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3 Chinese men arrested as FIA tightens screws on suspected transnational prostitution ring
[DAWN] Seven more people ─ including three Chinese nationals ─ were tossed in the slammerBook 'im, Mahmoud! on Tuesday as the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) continues its crackdown on a gang allegedly involved in the trafficking of women to China for prostitution. The FIA identified the arrested suspects as Song Chuaoyang (ring leader), Rafique Hussain (translator and manager), Sajid (controller), Guyong Da, Saima Mustafa, Fusing Bu and Saba Jahangir. The raid ‐ which was conducted under the supervision of FIA Anti-Human Trafficking Cell Rawalpindi's Deputy Director Kamran Ali ‐ took place after two women, Taiba Gul and Beenish Rasheed, appeared before the director general of FIA to tip the agency off regarding the gang's activities. The arrests come a week after Human Rights Watch said Pakistain should be alarmed by recent reports of trafficking of women and girls to China. It said the allegations were disturbingly similar to the pattern of trafficking of "brides" to China from at least five other Asian countries. The Chinese embassy in Islamabad has also raised the alarm over illegal, cross-border matchmaking services that are often a front for human trafficking. Last month, it issued a statement condemning reports of the existence of bureaus orchestrating illegal marriages. "China is working together with the Pak government and law enforcement agencies to track these illegal marriage centres," the statement said. The embassy has denied reports that the women were being trafficked for the sale of their organs as "misleading and groundless". Jameel Ahmad, a top FIA official, told Rooters that the agency had busted the gang after it received information about the increasing smuggling of Pak woman to China where they are thrown into prostitution. He said several gangs were believed to be operating, mainly targeting members of the Christian community. Ahmad said the police raid he led on a wedding ceremony last week in Faisalabad ...formerly known as Lyallpur, the third largest metropolis in Pakistain, the second largest in Punjab after Lahore. It is named after some Arab because the Paks didn't have anybody notable of their own to name it after... was a major breakthrough in the investigation. He said a man and a woman from China and a fake priest were arrested at the ceremony where a Christian girl was to be married. "The gang members confessed that they have sent at least 36 Pak girls to China where they are being used for prostitution," he said. The majority were Christians from different districts in Punjab, he said.
In China, demand for foreign brides has mounted, a legacy of the one-child policy that skewed the country’s gender balance toward males. Brides initially came largely from Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Now men are looking further afield, said Mimi Vu, director of advocacy at Pacific Links, which helps trafficked Vietnamese women. "It’s purely supply and demand," she said. "It used to be, ’Is she light-skinned?’ Now it’s like, ’Is she female?'"
Saleem Iqbal, a Christian activist, said he first began to see significant numbers of marriage to Chinese men in October. Since then, an estimated 750 to 1,000 girls have been married off, he said. Some of the grooms are from among the tens of thousands of Chinese in Pakistain working on infrastructure projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a project that has further boosted ties between the two countries in recent years. Other grooms search directly from China through networks. They present themselves as Christian converts, but pastors complicit in the deals don’t ask for any documentation. They pay on average $3,500 to $5,000, including payments to parents, pastors and a broker, said Iqbal, who is also a journalist with a small Christian station, Isaak TV. Iqbal has gone to court to stop marriages and sheltered runaway brides, some as young as 13. Dozens of priests are paid by brokers to find brides for Chinese men, said Augustine, the provincial minorities minister, who is Christian. Many are from the small evangelical churches that have proliferated in Pakistain. Gujranwala, a city north of Lahore, has been a particular target of brokers, with more than 100 local Christian women and girls married off to Chinese in recent months, according to Iqbal. The city has several mainly Christian neighborhoods, largely dirt poor with open sewers running along narrow slum streets. Tucked away in the alleys are numerous evangelical churches, small cement structures unrecognizable except for small crosses outside. Brokers also troll brick kilns, where the poorest work essentially as slaves to pay off debts, and offer to pay off their workers’ debts in exchange for daughters as brides.
Posted by: Fred 2019-05-08 |
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