HONG KONG--Eleven Chinese women lured into prostitution in Africa have refused to be rescued after being tracked down by police from their home country, a news report said Saturday.
Police from China flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo in November in the country's first operation to rescue women trafficked to Africa, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. They found 11 Chinese women who had been promised decent jobs in Paris by traffickers but ended up working in a Chinese-owned karaoke bar in the country's capital Kinshasa, the newspaper said. After a joint raid by Chinese and Congolese police on the karaoke bar, however, the women decided to stay in the country, saying it was easier to make good money there than in China. Chinese police official Yin Guohai told the newspaper, “They make US$100 for receiving one guest — half of the money goes to their boss and they keep the other half.” As well as prostitution, the women, mostly from China's underdeveloped Sichuan province, were able to take cheap goods from China to Africa after visits home and sell them for big profits, Yin said. An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Chinese people, many of them traders or businessmen involved in the mining industries, live in the Congolese capital Kinshasa.