Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery

Drawings by Prum Vannak - Vannak is a Cambodian survivor of human trafficking. His story is one of extreme poverty and what people do to take care of their families. Most of them don't live to tell us their stories. Vannak is part of a lucky few.

24 million people are enslaved in Asia. RFA traveled to faraway places to expose slavery. This journal reveals the private thoughts of the cameraman. He is an experienced professional. Yet what he saw during this assignment "changed him forever."

In remote parts of Southeast Asia new roads are seen as a sign of prosperity. But for people living there they often open pathways to exploitation.

Cambodian men and boys in search of work fall prey to the dark world of international fishing.

Between a strong demand from overseas adoptive parents and the willingness of Chinese families to abandon their child - particularly if they are girls - a lucrative market is striving.

Our reporters join Chinese parents looking for their abducted children. The parents try to recruit the help of the police, only to find that law enforcement agents are accomplices.

I wanted to feed them warm rice,' says a North Korean woman who though she was going to get a job by defecting to China. Instead she was forcibly married to an 'unmarriageable' man.

In the second part of a series on human trafficking and modern slavery, our reporters speak to Burmese residents of a refugee camp in Thailand. Many of these refugees are forced to take dangerous work through traffickers to feed their families.

In a new series on human trafficking and modern slavery, our reporters speak to young survivors of forced and brutal military service inside Burma. For these lucky few who escape, the ordeal is not over.