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