A map showing Laos. Lao high school girls are being lured into China with promises of rich husbands only to find they have been sold to a brothel or forced into street prostitution, RFA's Lao Service has learned. Chinese involvement in sex trafficking is a new wrinkle for Laos, as Thailand has been the most common destination for young women or girls forced into prostitution. Chinese men typically come to villages looking for poor high school girls who think that all Chinese are rich.
They believe they are going to China or another part of Laos where they will get married, but more often than not they are forced into prostitution. In Xayaburi province's Pak Lai district, one girl sent a message to her parents two months ago saying she was forced to provide sex service at a brothel. The Lao people who spoke to RFA did so on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation in a country where media is tightly controlled.
The Pak Lai district girl, who had finished high school, met a Chinese man who had come to her village, the resident said. The man told her he loved her and then made arrangements with a middle man, the resident added. Not long after they were engaged, the man took her to China where she disappeared, except for an occasional online message.
It's a story that's repeated again and again inside Laos, but it is next to impossible to determine with any accuracy how many times it happens. While human trafficking, particularly for sex, is an illegal activity, making it difficult to track, the uptick in sex trafficking to China has been recognized by the U. State Department. The State Department kept Laos on its Tier 2 Watch List, but the country barely escaped being named a Tier 3 country β the department's lowest ranking.
Laos' efforts to combat sex trafficking have not translated into a way out for impoverished Lao teenage girls. In her village at least eight girls have gone to China. One girl who left for China three months ago has never contacted her worried parents. Laos and China signed an anti-human trafficking cooperation memorandum of understanding in , and the countries have drafted an action plan to combat human trafficking, but local officials have done little to help and may in fact be part of the problem.
