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.

The BBC reported yesterday and the Telegraph the day before, that Hu Jia and Gao Zhisheng are prominent on a list of nominees for this year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize. 

True to form, China is already irked by the  embarrassment this will cause them, a state of affairs for which the Chinese leaders only have themselves to blame. One has to pity the CCP for whatever malady causes them to maintain their petty charade of a harmonious society while treating free speech and human rights with such complete disdain.

Much has been written about Hu Jia in the Chinese blogosphere. The unassuming human rights campaigner is currently serving a three and a half year jail sentence simply for being a caring, honest, decent citizen. His wife remains under house arrest. An overview of his current predicament can be found here:

Sadly the reality is that even if he gets the prize, which will be announced in a week, it will make about as much difference to his situation as giving it to jailed Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi did: none whatsoever.

Maybe so. But it will embarrass the Chinese government and deservedly so. In company with the Olympics politics plays a role here where some would argue that it has no place, just as some past recipients of the prize have been about as connected to peace as the Chinese media is to reality.

Besides, the nominations alone keep Gao and Hu in the spotlight and - quite possibly - alive. This is particularly true of Gao, who insiders say has been brutally tortured during his imprisonment.

It would be interesting to know who the Chinese leaders would nominate from among their people for this award. For certain, none of the names put forward could hold a candle those brave campaigners for justice currently incarcerated for ill-defined crimes against the State, among whose number are counted Hu Jia and Gao Zhisheng. They are Chinese citizens and, all politics aside, their names belong on the shortlist.

Good luck to them both.

I was concerned when I saw a white paper  published in the China Daily a couple of days ago together with an article refuting accusations of cultural genocide in the region. It read (as CD usually does) like government propaganda, in this case designed to shore up domestic opinion ahead of a post-Olympic backlash.

The white paper begins:

China is a unified multi-ethnic country. Tibet is an inseparable part of China, and the Tibetan ethnic group is an important member of the big family of the Chinese nation. The Tibetan ethnic group has a long history and a splendid culture. Tibetan culture is a lustrous pearl of Chinese culture as well as a precious part of world culture.

Important eh? So their opinions and beliefs must count for something. You’ve probably guessed at this point that His Holiness is excluded from descriptions such as splendid, lustrous, or precious: 

Before 1959 the 14th Dalai Lama, as a leader of Tibetan Buddhism and also head of the Tibetan local government, monopolized both political and religious power.

Sounds familiar. Anything else?

The serfs and slaves … suffered destitution, cruel oppression and exploitation, and possessed no means of production or personal freedom …

Unimaginable! That sounds awful - what happened next? 

The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 brought hope to the protection and development of Tibetan culture. Through the peaceful liberation in 1951 Tibet shook off imperialist invasion and trammels, ended its chronic isolation and stagnancy, and created the basic conditions for realizing progress and prosperity along with the rest of China.

My faith in human nature is restored. Is there more?

After the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the Central People’s Government actively helped Tibet protect and recover its traditional culture, and develop its modern cultural, educational and health sectors, opening up a completely new chapter for the development of Tibetan culture.

A new chapter? I’ll say!! What else?

This white paper is published to give the international community a better understanding of the reality of the protection and development of Tibetan culture, citing facts to expose the lie about the “cultural genocide” in Tibet fabricated by the 14th Dalai Lama and his cohorts…

How very thoughtful of the CCP to produce a white paper for the international community. One world, one dream? Not if you’re a Tibetan living on the soil of your forefathers, apparently. Timesonline today reports on the unrest that followed the latest episode of brutality dished out to the robed men of the plateau by armed police:

Other monks went to the police station to protest against the treatment of their colleague and an argument ensued. Police said that they would call local authorities to discuss the matter but shortly afterwards two truckloads of armed officers arrived and began to beat the monks.

I feel talk of a ‘free Tibet’ is counter-productive and naive if it is discussed in terms of independence. That’s never going to happen. True, there was a need for reform, long since acknowledged by the Dalai Lama, but not of the kind imposed by Beijing since 1951. Typically, the Chinese government  propagandise their Tibetan intervention as ‘a backward people in need of a helping Han hand’. Some help.

Human rights activists would do better to concern themselves with the restricted freedoms of ethnic Tibetans (monks in particular) in a vast area of the country that was, irrefutably until the CCP era, an area dominated by Tibetan culture and governed (albeit undemocratically) by Tibetan people.

No longer.

Unlike the vast majority of Han Chinese, I’ve spent some time in the region. The ill-feeling towards Beijing is palpable and justified. Tibetan monasteries have been destroyed and plundered so that Han businessmen can sell artefacts to the highest bidder. At the same time Beijing seeks plaudits for having saved Tibetan culture and promoting tourism (nothing wrong with that) so that more Han businessmen can exploit and marginalise the very people on whose culture their wealth is founded (very wrong). 

Further, Beijing’s idea of freedoms don’t extend to taking a walk if you’re a monk, or extend as far as decorating your home if it includes a picture of His Holiness. One can only imagine what ‘education’ for Tibetan children must look like.

The Olympics was the lull before the storm for Tibetans; now it really could be all over. I fear for them, as should any individual with a vestige of human compassion.