Twenty
three children and young adults rescued from slave labor in a garment factory
by Vietnamese authorities with the help of an Australian-run children's charity
have arrived in Hanoi.
Vietnamese government officials and police
from the victims' home region, with help from the charity Blue Dragon, raided
the factory in Ho Chi Minh City. The owners have been arrested and are awaiting
trial.
The victims, aged from ten to 21, are from the
Kho Mu ethnic group, in Dien Bien province in Vietnam's far northwest. Some of
them had been working for up to two years as slave labor in the garment
business.
Tired but happy, the children relaxed for an
hour at Noi Bai airport before boarding a bus for the 12-hour journey home to
their villages.
The group said they were looking forward to returning
to their families.
"I felt so homesick, living in
Saigon," said 12-year-old Trang.
He was taken by car from his small village of
35 households and brought to Saigon, where he worked cutting cloth and was
regularly beaten, he said.
He couldn't estimate how many hours he worked
as he can't read a clock.
Gazing fixedly at his can of Fanta, he said he
wanted to get home to his parents and six younger brothers and family farm.
Ta Ngoc Van, a lawyer with Blue Dragon,
traveled to the remote villages of Da Lech and Co Nghiu some weeks ago
following up a tip from a contact in the Ministry of Public Security about
rumors of missing children.
He found some families hadn't seen their
children in two years.
They'd been approached by traffickers who
promised their children well-paid and comfortable jobs in Ho Chi Minh City.
After receiving almost no money and no
contact, the families were desperate. Investigations by Blue Dragon,
experienced in saving children from garment factories, and Vietnamese officials
located the children.
Michael Brosowski, the Australian founder of
the charity, said local authorities were extremely interested in combating
child trafficking.
Legislation in Vietnam, however, needs to
catch up.
Most human trafficking recognized by the
government and NGOs related to cross-border trafficking, often for sex work.
Internal trafficking, usually for labor, is
harder to define and rarely prosecuted.
"It's not sexy enough (as an issue)
compared to sex trafficking," said Brosowski.
"But labor trafficking can be hideous as
well. These children lose years of their lives," he said.
As internal trafficking can be hard to prove,
some cases are prosecuted under labor laws instead.
Authorities have not yet said how they plan to
prosecute this case.
AFP
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