'I didn't seize passports of girls'

Thursday, April 2, 2009 (Page 3)

THE wife of the alleged ringleader of a Chinese human trafficking syndicate has denied seizing the passports of the girls whom she and her husband had been accused of forcing into prostitution.
According to Chou Xiou Ying, she and her husband, James Xu Jin, who is also an accused person, kept the passports of the seven girls for safety reasons and not to render them powerless from escaping from forced prostitution.
Answering questions under cross-examination from an Assistant Superintendent of Police, Ms Mary Agbozo, the accused person told the court that the girls feared they would misplace their passports and, therefore, she and her husband decided to assist by keeping them.
She claimed that the girls did nothing but troop from casino to casino, while she and her husband, with the assistance of a third accused person, Sam Shan Zifan, operated a restaurant alone.
Jin, Chou and Zifan, James’s younger brother, have each been charged with conspiracy and human trafficking and they have pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
They have been refused bail by the court, presided over by Mrs Elizabeth Ankumah.
The victims, who were recruited from Harbin, a city in China, had stated that they had been recruited under the guise that they were to assist Jin and Chou to run a restaurant in Accra for good salaries but on arrival in Ghana they were forced into prostitution by Chou and James.
The story of the girls, whose names have been withheld, are similar in terms of the fact that they all owed Jin, who paid for their air fare and other transport arrangements, their passports were seized and they had to pay a penalty of $50 a day or $1,500 anytime they refused to offer sex, which they were forced to do sometimes four or five times in a day.
They also said they relied on tips from their clients, who were mostly Lebanese, Chinese and Indians, for survival, among many challenges.
A prosecution witness, Mr Anas Aremeyaw Anas, through whose investigations the accused persons were arrested, had also informed the court that his investigations revealed that blacks, no matter how rich they were, were not allowed to patronise the girls.
However, Chou disagreed with the girls and other prosecution witnesses and claimed that the girls did not assist her to run the restaurant, adding that they rather paced up and down the restaurant anytime customers came over to eat.
She denied an assertion from the prosecution that she and her husband operated a brothel and not a restaurant.
She, however, could not give the average number of blacks who visited the restaurant to eat daily but she was able to tell the court that an average of 20 whites patronised the restaurant daily.
Chou also claimed that she never asked the girls the work they did, although they lived with her and her husband at Agyemang, an area at La in Accra.
Speaking through an interpreter, Chou denied an assertion from the prosecution that she and her husband enjoyed the proceeds from the girls’ prostitution.
She also stated that she was not aware that one of the girls was arrested naked with a naked man at her (Chou’s) residence on February 14, 2009 when a picture of that sort was shown to her.
The third accused, Zifan, who was led to give his evidence-in-chief by his counsel, Mr B. O. K. Johnson, told the court that he was not the link man between the girls and the men who patronised their services.
He said he understood little English and, therefore, interpreted for customers who visited the restaurant.
Zifan informed the court that he once escorted one of the girls to meet a man at a hotel based on the girl’s persistence.
According to him, he was given a $100 by the man whom he noticed was one of the customers who patronised the restaurant.
He is expected to be cross-examined on Monday, April 6, 2009.