Glen Carey reports:

Fei Fei, a 22-year-old from China’s Guangdong province, has a souvenir of her eight months in Dubai: burns on her back and arms from cigarette butts crushed against her skin when she refused to work as a prostitute.

She eventually submitted when a criminal gang threatened to send nude photos of her to family members. That indignity, she said, would have been worse than selling her body.

“They take pictures of me naked in shower,” Fei Fei said in broken English as she pulled up her shirt to reveal the dark red circular marks. Soon afterward, she adopted the English name “Lucy,” and sold sex in Dubai bars for 500 dirhams ($130) a trick to claw back her freedom.

Fei Fei’s story symbolizes the dark side of Dubai, better known for its skyscrapers, sail-shaped hotel and man-made islands built in the shape of palm trees. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is the second-largest member, is on a U.S. State Department watch-list for failing to take “meaningful steps” to end trafficking of women for prostitution and other workers trapped in conditions of slavery.

There are an estimated 10,000 victims of human trafficking in Dubai, according to the department’s 2007 report. U.A.E. officials say the figure overestimates the problem and that they have begun to take action, passing the first anti-trafficking law in the Middle East.

Read the rest of the report here.