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Women rescued as police flash-raids net traffickers

Police yesterday busted a trafficking ring that was bringing young women into the country from Indonesia using fake marriages, and then forcing them to work in appalling conditions as virtual slaves.

Taipei police officers and Immigration Bureau officials on Tuesday evening raided 14 locations, breaking a human-trafficking ring led allegedly by Huang Shou-chen (黃守辰), 42, and Wang Chin-mei (王錦梅), 38. They arrested 11 suspects working for the ring.

Huang is still at large, and is thought to be in Indonesia.

The authorities rescued a total of 35 Indonesian women. Some of the women told reporters they were brought to Taiwan under false pretenses, and that their greatest wish was to return home.

Police said Huang established an institute in Indonesia that purportedly to train women to work as caregivers in Taiwan.

Because the government reduced the number of foreign laborers allowed to work in the nation, Huang began to bring the Indonesian women into the country under the pretense of marriage.

The National Police Agency (NPA) said that Huang had lied to the women, saying he was arranging for them to marry Taiwanese men, but upon their arrival in Taiwan he forced them to work for people wanting cheap labor.

Wang, working with Huang, was in charge of brokering women to work in factories, restaurants and other jobs.

Police said that some of the women were physically abused by members of the ring if their employers complained about their performance and returned the women.

The beaten women were then forced to work for other employers after they "learned their lesson," police said.

Police said employers paid between NT$150,000 to NT$200,000 to the broker for the women.

Police added that another suspect, Chao Peng-hua (趙鵬華), 38, was in charge of forging documents to fool Taiwanese authorities when bringing the women into the nation, as well as for finding fake husbands for the ring.

Police said the ring had made more than NT$50 million since 2003.

One Indonesian woman, 26, told the police that she had married a Taiwanese man a year ago, but that she had never met her "husband."

She said that upon arrival, she was immediately brought to a Taichung street market to deal with frozen fish, and was forced to work from 4am to 11pm.

The woman showed her frost-bitten hands at a press conference, which had become injured through constant contact with icy water.

The NPA also said yesterday that it had broken up a seperate human-trafficking ring that was bringing Vietnamese women into Taiwan and forcing them to become prostitutes.

The agency said it had captured the ring's suspected mastermind, Lee Ho-ming (李河明).

The NPA said in a press statement that they had rescued two of the Vietnamese women and were looking for at least 30 more.

Taiwan's efforts to stop human trafficking have been routinely criticized. The country is now listed on a US watch list.
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