WHAT'S NEXT

  1. Signatures
    1,024 out of 1,500
    Petitioning
    1. Associate Vice President, Citcorp Diners Club (+ 1 other)
      Petitioning
      close
      • Associate Vice President, Citcorp Diners Club (Jurgita Simokaityte)
      • Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Diners Club (Judith Hilvers)
  2. Created By
    Amanda Kloer
    Washington, DC
About this Petition Petition Letter
How We Won

Jun 12, 2009

Diners Club recently contacted us and agreed to terminate their relationship with Vietnam Brides International.  Here is the updated story.

Diners Club International credit card company has a new promotion: buy a bride with your credit card and pay in interest free installments!
Vietnam Brides International has teamed up with Diners Club to offer a payment plan for the women they sell.  It's bascially a layaway plan for human beings, except you get the "product" before you even make the first payment. 

Human beings should not be bought or sold, and they certainly shouldn't be part of a payment plan, a "blue light special", or a clearance sale.  Mail order brides are not only extremely vulnerable to human trafficking, but also domestic violence, abuse, rape, and exploitation.  While creating a payment plan to purchase a human being is ethically and philosophically disgusting, it also reduces the economic barrier to buying a bride.  Removing that barrier allows traffickers to acquire women using less capital than they needed before.  It opens the door to a new socio-economic class of criminals to buy and exploit these women.  

Recent Signatures

End Financing of Mail Order Brides

Dear Diners Club,

I would like to express my deep concerns over serious the human rights violations Diners Club Singapore is supporting.  I was appalled to learn that Diners Club Singapore had entered into a partnership with Vietnam Brides International to provide a payment plan for the purchase of women, dehumanizing them and treating them like commodities.  Diners Club Singapore has agreed to finance the purchase of these women for $167 per month, over the course of four years, without interest.       
While the mail-order bride industry is a legal business, it is characterized by several important features which render the women sold within it especially susceptible to exploitative practices, including human trafficking, domestic violence, and other abuses.  Because mail order bride companies are commercial enterprises, they favor the interests of the paying clients, usually men, over the interests of the brides, usually women with few economic options.  The industry is also seldom regulated.  Together, these characteristics allow criminals to use mail order bride agencies to traffic and abuse women.   
By providing a payment plan to Vietnam Brides International, Diners Club is financially and morally supporting an industry which has been heavily associated with the trafficking of women.  Furthermore Diners Club is removing a crucial financial safeguard, the upfront marriage fee, which creates an additional barrier for criminals who would exploit these women.  As the financier of these transactions, Diners Club would be complicit in the trafficking of women through this agency.    
I know Diners Club strives to be a responsible, ethical company, but supporting a payment plan for the purchase of a human being is not acceptable.  Please end the payment plan for the purchase of these human beings and the partnership with Vietnam Brides International.  
I urge you to take immediate action on this to prevent Diners Club’s further association with the exploitation and trafficking of women via mail order bride agencies.   
Regards,  

[Your name]

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