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Chinese churches face off against human trafficking — and start to see social justice as part of their mission.
Works of Mercy
by Sylvia Yu
This article appeared in the February 2012 issue of Sojourners magazine
At a safe home for former trafficked women in the "Golden Triangle"
EVERY TUESDAY, AI JIN and two other young women from one of China’s underground urban Christian churches get together to pray—then walk the streets of a mafia-run red light district to tell girls as young as 13 who work in brothels that they can get out of prostitution. “Eight years ago, the average girl working in brothels was 25. Now it’s 14 and 15,” Ai Jin tells me. “I think it’ll get worse since it’s more difficult to find jobs, especially for girls from poor families with no education. They desperately need money to survive.”
Ai Jin and her two colleagues work with Mercy Outreach, an organization that offers prostitutes and trafficked women a safe home and alternative jobs. Started in 2003, Mercy Outreach is one of the first social enterprises of its kind based near the infamous “Golden Triangle”—the euphemistic name for one of the world’s busiest drug-trafficking routes. Running through Thailand, Burma, and Laos and bleeding into China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, it is a potent mix of extreme poverty, sex trafficking, rampant illicit drug production, and complicit local government leaders and warlords.
Ai Jin, 28, is part of a new breed of daring young women pioneers from the underground church reaching marginalized people, such as prostitutes, who had not previously been readily welcomed into house churches. “My pastor told me that what I’m doing in reaching out to prostitutes is what Jesus did,” Ai Jin says. “When I first started working at Mercy Outreach, I didn’t even want to shake hands with prostitutes. Every day I prayed for more love for the women. Now I can treat them like my own family.”
Ai Jin and her peers see their work as part of their contribution to building a civil society—unlike some underground church members in the past, who have traditionally steered clear of social service in the community because of persecution from authorities. “Social work is a new area in China,” Ai Jin says. “Most people don’t want to help prostitutes. Others don’t want to get in trouble with the mafia and pimps who control the girls.”
Ai Jin and others at Mercy Outreach—mostly women in their 20s and early 30s—boldly speak to mafia bosses and brothel owners to offer alternative vocational training and to point out that what they’re doing is morally wrong. She adds, “Just to be able to say to a person that what you’re doing is wrong can start a chain of events that can make a difference in a person’s life. We want to close one brothel at a time, reach one mafia boss at a time … to reach the entire community for God.”
The organization provides free medical support and mental health services; it also runs a social enterprise selling jewelry made by rescued women and former prostitutes.
Every morning before the work day begins, more than a dozen women on the morning shift in the jewelry-making workshop get together in a room to sing hymns, pray, and read the Bible. Kun Li, a petite staff member in charge of the main safe house, sits quietly in a corner with her head bowed in prayer. She says seeing the changed lives of the girls makes the intense challenges of this ministry worthwhile. “A lot of times I wanted to give up. But I’m encouraged by the fruit—the girls who have moved on and haven’t forgotten Jesus,” she said.
Entrance to a brothel in the Golden Triangle region
EXACT NUMBERS OF trafficking victims in China and the Golden Triangle region are unknown due to the hidden nature of the crime. According to the U.S. State Department, the Chinese police reported rescuing 10,385 women and 5,933 children from trafficking in 2010 (the latter figure includes kidnapping for illegal adoption).
Trafficking, for forced marriages as well as prostitution, could increase dramatically in the years to come in China and the rest of Asia because of China’s unprecedented gender imbalance: There is the prospect of an alarming shortage of at least 24 million marriageable women by 2020. Dubbed the “bachelor time bomb,” this skewed ratio was brought on by the “one-child” family planning policy that China began in 1979. Families preferred boys to carry on the family name, leading to sex-selective abortions and infanticide.
During my trip to China earlier this year, Ai Jin helped arrange interviews for me. One was with a young woman named Mei Mei. With her trendy auburn highlighted hair, meticulously applied make-up, and green hoodie, the jovial 23-year-old could fit right in at any campus or trendy hotspot—but Mei is a survivor of bride-trafficking. At the age of 14, she was tricked by a family friend of a classmate, taken by train to a distant place, trapped in a house with high walls, and strategically starved for two weeks. She screamed for days, but finally told her captors, “I’ll marry whomever.”
The couple watching over Mei brought in several men to inspect her like a piece of meat, then sold her for less than $1,600 to a middle-aged farmer who couldn’t afford to marry the traditional way. He took Mei back to his home village and chained her up like a dog except when he wanted to have sex with her. Mei eventually became pregnant and, at the age of 15, gave birth to a baby girl.
Soon after, Mei ran away and was recruited by a pimp to work in a brothel. She was sent to prison for six months for working as a prostitute. “When I got out of jail,” she told me, “I felt so much self-hatred and was too ashamed to return to my family, so I went back to prostitution.” A year later, Mei contracted HIV, something she had never heard of.
The staff at Mercy Outreach pulled Mei out of a dark pit of drug addiction and suicidal thoughts. They gave her shelter, counseling, training, and a job in jewelry-making and made sure she took her HIV medication. With the help of Mercy Outreach, Mei made a decision to commit her life to Christ. Today, Mei is smiling, and has regained a sense of hope.
I interviewed a teenaged prostitute and her pimp (looks in his 30s) in the Golden Triangle
FROM BEIJING TO Hunan to southwest China to the Tibetan plateau, courageous Chinese Christians are fighting the scourge of sex trafficking and slavery. In Chiang Khong, a city in Thailand where a highway is being built to connect with China, a new base for Chinese missionaries engaged in anti-trafficking work is slated to start up. “This region is in a time of transition; the highway could bring even more crime and flow of trafficking victims,” says a member of Target Ministries, a small international missions agency with bases in U.S. and Africa, which is setting up the base.
On three separate occasions, he told me, he has come across bride trafficking in China where women were sold into marriage with much older men. He hopes to help foster “concerted efforts to help provide refuge for sex trafficking victims,” he says, and to help “the Chinese church to make inroads into the Golden Triangle.”
Ai Jin and others’ groundbreaking work is a picture of what is happening in the urban underground church in China. Slowly, Christians are wading into anti-trafficking work, preaching the good news to the afflicted, binding up the broken-hearted, and proclaiming liberty to the captives and freedom to prisoners. But it will involve a radical mindset change in a shame-based culture to reach a segment of society that is considered the most “sinful”: prostitutes, pimps, and the mafia, according to Andrew Chiang, a British Christian who lives in Beijing and is co-founder of Daybreak Asia, a social enterprise that builds bridges between China and U.S. “The church in China has the wrong theology—we need to reform the church. There are problems in society historically because the church hasn’t done what God has called them to do,” he says.
It is clear that Ai Jin feels a sense of calling to her work, but she has one other reason: Her 14-year-old cousin is a prostitute. “When I found out that my own cousin was working in a brothel and wasn’t willing to leave, I was so upset and wanted to quit the ministry. But God said to me that, if I quit, other families will ask you, ‘Why didn’t you help my daughter?’” she says with tears in her eyes. “This makes me believe God called me here. If God is calling me, I want to do this ministry for the rest of my life. It’s an honor, not a duty, to work here.”
Sylvia Yu is a Hong Kong-based journalist and philanthropy adviser. She directed funding to Mercy Outreach in 2008 and 2009. She tweets at @Light1candle.
Me and the cutest 3-year-old - she has the sweetest voice and loves to sing, but also can be very strong-willed. This one is a leader and needs to be nurtured in the right way so that her spirit won't be broken by harsh discipline
Thankful for times and people who change your life… thankful for the ability to choose where I want to work and everything else. The former trafficked women I met in The Golden Triangle region do not have the freedom to choose because they were born in a village and have had limited education, nor have they developed confidence in themselves to fulfill their dreams. Those of us who do have decision-making power can help empower the voiceless. We have a huge responsibility if we’re willing…
At a drug rehabilitation center in Myanmar. That's me on the right (in flip flops). Our donor client funded this program complete with free HIV testing and medical treatment.
LEGACY OF LOVE, A BEAUTIFUL INHERITANCE OF JUSTICE AND PHILANTHROPY
Feeling weepy today… as I reflect on the legacy that I want to leave for my children and future generations and the dreams I have in my heart for them.
I want to be able to tell my children someday that this is our legacy for you: your parents fought for social justice and with the love of God, they did their best in loving orphans and helping them to be parented and empowered through healthy communities and social enterprises. Your parents lent their energy and voice in fighting for the ending of sex trafficking; in helping restore trafficking victims & providing support for safe homes for their rehabilitation, and in bringing healing and restoration to hurting at-risk children, broken lives & the desperately poor. This is what’s burning in my heart. I hope that it burns in my childrens’ hearts as well someday.
I want to carry on my 4th generation blessings of social justice work and extraordinary compassion. My great-grandparents on my mother’s side opened their home and hearts to love and feed the poor who would trek from all over to be nourished by free meals; they also gave whatever they could. They gave away coats, money and even gave the long johns they were wearing to those begging in the winter – so moved were they with great compassion for the suffering.
My great-grandfather was a radical, influential political leader (for his entire career till he retired and ran an huge fruit orchard) and had a deep passion for justice. You could say that he pioneered governmental social services in his region out of his large home estate. My mother had a privileged upbringing (was the first family in her town to have a T.V. set when she was a child among other material things), but grew up watching her grandparents give the shirts off their backs to street beggars. She was definitely shaped by her unusually loving grandmother; my mom is also incredibly compassionate… she has for more than 30 years helped low-income families in a myriad of loving and kind ways and cooked for the terminally ill at her church.
What qualities do I want my kids to model after their parents? I hope it’s what I’ve seen modeled in my great-grandparents and parents: deep faith, compassion, integrity, selfless service, noble living, wisdom & discernment, thoughtfulness and a deep commitment to friends and family.
What else is there besides deeply satisfying and nurturing relationships? Nothing. No work, no call of duty, not even material things can replace the special friends and family in our lives.
Orphans in Haiti
**These children are vulnerable to traffickers. Please pray, support and act quickly on behalf of these at-risk kids.**
January 19, 2010
Associated Press: Haiti quake creates thousands of new orphans
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The 5-month-old patient at the Israeli field hospital has a number rather than a name. No one even knows who dropped the barely conscious child at the makeshift medical center after he was pulled from the debris of a collapsed building four days after last week’s catastrophic quake. Now recovering, doctors have a difficult decision ahead.
“What will we do with him when we are finished?” said Dr. Assa Amit of the hospital’s pediatric emergency department. No one knows who the boy’s family is, or whether any of his relatives are alive.
Tens of thousands of children have been orphaned by the earthquake, aid groups say — so many that officials won’t venture a number. With so many buildings destroyed and growing chaos in the capital, it is conceivable that many children are alone.
“As yet they are still on the streets,” said Elizabeth Rodgers, of the Britain-based international orphan group SOS Children. “Without doubt, most of them are in the open.” Even before Tuesday’s deadly magnitude-7.0 earthquake, Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, was awash in orphans, with 380,000 children living in orphanages or group homes, the United Nations Children’s Fund reported on its Web site.
Some of the children lost their parents in previous disasters, including four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800 people in 2008, deadly storms in 2005 and 2004, and massive floods almost every other year since 2000. Others were abandoned amid the Caribbean nation’s long-running political strife, which has led thousands to seek asylum in the U.S. — without their children — or by parents who were simply too poor to care for them.
International advocacy groups are trying to help, either by speeding up adoptions that were already in progress, or by sending in relief personnel who could potentially evacuate thousands of orphans to the U.S. and other countries.
On Tuesday, a flight carrying 53 Haitian orphans landed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after two sisters working at a Haitian orphanage used Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about their plight. A day earlier, the Dutch government sent a planeload of immigration officials to Haiti who will try to locate and evacuate 100 children who were already being adopted by Dutch parents.
Also Monday, Indiana-based Kids Alive International, which runs orphanages around the world, is expected to take 50 Haitian orphans to group homes in the Dominican Republic, the organization said in a news release.
U.S. Homeland Security spokesman Sean Smith said Monday that orphans who have ties to the U.S. — such as a family member already living here — are among those who can get special permission to remain in the United States.
Notwithstanding the U.S. policy, the Catholic Church in Miami is working on a proposal that would allow thousands of orphaned children to come permanently to America. A similar effort launched in 1960, known as Operation Pedro Pan, brought about 14,000 unaccompanied children from Cuba to the U.S.
Under the new plan, dubbed “Pierre Pan,” Haitian orphans would first be placed in group homes and then paired with foster parents, said Mary Ross Agosta, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami.
“We have children who are homeless and possibly without parents and it is the moral and humane thing to do,” Agosta said. Archdiocese officials said many details would have to be worked out and President Barack Obama’s administration would have to grant orphans humanitarian parole to enter the U.S. In the meantime, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said the United Nations is establishing a group whose mission on the ground in Haiti will be to protect children — orphans and non-orphans alike — against trafficking, kidnapping and sex abuse.
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