Human Traffickers Finding New Ways to Avoid Arrest

In Naypyidaw, cases of human-trafficking has not decreased, with the majority of these cases involving Myanmar women being trafficked to China. In this piece, I focus first on the idea of agency, then bring in the political aspect of the issue. 

The idea of agency and the lack thereof was what struck out to me most in this article. Zaw writes that Chinese men legally marry Myanmar women ‘before selling them back in China’. Later on in the article, he also reveals that ‘Myanmar women married not because they fell in love with Chinese men, but because the Chinese men gave a large dowry to their parents’. From the latter quote, it appears to me as though there was some sort of exchange going on, and hints at some sort of agency on the Myanmar women’s part. This is also supplemented by how Zaw writes that ‘Myanmar women [were] convinced by middlemen that they will get jobs in China’. 

However, what follows these marriages appear to be all force and coercion, with what seems like cluelessness on the Myanmar women’s part. These include ‘forced labor’ and being ‘forced to be surrogate mothers’, among other things. 

Politically, however, none of these can be considered illegal. Firstly, this is because under Myanmar’s laws, Buddhist women can marry ‘foreigners who are also Buddhists’, and under China’s laws, although ‘arranged marriage and marriage for dowry’ are prohibited, ‘those laws do not prescribe penalties for violation’. Additionally, although the police scrutinise and act on who passes the border control, these actions are in vain because people are aware that ‘a Myanmar citizen holding a citizen identity card’ cannot be stopped from entering China. Because these rules cannot be removed or changed overnight, because legislations in general are difficult to alter, it is particularly challenging to control what happens in these situations. Zaw’s article also made it seem like although the police (who are placed in their positions to oversee that laws are being abided by) are aware of these cases of human trafficking but because of the same laws they are trying to protect, they have limited power to restrict these human trafficking cases. 

Some questions I thought of while reading Zaw’s article were: to what extent can human rights activists minimise these situations? and, because there are so many players involved in these cases, who should bear the most responsibility for the hurt and pain that comes with human trafficking? 

Referenced Article:

Zaw, H.N. (2018). Human Traffickers Finding New Ways to Avoid Arrest. Myanmar: The Irrawaddy.

Link: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/human-traffickers-finding-new-ways-avoid-arrest.html