Health and Rights at the Margins: Human trafficking and HIV/AIDS amongst Jingpo ethnic communities in Ruili City, China

Elena Shih

doi:10.14197/atr.20121327

Abstract

In 2007, China and Myanmar signed their first Bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on human trafficking. The two countries cemented this agreement with the unveiling of the first Border Liaison Office in Ruili City, located in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province — one of the primary border crossing points between China and Myanmar. The government focus on human trafficking on this border intersects with decades of struggles to curb the border’s porousness to drugs and HIV/AIDS. This paper is based on qualitative ethnographic participant observation and interviews with young Jingpo women living in Ruili City and investigates the risk of human trafficking as a by-product of cultural stigma associated with ethnic marginality, drugs, and HIV/AIDS. The case of Ruili warns us that the global shift towards regarding human trafficking as the single most perilous phenomenon of the current age obscures ongoing issues of vulnerability and cultural stigma for ethnic minority peoples globally. In lieu of state sponsored patrol and monitoring of the border, more attention must be paid to overlapping concerns of people living in border communities, including drug prevalence, disease, and ethnic marginalisation.

Highlights

This paper is based on qualitative ethnographic participant observation and interviews with young Jingpo women living in Ruili City and investigates the risk of human trafficking as a by-product of cultural stigma associated with ethnic marginality, drugs, and HIV/AIDS
Given the complex landscape of issues that already plague the border area, this paper asks the question: What implications does the governance of human trafficking have for the ongoing criminalisation of drugs and disease along the China-Myanmar border? The article addresses this question primarily through investigating the links between the risks of human trafficking and HIV/AIDS amongst Jingpo ethnic communities living on the China-Myanmar border
The social problems that exist at the nexus between borders, marginality and human rights converge for Jingpo communities in Ruili through lack of citizenship rights, uneven access to resources, the problematic ramifications of policing drugs and disease, as well as the focus on criminalisation and prosecution when addressing human trafficking

Summary

Introduction

Aggressively pursuing anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns through anti-drug use campaigns.[5] The government’s strategy of linking drug-use and HIV/AIDS is problematic because it conflates the illegality and punishment of drug-related crimes with the need for protection and services to those affected by HIV/AIDS Such policing of drugs and disease has accelerated since 2009, when Ruili became the site of astronomical capital investment due to its strategic placement along the new superhighway that will connect China to Southeast Asia via Yunnan province.[6] It is within this context of what the Chinese government labels as ‘maintaining social stability’[7] that efforts to control human trafficking might naturally appear fitting in Ruili City. Critical of how trafficking is being addressed in international and Chinese contexts, this paper details anti-trafficking efforts in Ruili, unpacking the intersectional issues that are not addressed in order to systemically and meaningfully impact trafficking

Methods

Conclusion