In China, human trafficking often moves across provinces.
Women and children are trafficked from west to east, from poorer and closed provinces to relatively affluent and developed provinces.
Specifically, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi and Xinjiang are the main outflow areas. Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui, Fujian and Guangdong are the main inflow areas.
In 2004, researchers from a number of universities and research institutes formed a project team entitled "Case Studies of The Influx of Abducted or Abducted Persons from Yunnan/Guangxi in five provinces of East China".
The researchers traveled to five "buyer provinces" in Eastern China — Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui, and Fujian — to interview many abducted women face-to-face.
Interviewed in Jiangsu were six women who had been trafficked to Xuzhou.
Of the six women interviewed, what factors contributed to their trafficking? What have they been through? Ever rebelled and fled? Later, why didn't they go home?
Why Xuzhou?
Xuzhou has two characteristics, one is (once) poorer than the surrounding area, and the other is convenient transportation.
Jiangsu is a rich province in China, and for poor areas, "Jiangsu" comes with an aura. Compared with Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi and other places, Xuzhou has been compared to an "underdeveloped area", especially a few decades ago. Although Xuzhou's GDP has grown rapidly in recent years. However, in 2002, the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences assessed the comprehensive strength of 13 cities under the jurisdiction of Jiangsu Province, and Xuzhou ranked 11th. This means that Xuzhou, its subordinate counties and rural areas, is not attractive enough to the surrounding population.
Xuzhou is also a transportation hub between the north and the south. There are only dozens of cities that can be called "national comprehensive transportation hubs", and Xuzhou is one of them. At least in terms of transportation, the influx of "foreign daughters-in-law" is very convenient.
The two are superimposed, making Xuzhou a typical area where "Yunnan women are abducted and sold to marry fraudulently". After 1985, many Yunnan women were abducted and sold to Xuzhou, and 1988-1990 was the peak period, and 2,000 to 3,000 women were abducted to Xuzhou in a single year.
Not only that, after 1993, there was even a phenomenon of "people leading people". For the sake of profit, some women who came to Xuzhou first began to introduce women from their hometowns (including older girls between the ages of 14 and 18). Some of the victims who had previously been trafficked became victims. "Fellow villagers selling their hometowns" is also the reason why there are many Yunnan women in some villages in Xuzhou.
In 2000, the whole country carried out a special crackdown on "cracking down on abduction." Since then, the abduction and trafficking of women and children in Xuzhou has declined, and the number of cases filed has dropped from hundreds in the past year to several cases in the following year.
However, many women who were trafficked to Xuzhou have changed their lives forever.
Most of the time, the buyer belongs to the "local poor family", or the man's personal conditions are poor, and it is difficult to marry in the local area.
Of the 6 families in Xuzhou, 4 belong to poor families, because the family is poor and cannot marry a local daughter-in-law, and the cost of buying/marrying a foreign daughter-in-law is much lower.
A's husband is too old, 16 years older than her, 33 years old when married, basically hopeless to marry a wife at this age in the local area, "said a lot, always not suitable, and then asked someone to tell fortunes, fortune tellers said that he missed the opportunity, can not be found in the local, to find a foreigner as a daughter-in-law, so you can rush to joy" "He is young, or a child, he is so old, he feels very scared." ”
B flowed into poor families, "do not eat a bottle of oil in January, do not eat meat once a year", not only that, because it is a small surname in the village, the family is small and weak, and it is often bullied, "Now so poor, the village has poverty alleviation funds, it is not given." "Because she didn't claim the poverty alleviation money, her family still lived in someone else's house in the year of the interview, and didn't have her own house."
C flowed into poor families, "At that time, the mother-in-law was sick for many years, the economic conditions were not good, the living conditions were worse than other families, and it was difficult to find a partner in the local area." Moreover, the family is also a small surname, "the power of the Zhao surname is relatively small, and it is not as smooth as the surname Li (the big surname in the village)."
D's husband was 42 years old at the time, (D was only 16 years old), his parents were deceased, he didn't even have the money to "buy his wife", and he forced his wife to come home on the road.
The family flowing in is more complex, the husband is short, ugly-looking, not loved by his parents, and does not receive much protection from his parents. E was so embarrassed by her husband's ugliness that she never let her mother-in-law's relatives see her husband. Not only that, because the husband's second brother did not get what he wanted when he separated the family, he often went crazy with alcohol, made a big fuss, and even beat up the family, and E suffered from the second brother's fist and foot violence many times.
F's husband's family is poor, and the man has polio sequelae, leg disabilities, difficulty in self-care, can not do farm work, only do some sewing work, but it is difficult to maintain his own life, "poor, poor, when he comes, there is nothing." "His family is the most difficult, and the only thing more difficult than him is the old bachelor, and there is nothing more difficult than him."
Poor families, poor conditions for men, and involuntary marriages all add to the suffering of trafficked women.
How was he trafficked?
Of the six, the relatively "voluntarily abducted" was C. She agreed to marry her husband who came to Yunnan under the condition of information asymmetry.
C's husband's cousin is also from Yunnan, cousin cousin came to Yunnan to visit relatives, C's husband followed, so he met C. At that time, C heard her husband say that xuzhou in Jiangsu province "does not have to cut firewood, do not have to carry, do not pick, it is a plain, everything is mechanized, the work is very easy, and there are many apple trees." C felt much better than his life in Yunnan, just like his family, he wanted to go out, didn't want to live a lifetime in the ravine, and wanted to know what the "big world" was like.
After arriving in Xuzhou, although C was not used to it at first, she also found that many situations were not quite in line, such as no apple trees, and the machine (tractor) was someone else's home, but she comforted herself, "Cheating is not like this... It's the plains that don't fake, don't have to pick, don't have to carry, and don't need me to work in the beginning..."
If C is still partially informed, then ABDEF is all involuntary and unknowingly trafficked.
A and B were sold after being tricked out by an acquaintance or relative.
A's acquaintance introduced her to someone who "could find a job to do." She didn't know the man, but out of trust in her acquaintances and wanted to do easy, lucrative work, she followed the man.
B is a relative of the "little sister" said to take her to the county town to play, she got into the car, but the "little sister" secretly got out of the car. The man in the car was a trafficker.
E and F went looking for jobs and were tricked into selling them by traffickers disguised as labor brokers.
E followed her sister to Kunming to play, her sister went out to do business, let her wait in the hostel, she went to the labor market to find work, met a few people who said that there was a big business, let her follow, she followed the train, found that it was not the place she told her before, but she had already got on the train and could not get off.
When F rushed to the market, he met two locals, one surnamed Zhang and one surnamed Wang, saying that he could take her out to work, and she followed these two people and was sold.
D's experience was probably the worst, being drugged by relatives in the village and forcibly abducted.
Grandma's niece gave D anesthesia, and she was groggy for three days, waking up and having been taken to Xuzhou Railway Station. She was taken out with her aunt, her aunt, who had been sold. She escaped without the attention of the traffickers, but she was cornered, illiterate, had no money, could not understand the local dialect, and met her current husband, who was dragged home by him.
One of the reasons why human trafficking is difficult to prohibit and difficult to identify is that there are almost all kinds of perpetrators.
Traffickers have men as well as women. There are single-man crimes and there are also gang crimes. Some people say that it is to help introduce marriage and marry into a good place and a good in-law's family; some people say that they want to take you to see the world and open your eyes; some people say that they want to recruit laborers to introduce work... The pitfalls are varied.
Some people think that they are not cautious enough to be abducted and trafficked women, but how to be careful to prevent being drugged by relatives in the village like D? Moreover, many abducted women grew up in traditional agricultural societies, which are "acquaintance societies" and "kinship societies" based on honesty and mutual trust. People naturally trust relatives, friends, fellow countrymen, and mostly "herding" management of their children... The study found that in many rural areas where the outflow is, children go out for several days and do not return, do not inform the parents, and the parents do not ask or track down. For example, of the 21 people interviewed in the "Case Investigation Project of the Inflow Areas in Five Provinces of East China", 7 people informed their parents about the time they were abducted and sold, 14 people did not inform, and the uninformed were twice as many as the informants.
These cultural practices are exploited by traffickers.
Movie "Blind Mountain"
Don't expect trafficked women to be the perfect victims, but see the logic of their survival and their actual situation.
Studies have found that women who are trafficked often have one thing in common – surviving multiple dilemmas.
Their hometown is remote and isolated, which is a geographical dilemma; the family is poor, this is an economic dilemma; the lack of warmth and love at home is an emotional relationship dilemma; as a woman, she drops out of school earlier, takes on the responsibility of the family earlier, and becomes a child maid and a child farmer, which is a gender dilemma.
A's parents died early, A only went to school for half a year before dropping out of school, helping his brother's family to do farm work, with children, doing housework, "There are sheep and pigs in the family, eat in the morning, put the sheep and pigs on the mountain, and rush home in the afternoon when the sun goes down." The second brother's family has three children, about the same age as me, two or three years younger than me, and he helped with children when he was a child... Helping them at home, they can't go to school."
D did not go to school, want to go to school, but dad works outside, she is the eldest, there are two brothers and three sisters to take, parents let her drop out of school to do housework, "parents told me not to go up, the family is very busy and busy, so I also do not go ... I've been more family-friendly since I was a kid... At the age of seven or eight, he herded cattle at home, and at the age of 12 he washed clothes and brought his younger siblings..."
E remembers that his hometown is "not very good, it is good to have food to eat, money, don't say, there is no money to spend."
F's mother remarried to her stepfather, and both she and her brother were forced to drop out of school and do housework at home, while the stepfather's children all went to school, "There was a flock of sheep in the house, and I was told to release them, and his children went to school, and none of us went to school." If you don't want to go, just hit me. Carry a large basket every day, put a few kyo fruits (rice balls) in it, and a little squeezed vegetables, which is extremely hard. (Crying)"
They have no right to education, no right to inherit assets and control over affairs in the family. The only thing they can say they have is some of their own right to choose a mate and go out to work. If they want to change their destiny and improve their lives, there are almost only two ways to "marry into a good place" and "go to a good place to work". Their "stock knowledge" and "stock ability" are only their own bodies and hands. In order to seize the chance, sometimes, they will ignore or give up some of their right to know.
They cannot be defined by "ignorance, ignorance, and credulity." There is nothing wrong with their survival and development needs. Who is born to be human, who doesn't want to get out of poverty, who doesn't want to improve their lives, who doesn't want food, health security, education and job opportunities for themselves and their families?
Historian Wu Si once proposed a "law of blood reward" when explaining "what do robbers and bandits live on" - "People's core calculation is: for a certain number of survival resources, how much risk of casualties can be risked, and to what extent can they be damaged by their own resource demanders..." "Using the damage suffered by flesh and blood in exchange for the resources needed for the survival of this body has become a kind of 'way of life'." ”
Fight for your life, you can exchange money.
Researchers believe that the "law of blood reward" applies to anyone who fights for their lives, including many who are trafficked and abducted.
A poor, illiterate woman in a remote rural area, all she had was her own body and her own life.
With my body and my life, bet on a way out.
Sometimes, she wins. Sometimes, she was trafficked and lost.
They have so little that high-risk gambling becomes a rational choice.
Why didn't the revolt succeed?
Women who are trafficked face at least four major dilemmas.
First, personal ability, knowledge and information are insufficient.
Second, the strong control of abductors.
Third, there is strong control over buyers and their families, as well as in the communities that flow into the area.
Fourth, the original family and the original community do not support and do not accept.
Trafficked women are often "older girls", over 14 years old and under 18 years old, who, although physically mature enough to be "sold", are still psychologically in a childish state that is vulnerable to control and intimidation. In addition, many of the abducted women grew up in traditional agricultural societies, and the rules, experiences, and abilities of the acquaintance society were completely different from those needed in modern industrial society. They are illiterate, do not speak the language, often do not hear or speak Mandarin, and do not know where they are or who to turn to.
A recalled, "I was illiterate, I was young, I came out, and I went around along the way, and I didn't know where I was... What can I think [after knowing I've been sold)? I'm illiterate, I'm young, I don't know where to go, I'm left there. I really don't think about anything anymore and resign myself to fate. "What if I don't agree?" You can't walk away, a little girl, where can you go? ”
B said, "I don't know him (the trafficker)." I can't read, I don't have any money on me. He got off the bus at that time (at Xuzhou Railway Station) and asked me to go with him, I didn't have any money on me, I didn't go with him, who could I go with? "At that time, I didn't know how to report the crime, I didn't know how to run if I wanted to run, and I didn't have the heart and eyes at that time, unlike now."
B was determined not to eat or drink, and followed the trafficker, thinking that the trafficker would always have to go back to his hometown so that she could follow him. "I heard that there is something that I don't know anything after eating it, so I follow people away, and I don't dare to eat it." I didn't eat anything, I didn't eat any water. When I arrived in Xuzhou, people said how I was so thin, I was hungry. ...... I don't eat the food you bought, I don't drink, I've been following you, you're from Yunnan, you want to go back to Yunnan, I'll go back, I thought so. ...... Looking at it now, I hate myself, I don't know culture, I don't have a brain. ”
D, who was drugged and sold to Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, had never even heard of "Jiangsu" province before, did not understand at all, she was in a strange place at the time, she had no money, could not read, she could not understand what others said, and she was in a desperate situation. She tried to save herself, persuading the traffickers to say, "You took me out, and then sent me home, my parents have money, I said that I came here to play, not to say that you brought me here to sell..." When she met the buyer, she also indicated that she wanted to run, "One day a person came, came to pay the money, came to take me, I said, I don't stay here, I want to go back to Yunnan... Then people didn't want me. ”
According to the survey, there are at least six ways for trafficked women to help themselves, (1) to intercede with the trafficker; (2) to show the buyer their refusal; (3) not to eat the food of the trafficker; (4) to follow the trafficker in order to return to their hometown; (5) to escape; (6) to self-harm and self-harm. However, self-help is not so easy.
There are two main types of control methods for traffickers and bribers, one is mind control, deception, intimidation, and the other is physical control, restriction of freedom of movement, and even the use of violence.
Traffickers and bribing agents often trick women into buying families, then threaten to abduct women, and if they do not obey or resist, they will resell her to worse conditions - poorer places, poorer families, uglier and more vicious buyers, more violent families... This is a very likely threat, and many women who are trafficked are indeed frightened.
A said, "Listen to others, if you want to run and get caught, use strong." Someone ran away and beat them when they picked up their clothes. I was scared and didn't want to run. "The old woman (the buyer's mother) said, if you go to a bad person's house, beat you, and force you, won't you still have to suffer?" I think about it too, hit you, that is not good, the heart is strange and afraid." "The people in their family also speak, and so do the neighbors. People say that when the money is used up, you people want to run, don't beat you? ”
B was deceived and went to buy someone himself. After the trafficker got off the bus in Xuzhou, he lied to her that he was going to visit relatives, and the "relatives' family" was actually buying the family. After arriving, "(The man's) third sister-in-law is also from Yunnan, and she persuaded her not to think about going back, saying that you want to go home is a vain thought." If you go to another home, you may be twenty or thirty years older, or you may be blind, missing legs and arms. ”
The third sister-in-law of the B man was actually "deceived" to come over, saying that it was a blind date, "At that time, it was said that you would stay when you saw it and felt good, and go home when you saw it, but when you came, you looked at it and didn't let it go."
E was deceived by the same means. "They (the traffickers) found the buyer to see, I made trouble, and then they thought that this was not the way to do it for a long time, so they told the buyer that it was their relatives, took me to play for a few days, and as a result, they were sold to this family."
Screenshot of the "Cao Xiaoqing Incident" TV station report
Traditional gender concepts and norms, such as chastity and maternal love, also bind women who are trafficked.
Interview studies have found that the vast majority of trafficked women begin to "confess their lives" after the first sexual act (sometimes rape) with the buyer, and the birth of the child deepens their "confession". In the "Research on the Problem of Trafficking and Trafficking in The Population in China", it is written that the two major methods of bribing the abducted and trafficked women by the buyers and their families are rapid marriage and childbirth, that is, the so-called "raw rice cooked and mature rice" in the folk proverb.
D, who had run many times, said, "Don't let me go out, I'm afraid I'll run away" "Then there are children, and when I leave, no one will take care of the children, (I) don't want to go out."
E said, "Locked in the house every day, watch." ...... It was useless to resist, and locked me in the house that night, and I made trouble. Later, his brother, they came a lot of people, they all said to me, 'If you don't obey, send you back (return to the traffickers), send it back, and people will find you an old man in his seventies and eighties', and they will scare me like this. ...... I was so frightened that I didn't know what to do, so I had to obey. ”
In addition, the discipline of women to "be virtuous and not greedy for money" even allows some abducted women to voluntarily stay behind to prove that they are "not afraid of suffering and tiredness, feeling poor and loving the rich". Some women consider the travel expenses paid by traffickers and the money paid by buyers as their own debts, and they feel that they are burdened with heavy economic shackles and dare not leave.
Traffickers, buyers and families that take buyers restrict the movement of trafficked women, who often have no freedom of movement until they have children.
My hometown is thousands of miles away, and I don't have any money, so I don't know how to escape. Even if they flee, isolated and helpless women, they are often surrounded and captured by those around them.
E has also escaped many times, sometimes he has been caught, sometimes he does not recognize the road, he is afraid of being abducted and sold again, so he has to go back by himself. It is that if you want to run, you will run, but it is useless to find another opportunity, you can't run out of the village, you get it back for others... When I first came, I ran at both ends for three days, and I couldn't run out", and "many people in the village carried me back". Now "of course I want to run, I still want to go back". "Of course, the people in the village are facing the people on the other side, but is he still speaking to my foreigners?" That's impossible." The village cadres did not take care of the matter of the husband's family buying their daughter-in-law, nor did they come to see it, "nothing."
E ran away many times because she was beaten by her husband's second brother, and once it snowed on the second day of the Chinese New Year, she was beaten to death and fell on a rock, "That time, his brother hit me again, I passed out twice, and then I woke up." They all woke me up and said, 'You still want to run,' That time [I] ran again. However, later in the evening, his family brought a lot of people to chase me, "Last year I went out to work, they all got back." When I went to Shanghai to work, I was brought back by his brother and sister-in-law. ”
D, who was drugged and trafficked, resisted most fiercely. She later felt that the experience was humiliating and ignored in the interview. But the village party secretary interviewed told the researchers that after D was forcibly taken home by her current husband, she didn't do it, pretended to be crazy and stupid, urinated and urinated in bed, her husband has been "sensitizing" her, and a year later, she has a child, she is "good".
Maybe some "crazy women" just insist on not being "impressed".
F said, (he was bought) "The village cadre doesn't care about you (this), the locals turn to the locals, he doesn't care about your business, which one cares about you?" I said I was lucky, and I was dead, forced to die. ”
Why not go home?
Rather than saying that trafficked women are "reluctant to go home," it is better to say that they do not have a "home" that they can go back to.
Sometimes, the buyer deliberately let the abducted woman miss the opportunity to be rescued.
F mentioned that once in the rescue, when the people above came to investigate, she was taken away in advance, "and went to her daughter's house... Insiders are good with him, all say good, can they still say bad? At that time, I saw that I could go back. I'm not at home, I'm going back at home, I don't want to leave it here, I don't want to think about it at all, and I can't get used to life. ”
Sometimes, trafficked women worry about their children even when they go home, and they suffer from longing.
B said that he did not go back because of his children.
E said the reason he didn't leave was "not because of my husband, but because of my son... [The husband's] family couldn't let me take it. ”
D returned to his hometown with her husband and children once in 1994, and "I didn't want to come back [at that time]. "After staying for half a month, he was afraid that I would not come back, so he took the child home", walked for a day or two, "and came back to tell me... The child shouted mom, think of mom every day, you go home", I don't return, "he took the child away again". The mother said, "The child is only so old (the child was 8 months old at the time), don't you go back and bring the child up?" "I thought again, let's come back ."
Sometimes, out of "fait accompli" or "not wanting to cause trouble", the mother's family advises women to "marry chickens and marry dogs with dogs".
A's parents died early, and after being abducted and sold, my brother came back and said, "You only said that you went out to work, who knows that you have cheated people and sold." Now let's see, this is a plain, there is enough food to eat, and it is quite sinful at home. Just leave it here. Wherever you go, you also have children, just live here. ”
E and my sister went back to their hometown once, and at that time, they did not plan to go back to her husband's house, "At that time, my sister was also scared to death, saying that if you don't go back, they can't take my life at home." Later, my sister cried there, and I came back with them (to pick up her husband). ”
F said, "My mother, well, is an old feudal, she said, you have children with others, you have to go to people's houses." ”
Sometimes, after years of being away from home, the mother's parents may have died or become old, and the mother's house and land have long been redistributed, and even if you go home, there is no roof to shelter from the wind and rain or the land resources to support yourself.
Sometimes, when she returns home, she is ridiculed and despised by the villagers, and she may have difficulty remarrying, and may not be able to have children because she has been sterilized.
Many times, abducted women return to their hometowns, enduring separation from their children and having difficulty accessing the resources of life.
Some of the women who were trafficked wanted to go out to work and live a better life. However, being abducted and living an even worse life than at home, they will inevitably feel ashamed of this and cannot afford to return to their hometown. Whether it's divorce, having children alone, or not having children, it will become a "stain" on them.
B said, "In Yunnan, getting married and remarrying will make others look down on you. "You have lived here, and then find someone (referring to remarrying after divorce), people are good, do not want you; poor people, also look down on you, you are divorced, you are certainly not a good person, or else, how do you divorce?" 」
D said, "Now that the child is so old, there is no way to go back... I have been traversed and can no longer have children, and if I go back to Yunnan, I can no longer get married and have children. ”
These dilemmas have prevented abducted women from returning to their places of origin.
Still, many women still dream of leaving.
A said, "I still want to go home, after all, it is hometown." ”
D said, "I didn't expect to marry someone (referring to remarrying in my hometown), to say something from my heart, if I don't come back, I will live here [in my hometown], and I will live like this, just at home (with my parents)." ”
E said, "The most important thing I want to do is to leave this home and go to work", she does not have much nostalgia for her husband, children, and current home, "it is all outside the body", "Now run out, I don't want to go back to Yunnan, I want to be alone." ...... The world is so big, there is no place for me to stay. ”
Instead of asking, "Why don't trafficked women go home," ask,
"Why not give land to abducted women?"
"Why not give transitional housing to trafficked women?"
"Why not give vocational training to trafficked women?"
"If an abducted woman wants to leave and take the child, can she fight for custody of the child, is there a way for her to support the child, and can the child go to school in a different place?"
"Why not send trafficked women off-site to rebuild their lives?"
……
It's not that they don't want to go, they just don't have a way out.
epilogue
In the international conventions on the prevention, suppression and punishment of trafficking in persons, "trafficking in persons" is defined as follows:
"Recruit, transport, transfer, harbour or receive persons for the purpose of exploitation by means of the threat or use of violence, or through other forms of coercion, by abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or abuse of vulnerability, or by the acceptance of honorariums or benefits, with the consent of a person who has control over another person."
If any of the above-mentioned means have been used, the consent expressed by the victims of trafficking in persons to the premeditated exploitation described above is irrelevant. ”
Many times, people feel that the trafficked women "agreed to it." Even many times, the abducted women hate themselves, why they are so stupid, why they trust others, why they are not strong enough, and they do not resist to the end.
However, it is always traffickers and buyers who use all kinds of illegal means to be reprehensible, not women who are sexually exploited, forced to work or enslaved.
What's more, many women are not even adults when they are trafficked, but only older girls.
Human trafficking is contemporary slavery.
Traffickers may have "voluntarily accepted reality" in a long period of despair, or they may have encountered more "moderate" slave owners. But one thing is self-evident: in this day and age, man should not be enslaved, he should not be forced to work, have sex, give birth under violence or threat, man should not be regarded as property to be bought and sold, and man should not be pushed into a situation of exploitation from which there is no escape.
And those who, out of luck, do not fall into the shackles should not turn a blind eye to contemporary slavery.
Don't forget them.
bibliography
Wang Jinling, Jiang Jiajiang, Gao Xueyu. Interviews with Abducted and Trafficked Women[M]. Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018.
Wang Jinling, editor-in-chief. Cross-regional trafficking or abduction: A new description of a case study on inflow areas in five provinces in East China[M].Social Sciences Academic Press, 2007-7.
Wang Jinling. Research on the Problem of Human Trafficking and Delinquency in China[M]. Social Sciences Academic Press, 2014-10.
Author: You Zhiyou
Editing: odette, Cloud
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