parents could be punished.

He denied reports that the girls would be punished if they returned home. But he also revealed that the Kachung authorities were already retaliating against the families of the escaped girls.

“I haven’t heard that if they come here, they will be punished,” he said. “But I have heard that the parents of the girls who came back here have been subjected to forced labor [in Uyghur, hasha].”

The leader of hamlet No. 8 said in an interview that this information had originated with government irrigation officials.

Meanwhile, distraught father Tohti called on local officials to bring his daughter home. “The government and party took our daughters, so we are expecting that they will do something to bring them back. The officials who took our children haven’t come back yet either. Two female officials took those girls with them.”

“We are very concerned about our children, because we don’t know where they are. We would like to bring them back. But we are afraid because two girls who have returned have been fined, and the officials are forcing their parents to send them back to the same place. They say that this is a Party order.”

Hasha, or forced, unpaid labor, is still used frequently by Chinese authorities in Yarkand, which with its 29 villages is the largest county in Kashgar. It economy is based on agriculture and horticulture, and it has a population of more than 670,000.

A hasha recruitment drive to expand an almond plantation was reported by RFA’s Uyghur service in March. In a series of interviews with RFA in 2004, Chinese government officials in Xinjiang confirmed that hasha still exists, although the system has long since been eliminated in other parts of China .

Uyghurs, who number more than 16 million, constitute a distinct, Turkic-speaking, Muslim minority in northwestern China and Central Asia . They declared a short-lived East Turkestan Republic in Xinjiang in the late 1930s and 40s but have remained under Beijing 's control since 1949.

Original reporting in Uyghur by Erkin. RFA Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie and edited by Sarah Jackson-Han and Enver Kadir.

Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts news and information in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. The purpose of RFA is to provide a forum for a variety of opinions and voices from within these Asian countries. Our Web site adds a global dimension to this objective. RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Thousands of NK Women Sold as Slaves in China

SEOUL — Thousands of North Korean women who fled famine in their homeland in recent years are believed to have been sold as “brides” to Chinese men, who often put them to backbreaking labor and subject them to constant fear, physical assault, and sexual abuse, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

In an unprecedented series of interviews by RFA’s Korean service, women who were trafficked into China, lured by the promise of food and a decent living, described their experiences.

“A woman from our village, who said she’d been to China, told me that we could make some money there, so I followed her and crossed the Tumen River,” said Jeong Soo-Ok, who was caught and sold by trafficking rings after crossing the border into China from North Korea in March 2004.

“Before I even knew it, I was taken to a man’s house,” Jeong said.

Paek Sun-Joo was an 18-year-old street child when she was sold to a 38- year-old Chinese man more than two years ago. “[The traffickers] would gather people wearing rags, appearing to be compassionate and pity them, giving them something to eat and telling them that in China they would be able to feed and clothe themselves adequately,” Paek told RFA reporter Han Min.

“It is easy to be tricked when you are starving, and somebody gives you some food, telling you that there will be plenty more for you if you go with them,” she said.

Most women trafficked in China come from areas of North Korea close to the Chinese border, such as Chagang, Northern Hamgyong, and Yanggang provinces. Often they were already extremely poor and socially marginalized—itinerant peddlers or street children.

In September 1998, at age 17, Hoh Kyung-Soon of Changjin decided to go to China.

“Somebody in North Korea had told me that I could make money working in China, and all I wanted to do was to work there for a month and then return to live with my parents,” Hoh said. “Next thing I knew, I was taken to a trafficking establishment in China.”

Price pegged to youth, appearance.

According to the victims, North Korean women aged 17 to 40 are trafficked in China, and the men who buy them are Chinese nationals between 37 and 58.

North Korean women said they were being sold in China for between 2,000 yuan (U.S. $260) and 20,000 yuan (U.S.$2,600), depending on their age and appearance.

The traffickers, mostly ethnic Korean Chinese citizens, operate a well-defined hierarchy and division of labor: there are “merchandise” scouts, distributors, brokers, and transporters. The scouts identify vulnerable North Korean women who seem to be “marketable” and lure them into crossing the Chinese border, with promises of well-paying jobs and a better life.

The distributors match the women with potential buyers, based on the women’s age and looks and the buyers’ purchasing power, and the brokers complete the sale. Once the deal has been closed, the transporters take the women to their final destination.

Chun Young-Hee said she had been sold by traffickers twice. “The bride’s price tag depends on her age and looks. The youngest and best-looking ones sell for up to 20,000 yuan. A bride that’s worth only 3,000 yuan is tough to sell.”

Most of the women who are currently in China escaped North Korea between 1995 and 2001. In many cases the women had shouldered the burden of sustaining their families, desperately striving to ensure their survival as the food crisis worsened.

What all of them hoped for as they risked the Tumen River crossing into China was to return within six months with 5,000 yuan (U.S.$650).

A severe shortage of younger women in Chinese rural communities has meant that bachelors seeking wives are faced with either heading to the cities themselves, or with spending large sums to buy a trafficked bride.

Most of the bachelors currently living in the rural areas are men in their 40s or 50s, poor, and in many cases suffering from some physical or mental disability.

A native of Northern Hamgyong province, Kang Sung-Mi is 35, and was sold a year ago by ethnic Koreans in China. Her husband is 47. They work on the farm together, but he thinks of her as a worker, rather than a wife.

“My husband is 47 years old, has no particular work skills, and is quite ill. I am not the only North Korean woman living in this area. As I was talking to some of the others, we came to realize that we had been sold into this kind of marriage. Last time my husband hit me, he even said: ‘You, do you have any idea how much I paid for you?’“

“Chinese men who live in poverty and have no professional skills cannot get married. That is why they buy North Korean brides for a very low price,” Kang said.

Nowhere to run.

Hoh Kyung-Soon married a Chinese man 12 years older than her, nine years ago. “They buy us for very little money and then make us work as slaves on their farms. My husband makes me work all by myself, the entire summer.”

In rare cases, such relationships prove to be successful, and the Chinese rural bachelors and their North Korean brides live as husband and wife. However, the North Korean women live with the ever-present peril of being arrested by Chinese law enforcement authorities for having illegally crossed the border. Some of them are apprehended even despite having lived in China for over a decade.

The jargon that human traffickers use to name their North Korean victims is “pigs,” a degrading word that evokes the treatment these women receive in China.

They describe nightmarish living conditions. Despite their relative youth, their faces are dark and stained and their hands prematurely wrinkled. To prevent the North Korean “bride” from fleeing, the husband’s relatives take turns watching her.

Bullying and physical violence are common, with some women deformed as a result. Unwanted sexual advances from other Chinese men are hard to refuse for fear of retaliatory deportation to North Korea, where returning defectors are often sent to labor camps.

“He hits me every day, for any trivial reason. It’s not that I want to live here, but I have nowhere else to go,” trafficking victim Hoh Kyung-Soon told RFA. “I’ve tried escaping twice. I was caught and beaten to a pulp.”

Paek Sun-Joo said she too had been beaten repeatedly after failed attempts to escape. “I tried to run away, but I was caught and brought back. I was beaten and kicked so brutally that my bones broke, and my face was bruised all over.”

According to Kim Young-Ae, who left North Korea in 1999: “We are treated worse than animals.They take care of their animals better, as they’ll make money selling them some day, but North Korean women are locked up inside the house, sometimes forced to live with three widowers in the same household, constantly facing the contempt of those surrounding us.”

The women rarely speak enough Chinese to get by even if they were to escape, and many have children still in China who they fear would be killed if they succeeded.

Trafficking victim Chun Young-Hee summed up the plight of many.

“I ran away once but came back after three days. I couldn’t speak the language, I had no money and there was nothing for me out there, except for the constant danger of being caught. I came back to this destitute life and apologized profusely to my husband.”

Original reporting in Korean by Han Min. Researched and translated by Grigore Scarlatoiu. Edited by Hyunju Lee and Sooil Chun. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie and edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.