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.

Sierra Leone war crimes court convicts 3

Source: CNN.

June 20, 2007.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- A U.N.-backed court trying those accused of bearing greatest responsibility for the brutality of Sierra Leone's civil war issued its first verdicts Wednesday, convicting three former leaders of a junta that had terrorized the country during a brief reign.

The court found the three defendants guilty of 11 of 14 charges, including terrorism, using child soldiers, enslavement, rape and murder.

The three were acquitted of charges of sexual slavery, "other inhumane acts" related to physical and acts related to sexual violence, said Peter Andersen, spokesman for the Sierra Leone Special Court.

The tribunal was set up following the end of fighting in 2002 to prosecute the worst offenders in a conflict that ravaged the small West African nation and spilled over into neighboring Liberia. The court has indicted 12 people, including former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is charged with backing Sierra Leonean rebels.

The three defendants convicted Wednesday in Freetown had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which were linked to heading a junta that raped women, burned villages, conscripted thousands of child soldiers and forced others to work as laborers in diamond mines.

The men -- Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu -- were indicted in 2003 as the alleged leaders of the group, called the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. The group of former military officers toppled Sierra Leone's government in 1997 and then teamed up with rebels to control the country until 1998, according to the indictment.

The conviction marks a watershed, said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch. "It's the first time that an international court has issued a verdict on child recruitment," she said.

David Crane, the founding prosecutor of the Sierra Leone Special Court, agreed.

"It's a huge moment for children around the world who have been oppressed in these conflicts," said David Crane, now a law professor at Syracuse University. "This particular judgment sets the cornerstone forever -- those who recruit children into an armed force are criminally liable."

Dufka said the group led by the three men committed their worst atrocities after they were pushed into the bush by an international peacekeeping force in 1998. It was then that they started "punishing the civilian population as a whole," said Dufka, an expert on the conflict.

It is estimated that about half a million people were victims of killings, systematic mutilation and other atrocities during Sierra Leone's conflict, in which illicit diamond sales fueled years of devastation.

Five others are awaiting verdicts in Freetown.

Some have criticized the Special Court for not progressing through trials quickly enough. Three of those charged have died since the indictments -- two of natural causes and one in a killing that many believe was a move to silence him.

Taylor's trial opened earlier this month in The Hague, Netherlands. It was being held outside of Freetown because of fears the case could trigger fresh violence, but remained under the auspices of the Sierra Leone court. Taylor's case was being heard in a room rented from the International Criminal Court.

Taylor is also linked to brutality in his own country, but Liberians have opted for a truth and reconciliation commission rather than a court.

In Darfur camp, women recount rapes, suffering

Source: CNN.

KALMA, Sudan (AP) -- The seven women pooled money to rent a donkey and cart, then ventured out of the refugee camp to gather firewood, hoping to sell it for cash to feed their families. Instead, they say, in a wooded area just a few hours walk away, they were gang-raped, beaten and robbed.

Naked and devastated, they fled back to Kalma.

"All the time it lasted, I kept thinking: They're killing my baby, they're killing my baby," wailed Aisha, who was seven months pregnant at the time.

The women have no doubt who attacked them. They say the men's camels and their uniforms marked them as janjaweed -- the Arab militiamen accused of terrorizing the mostly black African villagers of Sudan's Darfur region.

Their story, told to an Associated Press reporter and confirmed by other women and aid workers in the camp, provides a glimpse into the hell that Darfur has become as the Arab-dominated government battles a rebellion stoked by a history of discrimination and neglect.

Now in its fourth year, the conflict has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and rape is its regular byproduct, U.N. and other human rights activists say.

Sudan's government denies arming and unleashing the janjaweed, and bristles at the charges of rape, saying its conservative Islamic society would never tolerate it.

It has agreed to let in 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers, but not the 22,000 mandated by the U.N. Security Council. It claims the force would be a spearhead for anti-Arab powers bent on plundering Sudan's oil.

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 civilians have died and 2.5 million are homeless out of Darfur's population of 6 million, the U.N. says, and a February report by the International Criminal Court alleges "mass rape of civilians who were known not to be participants in any armed conflict."

Stigma of sexual assault

Kalma is a microcosm of the misery -- a sprawling camp of mud huts and scrap-plastic tents where 100,000 people have taken refuge. It is so full of guns that overwhelmed African Union peacekeepers long ago fled, unable to protect it. It is so crowded that the government has tried to limit newcomers -- forbidding the building of new latrines, so a stench pervades the air.

Anyone venturing outside must reckon with the janjaweed, as Aisha and her friends found out.

In Sudan, as in many Islamic countries, society views a sexual assault as a dishonor upon the woman's entire family. "Victims can face terrible ostracism," says Maha Muna, the U.N. coordinator on this issue in Sudan.

Some aid workers believe the janjaweed use rape to intimidate the rebels, and their supporters and families. "It's a strategy of war," Muna said in an interview earlier this year in Khartoum, the capital.

Sudan's government is especially sensitive about such accusations and denies rape is widespread.
Sudanese public opinion would view mass rape much more severely than other crimes alleged in Darfur, said a senior Sudanese government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from his superiors.

He acknowledged the janjaweed had initially received weapons from the government -- something the government officially denies -- and said authorities now are struggling to rein in the militias.

Nasser Kambal, a prominent human rights activist and co-founder of the Amel center, a Sudanese group helping victims of rape and other abuse, offers a similar view.

"I don't think raping was planned by the government. Killing and looting and torture, yes, but not rape," he said.

" All the time it lasted, I kept thinking: They're killing my baby, they're killing my baby."
- Aisha Hamid

Kalma isn't the only place where multiple accounts of rape have surfaced. Some 120 miles away, in the town of Mukjar, two men separately described women being brought into a prison where they were being held and raped for hours by janjaweed.

They said the assailants shouted that they were "planting tomatoes" -- a reference to skin color: Darfur Arabs describe themselves as "red" because they are slightly lighter-skinned than ethnic Africans.

According to Muna, U.N. agencies are working closely with Sudanese authorities to improve the government's response to rape allegations. In 2005, the government created a task force on rape in Darfur, headed by Attayet Mustapha, a pediatrician, government official and women's rights activist.

In an interview this year, Mustapha said social workers were being deployed to address the problem and a special female police unit was being assembled in Darfur.

"We tell officials that the government has decided to enforce a zero tolerance policy toward rape in Darfur," she said.

U.N. workers say they registered 2,500 rapes in Darfur in 2006, but believe far more went unreported. The real figure is probably thousands a month, said a U.N. official. Like other U.N. personnel and aid workers interviewed, the official insisted on speaking anonymously for fear of being expelled by the government.

Victims usually can't identify their aggressors, which makes prosecutions impossible. Only eight offenders were tried and sentenced for rape crimes in Darfur by Sudanese courts in 2006, said Mustapha, the task force leader. "They received three to five years prison, and 100 lashes" in accordance with Islamic law, she said.

In May, after the top U.N. human rights official charged that Sudanese soldiers had raped at least 15 Darfur women during one recent incident, Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi asked where the evidence was.

"We always seem to get sweeping generalizations, without naming the injured, without naming the offenders," he told reporters.

In Kalma, collecting firewood needed to cook meals is becoming more perilous as the trees around the camp dwindle and women are forced to scavenge ever farther afield. It is strictly a woman's task, dictated both by tradition and the fear that any male escorts would be killed if the janjaweed found them.

Agreeing to tell the AP their story earlier this month through a translator, the seven women's voices wavered and hesitated, broken by embarrassed silences. All gave their names and agreed to be identified in full, but the AP is withholding their surnames because they are rape victims and vulnerable to retaliation.

The women said they set out on a Monday morning last July and had barely begun collecting the wood when 10 Arabs on camels surrounded them, shouting insults and shooting their rifles in the air.

The women first attempted to flee. "But I didn't even try, because I couldn't run," being seven months pregnant, said Aisha, a petite 18-year-old whose raspy voice sounds more like that of an old woman.

She said four men stayed behind to flay her with sticks, while the other janjaweed chased down the rest of her group.

"We didn't get very far," said Maryam, displaying the scar of a bullet that hit her on the right knee.

Once rounded up, the women said, they were beaten and their rented donkey killed. Zahya, 30, had brought her 18-year-old daughter, Fatmya, and her baby. The baby was thrown to the ground and both women were raped. The baby survived.

Zahya said the women were lined up and assaulted side by side, and she saw four men taking turns raping Aisha.

The women said the attackers then stripped them naked and jeered at them as they fled. On their way back, men from the refugee camp unraveled their cotton turbans for the women to partly cover up, but the victims said they were laughed at when they entered the refugee camp.

"Ever since, I've made sure that women living on the outskirts of the camp have spare sets of clothes to give out," said Khadidja Abdallah, a sheika, an informal camp leader, who took the women to the international aid compound at the camp to be treated.

They were given anti-pregnancy and anti-HIV pills, thanks to which their families haven't entirely ostracized them, the women said. The baby Aisha was expecting at the time is doing well. His name is Osman.

Alarming trend of assaults in camps

Sheikas in Kalma said they report over a dozen rapes each week. Human rights activists in South Darfur who monitor violence in the refugee camps estimate more than 100 women are raped each month in and around Kalma alone.

The workers warn of an alarming new trend of rapes within the refugee population amid the boredom and slow social decay of the camps. But for the most part, they added, it all depends on whether janjaweed are present in the area.

The sheikas say they are making some headway toward persuading families to accept raped women back into their embrace and let them report attacks to aid workers. One advantage is that they get a certificate confirming they were raped.

"We tell husbands they might be compensated one day," said Ajaba Zubeir, a sheika. "But I don't think that's going to happen."

The seven women say they haven't left the camp since they were attacked. They have started their own small workshop and make water jugs out of clay and donkey dung to sell to other refugees.

As they worked on their large pile of jugs and bowls, they said they are even poorer than before, because they now have to buy their firewood from other women.

"But at least we never have to go out again," said Aisha.

None of the women has any faith that Sudanese or international courts will ever give them justice. All Zahya asks is that one day she can return to her village.

"If people could at least help end the fighting, that would be enough," she said.

Impunity for war crimes against women

By Louise Arbour

FIRST PERSON Louise Arbour.

The plight of victims of sexual attacks during conflict has come to the fore once again when last week, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor requested summons for two Sudanese connected with atrocities in Darfur. According to the prosecutor, there is strong evidence pointing to the suspects' responsibility for mass rape and other war crimes. Previously, the ICC had issued an arrest warrant for the leader of the Lord Resistance Army, a rebel group in Uganda, on the ground of war crimes, including ordering sexual enslavement and rape.

Thus, ICC action is gearing up to bolster the cumulative experience of international justice mechanisms that have brought to light specific types and patterns of sexual crimes targeting mainly women and girls in war-torn zones, as well as identified individual responsibilities in their commission. The work of these courts has also highlighted the difficulties in prosecuting perpetrators and countering the culture of impunity that shields their criminal acts. Such impunity, of course, permeates all societies, be they peaceful or at war. Not by coincidence, this year International Women Day is dedicated to combating this pervasive lack of accountability. It is, however, in times of war that the effects and consequences of impunity are at their starkest. This is due both to the widespread, systematic and often sustained nature of sexual attacks and to the number and callousness of perpetrators.

Although at their most brutal in war, sexual abuses against women often stem from longstanding prejudices, a lack of equality and discrimination that had condoned such violence all along. When perpetrators go unpunished, they are emboldened to strike again, perpetuating and encouraging vicious cycles of attack and reprisal even when a country emerges from conflict. Rendering justice to the victims is, therefore, not only a moral imperative, but also a precondition for reconciliation and peace to take hold.

Yet, sexual violence has been traditionally underreported and under-prosecuted. As a result, such crimes have long been considered as regrettable but unavoidable byproducts of armed confrontation. Women as victims or pawns of belligerents could demand no recourse.

Only recently has this powerlessness been addressed, primarily by the groundbreaking work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The tribunals defined systematic violence against women as crimes for which those responsible could be held accountable, thereby empowering victims to have their day in court. The creation of the International Criminal Court gave an additional boost to such emerging jurisprudence and changing mind set. Its statute stipulates that rape, sexual slavery, enforced sterilization, or any other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity are considered as war crimes. If these acts are committed as part of widespread or systematic attacks on a civilian population, they constitute crimes against humanity.

It now remains to be seen whether governments will accede to the Court's requests and surrender the suspects for trial. But if government non-compliance is potentially the main obstacle to the course of international justice, there are other factors that hamper prosecution. Victims of all forms of violence are often reluctant to come forward, in large part because they have little confidence that justice will be done. Although some of the perpetrators may have been apprehended, others, as well as their accomplices, may remain at large and therefore capable of inflicting further harm to victims, witnesses and their families.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has made strides in addressing such hindrances in the face of a monumental task: as the result of ten years of conflict and the belligerents' methods of warfare in that country, the brutality of sexual violence was extraordinary, and its victims were to be counted in the thousands. The Court benefited from its proximity to the victims, the parallel work of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a framework that protected the victims and ensured that their dignity was preserved. The ICC, too, is building on previous experiences and strengthening legal assistance and protection for victims.

Although the mandate and machinery of international courts have become increasingly more sophisticated and far-reaching over the years, gender justice continues to remain the exception rather than the rule. Successfully prosecuted cases represent just the tip of the iceberg. The crux of the matter in combating impunity is the requisite political will to tackle it. Often slow to gear up into motion, such political will needs to be mobilized through domestic and international pressure as well as continuous scrutiny.

Louise Arbour is United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Iran releases 8 women's rights activists from jail

By Agence France Presse (AFP).

TEHRAN: Eight Iranian women's rights activists arrested during a demonstration this week have been released but 25 others still detained are on hunger strike, one of their lawyers said on Wednesday. Thirty-three women's rights activists were arrested in Sunday's demonstration outside a revolutionary court where five other feminists were standing trial. "Eight of the 33 detained activists were released on Tuesday evening," lawyer Nisrine Sotoudeh said. "The hunger strike goes on. We hope they are all released before March 8." She added that two activists, Parvin Ardalan and Mahnaz Mohammadi, "who suffer from multiple sclerosis, are in bad health and the prison officials are refusing to deliver their medicine." Sotoudeh said the authorities have asked for a hefty bail of 500,000 rials (about $54,000) each for three of the detainees, and three others "have been transferred to the inmates' section, which has poor conditions." - AFP

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.