Summary

Seng Moon’s family fled fighting in Myanmar’s Kachin State in 2011 and wound up struggling to survive in a camp for internally displaced people. In 2014, when Seng Moon was 16 and attending fifth grade, her sister-in-law said she knew of a job as a cook in China’s neighboring Yunnan province. Seng Moon did not want to go, but the promised wage was far more than she could make living in the IDP camp, so her family decided she shouldn’t pass it up.

In the car, Seng Moon’s sister-in-law gave her something she said prevented car sickness. Seng Moon fell asleep immediately. “When I woke up my hands were tied behind my back,” she said. “I cried and shouted and asked for help.” By then, Seng Moon was in China, where her sister-in-law left her with a Chinese family. After several months her sister-in-law returned and told her, “Now you have to get married to a Chinese man,” and took her to another house. Said Seng Moon:

My sister-in-law left me at the home. …The family took me to a room. In that room I was tied up again. …They locked the door—for one or two months.… Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me…After two months, they dragged me out of the room. The father of the Chinese man said, “Here is your husband. Now you are a married couple. Be nice to each other and build a happy family.”

Her “husband” continued to be abusive. Seven months later, Seng Moon was pregnant. The baby was a boy; after he was born Seng Moon asked to go home. The husband replied: “No one plans to stop you. If you want to go back home, you can. But you can’t take my baby.”

Seng Moon wanted to escape with her son. Over two years after being trafficked to China, she met a Kachin woman in the market who gave her 1,000 yuan (US$159) to help her return to Myanmar. Later, a Chinese woman helped her cross the border. When Human Rights Watch interviewed Seng Moon, she was back in the IDP camp, hiding. “I’m afraid,” she said, that “the Chinese family will try to find me.”

Seng Moon’s story is typical of the 37 trafficking survivors interviewed for this report. The most unusual part of her story is that she escaped with her child; many other survivors were forced to leave children behind. All the survivors we interviewed were trafficked from, and managed to return to, Myanmar’s Kachin State or the northern part of neighboring Shan State. Most were from families affected by fighting in the area between Myanmar government forces and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). While the conflict dates to the independence of the Union of Burma in 1948, the end of a 17-year ceasefire in 2011 resulted in an escalation of hostilities that has caused the mass displacement of over 100,000 Kachin and other ethnic minorities.

The conflict has left many people in Kachin and northern Shan States struggling to survive. Their desperation is heightened because the Myanmar government has largely blocked humanitarian aid to displaced people, especially in areas controlled by the KIO. Displaced people living in camps receive food, but often not enough to avoid hunger. For example, one camp administrator explained that every 45 days families receive a distribution equal to two cups of rice per family member per day, plus about $6 per person in cash to cover all other expenses for the 45 days—such as oil, salt, beans, and other food items. People outside the camps also struggle to cope with lack of employment opportunities, low wages, barriers to education, and economic and social devastation resulting from decades of conflict.

Women often become the sole breadwinners for their families, as many men are taking part in the armed conflict. Desperate to support their families but with few opportunities to do so, many feel they have no choice but to seek work in China. Wages are higher there, even when working illegally, and jobs are plentiful. The border is nearby, and easy to pass through, with or without travel documents.

Traffickers prey on their desperation. There is no system of formal employment recruitment for work in China in Kachin and northern Shan States, but there are networks of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives, offering women and girls relatively lucrative jobs on the other side of the border. Some of these jobs are real. But frequently they are enticements by traffickers planning to sell women and girls as “brides” into a life of sexual slavery.

There is a woman shortage on the other side of the border. The percentage of the population of China who are women has fallen every year since 1987. The gender gap among the population age 15 to 29 is increasing and is continuing to rise. Researchers estimate that there are 30 to 40 million “missing women” in China—women who should be alive today, but are not due to factors including a preference for boys that leads to sex-selective abortion, infanticide, abandonment of babies, and neglect in providing girls with nutrition and medical assistance, many of which have been exacerbated by the “one-child policy” China had in place from 1979 to 2015 and China’s continuing restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.

The gender imbalance is leaving many Chinese men without wives. By 2030, projections suggest that 25 percent of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have married. Some families are willing to buy a trafficked bride from Myanmar and traffickers are eagerly cashing in.

It is difficult to estimate the total number of women and girls being trafficked from Myanmar to China for sale as brides. The Myanmar Human Rights Commission said data provided to them by immigration authorities showed that 226 women were trafficked to China in 2017. The Myanmar Department of Social Welfare provides assistance to between 100 and 200 female trafficking victims returned from China each year.

But these figures likely represent only a small proportion of the total number of cases. No reliable statistics on the total number exist on either side of the border. Gathering accurate statistics would be difficult, as many cases of missing women are never reported, many trafficked women and girls are never found, and many women and girls who escape may keep their experience secret due to stigma. Lack of effective responses by law enforcement and lack of services for survivors discourage people from coming forward. Even when victims and families seek help it is not clear that any institution—on either side of the border—is systematically tabulating even the number of reported cases.

The trafficking survivors interviewed for this report were sold for between the equivalent of US$3,000 and $13,000. The families that bought them occasionally seemed to believe that their payment was a dowry for a willing bride, but many clearly knew they were participating in trafficking. Even those who seemed surprised rarely released the woman or girl they had purchased.

Traffickers used deceit to deliver women into sexual slavery. Most of the women and girls interviewed for this report were recruited by someone they knew and trusted. Of the 37 survivors interviewed, 15 said they were recruited by friends and 12 by an acquaintance. One woman was sold by a friend from her bible school. Another was recruited by a 13-year-old girl she knew. Another 6 were recruited and sold by their own relatives.

Some women and girls said they were drugged on the way and woke up in a locked room. Others were told, after crossing the border, that the job they were promised was no longer available, but another job was, several days’ journey away. Unable to communicate due to language barriers, and with no money to make their way home, many women and girls felt no option but to stay with the person escorting them, even in the face of growing unease.

Once delivered to their purchasers, the reality of having been trafficked became clear. Most interviewees were initially locked in a room by the family that bought them and raped frequently as the family sought to make them pregnant. The survivors said that the families that bought them often seemed more interested in having a baby than a “bride.” Many trafficked women and girls tacitly understood—and some were explicitly told—that once they had a baby they were free to go, as long as they left the child or children behind. A few were subjected to what they believed were forced fertility treatments.

Some trafficked “brides” suffered ongoing physical and emotional abuse, in addition to sexual slavery. Others were subjected to forced labor, in the home or in the fields belonging to the family holding them captive.

The trafficked women and girls interviewed said they watched for a chance to escape. Some waited weeks or months; many waited years. A few ran to and were helped by the Chinese police. Most made their own escape, begging strangers for help, searching desperately for someone they could communicate with in a language they understood. Eight were forced to leave behind children fathered by their buyers, often a source of great pain to them.

Back in Myanmar they grappled with trauma and, in some cases, medical complications from the abuse they had suffered. The armed conflict and displacement continued in Myanmar, so they faced the same financial desperation that drove them to China in the first place. Some sought help in seeking justice and trying to recover custody of or access to their children. All struggled in an environment where they faced stigma from their communities and sometimes their families, and where very few services existed to help them recover from their ordeal.

Law enforcement officers on both sides of the border–including Myanmar authorities, Chinese authorities, and the KIO—made little effort to recover trafficked women and girls. Families seeking police help to find a missing daughter, sister or wife were turned away repeatedly, and often told that they would have to pay if they wanted police to act.

When women and girls escaped and ran to the Chinese police, they were sometimes jailed for immigration violations rather than being treated as crime victims. Repatriation of victims to Myanmar was done in a chaotic manner that sometimes left survivors stranded or abruptly dumped at the border.

Many survivors feared telling their stories, but those who sought justice rarely received it, as the people who trafficked them remained free, often continuing their trafficking activities. When Myanmar authorities did make arrests, they usually targeted only the initial brokers in Myanmar and not the rest of the networks in China. Police in China almost never to our knowledge arrested people that knowingly bought trafficked “brides” and abused them. Victims were sometimes discouraged by family and friends from seeking justice. In the KIO-controlled areas, traffickers were sometimes punished with nothing more than a reprimand. The police in Myanmar, China and KIO-controlled areas made little effort to coordinate with each other or make these cases a priority.

The women and girls who left children in China had no prospect of getting their children back. Some were so desperate to be with their children that they chose to go back to the families that had held them as slaves. Human Rights Watch was aware of one woman who tried to go back, but she was turned away by Chinese immigration officials, and has never seen her child again.

The armed conflict in Kachin and northern Shan States has largely escaped international attention, despite 2018 findings by the United Nations that the Myanmar military has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity there. The atrocities against the Rohingya people in Rakhine State deservedly seized headlines, but the women and girls of Kachin and northern Shan States remain largely invisible victims. Too many of them are trapped—by the collision of war and displacement in Myanmar and the fallout from the destructive denial of women’s reproductive rights in China—in lives of unspeakable abuse.

Key Recommendations

Myanmar and China should:

Improve implementation of agreements to provide effective and coordinated anti-trafficking prevention, law enforcement, and assistance to victims.

Collaborate in developing formalized—and government monitored—recruitment pathways for people from Myanmar, including Kachin and northern Shan States, to legally obtain employment in China and safely travel there.

Collaborate in strengthening efforts at and near the border to raise awareness of the risk of trafficking, detect trafficking, assist victims and potential victims, and maintain a shared watchlist of suspected traffickers.

Myanmar and the KIO should:

Develop and implement effective public awareness campaigns to inform people in high-risk areas, such as IDP camps, and those crossing the border or applying for travel documents, of the risk of trafficking and measures to protect themselves.

Provide comprehensive services to trafficking survivors.

China should:

End the practice of jailing trafficking survivors for immigration violations and assist their return to Myanmar. Facilitate their safe return to China to assist in investigation and prosecution of crimes committed against them.

International donors and organizations should:

Urge the Myanmar and Chinese governments and the KIO to do more to tackle bride trafficking.

Enhance services for trafficking victims by supporting nongovernmental organizations experienced in this work in both government and KIO-controlled areas.

Full recommendations can be found at the end of the report.

Methodology

This report is primarily based on interviews with 73 people, including 37 ethnic Kachin women and girls who escaped back to Myanmar after being trafficked and sold as “brides” in China. Some survivors escaped only weeks before we interviewed them. Twenty-four of the 37 were trafficked in 2010 or later; the most recent cases involved trafficking in 2016 and 2017. An additional 12 interviewees were trafficked between 2002 and 2009. The earliest trafficking experience described by a survivor we interviewed occurred in 1986. Our research in Myanmar took place during eight months from May 2016 through December 2018.

Twenty-two of the survivors interviewed had been held in China for a year or longer; 11 were held for three years or longer. The longest time in captivity was nine years. Twelve interviewees were under age 18 when they were trafficked; the youngest was 14. The others were ages 18 to 46. Two interviewees were trafficked twice; for figures in this report, we have used data from the most recent trafficking incident.

Many survivors told us they concealed their experience from their community and sometimes from their families. To protect their privacy, all names of survivors and family members in this report are pseudonyms, and we have omitted details that might make them identifiable.

Interviews with survivors were conducted in private, through an interpreter, in the Kachin language. They were conducted with only the interviewee, one or two researchers and an interpreter present, with the exception of a survivor who wanted her mother present. Human Rights Watch sought to avoid re-traumatization by using specialized methods for interviewing survivors of trauma. One interview with a survivor was conducted by phone; all other survivor and family interviews were conducted in person.

We advised all prospective interviewees of the purpose of this research and how the information would be used. They were advised that they could refuse to participate, to decline to answer any question or discuss any topic, and to end the interview at any time. Interviewees did not receive any compensation. Human Rights Watch paid for the costs in situations where interviewees travelled or incurred phone charges in order to be interviewed.

We also conducted interviews with three families of women believed or known to have been trafficked, and 33 interviews in Myanmar with individuals who included representatives of the Myanmar Ministry of Social Welfare, the Myanmar Human Rights Commission, the Kachin Independence Organization, the Kachin Women’s Association, and UN and other international organizations, as well as police, lawyers, foreign diplomats, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) staff members. These interviews were conducted in English or in Kachin or Burmese with an interpreter.

Human Rights Watch requested, by phone and email, an opportunity to interview the Myanmar police and the Ministry of Home Affairs but did not receive a response. We requested data from the Myanmar police, through the Ministry of Social Welfare, which agreed to convey the request. The Ministry of Social Welfare provided some of the data Human Rights Watch requested regarding that ministry’s own work but did not provide the requested data regarding police activities.

In January 2019 we wrote to China’s minister of public security, with copies to the president of the All-Women’s Federation of China and the head of public security for Yunnan Province. Our letter, included as annex I, outlined the findings of this report and requested a response and data from the Chinese government. As of the date of publication, we had not received a response.

At the time of the research, the exchange rates were 1,332 Myanmar kyat = US$1 and 6.28 Chinese yuan = US$1. We have used these rates for conversions in the text.

Terminology

We use the term “trafficking” as defined by the UN Trafficking Protocol:

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payment or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

Interviewees for this report often referred to people involved in trafficking them as “recruiters” and “brokers” as well as traffickers. Our research suggests that most of these individuals knowingly participated in trafficking.

Almost none of the trafficking survivors we interviewed legally married the man they were sold to, but they were typically referred to by traffickers and the families who bought them as “wives,” and often referred to themselves this way. We have placed the terms bride, husband, and related terms in quotation marks in some places, to emphasize that these terms do not describe the legal nature of the relationship, but in other places left them without quotation marks for ease of reading and to respect interviewees’ voices.

Background

The accounts of trafficking survivors highlight the crisis for women and girls in Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan States. The long-running and recently escalated conflict in the region has created financial desperation for many ethnic Kachin families, including those displaced since 2011 by the fighting, driving many to seek work in China. On the China side, the “one-child policy” coupled with a longstanding preference for boys helped create a large and growing shortage of women for marriage and motherhood. A porous border and lack of response by law enforcement agencies on both sides created an environment in which traffickers flourish, abducting Kachin women and girls and selling them in China as “brides” with near impunity.

War, displacement, and desperation in Myanmar

Political and ethnic disputes in Myanmar, date back before independence from Great Britain in 1948, and armed conflicts between the national government and ethnic armed groups have occurred throughout Myanmar’s statehood. While ceasefire agreements are now in effect in most of the country’s ethnic areas, several conflicts persist, exacerbated by nearly 50 years of abusive military rule, including in Kachin State, where the Kachin have been living with armed conflict for at least 40 of the last 57 years. The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), headquartered in Laiza, governs considerable swathes of territory, acting as a parallel state with departments of health, education, justice, and relief and development, among other civic programs. Its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), has become one of Myanmar’s largest non-state ethnic armed groups. Several other ethnic armed groups are also active in Kachin and northern Shan States.

Kachin and northern Shan States have been a fierce battleground. The Myanmar armed forces (officially known as the Tatmadaw) and the KIA have committed serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, the laws of war. The Tatmadaw has committed attacks on civilians and their villages, summary executions, rape, torture, forced portering, and destruction of property. It has forcibly relocated large numbers of Kachin civilians to government-controlled territory. The KIA has engaged in forced recruitment and use of child soldiers. Many of these abuses continue to the present.

A 2018 UN fact-finding mission found the Tatmadaw committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kachin and Shan States (as well as serious crimes in Rakhine State in western Myanmar). These included: murder; imprisonment; enforced disappearance; torture; rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence; persecution; and enslavement. The fact-finding mission also found evidence of international humanitarian law violations and human rights abuses by ethnic armed groups, including “abduction and detention, ill-treatment and destruction or appropriation of civilian land and property. There have been instances where these groups…have failed to take precautionary measures to protect civilians in attacks and forcibly recruited adults and children.”

The conflict has caused long-term mass displacement. By 1994, an estimated 84,000 Kachin had been displaced, either internally or became refugees in China and India. A 1994 ceasefire reduced the fighting and recognized KIO political autonomy over part of Kachin State. But in 2008, Myanmar's military government announced that all armed groups operating under ceasefire agreements would have to submit to the direct control of the Myanmar army. The KIO rejected the order and in 2009 began recruiting additional forces. A series of incidents in 2010 escalated tensions and in June 2011 the Tatmadaw began a major offensive in Kachin State, ending the 17-year ceasefire with the KIA.

The 2011 offensive and subsequent counter-insurgency operations since then were brutally executed: the Myanmar army attacked Kachin villages, razed homes, pillaged properties, and forced the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Soldiers threatened and tortured civilians during interrogations and raped women. The army used antipersonnel mines and conscripted laborers, including children as young as 14, on the front lines.

Since 2016, the conflict has escalated, with thousands of additional people displaced. The military’s offensive in early 2018 left many civilians trapped, displaced, and without adequate humanitarian assistance.

As of September 2018, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported there were 98,000 internally displaced people housed in 139 sites in Kachin State, 75 percent of them women and children. In Shan State, there were 8,500 IDPs, 77 percent of them women and children, located in 31 sites, all in the northern part of the state. Refugees have also fled into China, where they experienced lack of adequate shelter, food, potable water, sanitation, basic health care and education. Some refugees have been refused entry at China’s border, while local Chinese officials, allegedly on the orders of central authorities, forced others back to conflict areas in Myanmar.

A “women shortage” in China

China has a large and growing gap between the numbers of women and men, driven by gender discrimination and exacerbated by the “one-child policy” imposed by the government from 1979 to 2015. This gap has created a severe “bride shortage” among the age group most likely to be looking for a spouse. The sex ratio cannot be determined with precision because of a lack of information, as well as other factors including families’ concealment of births in an effort to circumvent the one-child policy. But according to the Chinese government’s 2000 census, in the period from 1996 to 2000 over 120 boys were born for every 100 girls—a group that would now be 19 to 23-years-old. According to the World Health Organization, a normal ratio at birth is about 105 men to 100 women.

World Bank data shows the percentage of China’s population who are female has fallen every year since 1987. As China’s population is growing, any imbalance in the gender ratio at birth will cause the disparity in the number of women versus men to continue to widen. Researchers estimate that there are 30 to 40 million “missing women” in China—women who should be alive today, but are not, due to factors related to preferences for boys including sex-selective abortion, infanticide, abandonment of babies, and neglect in providing girls nutrition and medical assistance.

This sex imbalance has obvious implications for marriage opportunities among Chinese men. The gender gap within the age range where people are most likely to marry is continuing to rise. The minimum legal age of marriage in China is 20 for women and 22 for men, and the average age at first marriage in 26 years old. In the 20 to 39 years-old age range there are already 17 million more men than women. By 2030, that gap will grow to over 22 million. By 2030, projections suggest that 25 percent of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have married.

Given this imbalance, women choosing to marry and their families may be more selective about potential grooms, opting against men who are poorer and less educated. The families that bought the women and girls interviewed for this report tended to be relatively poor and rural, and often agricultural workers.

How many “brides” are trafficked from Myanmar to China?

It is very difficult to estimate the total number of women and girls being trafficked from Myanmar to China for sale as “brides.” The figures available almost certainly dramatically undercount the number of women and girls who are being trafficked. A Myanmar government official acknowledged this, telling Human Rights Watch, “We have very little information” about total numbers. She said the government has data on the number of people who contact a government information center about the issue, but that figure is “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Government oversight of conflict-affected areas of Myanmar is very weak, and KIO-controlled areas are inaccessible to government officials and police. It is likely that trafficking is most prevalent in the communities closest to the border—and these are the areas in which most KIO-controlled areas and KIO-run IDP camps are located. These factors make it inevitable that figures regarding the numbers of cases handled by the government will provide only a very partial window into the scale of the problem.

Some data is available regarding the number of cases handled by the Myanmar government. In August 2018, the Myanmar anti-trafficking police reported that in the first seven months of 2018, they handled 130 trafficking cases, 96 of which involved women sold into forced marriage in China. The locations with the highest number of cases, in order were: equal numbers in Yangon region and Shan State, followed by Mandalay Region, and the Kachin State. A total of 48 cases came from Shan and Kachin States. In 2015, the Myanmar government reported to the UN that between 2008 and 2013, the government had imposed punishment in 820 trafficking cases, and of those cases 534 were forced marriage cases and 599 involved trafficking to China.

The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) said data provided to them by immigration authorities showed that 226 women were trafficked to China in 2017. The Myanmar Department of Social Welfare provided the following table and data to Human Rights Watch, in response to a request for the “number of female trafficking victims repatriated to Myanmar from China for each year from 2010 through 2017”:

Sr No Year Number Reaccepted Total Below 18 years Above 18 years 1 2010 29 135 164 2 2011 16 122 138 3 2012 26 127 153 4 2013 17 122 139 5 2014 15 119 134 6 2015 18 82 100 7 2016 25 81 106 8 2017 39 142 181 Total 185 930 1115

These figures almost certainly represent only a small proportion of the total number of women and girls trafficked even from government-controlled areas to China as “brides.” No reliable statistics on the total number exist and gathering such statistics accurately is difficult, as many cases are never reported, many trafficked women and girls are never found, and many women and girls keep their experience secret due to fear of stigma in the communities they return to in Myanmar. The lack of effective responses by law enforcement and lack of services for survivors and families discourage people from coming forward. Even when victims and families seek help it is not clear that any institution—on either side of the border—is systematically capturing the number of reported cases.

It is also difficult to quantify the problem from the China side of the border. The UN Action for Cooperation Against Trafficking in Persons (UN-ACT) writes in reference to China:

The clandestine nature of these [trafficking] crimes and the fact that only a small minority of cases are reported to the police as incidences of trafficking make it difficult to understand the true scale of China’s trafficking problem.… Anti-trafficking responses are limited by: the current limited legal definition of human trafficking; the lack of primary research and data collection; the nascent victim protection services available; and the limited understanding of the broader trafficking patterns.

Human Rights Watch’s research suggests the number of women and girls being trafficked is substantial and possibly growing. An activist working on trafficking cases in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, where the population of the township is about 307,000, estimated that 28 to 35 women and girls are trafficked each year from the city. A KIO official said from 2000 through 2009 the KIO dealt with 20 to 30 cases of bride trafficking each year in the Laiza area bordering China, but that number had increased due to escalating conflict and displacement.

A worker with the KIO-affiliated Kachin Women’s Association (KWA), which assists trafficking victims, said in four townships in northern Shan State that border China, about 12 or 13 bride trafficking victims seek help from the KWA each year. She estimated another 30 to 40 cases occur in the area in which victims do not seek help. “The number has been increasing…It has been increasing every year,” she said, adding that in 2011 they saw only two to three cases a year. She said she knew of traffickers taking groups of six or seven women and girls at a time.

Another KWA worker, in eastern Kachin State, said in 2017 they helped recover four trafficked girls. They received requests for help from 10 more victims but were unable to assist due to lack of resources. “Sometimes we hear about trafficking cases, but we have no money or top up cards [for mobile phones], so we just feel sad and cry,” she said.

Most interviewees for this report knew other victims. Two survivors had sisters who had also been trafficked as brides. Two interviewees were mother and daughter, trafficked several years apart. Five interviewees were trafficked with a friend or relative. Several more were trafficked with strangers, including a 16-year-old who was transported in a group with five other women and girls from Kachin State. One woman escaped back to Myanmar and married a man whose first wife had been trafficked.

Journeys of trafficked “brides” between Myanmar and China

“Four days later we arrived in Fugan. …Then I was locked up in the room. I was not allowed to use the phone. For a week I cried. I ate nothing. All I could do was pray. After that I realized that I had no way to choose anymore…I was there for four years.”—Nang Shayi, trafficked at 18, had two children in China. She escaped with her daughter but was forced to leave her son behind.

Desperation in Kachin and northern Shan States

The renewed fighting in Kachin and northern Shan States has left many people struggling from day to day to survive. Displaced people living in IDP camps receive rations, but often not enough to avoid hunger.

An IDP camp administrator from a nongovernment-controlled area said that in his camp, families receive every 45 days a distribution of rice equal to two cups of rice per person per day, plus 7,500 kyat per person (US $5.63) in cash to meet all other expenses for the 45 days—such as oil, salt, beans, and other food items. In other camps, food distribution is sometimes per family, not per individual, leaving people with large families particularly short of food.

Despair among long-term displaced people has also contributed to mental health problems and substance use. People living outside the camps also struggle to cope with the lack of employment opportunities, low wages, barriers to education, and the economic and social devastation created by decades of conflict.

Women are often the wage earners for their families, as many men are engaged in the conflict. “There is no education. No one has support,” a KWA worker said. “Those living in the camps are without money or anything. Not being able to make ends meet, it is women and girls who pay the price.”

Displacement in camps may make women and girls more accessible to traffickers. A Kachin activist said: “Normally the target is the family who are facing financial crisis. In the previous time, it was like this. But now the [brokers] are targeting the IDP camps. It’s a better place to gather people. They are in one space. Most of the brokers are involved as relatives or acquaintances.” A KWA worker, herself a displaced person, explained the connection between trafficking and the conflict:

Suddenly, in 2011, fighting broke out. We had to run away and escape for our lives. In the past we just left for a short time…We thought once the Myanmar army stopped firing we could go back. But we never could go back—and slowly we had to move to the border area, because the Myanmar army targeted the civilian population. …Then Chinese traffickers started coming here to persuade the civilians. … [Young women] thought they would take any risk if it would help their family, help their younger siblings.

Displacement and economic desperation

Many interviewees were directly affected by the armed conflict. Several had relatives killed or injured in the fighting. Many more described losing their homes, livelihoods and possessions and being displaced. Ja Tawng, trafficked in 2015, said:

[W]e lost everything we had. We had to leave everything when we ran from our village. I became separated from my husband. I stayed in the jungle and hid there with my babies. When my babies became hungry, I had to check the conditions outside the jungle. If it seemed stable, I would sneak out and go to the sugarcane field to find food for them.

Ja Tawng found her husband and they settled in an abandoned house that seemed safe:

But after staying there for a while, the jet fighters came. They shot everything they could see. They shot for four or five days and they started from the early morning from seven or eight a.m. They shot villagers and whomever they saw. They didn’t care. All the villagers had to run and hide. All the villagers fled. The kids had to hide under rocks. My children and I hid in banana fields. The road was very muddy, so the kids cried out a lot. They lost their shoes in the muddy road. The jet fighters’ missiles almost hit us. But we got away.

The family moved from place to place seeking safety. After several weeks of this, a friend said she could get Ja Tawng work in China in a sugarcane field. Ja Tawng went, bringing her two children; they were trafficked twice together.

With displacement came loss of livelihoods. “The village was in the middle of the fighting,” said Tsin Tsin, describing events in 2011. “There was shelling from both sides…we just ran with nothing. They burned all the houses.” The stayed with relatives for a month and then found a tent where they remained for two years. Tsin Tsin had run a grocery store in the village but lost her livelihood when the family was displaced. Desperate to get her two children back in school, she gratefully accepted when another displaced woman offered work on a banana farm in China. The woman sold her.

Once displaced, families cannot return, including because of the widespread presence of landmines on the Myanmar side of the border, and work is hard to find for people living in camps. Seng Ja Ngai, a mother of five, was trafficked in 2014, at age 35:

In 2011, the fighting came. The military burned the house and destroyed everything we owned. When the civil war came to our village, I assumed it would not last too long. That’s why we carried as much as we could, leaving everything else behind. Since then we never dared to go back…From the KIO side, they make some mines, and maybe the military also laid mines for a trap. So, no one can guarantee our security going back…We don’t know how long the civil war will go on.

Her family struggled in the IDP camp. “We had no car or motorbike, so we could not go out anywhere. The NGO gave us rations, but it was not enough for us because I have five children.” Seng Ja Ngai said she was trapped—needing transportation to find work, needing work to pay for transportation. The only work she could find was day labor paving a road near the camp, but at 50 yuan per day ($8), it left her still struggling to survive day to day. A friend offered her work in China and sold her.

Many survivors interviewed for this report were the primary wage earners for their families. Moon Ja was trafficked in 2013 at age 27. Her family was displaced to a camp in 2011:

I was the breadwinner of my family—I took care of my mother and I had to look after her. So, to live in the IDP camp—the place is too small, and everything is difficult. So, one of my friends told me, “In China there are jobs and good salaries. Every month you can get 4,000 to 5,000 yuan [$640 to $800].”

The IDP camps can be very crowded. Because of lack of space, camps often restrict how long a person can be away without losing their place. This heightens vulnerability by pressuring families to split up. Khawng Shawng and her husband decided one of them would have to go to China, while the other stayed behind to keep their space. When a Chinese couple came to the camp saying they needed a female cook for their construction company and promising wages of 1,500 yuan a month ($240), Khawng Shawng packed her things and left with them within two hours. They then sold her for 20,000 yuan ($3,200).

In June 2018, the Myanmar Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement announced plans to close IDP camps in Kachin, Karen, Shan, and Rakhine States. The ministry said it was developing a strategy for closing the camps and would begin closures after the strategy was adopted. The announcement provoked fear among many displaced people who worried that they would be forced out with nowhere to go.

In addition to the conflict and difficult economic situation in Kachin and northern Shan States, some trafficking survivors interviewed had faced additional problems. Several were orphans, grew up in abusive homes, or had faced domestic violence or abandonment. These factors left some more vulnerable to trafficking.

Ja Htoi Tsawm travelled to China often to do agricultural work for a few weeks or months at a time to support her four children after her husband, a drug user, abandoned the family. On a trip there in 2013, at age 29, she was trafficked by a woman she befriended as they worked together in a sugarcane field. She was held captive for two years. While she was gone, her in-laws sold her house and took the money. They put one of her children in an orphanage, and another of her children died while she was away.

School costs and other barriers to education

Barriers to education drive some girls to China. According to the United Nations, nearly one-third of Myanmar’s children are not enrolled in school and only 16 percent of emergency-affected adolescents in Kachin and Shan States are currently attending post-primary education, in large part due to the lack of access to free secondary education within IDP camps. In families short on money, prohibitive school fees and costs combined with discriminatory gender roles may mean boys’ education is prioritized over girls. Tenth and eleventh grades are especially expensive, driving many girls out. “There’s no money to continue their education, so girls leave and go to China,” a KWA worker said.

“The root cause [of trafficking] is the political situation,” said Khawng Shawng, 39, and a mother of two, who was trafficked in 2011. Khawng Shawng’s children were ages 5 and 10 months at the time of the interview. Her five-year-old daughter had been attending kindergarten in the IDP camp where the family lived. “But in December [2017] the Myanmar army shelled the camp,” Khawng Shawng said. “School was closed because of the shelling.” She added:

Because of politics there is no peace in our country. People cannot do their own development. When I was young my family was rich, and we didn’t have to worry. But one day the Myanmar army came, and we lost everything. My parents really wanted us to be educated but we didn’t have the chance because of the conflict…It’s the same now—we want to educate our children, but we can’t. I hope for a democratic government that can develop the country.

Seng Ja Htoi said she left school and went to China, where she was trafficked, because while as an IDP she was eligible to study for free through ninth grade, she was unable to pay 1,300,000 kyat ($980) for the tuition necessary to pass the tenth-grade exam. “This is why most Kachin young people leave education after grade 10,” she explained.

Several girls went to China seeking money for education. “At that time, it was the summer holiday, so I assumed that if I worked for a few months then I could make more money and pay my school fee,” said Nang Shayi, trafficked at age 18. “In our family it was a hard time. That’s why I decided to go to China.” Nang Shayi went with a woman from the same village who was known and trusted by her family. The woman sold Nang Shayi for 20,000 yuan ($3,200), and she was held for four years.

Several survivors interviewed were the eldest children in their family and expected to help support their families financially including by paying for younger siblings to study. Pan Pan Tsawm was one of seven children in a family living in an IDP camp. “I am the eldest sibling, so I wanted to earn money for them, so I decided to go to China,” she said. “My mother accepted the idea and she trusted my friend and thought I could believe her and thought that if I could support my siblings this would be a good way.” She was 15 when her friend drugged and sold her. She was held for three years and left behind a daughter when she escaped.

The lure of employment or a better life in China

On the China side of the border with Kachin and northern Shan States, there appears to be a demand for workers from Myanmar in sectors including agriculture and services. The shared ethnic identity of some groups in China and Myanmar creates greater comfort for some of Myanmar’s ethnic minority citizens in travelling to China, and there is a significant flow of workers, many female, travelling from Myanmar to China for legitimate employment opportunities which—even for people without legal authorization to work—are more readily available, and pay better, than in Kachin or northern Shan States.

Some survivors interviewed worked in China prior to being trafficked, and several worked there after being trafficked. Some workers cross the border daily; others go for weeks or months at a time, when opportunities arise and economic need dictates.

Most interviewees were recruited by people promising lucrative work in China. “I believed her and thought I was so lucky,” Seng Ja Ban said, about the woman who offered to pay her travel and food expenses on the way to a restaurant job across the border. The woman sold Seng Ja Ban, who was held for five years before escaping without her child.

A 13-year-old girl recruited Seng Ja Aung at age 20. The girl, who was Chinese, often visited Seng Ja Aung’s IDP camp; her mother and stepfather lived there. She offered to find Seng Ja Aung work. “I imagined I could get a good job working in some kind of shop,” Seng Ja Aung said. “She just said there are many jobs—in the shop, in another shop, in a restaurant…[She] arranged everything from the camp to get to China. On the way, we had to take a motorbike, we had to take cars…all arranged by that girl.” The girl delivered Seng Ja Aung to a man who tried to sell her. Seng Ja Aung escaped before being sold.

False promises, often from relatives and friends

Survivors interviewed were usually recruited by someone they trusted. Six said they were sold by their own relatives. The mother of a woman trafficked by her cousin seven years earlier who never made it home told Human Rights Watch, “In the past, I never thought that a relative could do such a crime.”

“The broker was my auntie,” said Seng Ing Nu, trafficked at age 17 or 18. “She persuaded me.” Seng Ing Nu travelled to China with her aunt, her aunt’s friend, and a Chinese man. “I didn’t understand the relationship between my auntie and the Chinese man,” she said. The four travelled to what turned out to be the Chinese man’s family home, and Seng Ing Nu’s aunt left her there. The man had bought her; it took her three years to escape.

A few women and girls traveled to China to visit family or vacation and were trafficked, sometimes by those who invited them. One woman and her cousin were working on the Myanmar side of the border when they were drugged and woke up in China. Another was sold by her three cousins after going to visit them. A number of interviewees travelled to China without telling their families because their families would not have approved.

Htoi Moon Ja was 16 when family friends invited to vacation in China with them. She happily agreed. Fighting was happening near her village, her mother had died, and she and two siblings were staying with their teacher. “In the village, there more people who are poor, and only Chinese from Myanmar they have satellite, they have the dish,” Htoi Moon Ja said. “I knew that China is a good place.” The couple sold her.

Nang Seng Ja, at age 20, travelled to China with her aunt to visit family. While at her cousin’s house, she said she was drugged and woke up in a Chinese man’s house. The man said she had been unconscious for five days, and she believes he raped her while she was unconscious. She managed to flee and make it to a police station, but the police accepted a bribe of 5,000 yuan ($800) to return her to the family. They then locked her in a room where her “husband” raped her daily.

Four of the survivors described the person who recruited them as a near stranger or someone they only knew as a potential employer or employment broker. Fifteen were recruited by friends, and 12 by acquaintances, often from their village or IDP camp. One young woman was recruited by a friend from bible school.

Several brokers were also trafficking survivors. “The traffickers are often trafficked themselves and then recruit others,” an NGO worker explained. A Burmese woman whom Seng Ja Ngai met in China told Seng Ja Ngai she had been trafficked twice and had been promised 1,000 yuan ($160) if she found a buyer for Seng Ja Ngai.

It is common in Kachin communities for a groom’s family to pay a dowry to the bride’s family at the time of marriage. This practice is sometimes exploited by traffickers who give “dowry” to purchase a woman or girl in a manner that may appear to her and her family to be legal and binding. “Parents are very ignorant and poor,” a Kachin activist said. “Traffickers say they will give the dowry to the mother…There is a very long history of this. It is giving respect to the mother and father’s side—you have to give precious things…The Chinese brokers says, ‘We love your daughter and we will pay.’” She said brokers often give about 10,000 yuan ($1,600) then resell the girl for 30,000 or 50,000 yuan ($4,800 or $8,000). “The parents don’t know that traffickers are using our customs and traditions.”

A porous border

Significant portions of Myanmar’s border along Kachin and northern Shan States with China are controlled by the KIO, not the Myanmar government. As a result, border control is haphazard or non-existent. Border security in the region is further complicated by trafficking in the jade and timber trades, which are themselves marked by corruption.

Almost all the trafficking survivors interviewed were recruited in Myanmar and escorted to China by a person implicated in trafficking. The movement of these women and girls across the border was facilitated by loose border controls.

Some women and girls were trafficked through official border posts, with guards failing to detect trafficking or perhaps aiding and abetting the crime. But most skipped immigration formalities. Crossing the border without appropriate papers is not difficult. “There are many ways to cross the border,” an activist said. “At the checkpoints there are officers checking [papers]. But behind the office…” She said that people cross illegally during hours when the police checkpoint is functioning, within sight of the border guards who make no attempt to stop them.

Others go early. “We know what time there is no border guard, so we chose that time—very early, 6 a.m.,” said Tsin Tsin. “There are no guards on either side [Myanmar or China] then. In the day there are KIO soldiers on the Myanmar side. Sometimes they check the red book [temporary pass], sometimes they don’t. You need to get permission from the KIO [to cross the border] but if you go at 6 a.m. you don’t need permission.”

Htoi Moon Ja, trafficked at age 16, travelled from Myanmar to China with her traffickers via a gate where boats cross the border without going through formalities. Several interviewees described an area where drug users carry people across the river for 10 yuan ($1.59). A KIO official explained: “Laiza in China and Laiza in Myanmar are like one village—it’s only to go further to mainland China that you need a passport.”

This area of the border is also the site of extensive trafficking of timber and jade, which takes advantage of and contributes to the lawless environment. “There are lots of illegal logging trucks crossing the border there,” Khawng Shawng, trafficked in 2011, said of the border area near her IDP camp. “It is very easy to pass illegally there.”

An escorted journey

Survivors interviewed usually said they were recruited by a trafficker in Myanmar and escorted to China. They often described a chaotic voyage, where they did not know where they were, were made helpless by language barriers, had no means to pay their own way home, and felt swept along by events they did not understand. The journeys often involved a sequence of cars and buses, over several days and nights, sometimes while the victim was drugged. Some survivors thought traffickers might have complicated the journey intentionally, to confuse them and prevent them from finding their way home. Some survivors said they were kept in hotels; a few said they screamed for help, but no one came, leading them to believe that hotel staff were paid or convinced to ignore them.

Several interviewees said traffickers took their identification documents. The woman who trafficked Seng Ja Ban took her Myanmar ID card as soon as they crossed into China. “The broker told me there would be no need to use it in China, and if someone found it they would know we were illegal,” Seng Ja Ban said. “So that’s why she took the ID card.”

Trafficked women and girls were often handed from one trafficker to another. A KIO official who had worked in anti-trafficking said: “The brokers from [Myanmar] are sub-brokers—not the main broker. They get a percentage of the price. The main broker is in Yingjiang [a town near the border on the China side]… There is a group—a broker in Myanmar, one in Yingjiang, one in China [beyond the border region].” He added:

The Myanmar broker gives them to the China broker. The China broker provides a place to stay and food and shows them to a Chinese man and he looks and pays depending on how pretty [she is]. One hundred thousand yuan [$15,900] or 70 thousand or 50, 30, 20—depending on how pretty. It’s like trading jade—if jade is a good quality we make a call and trade from one broker to another. Same thing with a girl, traded from one broker to another.

Many women and girls were promised a job close to the border, but told, after reaching China, that that job was no longer available, and but another was, further into China. “Brokers usually say the job is in Yingjiang,” an activist said, a town that is just across the border. “They are moved from very close to the farthest area, and then they disappear,” said a KWA worker. “Some girls are told, ‘We have to move to somewhere that pays more money,’ and they don’t even realize [they are being trafficked].”

Drugging of victims

Eleven of the trafficking survivors interviewed said that they were drugged by traffickers. At 14, Nang Nu Tsawm, one of eight children, needed money to fund her studies. A Shan woman offered her work in a clothing store in Myanmar, near the border, paying 50,000 kyat ($38) per month. Nang Nu Tsawm and her cousin, 19, went to work there:

After a week there, I fainted. I think maybe they gave me some medicine or something. I don’t remember what happened. When I woke up, I heard the train and recognized that I was on the train. I don’t know how many days I had fainted or how long I was on the train. I saw only the Chinese letters. I could not read them. There were no Myanmar letters. I started crying. I saw a woman. Maybe she was a broker—I never met whoever it was who brought me on the train. She pinched my face. She was a Shan-Chinese woman. She could speak Burmese. It was me, my cousin and the woman.

Nang Nu Tsawm’s cousin had also fainted. Nang Nu Tsawm was sold and held in China about seven years.

Several women and girls were drugged on the pretext of being given medicine for car sickness. “She offered me a pill for dizziness,” Seng Khawn said, about the friend who trafficked her. “After that I do not remember what happened to me.” Ja Htoi Tsawm woke up locked in a room. Her clothing was with her, but her passport and money were gone. The room was in the home of a family she had been sold to. She escaped two years later.

Others believed traffickers put drugs in their food or drink. Htoi Nu Ja, then 36, was promised work in Myitkyina. She went there, bringing her 2-year-old son, with two acquaintances. “We arrived in Myitkyina bus station,” she said. “They asked me if I was hungry and I said ‘yes.’ We tried some noodles and coffee, and then I don’t remember what happened. I fainted.” She was forcibly taken to China, separated from her child, and sold. She eventually escaped and managed to reclaim her son.

Paralyzed by the language barrier

Very few of the survivors interviewed could speak, understand or read Mandarin; they described a complete loss of their ability to communicate the moment they crossed the border. The language barrier often left trafficked women and girls feeling unable to escape even when in a public place or on public transport.

While held by Chinese families, women and girls struggled to communicate, making it harder for them to gain empathy or negotiate for their safety or release. Pan Pan Tsawm, trafficked at 15, was drugged by a friend and woke up in a locked room in a family’s house. “I thought they were my boss, because my friends promised to find me a job. I thought I was going to work in their business,” she said. “I cannot speak Chinese. We communicated using sign language.” Pan Pan Tsawm’s new “husband” explained, three days later, in sign language, that he had bought her, and then he raped her.

Many had no idea where in China they were, even as years passed, which meant even if they managed to contact family or friends, they could not help would-be rescuers find them. Women who sought help from strangers struggled to communicate. Those who made it to the police encountered officials who could not understand them and generally did not have access to interpreters.

“You have been grabbed by this family”: victims realize they have been trafficked

Every trafficking survivor described a moment when the reality that their voyage to China had gone horribly wrong became undeniable. For some it was as abrupt as being drugged and waking up in a locked room. For others it was a creeping sense of unease.

Some brokers used deception to hand over victims to buyers. A trafficker told Mai Nu, 18, that she had to stay with a family, so they could register her with the government to make it legal for her to stay, and that an employer would pick her up soon. After several days, Mai Nu became anxious. The Chinese family brought a Myanmar woman to speak to her. She said, “Why are you not talking? Your mother-in-law is concerned that you are not talking.” Mai Nu asked, “Who is mother-in-law? I do not know who is that mother-in-law?”

The interpreter said, “You have been brought in this family for marriage…[Y]ou will not easily go home now. You have been grabbed by this family—you are to marry, and you will be here, and you will stay here.” Mai Nu called the friend who promised her work in a restaurant. She said she was told she now had “a different type of job, with a family.” The friend then stopped answering Mai Nu’s calls.

Other traffickers used threats to stop trafficking victims from resisting. Nang Nu Tsawm said at 14, she and her cousin, 19, were drugged and abducted. They awoke on a train with a woman who took them to Hunan province. “We stayed in a hotel,” Nang Nu Tsawm said. “When we arrived, the Shan-Chinese woman locked the door from the outside and warned us not to run away. She said if we try to run she will cut off our hands and legs.” After two or three days, the woman found a buyer for Nang Nu Tsawm, who paid 80,000 yuan [$12,700].

Some traffickers used physical violence. After an acquaintance offered Seng Ja Ban work in a restaurant in China—and travel expenses to get there—she and a friend accepted. The broker took them across the border and handed them off. A second broker took them to Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province and left them in a train station. There two Chinese men grabbed them and forced them onto a train. Seng Ja Ban and her friend, with no money and unable to communicate and not knowing what else to do, stayed on the train for three days and three nights. The men then took them off the train and drove some distance before splitting up. “Me and my friend tried to stay together—we held each other and tried to stay together. But the Chinese men got mad and dragged us apart. I had to go with the Chinese husband,” Seng Ja Ban said. She managed to escape after about five years. Her friend never made it back to Myanmar.

Some survivors described men—or female relatives of a “groom”—coming to see them. In some cases, potential buyers were asked whether they wanted to purchase the “bride.” In other cases, trafficked women and girls were told to choose from a selection of “husbands,” but in circumstances where it was clear they were being forced to marry.

Htoi Nu Ja was 36, married, and a mother of two when she was drugged and trafficked, along with her 2-year-old son. They were held in a locked room:

They fed us sometimes, but not always. After three days they brought the men to the compound. There was a high fence, so no one could see what was happening inside the compound. Outside the room they showed me to 10 men. At that time is was morning, 7 a.m. They separated me from my baby and showed me to the men. The original broker had gone, and a second broker came and showed me to the men and asked me which one I liked. When I said I didn’t like any of the men, the broker slapped me. This continued for a few days and I kept refusing. Then the broker raped me. The broker got mad—to calm himself down at night he raped me. It was a violent rape. When I did not take off my clothes he beat me.

Htoi Nu Ja said this continued for a week. “They kept slapping me and told me to choose a guy, [saying] ‘You’re not a beauty.’” She said that after a week, “I chose a Chinese man…a 40-year-old man.” He paid 30,000 yuan ($4,800). Htoi Nu Ja’s son was taken from her then; she did not know where he was until several weeks later when a woman she believes was related to the trafficker helped her escape and recover her son.

Traffickers seemed to have a plentiful supply of potential buyers and networks spanning China. A mother of five, Seng Ja Ngai was trafficked at age 35 in 2014. Transported to Henan province in eastern China, she said, “[T]hey showed a Chinese man to me. But I had told them I didn’t want to get married. My face said I was angry.” The man declined to buy her. The trafficker then took her to Hunan province. Two more men came to look and declined to buy her:

[T]he old woman [the trafficker] got mad at me. She said, “It is taking too long—this never happens!” Then we went to Fuzhou [in Fujian province in eastern China]. There I also did not find a man.…At that time my age was over 30. So, the price for a bride from 18 to 25 is a good price. They can ask for whatever they want from the Chinese family. But over 30-years-old they couldn’t get as good a price as they want. So, the Chinese men were making her upset.

Seng Ja Ngai said the trafficker received a call saying there were “two little girls” in Yingjiang, near the Myanmar border, for her to sell. She rushed there, leaving Seng Ja Ngai with another trafficker.

Several survivors said traffickers tried to get them to agree to marriage—by offering them a “dowry” payment, trying to find a man they liked, promising the victim would be freed at a specific time, or arguing they could have a good life as a wife in China. But when interviewees refused to “marry” voluntarily they were forcibly sold. All interviewees described in this report as survivors were clear cases of trafficking.

When women resisted arrangements made by traffickers for them to “marry,” they were sometimes told they had no choice because the traffickers had spent so much money transporting and feeding them. At age 20, Ja Tsin Mai took a job as a nanny for a relative. Once in China, the relative urged Ja Tsin Mai to marry. When she refused, the relative said, “I can’t feed you anymore. You’ve already cost us much money, so you have to get married.” The relative chose a buyer, took the money, and handed over Ja Tsin Mai, who was held for about a year, and subjected to escalating physical and sexual violence.

Others were told they could pay to be released. In some cases, the amount traffickers demanded was presented as the expenses the trafficker had incurred. In other cases, traffickers demanded as ransom the full sale price they expected for the woman or girl. None of the survivors interviewed were able to pay the amount demanded.

Ja Seng Htoi, at age 20, was trafficked by a relative. She said:

Different men came to the home every day and met with me. The Chinese man [a trafficker] asked me if I liked any of the men. I said, “No, I dislike them. I want to go back home.” Then the [traffickers] said, “We already spent the transportation fee for you. But if you can pay back the money, then you can go back.”

Ja Seng Htoi, unable to pay, eventually gave in and “chose” a husband. After four years in captivity, she managed to escape, but was forced to leave her baby behind.

While trafficked women and girls were experiencing violence in China, their families in Myanmar were often in agony over the realization that their daughter, wife, or mother had disappeared. A week after Nang Shayi, 18, left for China, her grandmother began to worry because she had not been in touch. She travelled to Yingjiang on the China side of the border and found the woman who recruited Nang Shayi. “The woman told my grandmother, ‘Oh, your granddaughter is a difficult person. That’s why we sent her to a place quite far from here,’” said Nang Shayi. She had been sold to a family a four-day bus ride from Kunming and was held for four years.

Some brokers visited families of trafficked women and girls for several months, bringing payments purported to be the woman or girl’s salary, to stop them worrying that they had lost contact with the woman or girl. “Often families don’t know it’s trafficking,” an activist explained. “The broker usually sends one or two lakh a month [$75-150] to the family so they still believe in the broker. Mostly the broker convinced the family, ‘Your daughter is working in China.’…They have no contact with their daughter, but they believe that they are okay.…Then after six months, no one can find the broker anymore.”

Eventually reality hits. “As the mother of Nang Seng Ja, I have only one daughter,” the mother of a young woman trafficked by her cousins said. “She is the only one for me. When I heard that my daughter was human trafficked, the feeling is one I can’t express. My world was totally blowing up and destroyed.”

Knowing participation in trafficking by the families buying women

Many of the survivors interviewed for this report said the families that purchased women and girls were fully aware that they were there involuntarily. Families told some of the women and girls they had been purchased and would be held against their will.

The families’ knowledge of the trafficking was often evidenced by careful measures they took to stop the women and girls from escaping and that some families that purchased trafficked women later threatened or attempted to resell them. Most of the trafficking survivors interviewed for this report were initially kept in a locked room, and remained under close watch for months or years, with their movement out of the house and access to telephones, money, and other people restricted or sometimes denied entirely.

Pan Pan Tsawm, trafficked at 15 and held for three years, said she remained locked in a room around the clock until she became pregnant six or seven months later. “When I had sex with him, his parents would lock the door from the outside,” she explained. Pan Pan Tsawm escaped back to Myanmar leaving her daughter behind.

There were a few cases where the Chinese families appeared to have been under the impression that the “bride” had come willingly and that the money paid was not a fee to a trafficker but a dowry payment to her family. An activist said that in some cases a trafficker pretends to be the mother of the trafficked woman or girl and negotiates with the Chinese family for a dowry. In two cases, families seem to have allowed or even helped trafficked women and girls to escape. But most families seemed fully aware that they were buying a trafficked bride and in the instances that families seemed surprised to learn they had participated in trafficking, they sometimes said they would free the “bride” only if their money was returned, something the “bride” had little power to compel.

Life in captivity

Twenty-two of the 37 survivors interviewed for this report were held for a year or longer; 11 were held for three years or longer. The longest time in captivity among the survivors we interviewed was nine years.

Almost none of the survivors went through legal wedding ceremonies to their Chinese “husbands” though they were often referred to as wives by the families that bought them. Said one trafficking survivor, “[There was] no wedding ceremony. But he had sex with me. That’s how it was decided that we were married.” Some said the families that purchased them held a marriage celebration at some point, sometimes soon after the trafficked woman or girl’s arrival, or after she became pregnant or gave birth.

Seven months after she was sold, Seng Moon became pregnant. After learning of the pregnancy, the family held a celebration, inviting relatives and serving food, though no wedding ceremony took place. “I wore jeans and a red blouse—they gave it to me to wear. They tied me with a red ribbon,” Seng Moon said. “No one ever asked me if I wanted to be married.”

In a few cases, the family had a ceremony, but none seemed to be a legal marriage. Nang Shayi, trafficked at 18, said the family had a ceremony a week after she was handed over to them. “It looked like a wedding reception. There was an announcement delivering the new couple. The villagers came and also his relatives. [But] no official person like here [Myanmar]…No documents, because I was from Myanmar and I didn’t have an ID card. So, there was no documentation for our marriage.”

Confinement

Some women and girls were held for weeks or months by traffickers before being sold, while others were turned over to purchasers within days or hours of crossing the border. Either way, many trafficked women and girls spent the first weeks or months after they were trafficked locked in a room. Traffickers carefully ensured that women and girls did not escape, and “brides” were guarded equally closely by the families that purchased them.

“My aunt told me ahead of time that I shouldn’t talk about what happens to me,” said Seng Ing Nu, trafficked at age 17 or 18 by her aunt. “From the first night when we arrived in the Chinese man’s house, I had to sleep with him,” she said. “At the beginning of the night, he followed me around. There were only two rooms.” After her aunt left, the family locked her in one of the rooms. “I heard that they worried about me trying to run away.”

In some cases, harshness at the beginning seemed designed to break the trafficked “bride’s” will. Seng Moon was 16 when she was trafficked by her sister-in-law:

My sister-in-law left me at the home. When I entered the home, the family members talked to me, but I didn’t know what they were saying. The family took me to a room. In that room I was tied up again. The man tied me up. They locked the door—for one or two months. When it was time for meals, they sent meals in. I was crying…Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me. There was a window, but the window was black, so I didn’t know whether it was day or night. Whenever he brought the meal, he said “have the meal.” I said, “When you leave the meal, I will eat it.” But he usually raped me before I had the meal.

The windows were blacked out, but Seng Moon tried to keep track of time by marking days on a calendar in the room. “After two months, they dragged me out of the room,” she said. “The father of the Chinese man said, ‘Here is your husband. Now you are a married couple. Be nice to each other and build a happy family.’”

Over time “brides” usually gained a bit more freedom. Women and girls were sometimes let out of a locked room once they became pregnant. After captive “brides” gave birth, families often became less vigilant about preventing their escape. But they often remained confined in the family compound or, if permitted out, were allowed only to go to the market and back and were closely supervised. Khawng Shawng was kept locked in a room for the first 10 days while the man who had bought her worked on the family’s coffee plantation. One day Khawng Shawng had no choice but to defecate on the floor. After that, the man let her out but kept her with him all day. “Even if I wanted to go to the toilet, my mother-in-law would wait,” said Khawng Ja, trafficked at age 17 and sold for 80,000 yuan ($12,700).

In the early days of captivity, most women and girls interviewed were denied access to phones or allowed to use a phone only while being watched. A few managed to communicate with family or a friend by stealing a phone or getting someone else to contact family or friends on their behalf. Later, as restrictions loosened, a few found ways to reach out looking for help, often via WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app. Many others remained incommunicado, sometimes for years.

Nang Seng Ja was trafficked by her three cousins, who planned to split the money. But Nang Seng Ja said the youngest cousin felt that she had been given less than her share of the proceeds. In revenge she gave Nang Seng Ja’s mother the phone number for the family who had purchased Nang Seng Ja. When her mother called, the family let them speak on speaker phone in the family’s presence. “Then my mom and I talked in Kachin and the family got mad. Then I told my mom, ‘If we can give them 88,000 yuan [$14,000], they will release me.’” The Chinese family cut off the phone call, and Nang Seng Ja’s family went to the specialized Myanmar anti-trafficking police. Two of Nang Seng Ja’s cousins who were in Myanmar were arrested. The Chinese family went into hiding and kept Nang Seng Ja locked in a room again.

Rape

Once they were handed over to purchasers, the trafficked women and girls interviewed were—almost without exception—raped and subjected to continuing sexual slavery. Most of the women and girls said that they were raped the first night that they spent with the family that had purchased them and forced into sex regularly during their captivity. A woman who was trafficked twice explained: “The first husband, when I arrived in his home, I had to have sex with the man that night. I was sent into the room with the Chinese man and his father locked the room from the outside.”

Seng Moon Mai was raped as soon as she arrived at the home where the man who bought her lived with his parents and younger sister. “He just kept saying, ‘I bought you. You are my wife—I bought you,’” she said. “They knew I didn’t have any willingness to stay—that’s why they locked me in a room.” She said her “husband” demanded sex “so often.” “The first time I didn’t accept—I tried to escape. We were fighting each other in the room so many times, but after two or three months I thought ‘This is useless,’ so I stopped fighting.” Seng Moon Mai escaped after about a year and a half.

Seng Nu Ja, 17, managed to delay being raped for several weeks, as the man holding her captive tried to convince her to consent to sex with him. “After one month, he began to use force and was violent with me day and night,” she said.

Trafficked women and girls were under pressure to become pregnant and had almost no ability to refuse sex, to access and use contraceptive methods, or to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections. Two women were sterilized while in China, one without realizing what was happening to her, and the other through coercion. One interviewee tested positive for HIV after escaping and was certain her Chinese “husband” infected her. She said she unknowingly passed the virus on to the man she married after her escape. She was waiting to learn if her newborn was also infected.

Demands for children and forced pregnancy

Many of the trafficked women and girls interviewed said that the families who bought them really did not want a wife, but rather a child or children. They were often under enormous pressure to become pregnant quickly. One woman was even forced to undergo a medical examination at the demand of a potential buyer.

“I was locked in the room for one year,” said Seng Ja Ban, trafficked at age 30. “Before I had a baby, the family members—especially the mother-in-law—treated me badly. Her face was furious. Sometimes they didn’t feed me, because I didn’t get pregnant as soon as possible.”

Some trafficked women and girls said that they were raped nightly, or several times a day, as their “husband” tried urgently for a pregnancy. Nang Nu Tsawm was trafficked at age 14, “married” to a 15-year-old boy, and gave birth to two children she was forced to leave in China. “In the beginning they locked me in a room,” she said:

We were both still young. In the beginning the Chinese [boy] and I slept together but we never had sex, because we did not know about it. After two months, his parents took us and checked in the hospital to see if I was pregnant or not. They saw—no pregnancy. Then the mom complained. She talked to her son—my husband—and gave him some sex films to watch. Then, after he watched some kinds of movies, we started having sex.

“The Chinese man told me I would need to have a baby,” said Ja Seng Htoi, trafficked at 20. “I said I don’t want to have a baby. He pushed back and asked me to have a baby. [He said,] ‘Normally after Myanmar girls in China have a baby they go home—maybe you’re like this.’ So, I decided to have a baby with him. The Chinese man told me that after the kid was one-year-old then I could go back.” Ja Seng Htoi had a baby. Her “husband” and his family initially refused to let her leave, but then relented and let her go while they kept the child.

Some trafficked women and girls feared not becoming pregnant because they were afraid of angering their captors. One described concealing a miscarriage out of fear. One family tried to resell the “bride” they had purchased when she did not become pregnant. Others tried to avoid pregnancy. One woman managed to secretly obtain and ingest drugs to induce abortion.

Several women were forced to undergo what they believed were forced fertility treatments. Seng Ja Ban was 30, married, and mother of a 5-year-old daughter when she was trafficked. She was held for five years and became pregnant at the end of the first year.

They gave me many medicines. I did not know what they were…Once a week I was injected. Sometimes I had a big drip [of intravenous fluid]. Every week they took me to the clinic. I did not know what the medicine was, or why I had to take it. Sometimes I had to try herbal medicine and they cooked it and boiled it and I had to drink it. I assume it was to make me pregnant. Some of the medicines made me allergic. Sometimes I became itchy on my skin.

She also said that she was given more medicines after giving birth and an adverse reaction to one nearly killed her. “After we give birth, no one cares about us anymore,” she said, adding that the family would not permit her to breastfeed her child.

A significant number of trafficked women and girls understood—or were told explicitly—that once they provided a baby, they could leave, so long as they left the baby. After Seng Moon gave birth to a boy, she told her “husband” that she wanted to go home to Myanmar. He replied: “No one plans to stop you. If you want to go back home, you can. But you can’t take my baby.”

Some families seemed equally happy to have a boy or a girl, but others preferred boys. Nang Shayi was trafficked at age 18 and became pregnant after five months. “Because the first child was a boy, they treated us very well,” she said. Then she gave birth to a girl. She said her “in-laws” told her she could not stay in China after having two children, and could not obtain documentation for her children, unless she was sterilized. She reluctantly underwent a sterilization procedure:

After doing the operation the Chinese man’s mother totally changed. She often yelled at me. They discriminated between the boy and the girl—even giving snacks. Especially his mother. Sometimes she yelled at me: “You Myanmar people are bullshit and son of a bitch! Because you are just sex workers and worthless persons!” She used all kinds of bad words. But the worst was the discrimination between the children. The husband was nice to me, but the problem was his mother. Sometimes she would physically attack me. I couldn’t stand such conditions any longer.

Taking her daughter with her, Nang Shayi ran and made it to Myanmar. She never saw her son again. Nang Shayi’s return to Myanmar has been difficult. “I’m still young but I can’t have any more babies,” she said. “For a woman, this looks like there is no hope for me.”

Seng Ja Ban, trafficked at age 30, was also sterilized against her will. “I did not give birth naturally—I had to have an operation,” she said. “When I did this, the Chinese family told the doctor to cut a part of my womb so that I could not have any more children. I didn’t know this at the time. When I came back to Myanmar I went to the hospital and got news and was told that a part of my womb doesn’t work, so I cannot have a baby.” She escaped after five years, leaving the child behind. Having had no contact with her family during her captivity, she returned to Myanmar to find her husband had remarried, and their daughter had been raised by his parents. She remarried but could no longer have children.

Assault

Some trafficked women and girls said that after they had resigned themselves to being held against their will, and subjected to sexual slavery, they managed to make some peace with their captors. Others, however, faced ongoing violence, with no ability to seek help.

Ja Tawng was trafficked twice with her two children. The second “husband” beat the children and threatened them. “He took a rope—he showed it to me and my children,” Ja Tawng said. “’If you try to run away from here, look at this—I will tie you up,’ he said.”

Ja Tsin Mai said she was forced by the parents of her “husband” to do housework, laundry and work in the fields. They also beat her. She said that, “And then at night I had to have sex with the Chinese man [her “husband”]. I couldn’t stand it. I kept crying…But then they beat me severely…I was not allowed to go outside.” Her husband began beating her too, and the violence escalated:

I don’t know why they beat me. One day they beat me a lot. Even the neighbor came to the house and tried to stop them. When the neighbor stopped the mother, then the son beat me again. When the neighbor stopped the son, then the mother beat me…Every time I was beaten, I did not know what to do. I was bleeding from my nose and my mouth…No matter what, they beat me.”

Htoi Nu Ja was kidnapped in Myanmar, forcibly taken to China, raped by a trafficker, and separated from her 2-year-old son who had travelled with her. Then she was delivered to the family that bought her:

When I arrived, I met him and his parents. I didn’t know the language. But according to their facial expressions, they were nice to me. [But] that night the Chinese man raped me. Then he locked me in the room for the whole day. …He came in and had sex with me every night. But one night it could not be okay anymore—it hurt too much. One night I refused to take off my clothes. The Chinese man kicked me, and I hit the corner of the wall. That’s how I got this scar.”

Htoi Nu Ja’s ear was also injured from a beating by the family. “[His] parents didn’t know what was happening. They just let him lock me in the room and whenever he wanted sex with me he just came in.” She said after three weeks she was allowed out of the room but confined within the family’s compound.

Forced labor

Several women described being treated as both “brides” and unpaid laborers. Ja Seng Nu was held for almost a year on a watermelon farm near Shanghai. She said she was locked in a room and raped every night by the son of the family owning the farm, “because the family wanted a child as soon as possible.” But she also had to get up very early, cook breakfast for the farm’s workers, and then work in the fields all day. She also faced physical violence from her “husband,” who had paid 60,000 yuan ($9,600) for her.

Ja Htoi Tsawm said she awoke in a locked room after being drugged. A woman came in and explained in sign language that Ja Htoi Tsawm would have to stay for at least one year. “I discovered that I was in the house of a Chinese man,” Ja Htoi Tsawm said. “I had to have sex with the man every night. If I denied him, he would threaten me with knives…I had to do lots of house work. I had to wash their clothes, cook for them, give a bath to his parents.”

Tsawm Nu Ra, trafficked at age 16, was kept locked in a room. When she became pregnant after three months she was kept in the house and watched closely. But when she miscarried after three months, she was sent to work in the family’s sugarcane fields, put in charge of the housework. While in the fields, she met three Kachin laborers employed by the family who helped her escape, after two years of captivity.

Daring escapes

Trafficked women and girls said they often waited months or years, hoping for a chance to escape. Some begged for help from people in the communities where they were held but were turned away. “After a week they let me wander around,” said Nang Shayi, trafficked at age 18. “The problem was, in the village, they’d told everyone if I tried to run away, the villagers should call them. They gave them the phone number to call. In the downtown, there was only a bus station, so if anyone saw me on a bus, they would contact the family. There was no escape.” Nang Shayi managed to escape after four years.

Ja Seng Mai escaped her traffickers several times only to be recaptured after neighbors refused to help. After she begged a Burmese-speaking Chinese woman for help, the woman replied, “Everyone stays here many years in this village—that’s why I can’t directly help you.” Ja Seng Mai later ran to the woman’s house, but the woman chased her away. Next, Ja Seng Mai saw a man on the street she thought looked like he was from Myanmar. She begged him to take her to the police, but he said: “We can’t. I can’t make a problem, and I don’t care, and I don’t want to help you.” The traffickers locked Ja Seng Mai in a room and beat her after they saw her speaking to the man. Eventually, after they worried about her not eating, Ja Seng Mai convinced the traffickers to take her outside to buy food. On the way, Ja Seng Mai saw a woman she thought looked kind. She ran and hugged her and held onto her but, not speaking Chinese, she could not communicate. Then she saw a police officer. Releasing the woman, she ran to the police officer and clutched his legs desperately until he took her to the police station.

Some spent months and years engineering their escape. Ja Tsin Mai managed to get 100 yuan from friends ($16). When a relative of her captors came to visit, her mother-in-law was distracted and monitored her less closely than usual. Ja Tsin Mai began taking her belongings to the fields she worked in every day and hiding them in the bushes. One day she reclaimed the belongings, went to a nearby road and hailed a car. The men in the car agreed to drive her to a bus station for 70 yuan ($11). Then she discovered it was the wrong bus station and had to pay 10 yuan ($1.59) for a taxi to the right bus station. At the second bus station, she met a Chinese woman who spoke Burmese and was travelling to Myanmar. The woman helped her make it onto the bus and across the border. “Along the way, I was afraid that the Chinese man would follow me and find me,” she said. “The whole time I was ducking my head.”

Help sometimes came from unexpected quarters. When Seng Moon Mai was not pregnant after eight months of frequent rape, the Chinese family brought a Kachin-speaking woman to tell her she needed to have a baby. Seng Moon Mai begged the woman to help her escape and the woman agreed. The woman told the family that Seng Moon Mai would not have a baby until two or three years had passed and she felt like a real member of the family. The woman visited a few times and then, about nine months after they first met, came and said she was going near the border. They made plans for Seng Moon Mai to wait by the road in the middle of the night next to a tea plantation; the family trusted her enough by now that she was not locked in at night.

Some victims helped each other. Mai Mai Tsawm, trafficked at 21, gradually gained permission to go to the market, where she met some other women also trafficked from Myanmar. One woman she met tried to run and was caught by her husband, Mai Mai Tsawm said:

He tied her neck and hands and pulled the rope tight—he tied the rope to the end of a motorbike and dragged her behind the bike. The lady was screaming. I have seen these kinds of events. It made me shocked and I recognized that if I did not behave well or tried to run again, they will torture me.

Mai Mai Tsawm said she did not know whether the woman had survived or not. She managed to steal her in-laws’ banking password and withdraw 2,000 yuan ($318) without their knowledge. She still did not know how to get home, however—she had travelled with traffickers four or five days and did not know where she was. She found a solution:

For one person to get from there back to Myanmar would cost over 1,000 yuan [$159]. I had met a woman [from Myanmar] who was also trafficked there. I met her in the market. She knew the way back. I told her that I had 2,000 yuan and offered to pay for her transportation. We made a plan to both get out from our families. The next day, I pretended to have a toothache.

Saying she needed a dentist, Mai Mai Tsawm was allowed out. She stole the family’s identification documents and met her friend. They caught a train to Kunming. “To get the train ticket, we would have to show an ID card. That is why I stole the family documents—I used them to get train tickets.” When they reached Kunming, the women were out of money. But they met some Kachin women there who gave them money to make it to Myanmar. Two months later, however, financially desperate because her family was displaced by fighting during her absence, Mai Mai Tsawm went back to China to look for work—and was trafficked again.

She is one of several interviewees who escaped only to be trafficked again.

Children left behind, and escapes with children

Ten interviewees gave birth in China to children fathered by their captors. Most were forced to leave the children behind when they escaped, or to choose between freedom and their children. “I gave birth,” said Ning Ja Khawn, who became pregnant three months after she was sold. “After one year, the Chinese man gave me a choice of what to do…It took a lot of negotiation, but then I got permission to go back home. But not with the baby. The family members didn’t allow me to take care of the baby—only give birth and give the baby milk. Breastfeed the baby—then the mother-in-law took the baby and cared for the baby. They would not let me be the mother.”

Some women accepted that they could escape only if they left children behind. “In the beginning, I did not miss my son, because I thought he was not my baby—only the Chinese man’s baby,” said Seng Ing Nu, trafficked at age 17 or 18, who left a one-year-old behind when she escaped. “But now I got married to another man and had another baby. Now I miss him often.” Seng Ing Nu never saw her son again after escaping in 2013.

Several women returned, or tried to return, to China to be with their children. Nang Nu Tsawm was trafficked at age 14, and “married” to a 15-year old Chinese boy. She gave birth to a girl and a boy and had been in China over five years when police, alerted to her presence when another trafficked bride in the village escaped and ran to the police, came to the home and arrested her for being in the country illegally. Nang Nu Tsawm was held in jail for several weeks then deported. Her children remained with the family that bought her. “When I arrived home, I missed my children so much,” Nang Nu Tsawm said. After a year she contacted her “husband” and asked to see her children. She travelled to the Chinese side of the border, and he came to meet her, but when she tried to go with him to his home she was stopped at a checkpoint for not having travel documents. “So, I turned back,” she said. “Since then I have never seen my children.”

Only three of the trafficked women and girls interviewed managed to escape with their children, and of those three, one escaped with one child while leaving the other behind. Marang Seng, trafficked at 18 and held for four years, gave birth in captivity to a son and a daughter. She said the family was very kind to her son but treated her daughter badly. Because the daughter was less guarded by the family than the son, Marang Seng managed to escape with her. Her son stayed behind, and she has never seen him again.

Seng Moon, trafficked at 16, was determined to escape with her son, and after over two years in captivity she saw a chance. By now she was allowed to go to the market and there she met a Kachin woman selling vegetables. She begged the woman for money and the woman loaned her 1,000 yuan ($160). She hired a car and made it to near the Myanmar border before running out of money. As she sat crying by the side of the road with her son, a Chinese woman stopped. After she explained her situation, the woman took them home and cared for them for a month, then gave Seng Moon 200 yuan ($30) and told her how to get home by bus.

When Human Rights Watch interviewed Seng Moon, she was back in the IDP camp, and recently married. She had told no one aside from her family about her experience of being trafficked and had no plans to try to have the traffickers or the Chinese family arrested. “I’m afraid,” she said. “If the police hear my story, they will try to find the Chinese family—and the Chinese family will try to find me. I’m afraid they will find me.”

Rebuilding life back in Myanmar

The trafficking survivors interviewed for this report were, almost without exception, vulnerable to trafficking because of desperate poverty exacerbated by the armed conflict. When they escaped back to Myanmar, the same poverty awaited them, and some found their families had been harmed further, in their absence, by the conflict. They also struggled with new burdens of trauma, stigma, desperation to be reunited with children they were forced to leave in China, a need for legal assistance to pursue those who trafficked them, and health concerns.

Sitau Kong Nuey struggled to rebuild her life after the Chinese police deported her abruptly, five or six years after she was trafficked at age 14. She tried to return to the family that bought her because she missed her two children, but was blocked because she did not have a visa. She returned to China to work in a restaurant but fled when the owner tried to traffic her again. She found work in banana fields in Myanmar but said she had nearly died from poisoning from chemicals used in banana cultivation. When Human Rights Watch interviewed her, she had married six months earlier, but said her new husband was abusive and regularly beat her. The two of them were working on a road paving job, six days a week, 10 hours a day, but still unable to support their family, which included Nang Nu Tsawm’s husband’s five younger siblings.

Those who returned to Myanmar after being gone for years faced difficulties in trying to rebuild relationships with family members who had given them up for dead. “When I arrived back to my family, the family members thought that I was human trafficked and that I was killed, and they assumed I would never come back,” Nang Nu Tsawm said, trafficked at age 14, and gone five or six years.

“Holding this secret inside”: Stigma and discrimination against trafficking survivors

Survivors of “bride” trafficking often face devastating stigma. Much of the stigma is related to the fact that victims have been raped and held in sexual slavery. “Some escaped from China, but do not dare to come back home because they are ashamed about the situation and what happened to them,” said Moon Moon Mai, who was trafficked at about age 46, discussing the 10 to 20 other survivors she said she knows:

In our Kachin society, we look down on people who live together with another person and don’t get married or have sex with another person without being married. We came back home and were looked down on by our community. Even though we got married with a Kachin guy—in the future, [by] his relatives and his family I’m sure I will be condemned and looked down upon forever. That’s why even those who escape from China just get married to a Chinese man in Myanmar.

This stigma, and the secrecy it prompts, cuts survivors off from the few services that exist, and reduces public awareness of the risk of trafficking in the communities most affected. Survivors often tried to conceal what had happened to them—sometimes even from their families. “There are people who were trafficked, but they have never told this to another person,” Ja Tsin Mai, trafficked in 2011, said. “They hide it as a secret. We do not talk about it openly.”

Some survivors’ loved ones urged them to keep quiet. After four months of being held in a locked room and repeatedly raped, Khawng Shawng escaped back to Myanmar and her husband:

He asked me, “How much money do you have?” I said, “Don’t ask me how much money, ask me what happened to me in China.” He asked, and I told him about my situation. My husband was crying. I was crying. Then my husband suggested, “Don’t tell this story to anyone else because people might look down on you because you were trafficked to China.” And that’s why until today I didn’t tell anyone.

Survivors and experts said women and girls who have been trafficked are sometimes seen as being at least partly to blame for being trafficked. “This happened because you were foolish,” was the response Htoi Nu Ja said she received when IDP camp acquaintances heard about her experience of being trafficked, sold, and raped.

“People might think that people trafficked to China have behaved in ways that are not good and that’s why they were trafficked,” said Seng Moon Mai, trafficked and held for a year and a half. “In the community there are so many people who look down on women who have been trafficked.”

In close-knit IDP camps or villages, rumors travel quickly. “In the beginning, I had so many difficulties,” said Shayi, trafficked at 17 in 2014, describing her return to the IDP camp. “Everyone was gossiping about me. I felt doubt. I was looked down on. When I came back I didn’t dare to go out…I am quite ashamed to meet my friends—whether they know or not about my story. I feel I have to talk with them, but I cannot share what happened.”

The stigma is so strong that it drives some survivors not to come home. When Seng Ja Htoi escaped back to Myanmar after being trafficked and held for two months, she went to live with a relative instead of returning to her family in the IDP camp. “I feel ashamed to stay in here and meet anyone from the camp, so now I stay outside,” she said. “Friends are gossiping about me because I was trafficked.”

Some survivors blamed themselves. “I feel shame, because of what happened to me,” said Pan Pan Tsawm, trafficked at 15. She said she told only her family what had happened to her. “They say nothing. They gave no comment.”

Shayi was trafficked at age 17, after seeking work to pay her and her sister’s school fees. She said: “I was full of worry that I would get pregnant, but I kept praying for forgiveness. Poor people like us are greedy for money, which is why this happened to me. God may have been punishing me. So, I accepted it. My life had already been ruined.”

About her plans for the future, Tsawm Ning Ja, traf