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“I didn’t feel human”
16 September 2022
Mo* is from the Lai Chau Province of Vietnam. When she was just 13 years old, she and her older sister were tricked into believing that they were being offered work in China. Instead, they were trafficked and sold into slavery.
Separated from her sister and unable to speak Chinese, Mo was eventually sold to a family. Still a child, she was forced to marry a man aged 20 who threatened to break her legs if she tried to run away.
“
It was a dark, scary time. I didn’t feel human. I was falling into a deep hole, not able to get out.
“
The family never gave her money to support herself. She started learning Chinese and persuaded the family to allow her to work in a backpack production factory.
The Compassion House project is funded by the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Photos may or may not depict ‘Mo’ but have been provided by the grantee organization. Credit: © Pacific Links Foundation
With the little money she was earning, Mo bought a mobile phone and called the Chinese police. Officers escorted her to the Vietnamese Embassy, who helped her return home.
Mo was reunited with her mother, but her neighbors stigmatized her, and she became a social outcast. She didn't dare to speak to outsiders. She had also discovered that her sister had been forced to marry a Chinese man, and now had a young child.
"There were times when I went to work in the fields and was tired,” she said. “I looked down at the ground and said to myself, 'I can't live like this. My whole life is like this. I was criticized by people who didn't like me. I have to change.”
At that point, Mo turned to the ‘Compassion House’ in Lao Ca, a safe house project run by the Pacific Links Foundation.
The Compassion House project is funded by the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. The Fund, which is managed by UN Human Rights, helps hundreds of thousands of people who remain enslaved today by awarding grants to organizations that provide direct relief to victims on the ground.
Photos may or may not depict ‘Mo’ but have been provided by the grantee organization. Credit: © Pacific Links Foundation
A life transformed
Mo learned the Vietnamese language as well as necessary social skills. She was treated like family by the others. She initially studied tailoring, but afterwards applied for a culinary vocational training program in Hanoi.
As Mo herself says: "My life is very good right now. I am beyond what happened to me, I don’t look back. If it wasn’t for the Compassion House, I wouldn't be sitting here to tell my story."
*Name has been changed to protect identity
