Sister Ping: A Woman Trafficking Empire

Women in every culture assume a significant role in human trafficking. But only in China has a woman been found at the top of a major transnational trafficking organization. Sister Ping was sentenced to thirty-five years’ imprisonment by an American court for conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, other smuggling charges, and money laundering after many Chinese died on her vessel the Golden Venture off the East Coast of the United States. Before this tragedy, she had run a highly successful multimillion-dollar criminal empire that stretched across several continents. Sister Ping rationalized her role in human smuggling in that she believed she was providing a public service for migrants who could not enter the United States without her services. Members of the Chinatown community where she resided for many years reinforced this perception of her as a service provider to

– friends, family, acquaintances, and sometimes boyfriends. Some men deliberately befriend vulnerable young women, pretending to be their boyfriends and then selling them into prostitution. This was accurately depicted in the Swedish film Lilya 4-Ever, in which a boyfriend sold her, and in the Indonesian film, Chants of Lotus, in which a junior high school student is trafficked by a family friend.48 In India, procurers for brothels look for lost children, befriend them, and sell them into prostitution.49 In the Cadena case in the southern United States, a group of minor girls was entrusted by family members to a known family from their Veracruz community. The parents were assured that the girls would be working with families as domestic helpers, a story that seemed credible to their families, as many young Mexican girls travel to the United States for employment. The girls understood that their situation was different only when they crossed the Mexican – U.S. border and were driven to a store to try on