Foundinchina.com

In a week that highlighted the obstacles facing the parents of missing children (via Danwei) in China, comes a shocking report from the Guardian about the possible fate of some of the disappeared.

This is especially true, it would seem, for young girls that vanish without trace from towns in Fujian Province.

Young girls are lured to the UK with the promise of lucrative, respectable careers. Some as young as 11, they arrive without passports or visas, some claiming asylum at British airports, having paid traffickers thousands of pounds for their transit. Once here, they vanish from the hostels or foster care to which they have been assigned by the immigration authorities, often ending up in brothels run from suburban flats and houses.

The sheer scale and scope of the trafficking problem belies a high degree of organisation with powerful people making vast profits from human suffering:

It is evident there are incredible profits to be made. Last year, police discovered £93m transferred back to China via one bank account held by a Chinese restaurant in Kent – money suspected to have been earned through trafficking and brothel-keeping.

Ninety-three million !! Just one restaurant. Finest cuisine in the world, I’m told.

Once ensnared it is virtually impossible to escape from the indignity of daily physical and psychological abuse:

Often sent with the best wishes of their community, which has clubbed together to pay the exorbitant fees, the victims cannot bear to tell their families what they have been compelled to do on arrival. None would consider turning witness against their controllers: their heads are filled with horror stories of how they will be raped and imprisoned by the British police, and what would happen to those back home. Girls who attempt to run away are often hunted down, abducted from local authority care or hospitals.

What’s to be done?

Recently, two specialist national police units have been created to define, penetrate and disrupt the trade. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker, who is leading the government’s new anti-trafficking initiative, told us, “Just five years back I would not have believed this kind of thing could be happening in Britain. But it is down your street, in your lane, run by communities into which we have made few meaningful inroads.”

That last sentence sums up the problem facing Britain, and other countries, in their genuine bid to rid their societies of this evil practice. That’s not to say that British authorities are blameless in the escalation of this ‘industry’, but efforts to infiltrate the less savoury side of Chinese communities overseas often lead nowhere.

Even if they are not doing enough and are facing an uphill battle, at least Britain’s police acknowledge, investigate, and attempt to limit the incidence of trafficking and forced prostitution. I’m not sure the same can be said of their Chinese counterparts, who seem unable or unwilling (or both) to do anything to stem the flow of illegal immigrants out of Fujian, content to sit back and watch the tide take thousands of innocent young women to a terrible fate on the other side of the world.

I’m not generally in favour of capital punishment, but I’d happily switch my vote for traffickers and anyone found to be complicit in such a wanton disregard for human life.