From: tun@PHY.UCSF.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: IMMIGRANT VIRUSES
Date: 14 Apr 92 07:34:09 GMT

Since I have posted an article title "Japan's Sex Tourist" from 
seasia-l list, there has been some dicussion on the s.c.Japan and most 
of the article one way or another bring Thailand's AIDS problem into 
focus. Here is an article I posted to seasia-l concerning AIDS in 
Thailand. I read sometime ago in Far Eastern Eco. Review that there is 
a four-star hotel being contructed jointly by a Japanese and Thai company 
near the Golden Triangle where AIDS is rampant.

Followin is an article appear on seasail-l mailing list and soc.culture.thai
partially. Here is the article in its entirety. Scanned from Far Eastern
 Economic Review Feb 20th issue.

Coban
                  IMMIGRANT VIRUSES
         AIDS moves freely over the Thai-Burma border
                        by
         Bertile and Hseng Noung Lintner in Chiang Mai

      Nang Leng was born in a small village in the Kengtung area of the eastern
Shan state of Burma, near the Thai border. When she was 18, about a year ago,
she drifted down to Thailand and found a low-paying job in a Chiang Rai
restaurant. From there, she drifted to Chiang Mai and into prostitution,
joining the stream of young Shan women from Burma who make up the most recent
contribution to Thailand's thriving sex industry.

"I'm happy here," says the petite Nang Leng, after a night's work at one of
the "cafes" dotting the seedy redlight district of Santitham. Santitham is a
far cry from Bangkok's glitzy Patpong strip which to most outsiders epitomises
prostitution in Thailand. Here, there are no go-go dancers, cocktails or rock
music. Customers simply choose a girl and pay about Baht 100 (US$4) for a
session in a room behind the cafe, or 200-400 Baht for a night in a motel.
And the clientele are mostly locals, not foreign tourists as in Patpong.

"I make Baht 10-12,000 a month," Nang Leng says, "half goes to the owner of my
cafe and the rest is mine. After spending some on make-up and clothes, I still
send a lot of money back to my mother."

Among the estimated 10,000 Shan women working as prostitutes in Chiang Mai
alone, Nang Leng considers herself lucky. She has time off and relative freedom,
unlike thousands of other Shan women who are locked up in brothels and virtual
prisoners of their pimps.

She is also lucky because she has not contracted AIDS or the HIV virus.
Dr. Vicharn Vitiyasai of Chiang Mai University has found that the AIDS
situation in Chiang Mai is especially grave. According to his research, 72% of
the prostitutes tested for Hiv who charge Baht 30-50 are infected, compared
with 30% of those who charge Baht 50-100. Only 16% of those who charge more than
Baht 100 are HIV-positive. But his most disturbing finding was that among
prostitutes who had been in the trade for more than a yea regardless of how
much they charge 70% of those tested were Hiv-positive.

But such reports do not reach the prostitutes themselves; AIDS knowledge is
virtually nil among the young women from Burma. Even a relatively up-market
prostitute like Nang Leng says: "I've never heard of anyone here getting AIDS.
I'm tested every month and there's nothing. I think somebody's trying to scare
us."

Other Shan sources in Chiang Mai say it is common for local brothel owners to
approach infected women, offer them a few hundred Baht and tell them, "It's
time to go home and visit your mother."

Vitiyasai's research and Nang Leng's reaction highlight the enormous dimensions
of the AIDS problem. The sex industry, rather than intravenous drug use, has
become the major medium for spreading the disease. As AIDS creeps into the
heterosexual population along the Thai-Burma border, low-paid prostitutes
usually from Burma are the most vulnerable.

Returning prostitutes have spread AIDS to Burma at an alarming rate. Unlike
Thailand, Burma lacks funds, expertise and an efficient network of health
workers to deal with the problem. Local hospitals are primitive and few, if
any, use disposable syringes. These factors, combined with the country's role
as a major drug-producer and source of recruitment for Thai prostitution
rackets, make Burma the weakest link in the anti-AlDS chain in Southeast Asia.

Burma may therefore have the highest or most rapidly growing infection rate in
the region. Officially, Burma has some 30,000 registered drug addicts, but
unofficial estimates by UN agencies put the actual figure at around 160,000,
of whom at least half are already infected with HIV. Recently, a government
health official in Rangoon privately told a UN official that his department
had tested 10,000 drug addicts in the capital and found 85% of them
Hiv-positive.

Agents for prostitution rackets visit villages in the Kengtung area and offer
young women "good" jobs with a high salary in Thailand. Parents often receive
an advance the "strangle money" which leaves those who accept the offer in
bondage. And even when that money has been repaid, the young woman is already
dishonoured; most of them actually prefer to remain in the trade rather than
return to ridicule and disdain in their home villages.

Rangoon-based UN agencies allege that police and immigration authorities in
Thailand and Burma collude with the racketeers and powerful brothel owners.
When a group of prostitutes managed to escape from a brothel in Thailand
earlier this year, they were reportedly caught by the police in Burma, locked
up, assaulted and raped, and then released. They were almost immediately
picked up again by the racketeers and returned to Thailand.

Prostitution is also spreading rapidly inside Burma itself. Teenage
prostitutes interviewed by UN personnel in cheap brothels in Rangoon said they
saw over 10 clients a day, increasing the likelihood of rapid transmission of
the HIV virus.

Seen in a broader perspective, prostitution, AIDS and drug addiction are
symptoms of the disintegration of Burma. Nearly all of the young prostitutes
from Shan State who work in northern Thailand have come since 1988, the year
of a prodemocracy uprising in Burma that the government suppressed violently.
Since then, thousands of Burmese have been arrested, more than 10,000
dismissed from government jobs and at least 100,000 have sought greener
pastures abroad.

In 1990, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) attacked the last
remaining stronghold of resistance to its rule: the Buddhist sangha. Hundreds
of monks were arrested and the rest cowed into submission or bribed into
loyalty by lavish donations of colour TV sets and airconditioned cars, further
threatening Burma's social fabric. Moreover, the Burmese economy has
deteriorated to a point where many will do any-thing to survive.

In a border region like Kengtung, the disintegration is especially apparent
because of the proximity to free-wheeling, materialistic Thailand. Thousands
of men have gone to work on construction sites in Chiang Mai and many women
have become prostitutes. Significantly, only one ethnic group from Kengtung is
missing from the ranks of Burmese prostitutes in northern Thailand: the
Christian Kachins, whose church has instilled a sense of pride and dignity in
its believers.

Today, with almost the entire sangha in Burma discredited, the disintegration
of society is accelerating. The only winners of this game, apart from the
SLORC, seem to be the brothel owners in Santitham.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan,soc.culture.korean