Teenage school dropout Tran Mai Hoa's sad, soft voice lowers to a hush as she recalls how on a whim she accepted an invitation from a woman she barely knew to go on holiday.
"I never go out with people who I don't know well but I went with her," says the 17-year-old, her eyes downcast as she moodily traces patterns on the floor.
Hoa set off in a car with the woman, a friend of her older brother, thinking she was going on a short trip to a nearby town. But after her companion spun her an excuse about needing to take a detour, the naive girl was taken on a three-hour drive north from her native Halong City and then on a ten-minute boat ride across a river. Unwittingly, she had crossed the unpoliced Kalong border river into Chinese territory.
PHOTO: AFP
sold into slavery
"When I was taken to a house, I found some Vietnamese people there and they told me I was already in China. In the beginning I didn't know what was happening. Later the Vietnamese people told me I had to be a prostitute," Hoa, not her real name, says.
Like countless thousands of other young Vietnamese and Asian women, Hoa had been sold to a human-trafficking syndicate. She was bound for a life of sexual slavery, forced to sleep with up to 10 men a day until a lucky break helped her escape the gang's clutches and return to Vietnam after just a few months.
And save for that happy chance, her story is all too familiar across much of Asia.
Hoa, who looks older than her years, with waist-length hair neatly tied behind her neck, never once breaks down as she recalls her ordeal, sitting in an office of the Women's Union in northern Vietnam's Quang Ninh province, of which Halong City is the capital.
The woman who allegedly lured her there and who has since been arrested, was once a victim of trafficking herself, before joining the criminal operation and tricking young women into following her footsteps.
Experts say that many Vietnamese women, either themselves past victims of trafficking or those who sought partners across the border, are engaged in the sex trade.
"We understand that a lot of the brothels are just across the border and a number of them are run by Chinese men married to Vietnamese women," says Andrew Bruce, Director of the International Organization of Migration (IOM) country mission, saying the wives may be pivotal players in the trafficking business.
Nguyen Huong Giang, of Save the Children UK in Vietnam, says the two main trafficking destinations are China and Cambodia, but trafficking to other countries in the region as well as to Europe is on the increase.
six categories
Giang identifies six categories most vulnerable to being trafficked: girls, school drop-outs, the unemployed, children from large families, those from broken or single-parent homes, and working children.
Hoa fits the first three types. Three years ago, the teenager quit school believing her education was a burden on her poor parents living in Halong City, a relatively affluent tourist destination famed for its spectacular bay dotted with limestone formations, caves and grottos.
Her 51 year-old mother, who works for a coal company, is the sole breadwinner. Her father, 60, used to do seasonal construction work but does so no longer.
For a young girl unable to find work, the idea of a brief trip away with her older brother's friend was too tempting to resist. But once in China, the enormity of her mistake dawned on her and she pleaded in vain to be taken back home.
The trafficker only threatened to sell the short-statured girl further away in China. Better work for a few years, pay back the money for her sale to the brothel and win freedom, Hoa was told.
"I thought of my parents. I thought they'd made a lot of effort to take care of me and bring me up till now ... If they know what kind of work I have to do, what is happening to me, what'll they think?" she asks.
"I tried to commit suicide but they [the brothel keepers] saw me. They screamed at me and said: `You pay us back and we'll let you go,'" says Hoa, who tried to slit her wrists.
"And so I stayed in order to try and come back home," she recalls.
Hoa saw none of the money from the ten or so men she had to service daily but believes each of them paid about 40 yuan (about US$5).
She knew nothing about condoms but was taught to use them and allowed to insist they be worn, and the girls at the brothel were even supplied with palatable meals.
There were about a dozen in the brothel, divided among different "owners," some Chinese and some Vietnamese. The girls, or inmates, were not allowed to talk to each other except in the presence of their minders.
Unbeknown to Hoa, Vietnamese and Chinese police launched an anti-trafficking campaign this summer, giving her a lucky break that many never get.
"One day in mid-August, the trafficker put me in a car to evade a police raid. When we reached Nanning [capital of the southern Chinese Guangxi region], police stopped our car," Hoa recalls.
lucky break
Her nearly five-month ordeal was over. Numb with relief and despite being in the custody of foreign police, she dozed off. After two days of debriefing about the Chinese traffickers and minders, she was handed over to Vietnamese police in the border town of Mong Cai.
Hoang Thi To Linh, an IOM program officer, says 22 women were handed back in Mong Cai alone in the summer. Similar operations are believed to have taken place at several other border posts.
But those who are rescued may be just a fraction of those sold into sexual slavery.
Giang of Save the Children says that according to some surveys, the number of children and women trafficked from Vietnam alone may range from "more than 20,000 to more than 40,000 cases" to date.
Duong Thi Xuan, spokeswoman for the Vietnam Women's Union, says simply: "So long as there is demand there will be supply."
The UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking says on its Web site that anti-trafficking efforts may simply shift the problem from one place to another.
"This is sometimes referred to as the `push-down, pop-up' phenom-enon," it says.
And for every girl like Hoa who is rescued, there are several left behind or being trafficked anew.
Hoa's family eagerly took her back, but some others are reluctant, a fact which pains Noortje Verhart of IOM.
"The best solution would be to see if somebody would like to go back to their place of origin, their families in the first place," she says.
"When they have been through those experiences, the family often is prepared to receive them but [if] they don't want that then we have difficulty there," Verhart says.
In societies such as Vietnam, the family is central to people's lives.
happy ending?
"I was very happy to be back home," Hoa says. "My parents were shocked and hurt, knowing what I suffered over there [in China]. They didn't shout at me or anything, they just encouraged me."
Her unemployed brother is remorseful that a woman he had known turned out a trafficker.
"He said sorry to me because his wrong choice of friend had such an effect on his sister," she says.
"I am disappointed with what happened to me. I want to have a new life. I want to study something that can help me find a job," she says, worried that her ageing parents will be unable to care for her for much longer.
"Actually I ought to be feeding them, not they me," she says.
In the weeks since her return, she has had no job offers but the Women's Union says it is helping her get part-time work.
Linh of IOM says the union and her organization are offering training courses for both trafficking victims and other young women deemed vulnerable to exploitation.
The course is made up of lessons in cooking, English and "life skills in order to help them gain con-fidence," says Linh. Hoa will take it next month and get help with food, accommodation and some pocket money for course material.
Throughout the interview, the only question Hoa adamantly refuses to answer is what she thinks of men in general now and whether she will ever get married.
She has a more fatalistic view of life.
"Destiny has a bad part and a good part," she says. "If early in life misfortune occurs, then I believe good fortune can come in the future."
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