Sex slaves traded

A Vancouver human rights group together with the Nepal Cultural Society of British Columbia is calling on Ottawa to pressure the governments of South Korea and Japan to end a disturbing new trend in human trafficking described as "the latest hell" for young Nepali women.

While India continues to traffic in women from Nepal for its sex trade industry and underground factories, South Korea and Japan are increasingly turning to Nepal for hapless young worker-brides.

In the 1980s, developed Asian nations – primarily Japan and South Korea – reportedly perpetrated the same kind of "modern slavery" on developing Philippines and Vietnam.

"But as (the two victim countries) tightened rules, the trafficking moved to Nepal," says an explosive report in the respected Nepali news magazine, Himal Khabarpatrika.

An organised network of "manpower agencies" flourishes in Nepal, the report said, delivering unsuspecting Nepali brides to South Korean buyers. Calling themselves marriage bureaus, they promise these gullible and uneducated young women an easy fortune, South Korean citizenship within two years and permission to take their family members abroad.

"But when they get to (South) Korea, the girls are sold, resold and sold again," added the report.

The Vancouver-based human rights group, Creative Justice, which champions the cause of vulnerable and oppressed women worldwide, said in a statement released to the Asian Pacific Post that it is "deeply concerned" about the human trafficking that is now "flourishing" from Nepal to South Korea and Japan.

"We urgently call on the governments of these countries to stand up for the most vulnerable members of their societies and address the exploitation that is occurring across their own borders," said spokesman Craig Greenfield.

"We condemn the abuse of women and girls as slaves for profit and cheap labour. We also ask the Canadian government to use all official channels possible to apply pressure to the governments of South Korea and Japan, and to do more to address the economic factors that contribute to trafficking and slavery in Asia."

Shanti Magar, a 21-year-old woman from Baglung district in western Nepal, belongs to the indigenous Magar community.

Keen to go abroad for a better life, two years ago Magar paid $13,000 to a broker in Kathmandu who claimed to arrange marriages between young Nepali women and South Korean men.

But when she reached the land of her dreams, Magar found that she was simply a deal for her 35-year-old husband, who promptly sold her to an elderly farmer looking for an unpaid farm hand who would work night and day.

After oil-rich Gulf nations, South Korea is emerging as the latest hell for Nepali women, the report explained. There have been growing tales of slavery and sexual exploitation by employers there in connivance with recruitment agencies while both the governments turn a blind eye.

In South Korea, farmers, the elderly and the disabled are seeking women from Nepal who will work round the clock for no pay under the guise of marriage. They are being imported as replacements for Korean women who desire careers and seek to move to the capital from their villages.

"These women go for work. If they really get a job it’s not a problem. If they are abused, sent to brothels, then it’s a problem," said Ratna K. Rai, president of the Nepal Cultural Society of British Columbia.

"Obviously the primary reason behind this problem is poverty and lack of education; the recent political unrest in Nepal has exacerbated the problem."

Rai said his group – which represents over 1,000 Nepalese living in B.C. – will be meeting in coming weeks to develop a further "strategy" in response to the report of increased trafficking of Nepali women to South Korea and Japan, an "inhumane" situation he described as "recent" and "unique."

"Being a small Himalayan country, given its geographical nature, Nepal has a lot of natural hardness," Rai explained.

"People living in rural areas have trouble finding something for a living . . . a lot of women are taken out from our country with the promise of a better life, but they don’t know what happens afterward.

Like Magar, Dawa Sherpa, a 22-year-old from Nuwakot district north of Kathmandu, also dreamt of becoming rich by going to South Korea.

Her dream too was brutally shattered when her 32-year-old South Korean husband reportedly sold her to a disabled elderly farmer. When Sherpa tried to run away, she was caught and resold to another man.

"Dawa and Shanti are among many young Nepali women who are so desperate to migrate to (South) Korea and work there that they are ready to marry Korean men, little knowing that they would be sold to farmers willing to buy young women to do household and farm work and provide sex," Himal Khabarpatrika reported.

Diane Matte, coordinator of the Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation based in Montreal, Canada, said the young women of Nepal are no different from women in other parts of the world where poverty puts them in positions of vulnerability.

She said many of these women have been subjected to sexual violence in their own families or communities and, ironically, are seeking an escape from abuse when they leave their home country.

"In some countries the family is complicit with the buyers, they know their daughters are being bought for the sex trade of slave labour," Matte said.

"There are others who are willing to let go of one of their kids to feed the others, or they are coerced or duped into thinking the girls will be brought into the cities and given access to training or an education."

South Korea and Japan, Matte explained, present a "pull factor" or attraction for poor young women: "In many cases, once they arrive, they are trapped in to repaying the debt to their smugglers who are invariably connected to organized crime."

While the South Korean government closely scrutinises visa applications by blue collar workers, a citizen who "marries" a Nepali woman and asks for a visa for his "wife" faces little scrutiny.

Some of the sold wives run away in desperation and become illegal immigrants when their visa expires.

The Nepal government is either ignorant of the plight of its own citizens or is turning a blind eye, Himal Khabarpatrika reported.

"There are now over 300 Nepali ‘brides’ in (South) Korea," the report said. "But the Nepal embassy in Seoul says since the women became Korean citizens after marriage, it is a problem the Korean government should resolve."