THAO Thi Van was just two when her mother disappeared during a trip to the market, likely taken by traffickers preying on women from the Hmong hill tribes of northern Vietnam to sell as brides or into brothels in China. Now aged 13 she is still haunted by the fate of her missing mother but has found some solace at a textile cooperative for marginalised women in the region. “I have fun working here because I can earn some money and no one teases me,” Van said. The collective makes hemp handbags and table runners, coasters and stuffed animals, and the women can earn up to $170 per month, a decent wage in impoverished Ha Giang province.

Thousands of Vietnamese women are trafficked or tricked across the border every year and in this remote northern mountainous region of Vietnam, spitting distance from the Chinese border, women and girls frequently vanish from their communities. China’s buy-a-bride industry is booming, fuelled by a surplus of 30 million males. Some women go willingly; others are kidnapped or find themselves forced into marriage. The lucky few who escape marriages or sexual slavery in China often face stigma on their return to Vietnam and are shunned by neighbours. Driven to offer such victims a purpose — and an income — Vang Thi Mai set up the Lung Tam Linen Cooperative in 2001.

The co-op quickly grew and today is a hive of activity that employs more than 130 women, not just trafficking victims but also orphans, single mothers and seniors. But Mai has another goal too: to preserve the centuries-old custom of Hmong weaving, a tradition that has faded in many homes as modernity has crept in. Most women have swapped their colourfully embroidered hemp jackets and indigo blue hemp skirts for Made-in-China polyester outfits. “The traditional dignity and the cultural essence of the Hmong in Vietnam has eroded, I need to restore that with old women teaching to skills to younger ones,” Mai said.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2019