Part 1 - Hunting for the mountain girl

Highland girls become victims of "girl hunters".Illustration

The owner of the shop has narrow eyes, a curled beard, a short, dark figure, and rarely shows up. Every day, his main task is to recruit "goods" according to the needs of the "playboys".

The owner is willing to spend a whole week, even a whole month to find the "goods" that meet the standards! He revealed: in Nghe An, the places that provide "goods" include: Tuong Duong, Con Cuong, Que Phong, Quy Hop... The most prominent is Quy Chau district, which has provided a large number of "mountain girls" to serve at prostitution businesses.

In the "playground" there are also tear-jerking stories:

In L village, Chau Tien commune (Quy Chau district), there was a newlywed couple who had been married for more than a week when the wife suddenly “disappeared”. The husband stopped crawling, fainted, hugged the wedding photo and cried bitterly. When asked by neighbors, he whispered: “In the morning, I saw my wife and younger sister go to the forest to pick bamboo shoots. Usually, when the sun sets behind the mountains, the two of them return, but strangely, that day neither sister returned and all information was lost.” Both families organized a search and began to suspect that the girl had been kidnapped and sold. All searches fell into despair.

One time, someone in the village went out to “play” and accidentally discovered that his fellow countryman had left his hometown, abandoned his husband, and dragged his younger sister to Dien Thanh beach (Dien Chau) to practice prostitution. Upon further investigation, the villagers discovered that before getting married, she had been a prostitute. After the breakup, the husband gave up and let his wife go out to earn money, while he stayed home to hang out with drunkards.

The village has no more daughters.

Village chief K (Chau Hanh commune, Quy Chau) had sad eyes when telling the story of the village: "It would be a long story, in our village many families have children working as "ca ve". When the girls just grow up, they just go somewhere, when asking their families, they just wave their hands and say they go to work far away". The villagers cannot know all the girls working as "prostitutes" right on the land where they live, and even less know where the girls "working far away" are, what they do for a living. Some people "caught hands with...", some people only heard from villagers who went far away, sometimes it was just a guess, because they saw many girls who did not farm, had pigs or chickens, but their lives were called "well-off"... However, to tell the full, authentic information, even the village chief could not!

The way to the "Cave"

In K. village, people also call it “cave” village, because many girls here consider prostitution as a profession to support themselves and their families. At first, there were only a few people, but later, seeing that “business” was profitable, other girls in the village followed suit.

Many parents and husbands know that their children and grandchildren are prostitutes but they just ignore it and pretend they don't know. Their families are so poor that they don't know what to do to make a living even if they are forced to come back! Even more ironic, there are families where 2-3 daughters all work together in the "profession". Parents know, siblings and relatives know but they don't care, as long as they can send money back home. Mr. T's family has 3 daughters who are all prostitutes, the two older ones are married, and the younger one is only 16 years old but has been working since last year.

The village chief also said: After a few months or years, they return with emaciated bodies and die young.

Just like in K. village, we once went back to Nga My mountainous commune (Tuong Duong district), heard sighs under each house, the sad laughter of the young villagers when they witnessed their children and lovers racing to leave the forest for the city. A young villager sat absentmindedly by the door and said that there were no more girls here, they had all left….

Many villages in the highlands, which used to be peaceful and warm, are now covered by dark clouds, spreading disease and corrupting the way of life...

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Article and photos: Ngoc Binh -Law Newspaper