From Vietnam News Agency

HA NOI — More and more Vietnamese women and children are being sold into slavery by human traffickers, said Deputy Prime Minister Truong Vinh Trong yesterday at a national workshop in Ha Noi.

Nearly 6,000 Vietnamese women and children have been sold as cheap labour or prostitutes in foreign countries, according to reports released by the Ministry of Public Security.

Another 8,000 are suspected to have been smuggled out of the country illegally by traffickers.

Deputy Minister of Public Security Le The Tiem said the number of human smugglers that were caught increased by 72 per cent in 2006 when compared to statistics from 2005. (more…)

By Guy Delauney
From BBC News, Phnom Penh

The Cambodian government has launched the country’s first national task force to combat human trafficking.
Thousands of people are trafficked in or through the south-east Asian nation every year.

The new task force will bring together government ministries, law enforcement groups and international agencies.

Cambodia has hundreds of different anti-trafficking organisations, and reducing duplication of effort will be one of the task force’s main goals.

Clearer picture

Anti-trafficking is a fashionable cause, and donors have poured untold millions of dollars into efforts to help victims and punish traffickers.

But in Cambodia at least, that eagerness to help has also been the cause of consternation.

There are so many organisations operating here that it can be difficult to measure the success of anti-trafficking efforts, and many of them are competing for donor funding, muddying the waters still further.

The new task force hopes to co-ordinate efforts and get a clearer picture of what is actually going on. (more…)

By Donna Porter
From Associated Content

Kent Frank of Miami, FL was convicted today of eight counts of sex tourism and child pornography charges following a five-week trial in federal court. His sexual victims extended to Cambodia, and after almost two days of deliberations the federal jury in Miami found Frank guilty of eight counts charged in a 10-count indictment. The trial was held before Judge Adalberto Jordan.

Child sex tourists are individuals that travel to foreign countries to engage in sexual activity with children. It is estimated that more than one million children worldwide are drawn into the sex trade annually. The victims frequently live in poor countries where the law is thought to be more easily avoided or corrupted. These poverty-stricken areas are home to children who are sold for sexual exploitation, or who sell themselves, for basic necessities such as food.

The jury found that Frank engaged in commercial sex acts with three minors during two separate trips to Cambodia between September 2003 and January 2004. Evidence showed that Frank paid three Cambodian minors money so that he could take sexually explicit and nude pictures of the girls. The jury heard evidence that the defendant took sexually explicit images of several other minors in addition to the four females referenced in the indictment. (more…)