Thien Tam Tran is currently serving as a Field Representative for California State Assembly Member of Lou Correa of the 69th Assembly District. In this capacity, Tammy works predominantly with the Asian Pacific American community and issues of health care, education, and small businesses. In conjunction with various local elected offices, social service agencies, and community organizations, Tammy is active in the Protect Campaign, a project to raise awareness on human trafficking on local and international levels. She also serves of a statewide task force on advocating for model state legislation on anti-human trafficking in conjunction with the Protection Project at John Hopkins University.

She graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelors degree in International Relations in 2002. Tammy also is an active member of the Vietnamese American Public Affairs Committee, Doan Thanh Phan Boi Chau, and Len Duong Vietnamese Youth Network. In her future graduate study in Political Science and Comparative Politics, Tammy plans to write her dissertation based on a comparative research on human trafficking in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

According to the United Nations, 4 million people worldwide have been trafficked across borders for sexual and labor exploitation. Human trafficking is a modern day form of the slave trade where victims are moved from one place to another with the promise of a job or marriage by using coercion, fraud, deception, and force. The majority of victims are overwhelming women and children from impoverished countries - countries that can be characterized as supply countries. One such country is Vietnam.

In Cambodia, over 30,000 Vietnamese children are currently enslaved in the brothels of Svay Pak and Phnom Penh. In Taiwan, there are currently 100,000 Vietnamese brides and 65,000 Vietnamese laborers. Many of these young children and Vietnamese brides and laborers suffer from daily physically and mentally abuse. Some are raped by their captors, husbands, and/or other male members of the family.

Human trafficking is clearly a violation of a person’s basic human rights. The development of a civil society in Vietnam must not allow for or tolerate the sale and exploitation of human lives. In order to combat human trafficking there must be a collaborative effort of responsible government officials who respect human dignity and value the humanitarian efforts of Vietnamese professionals and volunteers in and outside Vietnam.

www.notforsalecampaign.org
www.vietact.org