Phuong Anh: New Houstonian Tells Of Her Time As Near-Slave

​The promise of a $300-per-month job was enough to convince
Phuong Anh to sell her home in Vietnam
and move to Jordan. Things didn’t turn out like she expected.

Earlier this week a tearful Anh told her story of resilience
and survival to an utterly engrossed group gathered at a private home in the Galleria
area by the Coalition to Abolish
Modern-day Slavery in Asia (CAMSA).

“We were poor, we just wanted to work and here we are being
beaten to death,” Anh said through an interpreter.

When Anh made it to Jordan
she learned there was a reason she wasn’t allowed to read her contract before
signing it while still in Vietnam.
For ten days of arduous and grueling sewing work, she and her coworkers were
paid $10.

Although she was the newest arrival to the workroom, Anh
bravely led a strike.

“Immediately they took our food and water, cut off the
electricity and confined us,” she said. “I called Vietnam
for help from the government and we were told to do as we were told.”

Calling for help in Jordan
proved hope-shattering.
“When the [Jordanian] police finally arrived they were
shouting and screaming at us. They struck us with their batons and shot fire
extinguishers at us,” she said. “I ran to the room with our beds and saw my friend being
beaten by an officer while still on her top bunk. I saw she was bleeding from
her mouth.”

Somehow Anh reached the same government official back in
Vietnam and shouted into the phone that police officers were killing them but
the woman coolly told her it was her fault, “She told me, “I told you to go
back to work, why are you calling me to complain?”

The 276 women grew even more despaired as they shared
stories and realized every single one of their passports and other identifying
documents had been confiscated upon arrival.

“One day we broke through a window trying to escape and we
saw police officers chatting with our bosses. We still went for it but they
corralled us in no time.”

Anh recalls they were so hungry they eventually found
ways to sneak out and sell anything they could get their hands on in exchange
for food.

“I’m so embarrassed to admit that we sold tampons to get
food,” she said.

Help finally came in the way of an article written by a
reporter who has since been blacklisted by the Vietnamese government. The
reporter, a sister of one of Anhs coworkers, was their way of reaching
someone who would care, someone who would not agree with their supervisors or
with Vietnamese government officials that these were humane conditions for
anyone.

The article reached Dr. Thang Nguen of BPSOS (formerly Boat People SOS)
and he contacted his network in Jordan
to help them.

“He gave us $3,000, but there were 276 of us, so we used it
to buy ramen noodles,” Anh said.

​The money also went towards porridge for the woman that was beaten while in bed
but despite all their efforts she didn’t survive.

When Vietnamese officials finally visited them in Jordan
they questioned and beat Anh for
taking Dr. Nguyen’s donation and ordered the women to return to Vietnam.
Anh wanted out of Jordan
but knew that to go back to Vietnam
would be to put herself at risk of retaliation from the work agency, or even,
the government.

“Dr. Thang gave me an additional $3,000 and told me to put the
money in one pocket and my passport on the other [of her pants]. I walked
around with an empty purse.”

Under the watchful eyes of the Vietnamese delegation
escaping from the airport in Jordan
was impossible, but she would try again once in Thailand.

“I snuck into a restroom. I couldn’t read the doors so I
didn’t know if it was the women’s or the men’s restroom.”

And in a time when, due to to fear of repercussions or simple
apathy or indifference most people would look the other way, the gentleman that
she found in the men’s restroom  believed
her and escorted her as she made her way through and out of the airport.

Outside Anh found her other savior, Dr. Nguyen, there waiting for her.

She would remain in Thailand
for two and half years while Nguyen reached out to the U.S. State
Department for assistance in securing Anhs safety and eventual political
asylum by the States.

Nguyen said the work of CAMSA goes beyond the rescue of
individual victims and that their wish is for their advocacy work to lead to
awareness for the need and creation of policy that would allow traffickers to be prosecuted and convicted in Vietnam.

“Although Vietnam
has consistently denied it, Vietnam
is a source country of labor
trafficking, but unlike other Asian countries, the government is in full
complicity with the labor traffickers,” he said

He said if Vietnam
fails to improve in two years, they face the possibility that the US
will impose trade sanctions.

At the end of the night, Anh asked those present to
consider donating to CAMSA so they can help CAMSA rescue women like her and the eight
women recently rescued from sex work in Malaysia’s
capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Phuong Anh has been in Houston
for two months. She walks daily to HCC for English classes and hopes to find work soon since she has no source of
income besides what assistance CAMSA can give her.

This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2010.