Myanmar women in China use WeChat to escape forced marriages

One man has helped save dozens since receiving a desperate plea for help via the app

Published on Feb 14, 2019

A billboard in Chin state urges people to phone a hotline if they suspect someone has been trafficked (Photo: Zarny Win/Myanmar Now)

She fled her forced marriage in China without any shoes, but she made sure to bring a smartphone.

After wading barefoot through waterlogged fields and reaching an unfamiliar town where she felt safe from capture, Li Han turned on the device and opened WeChat.

The social media app is ubiquitous in China, and for many trafficked women it is key to securing freedom.

She messaged her location to a volunteer from the WeChat White Charity Group, who arranged for a driver to collect her so she could begin the long journey back to the border.

Li Han, who asked to be referred to by her adopted Chinese name, is one of 50 women the organisation has saved in the past two years.

The network connects those who want to come home with their families, helps plan escape routes, and tips off the police about brokers and returning women.

Li Han, who is 27, was first sold to a man in early 2017 after being tricked by brokers who said they would find her a job.

When she was unable to get pregnant, they sold her to a second man. Shortly after, she began plotting her escape via the app.

Thousands of Myanmar women have been sold as brides in recent years in China, where a surplus of some 34 million males fuels a lucrative industry in brides.

Only a few manage to return home, but those who do are increasingly making use of online networks to help them get out.

WeChat can be used to transfer money, pay at shops, and purchase tickets for travel, and it also allows users to share their locations - all features that make it invaluable for escapees.

“If I didn’t have the WeChat account… I could never have come back to Myanmar in this lifetime,” Li Han said.

‘I’ve been sold, help me’

In late 2016, Tun Tun, a 48-year-old Yangon resident, was playing around on WeChat when a message popped up.

“I’m in trouble, I’ve been sold,” it read. “Help me!” A woman trapped in a forced marriage in China had apparently been messaging anyone she could find back in Myanmar in the hope of being rescued.

Tun Tun messaged back saying he would help, and offered to get in touch with her family in Myanmar. He also went to the police.

But the woman stopped responding, and he was never able to get her out.

The experience led him to set up the White Charity Group, a network of volunteers that includes Myanmar citizens who live in China.

Though the group has saved dozens, many others like the first woman go offline before escaping and are lost.

The group can’t afford to pay for the car rentals and bus tickets needed to get the women back to the border, so they ask the women to raise the cash themselves.

Some pawn jewelry, or use money given to them by their husbands, to help cover costs of anywhere between 100,000 and 700,000 kyat, or roughly US$450.

This, says Tun Tun, has been used against the group by brokers, who have posted on WeChat groups claiming his charity are themselves involved in selling women, and warning people not to send them money.

“Brokers criticize and attack us,” he said. “We have been mistaken for brokers a couple of times because we have to talk about money.”

The White Charity Group is among a number of organisations in Southeast Asia tackling trafficking with WeChat.

In Loas, the group Village Focus International trains at-risk women to post messages on the app if they find themselves in trouble.

The Vietnam-based group Blue Dragon uses WeChat to connect with women in China and orchestrate their rescues.

‘Wrong to come back’

The two Myanmar brokers who sold Li Han were caught and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

After she arrived in China and found out she was expected to marry someone, the brokers told her they would send money to her family if she cooperated.

“I went through two husbands but the brokers didn’t give me a single pya,” Li Han told Myanmar Now, referring to a defunct unit of currency valued at 100th of a kyat.

mmnowelectionads.jpg

“They didn’t send any money to my family either. If I’d worked as a prostitute I would have earned money.”

Life has been tough since she returned home, Li Han said. People treat survivors like her with the same contempt they do sex workers, she said, and she is struggling to find work.

“I want a job so badly. I would do anything, even work as a maid,” she said, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I am starting to think that it was wrong to come back.”

Human trafficking

Htike Nanda Win

Donate

Independent media is under attack in Myanmar... help us hold the powerful to account.

Donate Now

Win Htein to be tried by tribunal of two judges, says his lawyer

Announcement came as court postponed the 82-year-old’s third hearing, meaning his request for bail on health grounds was not considered

Myanmar Now

Published on Mar 19, 2021

Win Htein arrives for the opening ceremony of the second session of the Union Peace Conference in 2017 (EPA-EFE)

Detained National League for Democracy party stalwart Win Htein is to be tried by a special tribunal of two judges following an order from the military-controlled Supreme Court, his lawyer said on Friday.

“It was just one judge before, and now there’s two,” Min Min Soe told Myanmar Now.

“District judge Ye Lwin will serve as chair, and deputy district judge Soe Naing will be a member of the tribunal,” she added.

Win Htein faces up to a 20-year prison sentence for sedition under section 124a of the Penal Code.

His third hearing, scheduled for Friday, was postponed, with the court citing the internet shutdown as the reason because it made video conferencing impossible, Min Min Soe said.

“The arguments will be presented at the next hearing, we applied for bail but since they’re setting up a tribunal for the lawsuit, that will be discussed at the next hearing as well,” she said.

At the second hearing on March 5, Win Htein requested an independent judgement, a meeting with his lawyer, and bail due to his health issues, but the court said those requests would be heard on March 19.

Win Htein, 82, uses a wheelchair and suffers from breathing problems that means he often requires an oxygen tank. He also suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism and benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Min Min Soe was allowed a brief call with her client on Friday to tell him that his hearing had been postponed until April 2.

Aye Lu, the chair of the Ottara district administration council in Naypyitaw, is the plaintiff in the lawsuit against Win Htein. Ottara district is where the NLD’s temporary headquarters are located.

Aye Lu filed the charge on February 4 and Win Htein was arrested that evening at his home in Yangon. He has been kept in the Naypyitaw detention center and denied visits from his lawyers.

He was detained after giving media interviews in the wake of the February 1 coup in which he said military chief Min Aung Hlaing had acted on personal ambition when seizing power.

On Wednesday the military council announced that it was investigating Aung San Suu Kyi for corruption, on top of other charges announced since her arrest.

Many other NLD leaders, party members and MPs have been arrested or are the subject of warrants.

Kyi Toe, a senior figure in the NLD, was arrested on Thursday night in Hledan, Yangon.

Myanmar Now

Myanmar Now is an independent news service providing free, accurate and unbiased news to the people of Myanmar in Burmese and English.

Donate

Independent media is under attack in Myanmar... help us hold the powerful to account.

Donate Now

Op-ed

Seeking justice in the wake of Myanmar’s coup

The country’s military leaders have acted with impunity for decades, but now there is a mechanism to bring them to justice

Lin Htet

Published on Mar 19, 2021

Nationwide protests against the coup have been responded with murders, torture and mass arrests by the military regime. (Myanmar Now)

On March 8, U Ko Ko Lay, a 62-year-old teacher, bled to death on a street in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina. He had been shot in the head while protesting the military coup of February 1. That same night, U Zaw Myat Lynn, an official from the National League for Democracy, was taken from his home in Shwepyithar on the outskirts of Yangon and tortured to death. The list keeps growing.

In the more than six weeks since Senior General Min Aung Hlaing seized power, images of soldiers and police officers shooting, beating, and arresting protesters have flooded social media and Myanmar and international news outlets. So far, the regime’s forces have killed well over 200 people (more than half of them in the past week) and seriously injured many more. The junta has also arrested nearly 2,200 people, some of whom, like U Zaw Myat Lynn, have died in custody.

Each day, Myanmar human rights organizations update lists with names, dates, locations, and causes of death. Around 600 police and a handful of soldiers have decided they do not want to be involved in such actions. They have left their posts and even joined the anti-coup movement.

Many soldiers, police officers, and commanding officers are acting with impunity now. But they can face prosecution, not only in Myanmar’s courts but also internationally. Like any country, Myanmar is subject to international law. Because of its history of atrocities, most recently against the Rohingya people, Myanmar is also already subject to special international legal proceedings that apply to the current situation.

The most relevant is the United Nations’ Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM). The IIMM was created in 2018 after the Myanmar military’s brutal campaign against the Rohingya people, but it applies to the whole country. Its mission is to investigate “international crimes” from 2011 to the present.

International crimes are generally defined as “widespread and systematic” in nature, involving many victims and locations. These include crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.

In keeping with its mandate, the IIMM is collecting information on the current situation. In a statement released on February 11 (available in Myanmar here), it highlighted the “use of lethal force against peaceful protesters and the detention of political leaders, members of civil society and protesters.”

More recently, on March 17, the IIMM also called on recipients of illegal orders to share this evidence so that those ultimately responsible for these crimes can be held accountable.

"The persons most responsible for the most serious international crimes are usually those in high leadership positions. They are not the ones who physically perpetrate the crimes and often are not even present at the locations where the crimes are committed,” the head of the IIMM, Nicholas Koumjian, says in the statement (available in Myanmar here).

The crimes the IIMM investigates could be tried in Myanmar courts, courts in other countries, or international courts. International crimes are crimes that are so serious that they are considered to be against the international community, and are therefore not limited to courts in one country.

In other words, an international crime committed in Myanmar—for example, widespread and systematic attacks on civilians—can be tried in a court in another country or in an international court.

The Myanmar military is used to getting away with murder. Decades of well-documented killing, rape, and torture of civilians in ethnic minority areas have gone unpunished. No one has ever been tried for the killing of protesters during previous mass uprisings against military rule in 1988 and 2007.

But this time may be different. On March 4, the International Commission of Jurists said in a statement that “the killing of peaceful protesters by Myanmar’s security forces should be independently investigated as possible crimes against humanity.”

The IIMM is already set up and working. It provides a mechanism for just such an investigation. Those doing the shooting should be aware of this.

For further information:

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) on Facebook

International Accountability Mechanisms for Myanmar (learning materials in English, Myanmar, and Karen)

Lin Htet is a pen name for a team of Myanmar and international writers

Lin Htet

Donate

Independent media is under attack in Myanmar... help us hold the powerful to account.

Donate Now

At least eight killed in junta’s bloody crackdown in Aungban, Shan State

A resident said armed forces used drones to monitor the crowd before opening fire on them

Myanmar Now

Published on Mar 19, 2021

Men carry a wounded protester in Aungban, Shan State, on the morning of March 19 (Supplied)

At least eight anti-coup protesters were killed in Aungban, southern Shan State, during an attack by the military junta on demonstrations on Friday morning, according to the Aungban Free Funeral Service Society.

Sixteen military trucks carrying more than 100 policemen and soldiers arrived at the protest site at around 9:00 a.m. and began shooting at protesters. Seven died at the scene, and another protester who had been shot in the neck was taken to Kalaw Hospital and died by 11:00 a.m.

All eight victims were men.

The body of the man who died at the hospital was sent to his family’s home, but those who were killed at the protest site were taken away by the junta’s armed forces, a representative of the Free Funeral Service Society told Myanmar Now.

Aungban resident Nay Lynn Tun told Myanmar Now that police and soldiers had destroyed the doors of nearby homes in order to arrest people, and that at least 10 people had been detained.

“Initially, police arrived at the site. When the crowd surrounded the police, armed soldiers arrived at the site and began firing,” he told Myanmar Now. “In the coming days, if we cannot gather to protest, we will do it in our own residential areas.”

Since March 13, around 300 volunteer night guards have watched over these residential areas to protect locals from the dangers posed by the junta’s nighttime raids. These forces use drone cameras to monitor the activities of the night guards from 3:00 a.m. until 5:00 a.m. every day, Nay Lynn Tun said.

He added that hours before Friday’s crackdown, military and police had also used drone cameras to monitor the gathering of protesters in Aungban.

Over the last week, at least 11 protesters have been arrested in Aungban. Only three-- the protesters who were minors-- were released.

South of Shan State, in the Kayah State capital of Loikaw, two pro-democracy protesters were also shot with live ammunition by the regime’s armed forces on Friday. One, 46-year-old Kyan Aung, was shot in the lower abdomen and died from his injuries. The other wounded protester was a nurse, according to eyewitnesses.

According to a March 18 tally by the advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, at least 224 people have been killed across the country by junta’s armed forces since the February 1 coup. Thousands more have been arrested.