Vietnamese children forced into slavery to grow cannabis in the UK

Locked up for weeks to tend cannabis seedlings, often starved, is the situation of many Vietnamese minors trafficked to the UK to work as slaves.

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A cannabis farm in England. Photo: The Guardian

According to The Guardian, over the past decade, hundreds of young Vietnamese men and women have been trafficked to the UK each year.

Beaten if work is not done well

While women and girls are sent to work in nail salons or in the sex industry, men are forced to garden in illegal cannabis farms, built clandestinely in suburban homes.

“The first month was horrible,” recounted a 15-year-old boy named Tung (as reported by The Guardian), who was locked up for two months. “I wanted to go out, I wanted to talk to someone. I thought I was going crazy.”

“But after the second month, I started to get used to it,” Tung choked up.

In addition, the children were beaten if they did not perform their work properly, and British authorities did not even realize that they were victims of human trafficking.

Many children, like Tung, were imprisoned when the farm where they worked was discovered.

Typically, when cannabis farms are raided, the people who live and work there are arrested.

If police find they are victims of human trafficking, charges are dropped, but they are still sent to immigration detention centers.

Those under the age of consent are taken into the care system but often go missing and then return to traffickers.

France recently successfully raided an abandoned coal mine in the north of the country where a human trafficking ring was holding about 100 Vietnamese people, mostly in their 20s or younger, waiting to be smuggled into Britain.

The UK National Police Chiefs' Council's latest report on cannabis also noted that many farms run by British criminal groups are increasingly employing Vietnamese citizens.

Cannabis drying area at a farm in Wiltshire, England. Photo: The Guardian

Police indifference

The police appear to be taking the issue too seriously. Kevin Hyland, the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, has criticised the police for failing to tackle the problem.

He said the police had failed to take the case seriously and had been indecisive in cracking down on human trafficking networks.

Cannabis farms are still being discovered every week, he said, but “they are not being properly investigated.”

Police remove cannabis plants from a farm discovered in Wiltshire, England. Photo: The Guardian

"Despite the fact that Vietnam has always been one of the leading sources of slaves being trafficked to the UK, there has never been a successful prosecution of a Vietnamese trafficking ring," Mr Hyland said.

“It’s disappointing,” Mr Hyland said. “We want the victims to be found and helped, but I also want to see the perpetrators caught and prosecuted.”

According to his analysis, the police were ineffective in gathering information when they raided cannabis farms, specifically failing to extract information from trafficking victims.

According to Tuoi Tre