--- In [email protected], "kim" <kimhook@...> wrote:
>
> Hanya satu ras didunia yang
> menganggap TKW itu satu taraf sebagai budak hanya terjadi di
> negara Arab yang Islam.
oh ya?
news.yahoo.com/north-korean-women-sold-slavery-china-160546154.html
North Korean women sold into 'slavery' in China
Like the thousands of women who fled North Korea before her, Kim Eun-sun made
it into China and paid a woman to help her, only to discover she'd traded one
form of captivity for another.
By Donald Kirk | Christian Science Monitor Fri, May 11, 2012
The price for a North Korean woman named Kim Eun-sun, her mother, and sister,
to escape to China was 2,000 Chinese yuan, slightly more than $300.
Like thousands of North Korean women before them, they crossed the Tumen River
into China and met a woman who said she would help them escape only to
discover that they'd been sold to a Chinese farmer who wanted a wife.
"A lot of women come to China not knowing what they are getting into," says Ms.
Kim, who escaped the farmer with her family but was caught by Chinese police
and then sent back to North Korea. "Women are secretly sold in China."
RELATED Just how isolated is North Korea? 6 facts to consider
After fleeing from North Korea to China a second time, Kim Yuen-sun, her
mother, and sister eventually made it to Mongolia moving mostly on foot across
the Gobi desert. Mongolian soldiers found them and delivered them to the South
Korean Embassy in Ulan Bator whence they were flown to Seoul.
Now a senior in college here, she has received a US government grant that gives
her eight months of English-language training and another semester of study in
psychology at a US university. Wherever she goes, she conveys the message of
the suffering inflicted on North Korean women, generally estimated by officials
and activists to comprise at least 70 percent of the defectors who cross into
China.
She believes that exposure of the plight of North Koreans, particularly women,
is the best she can do to bring about change.
Campaigning for women's rights
Lately, Kim has been campaigning on behalf of North Korean defectors held in
China in demonstrations across the street from the Chinese Embassy in Seoul,
protesting China's policy of complying with North Korean demands to return them
to the North. Once she was angry enough to grab the microphone and shriek out
her sentiments in Chinese.
She also talks about the plight of North Koreans in meetings at college
campuses though she's disappointed by the apathy she encounters among young
South Koreans.
"I feel resentful there is small interest here, but I feel thankful for those
who attend when I talk," she says. "I know I will work [to promote] North
Korean issues when in the US."
Kim says "living in North Korea was impossible" as she discusses a book, "My
Nine-Year Escape from Hell," that she wrote with French journalist Sebastien
Falletti.
Mr. Falletti describes Kim's book as one way for her to raise awareness in
South Korea and the world, considering how shocked she was by the reluctance of
South Koreans to heed the daily life-and-death struggle endured by most North
Koreans.
Sold into slavery
Kim Sang-hun, director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights,
estimates 20,000 to 30,000 North Korean women are now entrapped in China in
what many observers see as a form of slavery. "Most of the women," he says,
"are forced into sexual slavery."
Female defectors typically must choose between being forced into marriage,
serving as a hostess in a karaoke bar or "massage" establishment, or escaping
into forbidding mountains where life is a constant struggle for food and
shelter. The last option means eluding Chinese police often working in tandem
with North Korean security officials.
Estimates of the number of North Koreans, both men and women, living in China
range from 100,000 to 200,000, he says, though there's no accurate way of
counting since they hide in obscure jobs, merging with a populace that includes
a community of more than 2 million Chinese citizens of Korean descent.
Kim Sang-hun says Chinese authorities view those whom they capture as economic
migrants who have entered China illegally, preferring to appear oblivious to
the issue of slavery.
The Chinese show little inclination to respond to demands not to return
defectors to North Korea. Typically they are sent to North Korea by buses at
night with curtains drawn and then placed in special camps for interrogation
and indoctrination.
China's policy outrages activists campaigning against a wide range of North
Korean human rights abuses. "It's a modern form of slavery where you're being
sold into a forced situation for a price," says Frank Jannuzi, head of the
Washington office of Amnesty International. Rather than do anything about it,
he says, the Chinese have built "a brand new detention facility where they
would store 200 to 300 North Koreans."
`A blot on South Korean society'
Human rights organizations blame South Korean gangs for some of the suffering.
Working in cahoots with Chinese Koreans, investing in karaoke bars in China,
they are said to hold women against their will while paying them just enough to
survive.
"South Korean businessmen are their best customers," says Tim Peters, director
of Helping Hands Korea, dedicated to aiding North Korean children in China.
"It's a blot on South Korean society," he says blaming the Chinese for "doing
nothing about a criminal system in violation of the rights of women."
Ha Tae-keung, president of Open Radio North Korea, broadcasting into North
Korea via short wave for one or two hours a day from Seoul, says informants in
China report hundreds of North Korean women are forced to work in "chat rooms"
selling telephone and Internet sex at high prices.
"They are detained in a room all the time, talking to people in South Korea,"
says Mr. Ha, elected last month to the South Korean national assembly
representing a district in the port city of Pusan.
Why so many women defectors?
The market for women may help explain why such a high proportion of defectors
are female. "Women can sell themselves easily," says Kim Tae-woo, president of
the Korean Institute for National Unification. They sense they can hide within
a forced marriage or brothel, he says, though they may not have quite imagined
what they were getting into when they crossed into China.
"Men are more conspicuous, more active," says Mr. Kim, as they move from job to
job, earning very little for often onerous labor.
Kim Eun-sun offers a more elaborate explanation for the predominance of women
among North Korean defectors.
"Males do not do well under starvation," she believes, reflecting on the death
of her father before she, her sister and mother fled for the first time. "Men
pass away more easily."
Then too, Kim adds, "A lot of men are serving in the North Korean military and
maybe worry more about betraying the regime and changing their ideology."
In the end, the lure of relative freedom trumps the knowledge of the ordeal
women are up against if caught.
Once back in North Korea, they face beatings and humiliation at the hands of
prison guards even if they're not charged with crimes such as selling stolen
goods or spying, both capital offenses.
"Typically, 60 women are held in one room," she says. "When you first are
there, you are stripped naked. They search every part of your body to look for
money. If you want to go to the bathroom, you have to ask permission. You feel
like the North Korean regime has stripped you of humanity."
She predicts the numbers escaping are sure to increase. So far more than 23,000
North Koreans some 80 percent of them women have made it to South Korea,
usually via Mongolia or Southeast Asia via Thailand or Vietnam. "The North
Korean economy is not getting better," she says. "Many more will escape."
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1635144,00.html
Slave Labor in China Sparks Outrage
By Simon Elegant/Beijing Wednesday, June 20, 2007
ENLARGE PHOTO+
Rural workers rescued from an illegal brickyard at the village of Linfen, in
northeast China.
EPA
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The furor in China surrounding the discovery that children and the mentally
handicapped had been kidnapped and sold into slavery is showing no sign of
abating. It seems increasingly likely that the controversy will mark a
significant milestone in the evolution of the country's civil society. Police
said they had rescued more than 500 people from forced labor in brick kilns,
where they were worked 18 hours a day and beaten if they tried to escape. Some
30 arrests have been made and more are expected following a massive police
rescue operation involving 35,000 officers checking 7,500 work places.
The crackdown began after some 400 parents of children who they suspected had
been kidnapped published an anguished letter on the popular Internet forum
Tianya Club on June 7. The letter said they had managed to rescue some 40
children before running into stiff resistance from the local authorities in the
northeastern province of Shanxi, where most of the kilns were situated. The
letter sparked a storm on the Internet, and by June 13 a member of the Standing
Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party expressed concern
about the issue. The police action soon followed.
Populist criticism on the Internet has been at the forefront of the outrage
and may be a harbinger for how grassroots protests are heard by Chinese
authorities in the future. As is often the case, coverage of the incident has
been gently moved off the front pages of Chinese newspapers. Nevertheless, the
subject is still a hot topic on Chinese websites, where much of criticism was
directed at the authorities for failing to intervene to stop the human
trafficking and enslavement of the brick kiln workers. Even in usually docile
official publication like the English language China Daily, the sense of shock
and outrage many Chinese felt on seeing footage and pictures of the dazed,
sometimes bleeding workers being led out of the kilns was evident, even if
relegated to op-ed pages.
"None of the synonyms for 'anger' is strong enough to express the public's
fury," wrote columnist Liu Shinan. "I want to ask: What were local government
officials doing when the children and other workers were tormented?" Liu also
noted that "nobody would believe that such atrocities... are happening in
today's China 58 years after the Communist Party-led revolution put an end to
the old society." Another columnist in the same paper praised the role of a
provincial newspaper reporter in exposing the slave trade and argued that China
needed more investigative journalism.
Such criticism of the authorities and calls for a greater watchdog role by the
tightly controlled media reflects the extent of shock many Chinese feel at the
gruesome revelations. But it also shows the way the party is being forced to
offer some accountability to a citizenry that is increasingly affluent and
unwilling to accept that they have no ability to counter the arbitrary power of
the state. The party leadership recognizes that it must adapt to the changing
attitudes or risk losing control. "There is room to maneuver and the party is
willing to negotiate so long as there is no challenge to its authority," says
Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch.
For both sides, figuring out the limits of the evolving relationship between
China's rulers and its people is clearly a work in process. The slavery
controversy culminates a month that has seen a string of incidents
demonstrating the different ways the authorities choose to handle controversial
issues. For several days in early June, for example, thousands of mostly
middle-class protesters filled the center of the coastal city of Xiamen. They
were calling for the government to cancel plans to build a chemical factory in
a city suburb. Though the authorities didn't attempt to stop the highly unusual
protests, they later called for participants to report to police stations and
officers tracked down a number of demonstrators who had been photographed at
the scene. Yet the government subsequently announced that it would suspend the
project and the State Environmental Protection Administration in Beijing said
the Xiamen government should reconsider.
The other incidents ranged from violent demonstrations against forced abortions
and police brutality to an anti-pollution protest that took place entirely
online. All were fueled because of the Internet, and in particular the
country's 20 million-strong bloggers. Says Bequelin, of the possibility for
change in China: "The role of the Internet is the one aspect of the kiln story
that made me optimistic."
chinaview.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/modern-slavery-in-china-status-of-chinese-worker/
Modern Slavery in China: Status of Chinese Worker
Jonathan Watts in Beijing, The Guardian, UK, Saturday June 16, 2007 -
Beijing (The Guardian)- More than 450 slave workers many of them maimed,
burned and mentally scarred have been rescued from Chinese brick factories in
an investigation into illegal labour camps, it emerged yesterday.
The victims, including children as young as 14, were reportedly abducted or
tricked into labouring at the kilns, where they toiled for 16 to 20 hours a day
for no pay and barely enough food to live.
According to the state media, they were beaten by guards and kept from escaping
by dogs. At least 13 died from overwork and abuse, including a labourer who was
allegedly battered to death with a shovel.
Such cruelty appears to have been commonplace and, until this week, ignored by
local governments intent on boosting economic growth at any cost.
Their plight was revealed by one of the biggest known police operations in the
country's history.
In the past week 35,000 police have inspected 7,500 kilns in the countryside of
Shanxi and Henan provinces, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. They
have arrested 120 suspects and freed 468 slaves, including 109 juveniles.
The results of this probe into the darkest corners of Chinese society have
shocked the nation. Since the first case was revealed on June 8, newspapers and
television broadcasts have been filled with images of the wounded, emaciated
and traumatised slaves. Some were so badly hurt they had to be carried out on
stretchers.
Their living conditions were appalling. According to local media they were
locked for years in a bare room with no bed or stove, allowed out only to work
in the red-hot kilns, from where they would carry heavy, burning loads of newly
fired bricks on their bare backs. Many were badly scalded. Fifteen-minute
meal-breaks consisted only of steamed buns and cold water.
One of the labourers, 17-year-old Zang Wenlong, told a TV station that the kiln
where he worked for three months in Caosheng village in Shanxi was a "prison".
He said he had been abducted from a train station.
The huge police investigation was prompted by 400 parents of missing youths,
who posted a petition on the internet last week, accusing local officials of
ignoring their suspicions.
Yang Aizhi told Xinhua that she went looking for her 16-year-old son in March
after hearing that he might have been forced to work at a brick factory.
In visits to dozens of kilns in Shanxi a province famous for its coal and
heavy industry she found children still in school uniform who were pressed
into hard labour.
President Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao ordered an investigation,
compensation for victims and severe punishment for traffickers and jailers. The
leaders rose to power on a promise to improve the conditions of those left
behind by the country's breakneck development.
But many commentators believe high-profile investigations only scratch the
surface of child labour, trafficking and slavery. With no free media,
independent courts or rival political parties, it is easy for local officials
to conspire with factory owners to ignore labour laws. "If China really gave
the media freedom, you would see stories like this appearing all the time,"
said Qiao Mu, of Beijing Foreign Study University.
Internet chatrooms were buzzing with criticism of the local authorities. "My
feeling is that local officials and police benefit from the brick industry and
that's why these appalling things could happen," said one post. "The boss and
local gangsters are not the only criminals. The courts should also sentence
local officials who were bribed off," said another.
- original report from The Guardian: Enslaved, burned and beaten: police free
450 from Chinese brick factories
Related:
- 400 Chinese Fathers of Child Slaves Seek Help Online, Wed Jun 13, 2007
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