As she smiles at customers and makes small talk with regulars in a Hong Kong bar, Kat’s every move is being watched by an older woman, a pimp who answers to the name “Mama-san.”
The 23-year-old from the Philippines has been forced to sell sex for Mama-san and her organized crime network since December when she was moved to Hong Kong under a recruiter’s promise of a well-paying job and easy working conditions.
A single mother, whose own mother is too sick to work, Kat jumped at the chance to earn a high salary but soon after arriving in Hong Kong, Mama-san confiscated her passport and sent her to work in the bar alongside other trafficked women.
Photo: REUTERS/Tom Esslemont
Clients pay up to 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$650) to have sex with Kat but payment goes directly to her pimp. Without any money, she said she cannot escape or fly home — and besides, her traffickers know where her family lives.
“I’m depressed. The other bar girls are depressed. They have to force themselves to be happy and make jokes,” said Kat, sobbing. “The Chinese bar owner gets angry with me because I look so sad.”
Kat, who declined to give her real name, is one of hundreds of women who are trafficked to Hong Kong from mainland China, Southeast Asia, Europe and South America for forced prostitution in the city’s brothels, bars, spas and pornography industry, rights activists say.
Many victims do not speak out for fear of being punished by their traffickers, some of them linked to the powerful Triad organized crime group. Others are afraid of being deported home or criminalized for being in the possession of fake papers arranged by their pimps, campaigners say.
“I take a risk every time I go out with a male customer,” said Kat, who also shudders at the parties she is made to attend where cocaine, marijuana and other drugs are used by clients and forced on the girls.
“They are great actresses because like one of them said, ‘I need to show that I am happy and OK even when I am not.’ This to me kills a soul,” said Marcela Santos, an advocate for trafficking victims who did not want to give her real name, saying it may put at risk her work helping survivors with jobs, training and sometimes a flight home.
IDENTIFYING VICTIMS
Last year, the US State Department downgraded Hong Kong in its annual Trafficking in Persons report to its Tier 2 Watch List, just one rank above countries like North Korea.
The report criticized Hong Kong for not doing more to identify victims of sex and labor trafficking among vulnerable groups such as foreign migrants, domestic workers and women and children in prostitution.
In 2016, the police identified a total of 16 trafficking victims who were foreign women forced into prostitution.
Hong Kong’s Security Bureau, in charge of law and order as well as immigration, said the police officers had been provided with regular training on identifying victims of human trafficking.
Recognizing the need for more training, the Immigration Department and Hong Kong Police Force introduced new and revised procedures for identifying potential trafficking victims including a checklist for danger signs.
The list of vulnerable trafficking victims has also been expanded to sex workers, illegal workers and illegal immigrants.
“It’s often challenging for law enforcement personnel and service providers to identify potential victims. In most situations, victims cannot escape from the traffickers,” said Nurul Qoiriah, head of the Sub-Office of the UN International Organization for Migration in Hong Kong.
Sandy Wong, chair of the Anti-Human Trafficking Committee of the Hong Kong Federation of Women Lawyers, said the best way to tackle forced prostitution was to target buyers of sex.
“Despite the police’s commitment and constant efforts in combating vice establishments, many operate in broad daylight and through the cracks in the legal system and evade arrest by police,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Investigating forced prostitution takes a long time with many victims unwilling to come forward as witnesses, she said.
“If we don’t stop the source of demand, there will always be someone who will provide the supply by hook or by crook,” Wong said, adding that Hong Kong should consider adopting a version of Sweden’s 1999 law which criminalizes the purchase of sex.
DRUGS
Some victims blame police corruption for inaction over human trafficking in Hong Kong.
One of the Philippine women Santos helped to rescue, Jean, said she was brought to Hong Kong on a two-month tourist visa in 2014 by an organized crime group in the Philippines with Triad links.
Her traffickers then used fraud to organize a two-year domestic helper visa for her as part of an arrangement with a bar in Hong Kong co-owned by a police officer — where she was immediately put to work.
“Of course it’s like torture to pay back the debt. The agent doesn’t care. They don’t know how clients treat you badly,” she said by telephone from Manila where she now lives.
“Life was hell. The most traumatic thing is you have to do a lot of drugs. Clients ask you to buy drugs like cocaine, ice, marijuana ... (They) make you take it with them.”
She said the pimps always knew when the police planned to come to the bar to check the women’s papers because their passports would be returned to them temporarily.
A Hong Kong police spokesman said the police force was committed to clamping down on Triad activity and had adopted a zero tolerance policy on any form of police corruption.
The spokesman also told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the police force had provided “full assistance” to the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption during investigations into corruption complaints involving police officers.
Now receiving help for her drug addiction, Jean said her four-year-old daughter keeps her going.
Kat is not so lucky.
After hearing that her brother was left in a critical condition after an accident in the Philippines, she begged Mama-san to allow her to fly home.
But the woman refused.
“I don’t want to do this,” Kat said. “I want to get training and to apply for a job in a restaurant. I don’t want to come back to Hong Kong.”
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built