THAILAND THE TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN
"I like Thailand. It's the one place in the world where you can still own a women the same as a dog", Australian Bar Owner.
One estimate for number of prostitutes based on a study of statistics from the Thai Foundation For Children was 2,800,000.
During the 1970s and 1980s foreign paedophiles began to see Thailand as the haven they were seeking.
Communities of paedophiles began to set up quiet little centres around the country where groups of paedophile tourists could have the privacy to carry out their activities.
This was done with the understanding and protection of corrupt local ofticials........
When a group of young girls managed to escape from a brothel in Thailand they were reportedly caught by the police in Burma, lock up, assaulted and raped, and then released.
They were almost immediately picked up again by the racketeers and returned to Thailand.
Ultimately, what it comes down to, is that young Thai country women are just another kind of crop.
The men, on the other hand, ride the other end of the equation.
Whether foreign or local, the men are willing to use the women to satisfy their sexual needs at an incredible rate.
This often without regard to disease or any common moral restraints, including age: prostitutes as young as seven are often bartered alongside their older counterparts.
Perhaps what will be the final arbiter in the struggle over prostitution is the advent of AIDS.
AIDS is spread rapidly and efficiently by the brothels because, basically, men do not like to use condoms, and the women can ill afford to refuse a customer who will not.
The rapid onset of the disease is imminent, if not already in progress, simply because, "[m]ost of the men visiting prostitutes reported having nonprostitute partners as well.
Of those men who had both types of partners (prostitutes and nonprostitutes), most men who had unprotected intercourse with prostitutes also had unprotected intercourse with nonprostitutes.
The men that patronize prostitutes bring the disease home to their wives, and ultimately, their children.
On January 30th 1984, fire broke Out in a brothel in Phuket in southern Thailand.
The charred bodies of five young girls aged between 9 and 12 were discovered in the basement ruins of the brothel.
They had been chained to their beds and locked in to prevent their escape.
At 13, Noi was lured from her hilltribe village in the north by a well-dressed woman promising a 'good job' in the city.
After handing her over to the brothel owner, the woman pocketed 5000 baht.
Jintana was kidnapped when she was 12 and sold to a brothel in Nakhomprathom.
She never knew how much she was sold for but remembers how many men were sent to her room.
For two years she was held captive and received nothing in payment from the brothel.
One day she managed to escape.
Born on the outskirts of Bangkok, Fon left school when she was 12 years old. She wanted to earn money to help her family and herself, so she went to Bangkok and got a job in a restaurant. She was lured to another city about 60 miles away, supposedly to work. But she ended up in a brothel where
the owners kept her as a prisoner and forced her to have sex with a succession of different customers each day. Once when she and a friend tried to escape they were caught and severely beaten by the owners. Later, Fon found that she was pregnant. She never recovered tully trom the beating and became increasingly sick.
The brothel owner realised there was no more profit to be had from her and released her. It was later discovered after a blood test that Fon was HIV positive. About a month after the blood test she gave birth to a baby boy.
Unfortunately the baby died of AIDS-related illnesses when he was l8 months old.
When Pon and Tai were 15, a woman showed up one day in their village of Shento, just across the Thai border in Burma. She promised to take the two girls on a sightseeing tour of Bangkok. When they got there, she dropped them at a brothel where they were locked up with another Burmese girl, Sang.
At the brothel in Bangkok, their virginity was quickly sold for US$40. They were forced to receive 4 or 5 customers a day, up to a dozen on weekends-without payment. Fearlul of AIDS, they offered to buy their clients condoms with meagre tip money.
Most men refused. Now all three girls have tested HIV-positive. "The men knew about AIDS but didn't care," said Pon, now 17. "They certainly didn't care about us."
In one raid on a brothel in Phuket, 17 girls were rescued. Aged from 11 to 17, 5 were HIV positive, the rest had VD and 1 was pregnant.
In the southern Thai border town of Ranong an estimated 1500 women are forced to be prostitutes.
Some are just 17. The punishment for those trying to escape is death, in Ranong at least 15 women have already been killed.
Nang Horn was sold into prostitution at the age of seven by her father to finance his heroin habit. She was drugged, taken on the back of a motor~ycle from her home in Burma to a brothel in Thailand and held there for 5 years.
Serving as many as 20 men a day, she was paid nothing.
Eventually she was rescued by Thai police and sent to a home where she was found to be HIV positive. She was forced to engage in perverted sexual acts and threatened with death if she refused to do so.
Chinese officials have said that about 5,000 young girls have been reported missing from southern China's Yunnan province.
This province has been a major target of Thai sex slave traders.
Government complicity in the trade of prostitution can be seen on many fronts.
From the soldiers to the politicians, the tourism bureau officials to the police forces, every sector of the powers-that-be have a vested interest in the continuation of prostitution; "many politicians, officials and policemen invest in the sex trade or benefit from it.
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