"Police have been unable to perform their primary duty of law enforcement since the coup as they have been busy helping the Myanmar military impose a crackdown on dissidents. The resulting lawlessness has allowed criminal gangs and allied human traffickers to thrive in areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations on the Myanmar-China border. Human traffickers have expanded their network to major cities like Yangon and Mandalay, key border towns including Lashio and Tachilek, and even Sagaing and Magwe regions in central Myanmar, which is experiencing fierce fighting between junta and resistance forces. Here, they lure young people with the promise of high-paying jobs, before trafficking them to Wa State, an autonomous enclave in northeastern Myanmar controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA). RelatedPosts Myanmar Junta Detains Battalion Commander, Deputy for Refusing to Fight About 50 Myanmar Junta Troops Killed in Four Days of Resistance Attacks Cambodia’s Ruling Party Says on Course for ‘Landslide’ in One-Sided Poll At least 350 people were trafficked in Wa State from February 2021 to May 2023, according to data compiled by the UWSA, Thai authorities, news agencies in northern Shan State, and The Irrawaddy. Among those trafficked were young people from Yangon, Mandalay, Lashio, Kyaukme, Hsipaw, Sagaing and Magwe as well citizens from fellow ASEAN countries including the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Indonesia, and from Russia. This figure only represents those who have been rescued or sought help. The actual number of trafficked Wa State, officially the Wa Self-Administered Division, is located in northern Shan State on the border with China. The UWSA is headquartered in Panghsan, and the self-administered division is made up of Mongmao, Monglin and Mongpauk districts and Panghsan and Namtit special townships – areas which the UWSA refers to as northern Wa State, covering around 1,500 square kilometers. Northern Wa State to the east of the Salween River is under the de facto control of the UWSA. Central government administration is limited to areas west of the Salween River. Northern Wa State comprises 24 townships. Panghsan, Monglin and Mongpauk are the busiest, hosting casinos, brothels, and hotels that sell narcotics including methamphetamine, ecstasy, ketamine and Happy Water. The USWA, which has a long history of trading narcotics and arms, claimed in 2005 that it had abandoned opium-poppy cultivation to focus on rubber, tea and orange trees, as well as mining rare earth elements and other minerals. However, the armed ethnic organization remains on the drugs and arms trafficking watchlists of neighboring Thailand and the US. But one key USWA-controlled business that the Wa army has avoided talking about is the hotel industry linked with casinos, gambling dens, brothels, and phone and internet scams. This sector is referred to as the “entertainment business” in Wa State. Investors in the UWSA’s entertainment business are mostly Chinese nationals. Brothels with Chinese names are controlled by criminal gangs and are hubs for human trafficking, slavery and forced prostitution. Brothels and online-scam businesses owned by Chinese nationals are guarded by armed men, according to a restaurant manager, an entertainment-business investor and other Wa State locals. Most operate undercover as massage parlors. The armed guards make sure trafficked victims don’t flee and do what they are told. These so-called businesses more accurately resemble organized crime groups. Female sex workers at brothels in Panghsan or Mongpauk earn 200 yuan (around 84,000 kyats at the current exchange rate) for 45 minutes, and between 1,000 and 2,500 yuan for the night, according to local agencies that help find recruits for brothels and online scammers. In some brothels, sex workers are reportedly forced to pay 50 percent of their earnings to their boss. But some are even less fortunate, sold by traffickers to Chinese businessmen for 15,000 to 20,000 yuan to become sex slaves. A virgin can earn a trafficker between 5,000 and 8,000 yuan per day. Hence, human traffickers target young girls as young as 14. “They [sex workers] should not be older than 25. Fifteen-year-olds are also okay. They are better since we can contract them for a long time. Virgins get better prices,” a brothel manager in Wa State told The Irrawaddy. Two of the registered 350 human trafficking victims were girls aged between 14 and 16. Women younger than 25 are preferred for prostitution, according to job adverts posted by brothels in Panghsan and Mongpauk. Applicants have to send three photos and a video of themselves to the brothels. Chinese bosses use middlemen in Shan State border towns, who provide transportation costs for successful applicants or send vehicles to pick them up, according to individuals engaged in the business. The prostitution industry in Wa State is not limited to sex with customers. Sex workers are also used as escorts for Chinese gamblers and nationals working in casinos, in internet scams and brothels, to perform in porn videos and via livestreams. Sex workers are also forced to use narcotics and stimulants so they can work for hours without sleep, according to accounts by victims, some of whom have filed complaints at Mongpauk police station. Meanwhile, men and women trafficked for phone and internet scams are confined in apartments and forced to work up to 19 hours per day, according to victims. Some were first sold into the scams but later forced into prostitution. Varying degrees of punishment are imposed on those who refuse to take orders. First-degree punishments include being confined to a room, gang-beaten, tased, and denied food and water, according to an ethnic Palaung woman who suffered torture before being released in 2022 after her family paid ransom money. Second and third-degree punishments include hanging from a tree or beam, searing the skin with hot objects, confinement in a doghouse, being stripped naked and beaten, imprisonment in a pitch-black room for several days, and chest-deep immersion in a water tank. An ethnic armed organization official posted to Panghsan for six years said: “This system is practiced on all [victims] regardless of their race or nationality. Whether they are Bamar or Chinese or Wa or Kachin or Palaung, they will be punished if they fail to pay back debts or lose at gambling and can’t repay the money. Men and women come to work here and if they want to go back before their contracts expire, or if they refuse to do the work as ordered, they are also beaten. Or they can be ransomed.” UWSA involvement in criminal activities The UWSA is known as the most powerful ethnic armed organization in Myanmar and envied by fellow EAOs for its de facto control over Wa State. But its other face is a vast business enterprise with ties to criminal gangs. Despite a constant flow of men and young women being trafficked into slavery, the entertainment industry in Wa State continues as usual. Its businesses are officially licensed and taxed by the UWSA-run government, which profits handsomely from the revenues. Meanwhile, UWSA chiefs benefit directly and indirectly from lucrative joint ventures with Chinese investors in the entertainment industry, according to sources in the industry. As in Wa State, human trafficking is rampant in neighboring China-Myanmar border towns controlled by the Kokang Border Guard Force and National Democratic Alliance Army. These casino towns are also notorious for prostitution and criminal gangs engaged in drug and arms trafficking. These businesses provide a large source of income for various EAOs and are thus unlikely to collapse anytime soon. International pressure rising The US State Department’s 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report for Myanmar states that “efforts to combat trafficking declined dramatically after the coup as the military regime shifted its focus away from other justice sector priorities and toward persecution of the pro-democracy opposition.” Myanmar was ranked on the bottom rung or Tier 3, for countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so. Minimum standards include laying out legislation that prohibits and punishes human trafficking as a crime; punishing these crimes in a way that is consistent and appropriate for the gravity of the evil involved in trafficking a person; punishment that appropriately deters future acts; and making “serious and sustained efforts” to eliminate all forms of trafficking by enforcement and prosecution, victim protection, trafficking prevention and more. Authorities and civil society organizations in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines also report having to conduct tough negotiations with Myanmar authorities to rescue their trafficked citizens from Myanmar. Thai authorities said last month that around 140 Thai citizens had been trafficked into Shan State, and only 63 had been rescued. They waited two to three months after asking Myanmar authorities before the Thai victims were eventually rescued. Chinese ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai held talks with deputy junta chief Soe Win in March and May in Naypyitaw, seeking cooperation to combat cross-border crimes and phone and internet scams. China’s top diplomat, Qin Gang, raised the same issue when he visited the China-Myanmar border and Naypyitaw to meet junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in the first week of May. Videos warning about Myanmar traffickers luring victims with promises of high-paying jobs have flooded Chinese social media. The videos highlight the plight of victims who are confined and tortured, and how they can also end up as victims of the organ trade. Following international pressure, the UWSA has taken steps to enforce the law against traffickers. In February, it issued an order barring judicial and law enforcement personnel from visiting casinos and entertainment venues except as part of their duties, and also barred them from drinking alcohol except on weekends. It also said it had handed over 100 victims of human trafficking to junta police on March 23 as part of regime efforts to rescue victims. The UWSA issued another order on June 6 warning of harsh action against entertainment venues caught selling narcotics including so-called party drugs such as ketamine, ecstasy and Happy Water. But the measures have seemingly failed to dent the operations of organized crime groups in Wa State. They continue to operate freely while human traffickers are still luring job seekers via social media. UWSA second generation The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) measures human security according to seven criteria: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political. A situation in which individuals cannot live with dignity or make a living also constitutes a lack of human security. According to the UNDP’s indicators, the operations of crime groups and traffickers in Wa State are a threat to both personal and community security. That threat on the Myanmar-China border is being monitored not just by Myanmar’s neighbors, but also the US and international human rights agencies. The Irrawaddy was unable to obtain comment from UWSA spokesman Nyi Rang about reported sex and cyber slavery and crime groups in Wa State. First-generation UWSA leaders such as Bao Youxiang and Wei Hsueh-kang have a murky past as drug traffickers. They earned their names as drug lords rather than as leaders of an ethnic armed organization fighting for freedom. The US even offered a reward of $ 200,000 for the arrest of UWSA vice chair Wei Hsueh-kang. But with the changing times, the UWSA has become increasingly involved in the politics of ethnic minorities in Myanmar. It now seeks official status of statehood for Wa State. The UWSA has also allied with other ethnic armies and supplied them with arms and financial assistance in a bid to enhance its image and expand its political influence. Through its allies, it has also provided help to resistance groups that emerged in the Spring Revolution against junta rule. The UWSA reshuffled its leadership in August last year, which saw Bao Ai Kham, son of long-time UWSA commander-in-chief Bao Youxiang, promoted to deputy general secretary of the United Wa State Party, the political wing of the UWSA. He is tipped to succeed his father as the next leader of Wa State. Zhao Ai Nap Lai, a son of Zhao Nyi-Lai, one of the founders of the UWSA, became the head of the politburo. Bao Youxiang’s nephew Bao Ai Chan was also promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of the UWSA. However, the second generation of UWSA leaders is likely to fall under the same shadow as the first generation if they fail to control criminal activity that threatens the social fabric of Wa State. Margaret Aung (a pseudonym) is a researcher at the Yangon-based Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar..."