Seventeen Vietnamese children, believed to be victims of human trafficking, have vanished from Australian immigration facilities since mid-2011.

A number of Vietnamese children came to Australia by boat in March 2011, Photo: smh.com.au

The children, most of them boys in age of 15-18, who came mostly from Northern Vietnam to Australia by boat last March, were found to be missing two or three months later, Sydney Morning Herald wrote.

The authorities did not know how the children left the immigration detention centers. 

Nguyen Phong, federal president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, said “'It is alarming that children can disappear like that. We don't know what their situation is, and if they are living underground, then adults might exploit or abuse them.''

Believing that someone had helped the children get out of the camps, Phong called on such people to provide information to the Vietnamese community about the situation of the children. 

They are in a very vulnerable position. We want to know whether they are safe and not being abused, Phong said.

He also requested the Australian Immigration Department to announce that the children will not be punished if they present themselves to police.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Canberra said it has asked for information about the missing children from Australian competent agencies but not received a reply yet, VnExpress reported. 

Abnormal 

Serious concerns have been raised about the sudden arrival of dozens of unaccompanied Vietnamese children as young as six within the past 12 months. There are fears they may have been trafficked to Australia for illegal labor or for prostitution. 

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said that “when there was suddenly a large number of Vietnamese children arriving alone, among them girls just 12 years old, there was ''something going on,” Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Before the children disappeared, they told advocates that their parents had been tricked into handing them into the custody of an older Vietnamese man who promised them work and education in Australia.

The children’ parents appeared to have been duped and exploited, Melbourne-based refugee advocate Pamela Kerr said. “They have been convinced to pay money for their children to travel in the belief that they will be taken care of and allowed to work and study in Australia. When they get here they find that is not the case,'' she said. 

However, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus said the agency was not investigating the missing of the children and did not find signs of trafficking related to them. Inquiries had failed to find any links to child-trafficking networks.

Yet a spokeswoman for the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, said the department has co-operated with relevant agencies to find the location of these children and the government also paid more attention to those who left refugee camps. 

Since July 2010, 36 children, including Vietnamese and those from other countries, have gone missing or escaped from immigration facilities around the country, the department revealed. 

Nineteen have since been located and one of them admitted that he was not a minor but had illegally immigrated, the department said.