Human trafficking victim, sex slave, mother of 8, needs to be freed
The Issue
We are seeking help from the international community to save this woman of a human trafficking, sex enslaving, and heinous human rights violation case, out of Xuzhou, China. A woman (center, taken recently), who widely believed to be Li, Ying (right, taken around 1996, before she was abducted at 12), has been a sex slave of a man who not only raped her but also had 8 children with her. She is seen in a video locked up with an industrial chain, covered with a thin layer in winter in a scruffy hut. The government took her into a mental health institute and shielded her from outsiders, and insisted she's Xiao Huamei (left, from her marriage certificate with her abuser) from Yunnan Province. The horrid fact is, trafficked sex slaves are widely spread in the area. Evidence shows that there are at least several other women in the same if not worse situation in this village alone.
A recent news report by CNBC on Feb 18th can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks-1mDCPj1M
A recent follow up report by New York Times can be found here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/business/china-chained-woman-social-media.html
Around Jan 29, an internet post drew the attention of the public. A man, Dong, Zhimin, is showing off his 8 kids and government subsidy he received on Tik-Tok. People noticed that in the background, there's a woman shackled in a squalid place, a hut with no isolation in winter. Dong claimed his wife, the woman in the picture, is mentally sick. The incident soon raised internet outrage. Is it legal to chain up any individual in captivity? Was she mentally unwell before they were married, in which case the woman can be considered as nonconsensual? And most importantly, how did she end up there?
Two days later, the local government issued a statement saying that Yang, X Xia (the woman) was a local villager with mental disease, who was married to Dong in 1998. "There was no abduction and she is locked up to keep people safe." said the statement.
Soon, a grassroot volunteer organization discovered that a girl who was abducted on the way to school and claimed missing has undeniably identical features to Xia. The girl named Li, Ying was abducted in 1996 at the age of 12, and is believed to be a human trafficking victim. Her family is still looking for her. With the look, the year missing, and all other details match, it is widely believed that Xia is Ying.
People who are related to the area or who have obtained information about the village stepped out with more information. The girl was "purchased" by Dong's family from the traffickers, and used by the father and 2 sons sexually, one of which is Dong Zhimin. Some local officials participated in the raping as well. Xia, obstinate and valorous, fought back with teeth and kicks. In order to make her more "obedient", Dong knocked off her teeth and nipped off the tip of her tongue. One person also said that Xia was drugged to lose her voice.
The local government then issued another statement, saying they have compared with the DNA pool and Xia is not a registered missing person.
By then, Ying's mother has requested a DNA comparison with Xia, which is never granted. Xia is kept in a place no outsiders can approach to get a sample.
More truth swarmed in, stupefying the already gasping public. Villages around Xuzhou have a history of being one of the destinations of human trafficking. In the 80s, during the year 1986 to 1989, there were over 48,000 human trafficking victims bought by the villagers as sex slaves. A rough calculation shows, today there are around 20,000 sex slaves in those villages. Human trafficking in Xuzhou has an industrial complex behind it. Unmarried guys can pay around 3,000 to 6,000 Yuan (around $500 to $1,000) to get a girl. The local government then would create a new ID for the girl, and too marriage licenses. The new household then can claim government subsidy. Of course, sex slaves do fight back. They will get beaten up, drugged, or inhumanely tortured as a result. There's another woman "living" next to Xia's, is crawling on the ground in a more grubby hut. Her knees were knocked to pieces from an attempted run-away. Another one is hung to the beam, whacked every other day. Some of them went insane in the living hell. About half of the rescued sex slaves are diagnosed of having mental illness.
Another question also emerged among all. There's a ten-year gap between Xia's 1st son and 2nd son. Xia has 7 boys and 1 girl, youngest 1 year old. The chance of getting such biological probability is thin. People suspect Xia has/had other kids. They could be girls that were "dealt with", following the prevailing gender discrimination across rural areas in China, the same discrimination causing the gender disproportion in China leaving men out number women by 30 million in rural areas, as girls are aborted, drowned after birth, or abandoned during infancy. The surplus group serves as terminal consumers of the human trafficking business. But no one could get a chance to talk to Xia. The village is sealed.
It is palpable by now that the Xuzhou local government has served as a shield in the human trafficking business. On the provincial level, neither Ying's birth place nor Xuzhou's governing province has uttered a sound despite the fuming lambasting from the public.
On Feb 7, the central government semi-officially stated that Xia has been identified. She is Xiao Huamei (left on the picture; taken from her marriage certificate), a woman of 52, from Yunnan Province, who was taken to treat her mental disease 20 years ago and got missing. She has no living relatives.
The public is giving backlash. Apparently, the numbers don't add up. There's no photographic or witness evidence either.
Till then, Ying's mother's DNA request is still not granted.
To date, Xia is segregated and confined to a mental institution guarded by armed police force for "national security reasons", no volunteer or social worker allowed to visit. The truth is prevented to be found out by the state apparatus.
According to all the information gleaned so far, Xia is not simply a psychotic woman who is mistreated. The whole occurrence is a consortium of crimes on multiple levels with unfathomable magnitudes. Xia was abducted, human trafficked, raped, sexually abused and assaulted, used as a reproductive machine, manhandled, and tortured. She was a prey of the human traffickers, her purchaser family of 3 males, local authorities who gave green light to the business chain, higher up government who makes up a story to deny her identity, and the state government that censors public opinions.
We want to ask a few questions:
- Why isn't a DNA comparison approved?
- Why isn't Xia permitted to talk to any outsider?
- Why isn't the local government answering on what base did they issued the press releases that are contradicting each other?
- How many more women like Xia are there in the same village? The same city? The same province?
- What is being done to help them?
In so, we urge the international community to help us volume up. We feel for Xia. Any human being's heart would pain at such hideous crime. She is our daughter, sister, cousin... She was us. Even if the chained woman is not Ying, she still deserves . The state apparatus is used to protect perpetrators. The system is failing her.
We invite you to join us, to ask for truth, to ask for justice, and to demand that the Xuzhou government give Li, Ying's freedom and life back.
#saveliying #xuzhoumom #girlbestrong
A recent report by Washington Post on Feb 9th can be found here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/09/china-chained-xuzhou-mother-human-trafficking/
The Department of State 2021 Trafficking in persons report can be found here:
Updated Feb 23rd, 2022:
The fifth and likely the final statement came out today, backed major conclusions from the earlier 4 statements, and insisted Xiao Huamei (left) is the chained woman (center), and Ying (right) is nowhere to be found. No local official was criminally charged; they were forced to step down from their post, or simply got their party membership stripped. The anger that erupted in the Chinese social media were quickly put down: articles deleted, accounts suspended, social influencers and citizen journalists threatened by the police, and volunteers criminally detained. Furthermore, many other human trafficking victims around the area has not been mentioned even once in the statement.
The local government of Feng county, Xuzhou city, and Jiangsu province, knowingly shielded and enabled the criminals to conduct severe human trafficking offenses on the mother of eight and potentially many other women and girls. Such behaviors constitute "knowingly aiding, assisting, or colluding with an individual who has committed or conspired to commit a severe human trafficking offense in the United States or outside the United States". While this leads to inadmissibility to the US in general, the local officials are unlikely to be exposed or prosecuted at all by the Chinese authorities. So these officials not only face no consequences for their criminal acts, they and their families may even reside in the US while their victims suffer in shackles year-after-year.
The Magnitsky Act authorizes the US government to sanction those it sees as human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S. I implore you to consider sanctioning the local and municipal officials for enabling such long-term widespread human trafficking offenses.
3,544
The Issue
We are seeking help from the international community to save this woman of a human trafficking, sex enslaving, and heinous human rights violation case, out of Xuzhou, China. A woman (center, taken recently), who widely believed to be Li, Ying (right, taken around 1996, before she was abducted at 12), has been a sex slave of a man who not only raped her but also had 8 children with her. She is seen in a video locked up with an industrial chain, covered with a thin layer in winter in a scruffy hut. The government took her into a mental health institute and shielded her from outsiders, and insisted she's Xiao Huamei (left, from her marriage certificate with her abuser) from Yunnan Province. The horrid fact is, trafficked sex slaves are widely spread in the area. Evidence shows that there are at least several other women in the same if not worse situation in this village alone.
A recent news report by CNBC on Feb 18th can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks-1mDCPj1M
A recent follow up report by New York Times can be found here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/business/china-chained-woman-social-media.html
Around Jan 29, an internet post drew the attention of the public. A man, Dong, Zhimin, is showing off his 8 kids and government subsidy he received on Tik-Tok. People noticed that in the background, there's a woman shackled in a squalid place, a hut with no isolation in winter. Dong claimed his wife, the woman in the picture, is mentally sick. The incident soon raised internet outrage. Is it legal to chain up any individual in captivity? Was she mentally unwell before they were married, in which case the woman can be considered as nonconsensual? And most importantly, how did she end up there?
Two days later, the local government issued a statement saying that Yang, X Xia (the woman) was a local villager with mental disease, who was married to Dong in 1998. "There was no abduction and she is locked up to keep people safe." said the statement.
Soon, a grassroot volunteer organization discovered that a girl who was abducted on the way to school and claimed missing has undeniably identical features to Xia. The girl named Li, Ying was abducted in 1996 at the age of 12, and is believed to be a human trafficking victim. Her family is still looking for her. With the look, the year missing, and all other details match, it is widely believed that Xia is Ying.
People who are related to the area or who have obtained information about the village stepped out with more information. The girl was "purchased" by Dong's family from the traffickers, and used by the father and 2 sons sexually, one of which is Dong Zhimin. Some local officials participated in the raping as well. Xia, obstinate and valorous, fought back with teeth and kicks. In order to make her more "obedient", Dong knocked off her teeth and nipped off the tip of her tongue. One person also said that Xia was drugged to lose her voice.
The local government then issued another statement, saying they have compared with the DNA pool and Xia is not a registered missing person.
By then, Ying's mother has requested a DNA comparison with Xia, which is never granted. Xia is kept in a place no outsiders can approach to get a sample.
More truth swarmed in, stupefying the already gasping public. Villages around Xuzhou have a history of being one of the destinations of human trafficking. In the 80s, during the year 1986 to 1989, there were over 48,000 human trafficking victims bought by the villagers as sex slaves. A rough calculation shows, today there are around 20,000 sex slaves in those villages. Human trafficking in Xuzhou has an industrial complex behind it. Unmarried guys can pay around 3,000 to 6,000 Yuan (around $500 to $1,000) to get a girl. The local government then would create a new ID for the girl, and too marriage licenses. The new household then can claim government subsidy. Of course, sex slaves do fight back. They will get beaten up, drugged, or inhumanely tortured as a result. There's another woman "living" next to Xia's, is crawling on the ground in a more grubby hut. Her knees were knocked to pieces from an attempted run-away. Another one is hung to the beam, whacked every other day. Some of them went insane in the living hell. About half of the rescued sex slaves are diagnosed of having mental illness.
Another question also emerged among all. There's a ten-year gap between Xia's 1st son and 2nd son. Xia has 7 boys and 1 girl, youngest 1 year old. The chance of getting such biological probability is thin. People suspect Xia has/had other kids. They could be girls that were "dealt with", following the prevailing gender discrimination across rural areas in China, the same discrimination causing the gender disproportion in China leaving men out number women by 30 million in rural areas, as girls are aborted, drowned after birth, or abandoned during infancy. The surplus group serves as terminal consumers of the human trafficking business. But no one could get a chance to talk to Xia. The village is sealed.
It is palpable by now that the Xuzhou local government has served as a shield in the human trafficking business. On the provincial level, neither Ying's birth place nor Xuzhou's governing province has uttered a sound despite the fuming lambasting from the public.
On Feb 7, the central government semi-officially stated that Xia has been identified. She is Xiao Huamei (left on the picture; taken from her marriage certificate), a woman of 52, from Yunnan Province, who was taken to treat her mental disease 20 years ago and got missing. She has no living relatives.
The public is giving backlash. Apparently, the numbers don't add up. There's no photographic or witness evidence either.
Till then, Ying's mother's DNA request is still not granted.
To date, Xia is segregated and confined to a mental institution guarded by armed police force for "national security reasons", no volunteer or social worker allowed to visit. The truth is prevented to be found out by the state apparatus.
According to all the information gleaned so far, Xia is not simply a psychotic woman who is mistreated. The whole occurrence is a consortium of crimes on multiple levels with unfathomable magnitudes. Xia was abducted, human trafficked, raped, sexually abused and assaulted, used as a reproductive machine, manhandled, and tortured. She was a prey of the human traffickers, her purchaser family of 3 males, local authorities who gave green light to the business chain, higher up government who makes up a story to deny her identity, and the state government that censors public opinions.
We want to ask a few questions:
- Why isn't a DNA comparison approved?
- Why isn't Xia permitted to talk to any outsider?
- Why isn't the local government answering on what base did they issued the press releases that are contradicting each other?
- How many more women like Xia are there in the same village? The same city? The same province?
- What is being done to help them?
In so, we urge the international community to help us volume up. We feel for Xia. Any human being's heart would pain at such hideous crime. She is our daughter, sister, cousin... She was us. Even if the chained woman is not Ying, she still deserves . The state apparatus is used to protect perpetrators. The system is failing her.
We invite you to join us, to ask for truth, to ask for justice, and to demand that the Xuzhou government give Li, Ying's freedom and life back.
#saveliying #xuzhoumom #girlbestrong
A recent report by Washington Post on Feb 9th can be found here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/09/china-chained-xuzhou-mother-human-trafficking/
The Department of State 2021 Trafficking in persons report can be found here:
Updated Feb 23rd, 2022:
The fifth and likely the final statement came out today, backed major conclusions from the earlier 4 statements, and insisted Xiao Huamei (left) is the chained woman (center), and Ying (right) is nowhere to be found. No local official was criminally charged; they were forced to step down from their post, or simply got their party membership stripped. The anger that erupted in the Chinese social media were quickly put down: articles deleted, accounts suspended, social influencers and citizen journalists threatened by the police, and volunteers criminally detained. Furthermore, many other human trafficking victims around the area has not been mentioned even once in the statement.
The local government of Feng county, Xuzhou city, and Jiangsu province, knowingly shielded and enabled the criminals to conduct severe human trafficking offenses on the mother of eight and potentially many other women and girls. Such behaviors constitute "knowingly aiding, assisting, or colluding with an individual who has committed or conspired to commit a severe human trafficking offense in the United States or outside the United States". While this leads to inadmissibility to the US in general, the local officials are unlikely to be exposed or prosecuted at all by the Chinese authorities. So these officials not only face no consequences for their criminal acts, they and their families may even reside in the US while their victims suffer in shackles year-after-year.
The Magnitsky Act authorizes the US government to sanction those it sees as human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S. I implore you to consider sanctioning the local and municipal officials for enabling such long-term widespread human trafficking offenses.
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Petition created on February 9, 2022