Traffickers jailed for enslaving Vietnam women in UK nail bars

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters


by Emma Batha | @emmabatha | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 2 January 2018 18:23 GMT

By Emma Batha

LONDON, Jan 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Members of a gang who forced Vietnamese girls and women into slavery in nail bars in Britain have been jailed for a total of nine years in what police believe is the first case of its kind.

Giang Huong Tran, 23, Viet Hoang Nguyen, 30, and Thu Huong Nguyen, 49, were sentenced on Tuesday after being convicted of human trafficking and modern slavery offences.

Police said the "sophisticated money-making operation" involved the exploitation of vulnerable Vietnamese teenagers who were physically and verbally abused.

"The victims worked for no money and were trafficked between nail bars according to demand," Senior Crown Prosecutor Eran Cutliffe said in a statement.

Read more: http://news.trust.org/item/20180102183421-14hg4

[murielm99]

1. I have never heard these places

called "nail bars" before. I had to look it up.

[Nitram]

2. So, do guys go to have their nails done and get a happy ending?

[murielm99]

3. I go to a regular old nail salon.

I see some married couples come in. The men get manicures and pedicures. There is nothing unusual about that.

I did run into a guy there who had lost a bet. He was part of a wedding party, a groomsman. He was getting a mani/pedi, and getting his eyebrows done. He left the place with a positive attitude, and said he would come back.

[Nitram]

4. I wasn't suggesting there was anything unusual about a man getting a manicure. It was

the association with prostitution that I was asking about. I still don't quite get it. Do you?

[murielm99]

5. I don't think it has to be for sex.

They just work them as nail techs for long hours every day with no time off and no pay. They move them around the country.

Some of them are told that they can come here and work and get an education. Instead they work long hours for no pay.

[Yavin4]

6. Exactly. Everyone assumes human trafficking sex work.

Truth is most humans are trafficked around the globe to work in nail salons, as maids, as nannies, and in particular, dangerous construction projects in Dubai.

[Nitram]

7. Thanks for disabusing me of that notion. Interesting.

Not quite as sordid as forced prostitution, but definitely not good.

[Yavin4]

8. I would argue that the conditions of working at some of those construction sites in Dubai

are the worst.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/06/20/dispatches-trafficking-and-forced-labor-united-arab-emirates

https://news.usc.edu/65972/dubai-a-city-rolling-in-oil-and-forced-labor/