BURMESE WOMEN AND GIRLS TRAFFICKED TO THAILAND
"Lin Lin" was thirteen years old when she was recruited by an agent for work in Thailand. Her father took 12,000 baht (equivalent to US$480) from the agent with the understanding that his daughter would pay the loan back out of her earnings. The agent took "Lin Lin" to Bangkok, and three days later she was taken to the Ran Dee Prom brothel. "Lin Lin" did not know what was going on until a man came into her room and started touching her breasts and body and then forced her to have sex. For the next two years, "Lin Lin" worked in various parts of Thailand in four different brothels. The owners told her she would have to keep prostituting herself until she paid off her father's debt. Her clients, who often included police, paid the owner one hundred baht (US$4) each time. If she refused a client's demands, she was slapped and threatened by the owner. She worked every day, except the two days off each month she was allowed for her menstrual period. Once she had to borrow money to pay for medicine to treat a painful vaginal infection. This amount was added to her debt. On January 18, 1993, the Crime Suppression Division of the Thai police raided the brothel in which "Lin Lin" worked, and she was taken to a shelter run by a local nongovernmental organization. She was fifteen years old, had spent over two years of her young life in forced prostitution, and tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.20
"Lin Lin" is just one of thousands of Burmese women and girls in Thailand who have been trafficked into what amounts to female sexual slavery.21 Burmese trafficking victims are subjected to a range of violationsof internationally recognized human rights, including debt bondage, illegal confinement, arbitrary detention, discriminatory arrests, and numerous due process violations. In three visits to Thailand in 1993, Human Rights Watch gathered evidence that government officials, particularly the Thai police, are involved directly in every stage of trafficking and forced prostitution. Our information gathered since then indicates that there has been no substantial change in the conditions we documented in 1993.
20 The following material was adapted from Asia Watch and Women's Rights Project, A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993). The names of interviewees are withheld by Human Rights Watch unless otherwise indicated.
21 As of January 1994, estimates of Burmese girls working in brothels in Thailand ranged from 20,000 to 30,000, with approximately 10,000 new recruits brought in each year.
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