From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Burmese Women Refugees in Thailand
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 00:40:37 GMT

/** reg.seasia: 206.0 **/
** Topic: Burmese Women in Thailand **
** Written  9:57 pm  Sep 30, 1992 by burma in cdp:reg.seasia **
Following article is from back issue of bAngkok base NGO B.U.R.M.A
(BUrma Rights Movement for Action. )

SOCIAL ISSUES

Burmese Women in Thailand
The numbers of young women from Burma being lured into prostitution
in Thailand is growing at an alarming rate.  According to UNICEF
(Possibilities for a United Nations Peace and Development
Initiative for Myanmar, March 16, 1992), at least 40,000 young
women and children have now been sold into Thailand's sex industry. 
They also claim that Burma, along with India and Thailand, now has
the highest HIV incidence in Asia.  With little, or no treatment
available for this disease, it can spread unhindered throughout the
country, spurred on by more and more of these young women and
children being infected in the brothels and tea houses of Thailand. 
Unconfirmed reports claim that women who escape the brothels and
return to Burma are often killed if found to be HIV positive.
A recent letter, smuggled out of a brothel called the Grand
Victoria Hotel in southern Thailand details some of the suffering
these young women and children must endure.  The letter was signed
by 73 women, all claiming to be held in the hotel against their
will.

According to their letter, most of the women have already been
working in the brothel for more than three years.  Their letter
states:

"They (brothel owners) forced and treated us like their slaves.  We
have to work all the day and night without rest.  After we'd heard
the news of death or illness of our relatives, we would like to go
back, but they always rejected our leave and continued to force us
back into slavery....Moreover, they fed us only a little amount of
rice with tasteless boiled soup full of water.  We haven't got
enough sleep because they make us work till 2 a.m. and then awake
us at 6 a.m.  It's been more than 3 years that we had suffered such
sleepless nights."

The psychological torture which these young women must face is
enormous.  Many of them come from ethnic villages deep in the
interior of Burma.  They can not speak Thai or English, and have no
concept of the world outside their village.  Suddenly being thrust
into the life of sex trade, not only their physical, but also their
psychological well-being is seriously threatened.

"There are 56 rooms and 100 Burmese girls working in Victoria
Hotel.  Only three of them had already escaped away from it up till
now.  We could not be patient on such a house arrest as beaten
slaves.  Some girls were being threatened and tortured
psychologically, so they became seriously depressed.  It was the
worst time when they got letters from their parents to come back
home at once.  Absolutely they can't.  Their appeals were faced
with harsh response.  In order to relax their present tension, they
drank a lot and even used narcotic drugs.  Such drunken girls were
not only beaten mercilessly with 2 1/2 inch-wide wooden sticks, but
cut out of food and drink for a few days.  Because of having been
beaten with those big sticks, some girls got swollen bruises and
injury all over the body and even vomited blood."

Helping the women escape the brothels is no easy task.  One Thai
nongovernment organization has attempted to help some Burmese women
caught in the sex trade in Burma, and although they have had
limited success, they face many threats and harassments.  Since
local police and officials may be economically linked to the local
sex trade, it is often extremely difficult to get them to take
legal action, or to press charges once the women may be freed.  The
Vice Squad based in Bangkok has provided assistance in helping many
of these unfortunate women, but even their help has its
limitations.

"During last June, the brothel men hid some of us in order to avoid
the arrest of the Crime Suppression Police from Bangkok.  The
police raided the Victoria Hotel and arrested 16 Burmese girls from
it.  After a chain of interrogation, those police expatriated us to
Kawthaung (on the Burmese side) by boat.  But we were not lucky as
in the middle of the river, Victoria Hotel boss Taw We, Wida Tauk
and boss Phinai, who came along with us in our boat in disguise,
bribed the boat driver to turn back to Ranong.  By this way we had
to return as their slaves.  Whenever we ask for our freedom or
release, we are beaten with big sticks till unconscious.  By this
situation, we no longer dare to open our lips again."

Young women in a situation of despair.  Members of the human
family, bought and sold in a human market.  Their please for help
are the cries of at least 40,000 other young women and children
from Burma who have been snatched from their village world and
thrust into the world of sexual slavery.

"Unless you take some initiatives to save us, we will be
diminishing in the darkness of death.  We can't stay any longer in
this place because it has no hope for release -0 even worse than
the prison or jail, which has at least a chance for release.  We
can endure no longer.  We have great desire to see our parents as
soon as possible.
** End of text from cdp:reg.seasia **

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