VZCZCXRO1627
RR RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHNH RUEHPB
DE RUEHHM #0612 1590505
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 080505Z JUN 06
FM AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0969
INFO RUEHHI/AMEMBASSY HANOI 0715
RUCNARF/ASEAN REGIONAL FORUM COLLECTIVE
RUEHGH/AMCONSUL SHANGHAI 0002
RUEHSH/AMCONSUL SHENYANG 0005
RUEHGZ/AMCONSUL GUANGZHOU 0007
RUEHCN/AMCONSUL CHENGDU 0005
RUEHHK/AMCONSUL HONG KONG 0059
RUEHHM/AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY 1015

UNCLAS HO CHI MINH CITY 000612 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PREL CVIS KWMN TIP ELAB SMIG SOCI TW CH VM
SUBJECT: CHINESE ALIEN SMUGGLING THROUGH HCMC 
 
¶1. (U) On May 9, the HCMC branch of the Anti-Social Evils Police 
(PC-14) rescued four Chinese children from a traffickers' "safe 
house" in HCMC.  According to press reports, the rescue came 
from a tip-off from a bus driver in neighboring Tay Ninh 
province who noticed that the children did not speak Vietnamese. 
 He reported his suspicions to local police, who moved to 
retrieve the children.  The children, aged 5 to 14, were 
identified as residents of China's Zhejiang province.  On May 
23, police intercepted another three Chinese children, aged 13 
and 14, also from Zhejiang province.  HCMC press reported that 
the children were "kidnapped from China and brought to Vietnam 
en route to Cambodia."  The children were turned over to the PRC 
Consulate in HCMC. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Director of the HCMC branh of PC-14, Lieutenant 
Colonel Le Thanh Kiem, told ConGen that eleven suspects from the 
northern provinces of Hai Duong and Bac Giang and from HCMC have 
been arrested.  He said that police believed the two incidents 
were linked and that the suspected head of the smuggling ring 
has gone hiding. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Kiem told us that some children told police that their 
travel from Zhejiang to the border with Vietnam had been 
arranged by their relatives.  Chinese traffickers then brought 
them across the border to Vietnam via land transport and handed 
them over to the Vietnamese ring.  The Vietnamese, in turn, were 
to bring them to Cambodia, where others would forge documents 
for the children to be resettled in a third country.  An 
arrested driver who was hired to transport the children from the 
border to HCMC told police that the children had been given 
pills to sleep through most of the journey inside Vietnam. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Kiem said it was likely that in at least some of the 
cases the children's parents had migrated to Europe illegally 
and now were seeking to have their children join them.  Some of 
the bit players in the Vietnamese smuggling ring told police 
that they were paid between USD 15 to 20 to transport each 
child.  The police believe this ring has been operating in 
Vietnam since 2003.  The suspects admitted that since beginning 
of 2006, they smuggled 41 Chinese children to Cambodia in 12 
trips through Vietnam.  To date, police have accumulated 
sufficient evidence to recommend to the People's Procuracy -- 
the Vietnamese prosecutor's office -- to prosecute one  suspect 
for "trafficking of children."  Further prosecutions are 
pending.  We contacted the China's HCMC Consulate multiple times 
to seek additional information, but they consistently avoided 
discussing the cases. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Comment: The aggressive response to the tip off by 
HCMC and Tay Ninh police demonstrates increasing awareness and 
commitment of provincial governments to tackle TIP.  Police say 
that this was the first time they have detected this type of 
smuggling from China through Vietnam to Europe.  Police 
indicated that they have additional TIP investigations underway 
involving smuggling of Vietnamese nationals to Malaysia and Hong 
Kong.  End Comment. 
 
WINNICK