Burma | Burma Center Prague

"A report released on May 17 by the Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand, titled “Driven Away: Trafficking of Kachin Women on the China-Burma Border”, warns that girls as young as fourteen are getting tricked and exploited as they look for ways to make money to pay school fees and support their families.

Researcher Gum Khong explained that women are being transported to border towns and deep into China’s Yunnan province, as far as the North Korean border, where they are forced to marry Chinese men or work in the sex industry. Domestic trafficking is also common, with some women being traded to karaoke bars and massage parlors in the mining areas of Kachin and Shan states as well as ones in the capital Rangoon.

The report lists 63 instances of trafficking from 2000 to 2004, involving 85 victims from the Kachin towns of Myitkyina, Bhamo, Laiza and Mogaung, as well as Muse and Kutkai in Shan State. The report claims inefficient government policies, such as the neglect of social services in favor of extending military forces, have plunged the country into poverty and unemployment. This has in turn increased the numbers of youths forced to move away from home in the search for work, which provides traffickers with easy targets." (reported by The Irrawaddy)