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My grandmother was sold for 300 taels of silver when she was 10 years old.
A tael is a Chinese unit of weight.
My grandmother (or Amah as I called her) was living in an impoverished village in southern China. Amah said she sold herself willingly to a visiting opera troupe, signing a contract for seven years, because she and her sisters were starving. The troupe owner told her she would be fed rice, then a luxury, three times a day.
The money would go to her family to buy back land they had lost. In fact, she received only 250 taels as the owner of the troupe docked 50 for her food and board.
The troupe took her to Singapore. Her father travelled with her as a member of the troupe, but after two years he returned to China. At the age of 12, she was on her own.
Three years later, the troupe disbanded and sold Amah on to another troupe that took her back to China where amazingly at 17 she reunited with her mother, who had followed her to Singapore and tried unsuccessfully to find her. In the meantime, Amah’s father and her sisters all died.
Parts of my grandmother’s story are disturbingly familiar.
Over the course of my career as a human rights advocate, I have interviewed hundreds of victims of trafficking around the world.
Men and women who describe how they too were sold for money, or accepted deceitful work offers in foreign countries because of their own dire economic circumstances. Forced to work in factories, homes, farms, brothels, unable to escape. And even when they are able to flee, often they end up detained, deported or punished by the officials responsible for providing them protection.
I have documented many of these cases in reports and stood side by side with trafficking survivors at the United Nations, pressing for governments to include victims’ rights in international treaties, laws and policies to combat human trafficking.
In countries such as Thailand, Nepal and Nigeria, survivors told me of the complicity of police, the large “debts” they owed their traffickers and the difficulties of returning to their homes and families due to stigma.
I spent the first part of my career advocating against trafficking without really knowing the full details of my grandmother’s story.
I knew she was sold to an opera troupe and that she escaped, but in my Singaporean family bad things from the past were rarely discussed.
At 19, my grandmother was still bonded to the second opera troupe when the new owner wanted to make her his concubine. She disguised herself as an old woman and fled to Hong Kong on a boat, then returned to Singapore, the one place she knew she could get work.
She would go on, according to family legend, to become a sought-after Chinese opera star.
I couldn’t speak directly with Amah, as she spoke Teochew, a Chinese dialect, and I only spoke English. When we visited my grandparents in Singapore, we would hang out in their cramped apartment. She still liked to sing and dance and sneak cigarettes in the kitchen when my mum wasn’t looking.
I discovered the details of my grandmother’s ordeal over the course of writing a book. Googling her name, I came across audio recordings in the National Archives of Singapore. Someone had interviewed her in the late 1980s for an oral history project on “vanishing arts” such as Teochew opera.
Reading the transcripts, I felt a sharp longing for Amah, who died long ago. I wanted to go back in time and sit in their cosy flat that smelled of joss sticks, with a cup of sweet jasmine tea, and ask questions about her incredible life.
It was a shock to realise that abuses I have documented affecting others for more than two decades have also occurred in my own family. But I also recognised something of my grandmother’s spirit in the many survivors of trafficking I have interviewed – bravery, determination and a certain cheeky resilience.
I have heard stories of courageous people who have had to leave their homes because of poverty, persecution, violence or slavery. Some are locked up in detention, yearning for the embrace of family members. And even for those who manage to reach safety in Australia, some face intimidation and harassment from the long arm of authoritarian regimes.
Against all odds, some of these people have become powerful advocates, writers, artists and storytellers, sharing their own stories with the world and future generations to expose human rights violations and to push for change.
Regrettably, I never had the chance to hear Amah’s stories from Amah herself. But the power of her stories ensured that they would one day reach me. It’s a privilege to share her story, and those of others I admire, with others.
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