More on the other side of the link.Hien’s story is not unique. He is one of an estimated 3,000 Vietnamese children in forced labour in the UK, used for financial gain by criminal gangs running cannabis factories, nail bars, garment factories, brothels and private homes. Charged up to £25,000 for their passage to the UK, these children collectively owe their traffickers almost £75m.
While there is growing awareness of the use of trafficked Vietnamese people in the booming domestic cannabis trade, child trafficking experts are now warning that the British authorities are unable to keep up with the speed at which UK-based Vietnamese gangs are recruiting and exploiting children for use in other criminal enterprises such as gun-smuggling, crystal meth production and prostitution rings.
“By our calculations there are around 3,000 Vietnamese children in the UK who are being used for profit by criminal gangs,” says Philip Ishola, former head of the UK’s Counter Human Trafficking Bureau.
“The police and the authorities are now aware that trafficked children are being forced to work in cannabis farms but this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Often the same child will be exploited not just in a cannabis farm but also in myriad different ways. This is happening right under our noses and not enough is being done to stop it.”
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Police admit that they are struggling with the speed at which Vietnamese criminal gangs are diversifying and expanding their activities across the England and into Scotland and Northern Ireland. “Right now we are just fighting in the trenches, fighting in the nail bars,” said detective inspector Steven Cartwright, who heads Police Scotland’s human trafficking unit. “It is vital that we that we understand new methods being deployed by the gangs because we need to stop demand at one end or limit their ability to make money at the other.”
Hien’s journey to the UK started when he was taken from his village at the age of five by someone who claimed to be his uncle. As an orphan, he had no option but to do as he was told. He spent five years travelling overland, completely unaware which countries he was going through, from Vietnam before being smuggled across the Channel and taken to a house in London. Here he spent the next three years trapped in domestic servitude, cooking and cleaning for groups of Vietnamese people who would come in and out of the property where he was held.
The men in the house beat him and forced him to drink alcohol until he was sick. Other things happened to him that he still cannot talk about. He was never allowed out of the house and was told that if he tried to escape, the police would arrest him and take him to prison.
During his time in that house, Hien says, many other Vietnamese children were brought in. They told him that they were here to work and to pay off debts for their families back home. They would stay for a few days and then be taken away, and Hien never saw them again. He became homeless after his “uncle” abandoned him. He slept in parks and ate out of bins. He was eventually picked up by a Vietnamese couple, who offered him a place to stay but then forced him to work in cannabis farms in flats in first Manchester and then Scotland.
In his testimony to police, he says he still does not understand exactly what the plants were, although he understands now that they are worth a lot of money. He looked after the plants, using pesticides that made him ill, and only left the flat when he helped transport the leaves to be dried elsewhere. He was locked in, threatened, beaten and completely isolated from the outside world.
“I was never paid any money for working there,” he says. “I did not stay there for money but because I was afraid and I hoped the whole thing would end soon.”
When the police came, they found Hien alone with the plants. He told his story to the police, but was still sent to young offenders’ institution in Scotland, where he spent 10 months on remand, charged with cannabis cultivation. He was released only after the intervention of a crown prosecutor led to him being identified as a victim of trafficking.
Vietnamese children such as Hien are easy pickings for the increasingly sophisticated trafficking gangs operating between the UK and Vietnam. Children make up nearly a quarter of the estimated 13,000 people trafficked into the UK every year, and Vietnamese children are the largest group of children trafficked to the UK. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 30 Vietnamese children arrive illegally in the UK every month, on well-established smuggling routes.
“Children are an increasingly valuable assets to criminal gangs because they are easy to get hold of, easily intimidated and exploited, and easy to keep isolated and unaware of what is really happening around them, which makes it far less likely for them to be able to disclose anything of use to the police,” says Ishola.
When it comes to Vietnamese children, he says, the culture of seeing a child as the “golden egg”, who will be sent to work abroad and provide for their families still prevails. This attitude is exploited by gangs, who deceive families into believing that there is legitimate work in Britain for their children.
“During their journey to the UK, the traffickers keep charging the children more and more money, and by the time they arrive, the pressure to pay back this enormous debt is a key factor in their vulnerability to ending up trapped in forced labour,” he says. “Upon arrival the children are faced with a highly organised system of criminal activity, with methods of control ranging from extreme physical brutality to debt bondage. Before they even arrive, that trap is set for them.”
Members of the Vietnamese diaspora in London told the Observer that they had seen an explosion in child trafficking by criminal gangs operating on the peripheries of their communities in recent years. “Some of these children and victims have told me that it cost them £25,000 to get to the UK,” said one Vietnamese community leader in London, who did not want to be named. “They come with a debt and they are not allowed to leave until the debt is paid. That is slavery and exploitation.”
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Even when a child has been taken out of trafficking and come under the care of a local authority, he or she is likely to return to the control of the traffickers. In 2013, a report by independent thinktank the Centre for Social Justice concluded that 60% of trafficked children in local authority care go missing, nearly a third of them within a week of arrival. Most are never found again. There are increasing reports of children being retrafficked from foster homes or when they have been given asylum status.
“I don’t think we understand the entire enterprise,” says detective inspector Cartwright. “Despite our best intentions I think we’re not offering them anything that would persuade them to stay. Many will get retrafficked because we didn’t offer them a better alternative to what the traffickers are providing.”
Personal thoughts:
1) yes this happens
2) most young illegal vietnamese when arrested/pregant will claim to be 16/17, as it puts them into care for a year or two rather then immediate trial
3) with aslyum or refugee status being incredibly insecure, most of these kids will disappear again, rather then be returned back to Vietnam - see 5
4) most of the cases all come from the same city - Haiphong, "the crime capital of vietnam". Some of them are on the run, others on the make, and some are just damaged goods
5) even for kids that get some right to stay, it's tempting to sink back into nail-bar culture, work 16 days officially, get supporting benefits, work another 40 hours cash in hand for half minimum wage. It's shitty, but it's known, its reliable, it dosen't mean having to learn english, and while shitty no worse then other wage slave jobs available to someone with no education
6) Get them out of the culture, forcibly or geographically, and some will excel. This ranges from a uneducated single mother with a kid with severe health problems teaching herself local english in a few months, up to and including sorting herself out a library card so she can get childrens books to practice reading. On the other hand, a 17 year old with the right to stay who's doing really well at school and was on track to be a doctor is now going to drop out and work in a nailbar because it seems easier, and he doesn't want to leave his girlfriend, who may need to disappear in a few months to avoid an early morning arrest and being stuck on a plane to Haiphong.
7) Hearsay is that many will get themselves out of the cannabis racket once they hit 30 and want to settle down and go legit. Their kids will do well at school and go on to be professionals.
