From The Bangkok Post, Thailand
16th June  2001

Editorial
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The horrible truth about sex slaves

Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction, and a great deal more
horrifying. This is a true story, although some will treat it as
fiction to ease their conscience.

A young girl sits on a bench in a wooden shanty in Songkhla. Her face
is pale and a high fever is making her sweat, ruining her make-up. She
is more than a thousand kilometres from her home in Khon Kaen province
and has difficulty understanding the southern dialect. She is deeply
in debt because her employer cheats her by deducting grossly inflated
amounts from her earnings for such essentials as food and clothes.

The wooden shanty is, of course, a brothel owned by a high-ranking
police officer's wife who lives a life of ease and indulgence with her
servants in the luxuriously-appointed house next door.

The sick girl is a prostitute, sold by her father to a middle-aged,
sweet-talking procurer working for the brothel. As the eldest daughter
in the family she did not object to being sold because she saw it as
her duty to put her brothers through school and provide for her
parents' livelihood. A visitor to the brothel, appalled to learn that
she is only being treated for her illness with one aspirin a day,
takes pity on her and offers to take her to a clinic to receive proper
medical attention. The brothel owner says she cannot leave the
premises for any reason because her absence could cost the brothel
money in loss of profit and she might run away. Steel bars, chains,
locked doors and barred windows bear mute testimony to the seriousness
with which brothel guards take this threat of a potential escape.

The visitor is not without friends, influence and money, and after
protracted bargaining eventually buys her freedom by repaying the
brothel's investment, her inflated "debts" and "compensation" for loss
of the girl's services. The girl is then taken to a doctor in Hat Yai
who diagnoses a severe womb infection caused by the unhygienic use of
a piece of cloth to block menstruation so that her daily routine would
not be affected.

This horror story does not have a happy ending. The girl's benefactor
paid her train fare home and later learned that she had been beaten by
her father for returning home without any money, and then resold
through another procurer. All this took place many years ago before
the passage of laws intended to end this vile trade. But these laws
have not prevented the callous exploitation of the desperation bred of
poverty and disregard for family values. Forced prostitution is still
very much with us.

Let's move closer to the present. Less than a month ago a police raid
in a Bangkok lane freed 30 women who had been forced into the flesh
trade. Their treatment had been so barbaric that one girl was still in
the iron shackles which enslaved her. For many of these women and
girls trafficked into forced prostitution, the human rights abuses
they experience will ultimately prove fatal as a result of contracting
the HIV virus. There is unlikely to be any investigation or
prosecution of those responsible, including the authorities who had
turned a blind eye to the goings-on in that house, and in many others.

Fairy-tale endings are rare in this kind of situation and will remain
so until the mindset which produces sexual slavery can be eliminated
from our society. Sadly, there is little evidence that this is
happening. Fear of Aids among potential customers has driven the sex
industry to recruit more and more young girls from remote villages
perceived to be untouched by the epidemic. Young girls, sometimes only
13 or 14 years old, may be particularly at risk for HIV infection. Not
only are they often too intimidated to insist on the use of condoms,
but the younger the girl, the more susceptible medical researchers
have found her to be to HIV infection. So long as procurers, brothel
owners, pimps and, yes, clients see themselves as being exempt from
punishment, and there remains a lack of political will or public
outcry, the evil of forced prostitution will remain a blight on our
society.

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