By Kim Linden
Around 100 people attended a May 1 forum on the trafficking of Burmese women and girls in Thailand held at the Overseas Services Bureau in Fitzroy, Melbourne. The forum was the first leg of the "Traffic of Pain" speaking tour and campaign by the International Women's Development Agency (IWDA) to highlight the abuse of human rights and to work towards ending the trafficking of Burmese women and girls.
The forum was addressed by two researchers for the Asia Watch Women's Rights Project report titled A Modern Form of Slavery — Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand, which documents the abuse of Burmese women and girls caught up in organised trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation and migrant labour.
The report is based on 30 in-depth interviews which reveal that:
- trafficking is organised and driven by a desire to maximise profits;
- agents for brothels infiltrate remote areas of Burma seeking recruits, who are unsuspecting and easily deceived;
- virgin girls bring higher prices and less threat of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. This leads to greater demand for younger girls;
- family members usually accompany the girls to the Thai border, where they receive payments ranging from 10,000 baht ($400) to 20,000 baht from agents for brothels;
- the payment to the family becomes the debt, usually doubled with interest, which must be worked off by sexual servitude;
- once a girl or woman is inside a brothel, she is virtually a prisoner; escape is, if at all possible, very dangerous.
According to the report, nearly all the women interviewed had to be available to work 10-14 hours a day, with a typical allowance of $1.20 a day. The conditions in which they work and live are sub-human. Slides shown at the forum depicted concrete cubicles that resemble rudimentary toilet blocks measuring two by two and a half metres. Some brothels are guarded by armed pimps and surrounded by electric fences. Provision of health care is sporadic and in most cases non-existent. It is estimated that 50-70% of the women and girls are HIV positive.
One in three of the Burmese women and girls interviewed were willing and able to identify police who had been involved in transporting them to the brothels, and 50% reported having police officers as clients. Several women and girls had previously been arrested by local police and returned to the brothel after the owner paid money to the police. Their fine was added to their debt, furthering their bondage to the brothel owners.
Many of the women are from ethnic minorities in hill tribe village areas. In Thailand they are considered illegal immigrants and are subject to arrest, detention and deportation.
Deportations occur every month, and when girls cross the border their fate at the hands of the Burmese military, police and immigration officials can be harsh. They are prosecuted for having illegally left Burma.
The fact that the women come from different ethnic backgrounds serves the interests of the brothel owners, who play on rivalries between the women so that they are less likely to attempt united organisation.
Solutions are fraught with complications and frustrations. There are a whole string of conventions that the United Nations could invoke against parties complicit in the trafficking, but it fails to do so.
Article 6 of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), of which Australia and Thailand are both signatories, states: "Parties shall take all appropriate measures including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women". Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) address sexual exploitation and abuse and the trafficking of children. There is also the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, of which Burma is a signatory.
These conventions have never been invoked. The researchers of the report also say that on the ground there is no sign of the United Nations doing anything to help the women.
The government of Thailand is complicit in the trafficking. Police and officials are directly involved in both the trafficking and the operations of the brothels and are exempt from any prosecution. Meanwhile the military regime in Burma has no interest in the problem; Burma itself is racked with human rights abuses.
The "Traffic of Pain" researchers will be giving testimony to a closed sitting of a parliamentary human rights committee in Canberra. Seminars will be held in Sydney and Melbourne for non-government organisations working in the region to generate an awareness about, and commitment to, women's human rights, especially in the elimination of trafficking for prostitution. It is intended to develop a strategy from these forums that can be taken to the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women in September.
[The report is available from the Melbourne office of IWDA, phone (03) 417 1388.]