Tag: Human Trafficking

7 Months Inside an Online Scam Labor Camp

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Neo Lu had been looking forward to starting his lucrative new job as a translator. But from the moment he arrived, he knew something was off. He hadn’t been hired. He had been kidnapped and forced to work for an abusive online scam operation. Only by understanding how it worked could he hope to escape. He had been promised a generous salary. A better work-life balance. A chance to live in the vibrant metropolis of Bangkok. His fluency in English would be put to good use as a translator for…

Six people arrested in China’s Hubei province over ‘baby-trafficking ring’

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Six people have been arrested in central China’s Hubei province over alleged involvement in a baby-trafficking ring linked to a hospital in one of the province’s biggest cities. The allegations about Xiangyang Jianqiao hospital first came to light on 6 November via a Weibo user by the name of Shangguan Zhengyi, who describes himself as an “anti-trafficking volunteer”. Shangguan posted a series of claims about the hospital’s director, Ye Youzhi, whom he accused of colluding “with online intermediaries” to sell birth certificates for 96,000 yuan (£10,750). After selling a birth…

Defecting From North Korea Is Now Far Harder

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The North Korean software engineer was desperate. He had been sent to northeastern China in 2019 to earn money for the North Korean regime. After working long hours under the constant watch of his minders, he found an email address on a website and sent a harrowing message in 2021: “I am writing at the risk of losing my life,” pleaded the engineer. A young woman who had been smuggled by human traffickers from North Korea into China in 2018 contacted the owner of the same website early this year.…

Your Monday Briefing: A ‘Toothless’ Trip to Xinjiang

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering the U.N. human rights chief’s trip to China, India’s expanded protections for sex workers and Ukraine’s offensive in Kherson. U.N.’s tempered criticism of China The United Nations’ top human rights official spent six days in China, offering only limited criticism of China’s crackdown on predominantly Muslim minorities. Michelle Bachelet said that her visit “was not an investigation,” and that she had raised questions about China’s application of “counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures” when she spoke by video with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. In so doing, Bachelet couched…

‘Chained Woman’ Spurs Social Media Movement in China

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese government faces a quandary: how to convince its people that what it said about a chained woman is true. Since a short video of the woman chained in a doorless shack went viral in late January, the Chinese public has taken the matter into its own hands to find out who she is, whether she is a victim of human trafficking and why the apparently mentally ill woman had eight children. The public thought it couldn’t trust a government that was not truthful about her identity and that…