Note Written In Blood Led To Probe Of Sex Slave Rings

by Baradan Kuppusamy

(IPS) KUALA LUMPUR -- Last November, Zu Lian, 22, from a tiny village in China's southern Yunnan province and five colleagues pricked their fingers, dipped a toothpick in the blood and wrote a dramatic note to a Malaysian Chinese politician begging him to intervene and free them from an immigration detention camp.

'We cried everyday and missed our parents and our village in China terribly,' they wrote in the letter to Michael Chong, a member of the ruling National Front coalition, who runs a well-known help center for ordinary people considered to be abused by the state.

'We were hired as maids but on arrival tricked and forced into prostitution. We were held as sex slaves and forced to service numerous clients,' they said. 'Please save us from this ordeal.'

A police raid on the brothel in April ended their seven-month ordeal as sex slaves but another suffering, a ludicrous one, awaited them. They were incarcerated in an immigration detention camp and forgotten while waiting to testify at the trial of their former 'bosses.'

They would have languished in the camp while waiting for the trial scheduled for September had they not written the note in their blood.

The local publicity that followed their plight ensured they were freed from detention last week and put on a flight to China.

But the pimps, gangsters and traffickers who bought Zu Lian and thousands of young girls like her from China and Indonesia usually escape unpunished, revealed the National Human Rights Commission or SUHAKAM in a damning report released last week.

The candid and transparent report highlighted the plight of women like Zu Lian who are trafficked to Malaysia to be abused and exploited as sex slaves -- told of high-paying jobs overseas but eventually ending up in prostitution.

'Trafficking in Women and Children, 2004' details the stories of cruelty and victimization that these young women suffer and is based on extensive interviews conducted at the detention camps.

'The victims were severely punished for overstaying and working without permits but the traffickers and the clients who commit serious and heinous crimes almost always escape unscathed,' said SUHAKAM chairman Abu Talib Othman when releasing the report. 'We urge the government to fulfill its promise to build a just and fair society and prosecute and severely punish the human traffickers.'

The 160-page report also criticizes the government for its lackadaisical attitude.

SUHAKAM said a comprehensive anti-trafficking law to protect the victims of trafficking and targeting the perpetrators was urgently needed. It also recommended that offenders be punished with at least a 30-year imprisonment term.

The report also blames sex tourism for fueling the clandestine trade in young women and urged action against operators of sex tours.

'Trafficking threatens the world community by allowing a safe haven for trafficking syndicates that fund illicit activities and facilitate the spread of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS,' said Abu Talib.

'Trafficked women are victims but the system treats them as illegal immigrants and punishes them as criminals,' he added.

SUHAKAM cited one case last year where 19 girls from China who were forced into prostitution and were punished when arrested, but none of the 261 men at the brothel were touched by the police.

'The country's legal system, police and immigration were all stacked against the trafficked women,' he said.

Currently in Malaysia, there is no single legislation that penalizes offenders involved in various forms of trafficking crimes.

'What we have are piecemeal legislations such as the Penal Code, the Immigration Act and the Child Act,' the SUKHAM report said adding these laws are not anti-trafficking laws per se and not comprehensive enough.

'Most importantly, they do not provide for the protection of victims,' added the report. 'Only the victims are punished and often the traffickers and perpetrators escape the full punishment they deserve.'

The report narrates how during one of visit to a women's prison, SUHAKAM commissioners observed a large number of foreign nationals, mainly young girls, under detention.

SUHAKAM's investigations also reveal that besides those from China and Indonesia, foreign women in the immigration detention centers are also from Burma, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Thailand and Vietnam.

According to Irene Fernandez, director of TENAGANITA -- a organization that helps migrant workers and trafficked women -- a specific anti-trafficking law in Malaysia is long overdue.

'Such legislation would go a long way to protect women victims and treat them with respect and accord them due process and legal protection,' Fernandez told IPS.

She said the victims were already traumatized and placing them in detention camps only worsens their conditions.

'The urgent thing is to create an identification and victim protection system in the prisons by which trafficked persons are treated as victims and are not abused by the authorities,' said SUHAKAM commissioner Raja Abdul Karim.