 |
|
TRAPPED
FOREVER
IN SEX
SLAVERY, EH? -
PART 1
Canada Is the World’s
Latest Portal of Human Traffic
WORDS AND PHOTOS
BY DOUGLAS HADDOW
|
|
|
|
From the Chinese head tax in the days of the British Columbian gold rush (look it up, it’s fucked) right down to the Filipino chap who holds an architecture degree from back home but now flips your cheeseburger for minimum wage in Montreal, Canada has a long and illustrious history of fucking Asian immigrants right in the ass upon their arrival to the Great White North. In no industry does this happen more literally than in prostitution, and right now women are pouring into Canada from all over Asia like, um, the choicest and most delicate plum wine being dumped into a scummy beer barrel at a logging camp in the Yukon.
One might think that in the 21st century, a wealthy liberal democracy would be able to squash its tendency to subjugate newcomers fresh off the boat. But unfortunately for a nation that prides itself on once having been a safe haven for African slaves, the rhetoric of social progress doesn’t hold up against reality—Canada has become a major transit point for a booming $10 billion a year human-trafficking industry.
The Mounties (Canada’s horsey-riding version of the FBI) have made conservative estimates that around 2,000 women and girls are illegally trafficked into Canada each year, but the reality is probably closer to around 10,000. From countryside rice patties to inner-city slums and then all the way to the freshly vacuumed arrival lounge of the Vancouver airport, traffickers use a deftly engineered system of exploitation to covertly import Asian girls into the North American sex market.
Incoming traffickees are processed in Vancouver and spat out across the continent’s vast labyrinth of massage parlors, hostess clubs, and underground micro-brothels. Within the industry, there are two broad categories of victims: older, street-smart semi-professionals who know what they’re getting into and younger girls who have no clue that they’re about to have their lives and their futures turned to shit by monsters.
I recently got to know some of the women suffering under the yoke of sex slavery and they’ve told me their stories. One of the first women I met, who goes by the name of Yo-Yo, shares a dingy ground-floor apartment with her sister where they sleep on couches in the living room and turn tricks in the bedroom. Hailing from a quaint village in rural China, Yo-Yo enjoys spending her extra dough on Hello Kitty paraphernalia. She told me that when she isn’t providing what she refers to as “girlfriend experiences,” she sits around and watches pirated DVDs because she’s not allowed to leave the apartment without her pimp’s permission.
The typical narrative of people who are trafficked through Canada’s underground railroad of sex slavery goes something like this: A transnational crime syndicate such as the Viet-Ching or the Korean Mafia, or an independent white-collar slaver, will set up a front through which they meet vulnerable young women. The fronts come in a variety of forms, the most common being moneylenders, travel brokers, and school liaisons. Slavers target girls who come from the poorer regions of East Asia and who are looking for a way out of a hopeless life.
One of the most popular recruitment ploys is the ESL dream holiday, where a girl is tricked into thinking that, for a relatively affordable fee, she will be able to travel to Canada or the US and comfortably study English at a posh institute while being hooked up with a good job and nice digs.
The front will offer the girls all-inclusive travel-study packages and will then organize and facilitate every aspect of the journey, from passport and visa arrangements to plane tickets and living accommodations. After touching down at Vancouver International, the girls are brought to a sketchy motel room or condo. That’s where things start to go very, very wrong.
They are told that they owe their benefactors much more than was previously arranged—a debt typically exceeding $30K. Their passports are stolen and they are coerced, through violence and threats of imprisonment, to not attempt any contact with Canadian authorities. After a period of brainwashing, abuse, and training, the girls are introduced to their only possible payment method: whoredom.
| A couple of lucky cats sit in the living room of a condo brothel and beckon incoming johns. |
|
Johns pay somewhere between $100 and $150 for an hour-long “girlfriend experience.” If they are lucky, the girls will get a 10 percent cut of the profits. |
CONTINUED
TRAPPED FOREVER IN SEX SLAVERY, EH? | 1 | 2 |
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
“I can’t understand why Canada hasn’t successfully prosecuted a single person for human trafficking when you look at other countries like the U.S., Australia, and the U.K.,” says Perrin. “We’ve made the same commitments and been to the same conferences, but Canada has been all talk and no action. We’re just beginning to turn the corner; we’re where other countries we consider ourselves in the same league as were 10 years ago. We’ve had a decade of inaction on this and it’s allowed traffickers to profit; we need to make it more risky and less profitable for them.”
Benjamin Perrin (UBC Law) | |
| Jack Burton, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
What is happening to these girls is awful. They don’t deserve this shit. It happens all over the world everyday. It can’t all be roses and sunshine.
I had to help Wang get Miao Yin back from David Lo Pan before she fell to the same fate. It was tough. | | Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
to all the "der writer needz postings more stats!":
how about you get off your ass, then get back on it, and find them yourself and inform us? the article is bringing attention to an issue and all you can do is sit there and bitch about "why u post no stats?". valid criticism, but what’s worse is that no one else brings a damn thing to the table either. | | Anonymous, on Aug 13, 2008 wrote:
this is just far too serious and mind bogglingly complicated to be talked about so un-seriously, and put out there to educate stupid people but in an entirely uneducated way. its almost like - ’i cant believe he just wrote that’ | | Anonymous, on Aug 13, 2008 wrote:
Maybe they can get jobs at American Apparel! | |
| Zigmund Fraud, on Aug 13, 2008 wrote:
Hm they look kind of cute why he no get full service | | Anonymous, on Aug 13, 2008 wrote:
This shit has been happening all around the world forever. Men and women just know how to fuck other women over.
The sex-slave trade is for real. No major country, or small, has escaped this sort of shit.
Is it really that hard for some men to get pussy? Pretty sad if you tell me!!! | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
I would imagine stats on this type of crime are pretty unreliable...how would the advocacy groups be able to find out the reality of the situation when even the cops are clueless? | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
This writer needs to back up more stats. It’s too anecdotal, too based on allusion. Good topic, it’s too bad the writer replaces real facts (from a prostitute advocacy group perhaps) with phrases like, "It’s fucked." | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
paddym, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
What a biased piece-of-shit article.
could you be more retarded? | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
Can we at least see their beavers?
I don’t see what the problem is. Guys like to pay for sex and women like to get money. Looks like a win-win situation to me. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
Sick evil and sad. But you only have to look at the back pages of free papers like Eye Magazine in Toronto to see how many more Asian girls are being pimped out these days.
| | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
"discriminating against a nationality isn’t racism"
so the head-tax wasn’t racist???? | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
really, wow bummer, thats it? And how is this article suppose to be a biased piece of shit? Biased against forced prostitution, then yeah, I guess so... | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
wow...bummer. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
thanks to vice commenters I now know where to go to read the real story (Rivethead, McMafia), not these bullshit failed-out-of-creative writing hack investigative journalism pieces. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
who is this guy? "2,000 women and girls are illegally trafficked into Canada each year, but the reality is probably closer to around 10,000" really? is this just a guess? this was not an "article" or a "story", more like someones notes for a bad term paper. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
wonder if he got a freebee. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
do you think the hello kitty thing is an attempt to hold on to her youth? | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
Doug you should be ashamed of yourself...frosted shit | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
Yeah, not biased, just not good reporting. Read the stunning book McMafia for a better explanation of this. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
C’mon, the Head Tax wasn’t that fucked up, no where near sex slavery on the fucked scale, and has very little to do with the article. Besides, all countries regualte immigration, and discriminating against a nationality isn’t racism. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
"rice patties"?
sounds m-m-good. | |
| Bane, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
10,000 per year?
I’d be willing to bet that there’s more women than that coerced into prostitution in LA over a single day. | | Anonymous, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
Um, biased against what exactly, human traffickers? | |
| paddym, on Aug 12, 2008 wrote:
What a biased piece-of-shit article. | | | < Previous 30 comments | |
| |
