French man rescues thousands of Vietnamese women from trafficking
Alliance Anti-Traffic (AAT) founded by French man Georges Blanchard has rescued around 2,500 trafficked Vietnamese women.
Blanchard came to Vietnam in 1992 to help local street children attend school. In 1998, he set up a rehabilitation centre for women who were victims of sex exploitation and in 2003, he founded AAT.
With the support from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, AAT has helped rescued up to 2,500 women who were trafficked to Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Singapore.
His small house in HCM City still keeps many pictures of the victims who were saved by AAT. Each of them reminds him of the rescue efforts.
Loan in the southern province of Dong Thap is among them. Decades ago when she was just 10 years old, she was kidnapped to China and after that, she was forced to have cosmetic surgery to change her face. Then the traffickers took her to Macau as a sex worker. She was also forced to use drugs. Two years later, she was sold to Hong Kong.
AAT helped Loan to flee to Cambodia where she was arranged a safe accommodation and taken care of by a social worker. Loan denounced the traffickers to the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and provided clues for the investigation which helped to bring some other girls in the ring to return their home.
“Loan is now living in HCM City. She gets married and has children. She always remembers us,” Blanchard said.
AAT often receives threatening calls, but they haven’t discouraged Blanchard and his colleagues in the fight against human trafficking.
“In 2015, we got a list of 250 people who were trafficking victims but in the year, we could only bring 33 of them home. The number was small, so we have to try harder,” he noted.
AAT is now sponsoring 12 Vietnamese disadvantaged young girls who face the risk of leaving school early and being pushed into prostitution rings. With the assistance of the organisation, they have been trained about safe sex, reproductive health and human trafficking issues. Each of them has the nickname of a kind of flower.
A girl named Tulip said that in 2013, she had to leave school due to her family’s financial difficulty. Coming to HCM City to look for a job she was hired to work for a coffee shop with the monthly salary of VND1.5 million (USD68) which was too modest to support the family. She then accepted to be a prostitute.
Being supported by AAT, she was trained to become a manicurist. She said that she planned to open her own shop.
Nguyen Thi Kim Lien, former deputy head of Bac Giang Province’s Department of Social Evils Prevention, said that she had many chances to worked with AAT. The organisation helped to rescue 100 local trafficked women.
Le Thi Ha, former head of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affair’s Social Evils Prevention Department, said that she highly appreciated efforts of Blanchard in particular and AAT in general in supporting Vietnam’s fight against human trafficking.
Blanchard came to Vietnam in 1992 to help local street children attend school. In 1998, he set up a rehabilitation centre for women who were victims of sex exploitation and in 2003, he founded AAT.
With the support from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, AAT has helped rescued up to 2,500 women who were trafficked to Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Singapore.
Georges Blanchard
His small house in HCM City still keeps many pictures of the victims who were saved by AAT. Each of them reminds him of the rescue efforts.
Loan in the southern province of Dong Thap is among them. Decades ago when she was just 10 years old, she was kidnapped to China and after that, she was forced to have cosmetic surgery to change her face. Then the traffickers took her to Macau as a sex worker. She was also forced to use drugs. Two years later, she was sold to Hong Kong.
AAT helped Loan to flee to Cambodia where she was arranged a safe accommodation and taken care of by a social worker. Loan denounced the traffickers to the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and provided clues for the investigation which helped to bring some other girls in the ring to return their home.
“Loan is now living in HCM City. She gets married and has children. She always remembers us,” Blanchard said.
AAT often receives threatening calls, but they haven’t discouraged Blanchard and his colleagues in the fight against human trafficking.
“In 2015, we got a list of 250 people who were trafficking victims but in the year, we could only bring 33 of them home. The number was small, so we have to try harder,” he noted.
AAT is now sponsoring 12 Vietnamese disadvantaged young girls who face the risk of leaving school early and being pushed into prostitution rings. With the assistance of the organisation, they have been trained about safe sex, reproductive health and human trafficking issues. Each of them has the nickname of a kind of flower.
A girl named Tulip said that in 2013, she had to leave school due to her family’s financial difficulty. Coming to HCM City to look for a job she was hired to work for a coffee shop with the monthly salary of VND1.5 million (USD68) which was too modest to support the family. She then accepted to be a prostitute.
Being supported by AAT, she was trained to become a manicurist. She said that she planned to open her own shop.
Nguyen Thi Kim Lien, former deputy head of Bac Giang Province’s Department of Social Evils Prevention, said that she had many chances to worked with AAT. The organisation helped to rescue 100 local trafficked women.
Le Thi Ha, former head of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affair’s Social Evils Prevention Department, said that she highly appreciated efforts of Blanchard in particular and AAT in general in supporting Vietnam’s fight against human trafficking.
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