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Burmese women used as sex slaves in Chinese night club

November 9, 2007KNG

Women and young girls from Burma are being used as sex slaves in a night club in Hangzhou in China's Zhejiang province near Shanghai, a popular tourist resort on the East China Sea coast, said girls from the night club who escaped.

Four Kachin girls from Northeast Shan State in Burma, who recently escaped from the night club, said there are over 30 women from Burma out of about 70 women in the club who are used for sex and as waitresses. Over 50 security personnel guard the women. They are given one meal a day and they had not received their full salaries since they arrived. The women are not allowed to communicate with the outside world. There is no way they can escape and some have died of sexually transmitted diseases.

Every night they are forced to work at least 11 hours from 5:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. China Standard Time. They have to warmly welcome all male guests and are made to drink alcohol and beer with their guests.

A girl is paid a special wage of Chinese Yuan 1,000 a night whenever she is taken outside the night club by male customers or businessmen for sex. But the money is taken away by touts who look after them in the night club, the girls said.

A 10th grade schoolgirl, aged 17, from Namkham Village in Northeast Shan State who escaped from the night club last month told KNG that she had been deceived and invited to join a Kachin Traditional Dancing Club in Kunming in China's Yunnan Province and then sold to the night club owners.

She testified to KNG that she and her colleagues had been paid less than Yuan 10 daily for breakfast by the owner of the night club because he was worried that the girls would run away from the club if he paid them their full salaries.

A member of the Sino-Burma border trade zone, Muse based Kachin Youth Organization, which is aware of trafficking in women from Kachin to China, said they have recorded over 80 Kachin girls being taken away from Namphakka (Nam Hpak Ka), Namkham, Homong, Di Ma, Dat Nai, Mongbaw, Monggu, Kutkai, Muse and Kachin Defence Army (KDA)'s headquarters Kawng Hka in Northeast Shan State. They were sold to Chinese businessmen by traffickers as of 2004.
One of the watchdog leaders said, most girls are sold to China as sex slaves without wages and the rest are sold to Chinese men who have no wives while some take second wives.

He told KNG that the economic deterioration in military-ruled Burma had impacted the lives of Kachin women in Northeast Shan State making them fall prey to traffickers.
In May, 2005, the Thailand-based Kachin Women's Association (KWAT) in a report -- ''Driven Away—Trafficking of Kachin women on the China-Burma border'' revealed that over 62 Kachin women from Kachin State and Northeast Shan State were sold to China during 2000-2004.

About the author: The Kachin News Group (KNG) is a non-profit, an independent media organization and covering Kachin, Burma and regional issues