CHINESE ALIEN SMUGGLING THROUGH HCMC

UNCLAS HO CHI MINH CITY 000612

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM PREL CVIS KWMN TIP ELAB SMIG SOCI TW CH VM
SUBJECT: CHINESE ALIEN SMUGGLING THROUGH HCMC


1. (U) On May 9, the HCMC branch of the Anti-Social Evils Police
(PC-14) rescued four Chinese children from a traffickers' "safe
house" in HCMC. According to press reports, the rescue came
from a tip-off from a bus driver in neighboring Tay Ninh
province who noticed that the children did not speak Vietnamese.
He reported his suspicions to local police, who moved to
retrieve the children. The children, aged 5 to 14, were
identified as residents of China's Zhejiang province. On May
23, police intercepted another three Chinese children, aged 13
and 14, also from Zhejiang province. HCMC press reported that
the children were "kidnapped from China and brought to Vietnam
en route to Cambodia." The children were turned over to the PRC
Consulate in HCMC.


2. (SBU) Director of the HCMC branh of PC-14, Lieutenant
Colonel Le Thanh Kiem, told ConGen that eleven suspects from the
northern provinces of Hai Duong and Bac Giang and from HCMC have
been arrested. He said that police believed the two incidents
were linked and that the suspected head of the smuggling ring
has gone hiding.


3. (SBU) Kiem told us that some children told police that their
travel from Zhejiang to the border with Vietnam had been
arranged by their relatives. Chinese traffickers then brought
them across the border to Vietnam via land transport and handed
them over to the Vietnamese ring. The Vietnamese, in turn, were
to bring them to Cambodia, where others would forge documents
for the children to be resettled in a third country. An
arrested driver who was hired to transport the children from the
border to HCMC told police that the children had been given
pills to sleep through most of the journey inside Vietnam.


4. (SBU) Kiem said it was likely that in at least some of the
cases the children's parents had migrated to Europe illegally
and now were seeking to have their children join them. Some of
the bit players in the Vietnamese smuggling ring told police
that they were paid between USD 15 to 20 to transport each
child. The police believe this ring has been operating in
Vietnam since 2003. The suspects admitted that since beginning
of 2006, they smuggled 41 Chinese children to Cambodia in 12
trips through Vietnam. To date, police have accumulated
sufficient evidence to recommend to the People's Procuracy --
the Vietnamese prosecutor's office -- to prosecute one suspect
for "trafficking of children." Further prosecutions are
pending. We contacted the China's HCMC Consulate multiple times
to seek additional information, but they consistently avoided
discussing the cases.


5. (SBU) Comment: The aggressive response to the tip off by
HCMC and Tay Ninh police demonstrates increasing awareness and
commitment of provincial governments to tackle TIP. Police say
that this was the first time they have detected this type of
smuggling from China through Vietnam to Europe. Police
indicated that they have additional TIP investigations underway
involving smuggling of Vietnamese nationals to Malaysia and Hong
Kong. End Comment.

WINNICK