Pop stars join fight against trafficking

Solidarity: Brown-Eyed Girls on stage at the MTV concert on Saturday. — File Photo

HA NOI — A boyband from Canada and a girlband from South Korea have something more in common than their worldwide reputations – they are both involved in social work.

The bands, Simple Plan and Brown Eyed Girls, set fire to audiences at an MTV concert at My Dinh Stadium on Saturday night to End Exploitation and Trafficking (EXIT).

They were joined by Australian singer Kate Miller-Heidke and local artists, including female pop singer My Tam, rock band Buc Tuong (The Wall) and rapper Karik.

The two bands expressed their support of the multi-media MTV EXIT campaign through 14 songs and spoke out at a press conference in Ha Noi yesterday.

Brown Eyed Girls said they were shocked by human trafficking in Asia. Being women, they sympathised with the victims, they said.

Founded in 2006, the girlband said they had supported social issues from the outset, supporting many community and charity works. Group members said they were happy to join the MTV campaign to raise people's awareness of human trafficking.

They said many new groups were being founded daily in South Korea, but they were confident they would maintain their popularity, thanks to their talent and contribution to social works.

Boyband The Simple Plan also said participating in community activities was important to them.

Beyond music, they were concerned about society, they said. They had many fans in Viet Nam, so they had agreed to perform in the concert to help solve the human trafficking problem.

The Canadian band said they studied about the country on TV and the internet before the trip and enjoyed dining on Vietnamese food in Montreal.

But experiencing the real Viet Nam was much more interesting, they said.

Before the concert, the general director of the culture ministry's Department of International Co-operation, Nguyen Van Tinh, said the prevention of trafficking and the protection of human rights was very important. He said the Government had strict laws against the practice and had collaborated with international organisations to help victims integrate into their communities.

US Ambassador to Viet Nam David Shear said human trafficking was a worldwide scourge that all countries must work together to address.

"The US government is proud to be working with MTV and other partners to raise awareness of people trafficking, with the shared goal of helping young people in Viet Nam and around the region to understand what they can do to protect themselves and their communities," Shear said. — VNS