Published on January 27, 2006

Thailand has become a regional hub for trafficking women for the sex industry, experts said yesterday.

With an improving infrastructure in the Greater Mekong sub-region, large numbers of people from southern China, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam have moved to Thailand, said Kritaya Archavanitkul, an expert on human trafficking from Mahidol University said. Many of the women and children smuggled into the country with migrant workers entered the sex industry in the Kingdom, before moving to other countries, she said.

“In that sense Thailand is a regional hub for human trafficking for the sex industry,” she told a seminar hosted by the Toyota Foundation.

Sex is a high-margin business and law enforcement to curb its spread in the Kingdom is lax, she said.

Based on a series of interviews with prostitutes, Kritaya was able to trace the trafficking routes and discovered that girls from China’s Yunnan province travelled through Burma to work in Bangkok and Hat Yai before moving on to Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan.

“The group I interviewed was deported from Taiwan to Thailand, where they were later charged with illegal entry,” she said, adding that the promotion of tourism in Thailand, and its sex industry, were significant factors in stimulating the trafficking of women and girls.

Poverty in neighbouring countries also drove women to seek a better life in Thailand, she said. Good-looking women, notably Tais from Lue and Shan, were popular in the entertainment industry in Thailand.

About half the 23,000 Lao illegal migrants in Thailand work in the sex industry, added Suchada Thaweesith from Ubon Ratchathani University.

They are no strangers to the sex industry, she told the seminar. Drinking girls, women promoting brands of beer and vendor girls are now common in the sex industry in Laos, said Suchada, who has researched human trafficking from the communist country.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

The Nation

Nong Khai

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