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Small victory in a dirty war -- bro



Subject: Small victory in a dirty war -- brothels of Chiang Mai

Small victory in a dirty war -- brothels of Chiang Mai

Last week, Bangkok police overrode their Chiang
Mai counterparts to rescue 19 young girls, 14 of them
foreign, from squalid conditions in a city brothel.

About 15 young pale-faced girls wearing T-shirts sit under blue and red 
fluorescent lights on a tiered platform covered in worn red carpet. 
Surrounding
them is a pink curtain, also well worn. Above their heads is a sign in Thai 
wishing everybody a happy new year.

In front of them sit a few Thai men, ready to deliver 110 baht (25 bahts to 
the dollar) to a cashier to their left. For that, they expect sex in the 
girls' home,
one of 20 wooden rooms at the back of the house-style building which each of 
the girls has made their own. (her shirt is effective advertisement for her
body, click here)

Some of their rooms have beds with quilts, spirit houses, posters, and 
fluffy toys. They are the ones who have been there a long time. To them, the 
room is
a precious piece of territory they can put their own characteristics and 
personality intoIn the corner sit two middle-aged women, the mamasan who try 
to
hurry customers into choosing one of the girls behind the glass partition 
quick turnover means quick profits.

Next door, one of Chiang Mai's largest hotels, the Mae Ping, is enjoying a 
healthy turnover of its own, a legitimate one. It is a significant landmark 
in one of
the city's best known brothel districts.

The area has been the target of criticism for years, but it has fallen on 
the deaf ears of police who are supposed to suppress its most popular 
attraction
young, foreign girls. They are sold in almost all of the ten or more 
brothels lining the same street. And for the customers, they come at bargain 
prices.

But late last Wednesday night, the system was changed, at least 
temporarily.At about 10:30 p.m. the Rung Ruing Cafe was stormed by 11 
Bangkok Crime
Suppression Division Police. They ran down a 20 metre corridor, kicked open 
doors, and rounded up 19 girls. They arrested the overweight, aging
mamasan, a 28 year-old cashier, and a male pimp who almost escaped in his 
car.

The two girls they were there to rescue, Bootook and Phousi, both 15, were 
Akha hill tribe children from Sipsongpanna in southern China. Their parents
were rice farmers, and both had lost their virginity in the village. Like 
many other girls from their region, they had been tricked by an agent into 
leaving their
hometown, believing they would be working in a restaurant in affluent 
Thailand. (Each time a girl slept with a customer, a card would disappear 
from her
bundle to pay off her debt. Sleeping her way through the bundle was her key 
to freedom, click here)

An agent took them along a well-beaten path which usually starts in southern 
China's Jinghong Province, leads through Keng Tung in Burma, and ends in
Nae Sai, where they are sold to another agent. In their case it was 
suspected that a Mae Sai border policeman was involved in the sale The girls 
were taken
to Chiang Mai, where they were both sold for 10,000 baht and forced to sell 
their bodies.

Each was issued a pile of cards, about 1,000 of them, that would effectively 
be their bundle of slavery. Each time they sold their bodies for 110 baht, a 
card
would disappear from the bundle. This usually happened at a rate of four per 
night. They had been in the brothel for just over a month and would have to
work for at least another eight before their ticket to freedom was secured 
if, that is, they did not come into contact with HIV before then.

In the same brothel, there were at least six other similar contracts which 
had been signed by parents who sold their daughters, all for between 10,000 
and
15,000 baht.

After their rescue, the girls smiled and had a rare conversation with their 
undercover snitch, an Akha Chinese man in his 30s who had heard about the 
girls'
captivity from a friend and wanted to help. He had spoken to them before to 
ask if they wanted to return home, and the answer had been obvious.The
brothel owners must have become suspicious, as the girls were due to be re 
sold to a brothel in Bangkok and were told to be ready to leave by car at
midnight that night.

Their bedrooms had nothing. (bedroom of a 15 year old Chinese girl who was 
sold to a brothel for $400.00, click here) The girls were given a small 
bucket
with which to bathe, a sheet to sleep on, and basic clothes which previous 
girls had left behind. "We were told to sleep in the same bed another girl 
had just
died in ", they said.The girls later sent a stinging message to the Thai 
government. "They don't have things like this in our country. We didn't know 
anything
about Thailand. We didn't think there would be things like this. We will now 
go home and tell people about what we have been through. The government
must arrest people who do bad things to others."

Both girls had befriended a 21-year-old Burmese girl, Sandra, who had been 
forced by poverty to leave here home in Rangoon to look for work. She cried
nightly, finding consolation from her younger friends.Again, tears rolled 
slowly down her face as she told her story. She had been beaten often the 
brothel
owners and had not received any money during here year long stay in hell. 
She missed her young baby, who she had intended to support by getting
legitimate work. She wanted only to go home.Like many of the girls in the 
brothel, Sandra could speak only a few words of Thai. Of the 19 girls 
rescued, she
was one of only four aged 18 or older. Eleven of them had been trafficked 
from small villages in Burma. Another girl, a Thai, was five months pregnant 
and
was still sleeping with up to six customers a night.

Police collected evidence, contracts, bundles of debt cards, condoms, small 
baskets of make up and toiletries, and money which had already been 
collected
that night. The back fence was fringed with barbed wire and the front door 
had sharp nails protruding from it from top to bottom. The Wednesday night 
raid
followed a similar but failed attempt just over a year ago. Chiang Mai 
police had apparently heard a raid was on the way and tipped off brothel 
owners.
Brothels shut down instantly, only to re open days later.

Last week, when the girls were taken from the brothel to the police station, 
local police were called in to take statements from them. One said he 
doubted
some of the Burmese women were as young as they said.

District Crime Suppression Division chief Lt. Col.Wanchai Charoenpol invited 
reporters to his office and explained that he had only been in Chiang Mai 28
days, and that he was about to launch a campaign against many crimes, 
including the procurement of child prostitutes.

When asked if he felt sorry for child prostitutes, Lt.Col Wanchai folded his 
arms "I am a vegetarian. I have a family I rarely see. The police are 
genuinely
concerned about their sanity:" He said everybody knew about the street and 
its active trade in young girls. But the law, he said, was not on his side. 
He was
unsure of what charges to file against pimps and procurers. But cracking 
down on child and forced prostitution will be a difficult task.

The leader of the first ever full scale police raid on a Patpong bar last 
month was led by deputy commander on anti child labour and prostitution 
Bancha
Charuchareet, who was ousted from his position shortly afterwards. He is now 
under investigation after allegations that he had embezzled money from
service girls. Other rumours about police involvement in the sex trade are 
rampant.

On the night of the Chiang Mai raid, a map of the street near the Mae Ping 
Hotel was given to police showing more than ten brothels, two of which 
social
workers from the Centre for the Projection of Children's Rights claimed had 
more than 20 young prostitutes. According to inside police sources, those 
same
brothels and others had been paying police 20,000 baht a month to stay 
open..This happens all the time. There is a raid and the brothels close 
until things
die down. But they open again every time.

Reprinted from the Bangkok Post, date of 3/10/95