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An indictment says two Chinese women were trafficked by a male Chinese citizen who misled, threatened, and exploited them. (illustrative photo)
An indictment says two Chinese women were trafficked by a male Chinese citizen who misled, threatened, and exploited them. (illustrative photo)

BELGRADE -- A Serbian court will open proceedings on September 12 in the country's first publicly documented case of sex trafficking involving Chinese nationals.

A criminal indictment obtained by RFE/RL through a freedom of information request says that two Chinese women were trafficked to Serbia from China and then had their passports taken away from them, given only one meal per day, and forced under the threat of death to provide sexual services to men.

The indictment adds that the two women were trafficked by a male Chinese citizen who "misled the victims" by promising to "find them a job as a masseuse" in Serbia and "provide housing and food" for them. He then forced them to have sex with men shortly after arriving in the Balkan country by threatening "to kill them" and warning "that he is powerful and can do anything to make them disappear."

"After a few hours upon their arrival, he organized their sexual exploitation by" Chinese men in Serbia "under the threat that they... owed him money for the purchased [plane] tickets and that they needed to earn money to obtain work permits."

The Chinese man, who has not been identified, was arrested in March by Serbian police in the eastern city of Bor and is set to begin his closed-door preliminary hearing after being charged with human trafficking by a court in the nearby city of Zajecar.

Large sections of the indictment obtained by RFE/RL, including details about the case and the women's ordeal, were blacked out.

The legal case involving Chinese nationals is likely to test the increasingly friendly relations between China and Serbia.

China has become a major investor and trade partner with Serbia, and the two countries provide visa-free travel for each other's citizens.

"The sensitivity of diplomatic relations often creates pressure on [Serbian] authorities to be cautious when it comes to investigations involving Chinese citizens or companies," said Sasa Djordjevic, senior analyst at the Global Initiative to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, a Switzerland-based think tank.

"The fear that this could jeopardize strategic ties between Serbia and China may lead to a less decisive reaction from [Serbian] authorities and institutions," Djordjevic added.

Looking Closer At The Case

The two women have been officially identified as victims of human trafficking by the Center for the Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking, a Serbian state-run organization that provides support to trafficking victims.

The center told RFE/RL that the case was the first in Serbia involving Chinese nationals since it began collecting data in 2015.

There have been 35 documented cases of human trafficking in Serbia so far in 2024, according to the center.

Examples of trafficking Chinese women to Serbia are mentioned in the 2024 Trafficking In Persons Report released by the U.S. State Department.

The report says that "traffickers exploit women from the [People's Republic of China (PRC)] in sex trafficking, primarily targeting demand for commercial sex from workers at PRC-funded projects, including copper mines."

While no links to the mining industry are mentioned in the indictment, Bor, the city where the man accused of trafficking the women was arrested, and the nearby town of Majdanpek, are both home to large gold and copper mining operations that were taken over in 2018 by China's Zijin Mining company. The firm employs both Serbian and Chinese workers in Bor and Majdanpek.

Trucks transport a load at the copper mine in the eastern Serbian town of Bor.
Trucks transport a load at the copper mine in the eastern Serbian town of Bor.

The State Department declined to answer RFE/RL's questions about the details mentioned in the report or if it included the case of the two Chinese women in the indictment. But the State Department did say that it informed the Serbian government about its findings.

The Serbian government did not respond to RFE/RL's request for comment.

The Chinese Embassy in Belgrade did not respond to RFE/RL's questions about the indictment, the preliminary trial beginning on September 12, or the claims raised by the State Department.

Zoran Pasalic, Serbia's national rapporteur for human trafficking and ombudsman, told RFE/RL in a statement that he was familiar with the case involving the two Chinese women and that "there is no doubt that they are victims of human trafficking."

Pasalic said other people in addition to the Chinese man were also involved in trafficking and exploiting the two women.

"According to our knowledge, it is not only a Chinese citizen. However, in the interest of the investigation, I cannot reveal who was also involved in that case," he said.

Pasalic said the Center for the Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking provided the women with free accommodation and psychological support, granted them temporary residence permits, and "support during their return to China."

In Serbia, human trafficking carries a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison.

But Marija Andjelkovic, the CEO of ASTRA, a Serbian grassroots organization that provides support for human-trafficking victims, says that legal precedent in the country tends to favor lighter sentencing, often between three to five years.

"These procedures can last a long time and be exhausting for the victim," she told RFE/RL. "[The victim] can be expected to repeat her story on average up to seven times from the first contact with the authorities until the end of the trial."

Serbia's Record On Human Trafficking

In another notable human-trafficking case in Serbia in 2021, the Chinese company Linglong, which is building a nearly $1 billion tire factory in northeastern Serbia, was accused of trafficking and exploiting an estimated 500 Vietnamese workers.

As documented through testimony from workers and images shared with local and international media at the time, the laborers were housed in makeshift barracks near the construction site without electricity, hot water, or adequate access to food. Many of the workers also had their passports taken away by their managers after entering Serbia and the incident was raised by the UN Human Rights Council.

A worker leaves a housing site near the Linglong tire factory in Zrenjanin, Serbia, in 2021.
A worker leaves a housing site near the Linglong tire factory in Zrenjanin, Serbia, in 2021.

A similar case arose in January involving a smaller group of Indian workers with the construction company China Energy Engineering Group Tianjin Electric Power Construction, which is a contractor of Linglong.

Serbian investigators concluded that neither incident was a case of human trafficking, a move that was criticized by grassroots groups like ASTRA and by Tomoya Obokata, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery.

Obokata told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network that it was part of a "dangerous trend" of Serbia ignoring potential human-trafficking cases.

A police officer in Sarajevo wears a Hytera body cam.
A police officer in Sarajevo wears a Hytera body cam.

SARAJEVO -- Amid a growing push for transparency, Sarajevo police have chosen to use body cameras from a controversial Chinese company that is under scrutiny in Canada and the European Union and blacklisted in the United States over national security concerns.

RFE/RL reporting shows that despite those warnings -- which also include charges from the U.S. Justice Department of industrial espionage -- the Sarajevo Canton’s Interior Ministry decided to purchase 200 police body cams in 2023 from Hytera, a partially state-owned Chinese manufacturer, for a pilot program launched on July 1.

This local-level episode comes amid an evolving conversation across Europe over the use of Chinese telecommunications equipment in government programs. While the United States has been the strictest -- banning surveillance cameras and other equipment made by Chinese giants like Huawei, ZTE, Dahua, and Hikvision -- European governments like Britain, Germany, France, and the Baltic states are also updating their procurement systems amid growing probes into security risks and lax data practices on a collection of Chinese firms.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere across the Balkans, budget-conscious governments have increasingly turned to affordable Chinese equipment with little public debate about the potential security implications.

In the case of the 200,000-euro ($222,000) sale of the police body cams -- small video cameras worn by an officer to record arrests and provide evidence from crime scenes -- Sarajevo Canton Interior Minister Admir Katica has not said publicly that the equipment is made by Hytera or that the company has been blacklisted in the United States and is under mounting scrutiny.

When asked by RFE/RL if they were aware of the accusations and that Hytera has been blacklisted by the U.S. government, the Sarajevo Canton Interior Ministry said only that Bosnia's law on public procurement "does not give the possibility to exclude a certain bidder according to the criteria stated in the question."

Drazen Vidakovic, an attorney who previously worked for Bosnia's Public Procurement Agency, told RFE/RL that local procurement law does grant provisions for a supplier to be excluded over criminal proceedings, but applying this to international charges is difficult.

"An offer can be rejected due to gross professional misconduct, [and] industrial espionage could be considered part of gross professional misconduct," Vidakovic said. "But it's difficult to prove because the ruling was not made according to our laws, so we don't have any judgment of ours to cite."

A Closer Look At Hytera

Hytera Communications was founded in 1993 and is best known for its walkie-talkies, radio transceivers, radio systems, and bodycams like those bought for the Sarajevo police.

The Chinese government owns approximately 10 percent of Hytera through an investment fund, and sales and imports of its equipment were banned in the United States after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in 2021 that the firm is one of several Chinese companies that pose an "unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons."

Sarajevo police officers from the traffic unit wear Hytera body cams at a press event for the launch of the pilot program on July 1.
Sarajevo police officers from the traffic unit wear Hytera body cams at a press event for the launch of the pilot program on July 1.

The Chinese firm has also been embroiled in a multiyear legal fight in the United States over charges that it stole trade secrets from the U.S. telecommunications company Motorola, a leading firm on the global market for police body cams, in addition to Hytera and Axon -- another U.S. manufacturer. A U.S. jury ruled in favor of Motorola against Hytera in 2020 and awarded more than $748 million in damages.

A new criminal trial against Hytera for allegations of theft and copyright infringement from Motorola is set to begin in October.

Hytera did not respond to multiple RFE/RL requests for comment about the body-cam sale to Sarajevo Canton, the legal case with Motorola, or security risks posed by its products.

Conor Healy, the director of government research at IPVM, a surveillance-industry research firm, says the response of officials from the canton’s Interior Ministry is insufficient.

"This is a common excuse from public agencies around the world," he told RFE/RL. "The reality is that procurement regulations almost always provide some latitude to exclude suppliers on legitimate grounds.

"[Were] the police really powerless to refrain from doing business with a criminally indicted company?" Healy added. "If that is really true, then there is a problem in the procurement law."

In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the country's national police service, faced a backlash in 2022 for buying Hytera body cams and eventually suspended a contract with its local subsidiary. A later review found that the equipment did not lead to any security breaches, but the incident led to an overall change in the RCMP's procurement system.

Some EU government institutions have also begun to phase out Hytera equipment.

An RFE/RL review of procurement records for the European External Affairs Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic service, shows that it has begun to replace Hytera equipment in use at its headquarters in Brussels and several other offices around the world with Motorola equipment.

"The replacement of the radio equipment is based on the technical and operational assessment of the EU delegations," the EEAS said.

Sarajevo's Pilot Program

The pilot program for the cameras was first promised in 2021 when the newly elected local government for Sarajevo Canton announced that it wanted to improve the transparency and efficiency of the police force.

The equipment was acquired from a Sarajevo-based supplier called MIBO Komunikacije in November 2023 and the program launched on July 1 is a pilot program involving traffic police in the canton, marking the first units to use body cams in Bosnia.

In a statement to RFE/RL, the canton's Interior Ministry said the body cams are in a trial period to gauge both how they are received by the public and by police officers.

One issue raised by Healy with the purchase of Hytera equipment is that in addition to the cameras, part of the sale also includes software from the company for downloading footage from cameras and managing material, which could come with weak security for protecting data from the body cams.

"I think there is a lot of data that body cameras record and the security of such a database is very important," Healy said.

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The ministry said its Professional Standards Unit, as well as the Internal Control Department, have access to the material recorded by the camera and are taking steps to manage it.

“The recorded material is kept on the storage system for 30 days, while during the test period of using this equipment the recording will only be kept for seven days,” the ministry said.

Healy, however, says that relying on Hytera’s software comes with risks given that similar programs from its peer companies for surveillance cameras, such as Dahua and Hikvision, have faced data breaches, had documented vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers, and have even been accused of providing access to elements of the Chinese government, a charge that the companies have denied.

“How many times have we heard companies say that they can’t access your data and then it turned out to be untrue?” Healy said. “I hope police in Sarajevo understand how sensitive the data they are recording and storing is.”

Written by Reid Standish in Prague based on reporting by Meliha Kesmer and Andi Mioc in Sarajevo

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