"We need protection" say women who face hell working abroad

But things turned out differently. "My life there was like hell," she said.

As soon as she arrived in 2006, this single mother was sent to the bed of many men at so many places that she could not remember the details.

"Fortunately, police raided a house where I was living and I was rescued."

After she was sent back home, she took her sister-in-law to court. The case is still pending.

The Struggling Women Group is now following up on many cases like this.

"After I came back from Japan, I found that several other women were facing the same fate. So, we have formed a group to educate former victims about their legal rights and to warn other women to avoid being lured abroad," the group's chairwoman said.

Identifying herself only as Pranee, she said she had to borrow money from other Thais in a Japanese jail to finance her flight back home.

"I have to come back because my two children are here," she said.

Pataya Ruenkaew, an independent researcher, insisted that Thai women working in foreign countries must be covered by the International Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

"Sex workers in countries like Germany should receive the legal protection too because prostitution is considered an occupation there," Pataya said in her research paper.

Most victims were women from the North, Northeast and South with only a basic education, she said.

They could be divided into three main groups - single mothers, sex workers and single women who wanted to improve their social status.

They followed a similar migration pattern, starting with Hong Kong, Malaysia or Saudi Arabia before moving to Japan and Germany, she said.

Most of went abroad because of the lack of economic opportunity or family problems including wayward husbands and being a single parent.

The migration process involved a labour agency collecting a commission to transport them to become illegal migrant workers or a matchmaking company to arrange marriages with Japanese or German men. Some women had to hire a Japanese to marry them so they could qualify for a visa.

Others also had to get pregnant and have children with a Japanese to get a permanent visa to work.

As for the workers falling victim to human trafficking and prostitution, they were forced to sell themselves under threat of being sent to an island, which would ensure even more brutal treatment, she said.

"The problem that we found was that Thai children and youths whose mothers took them to Japan and Germany were on the rise. For example, we found Thai kids aged 0-19 at 10 per cent were accompanying their mothers. Some of these stateless children lived there for a long time with no nationality granted them and no education. They ended up being workers themselves and Thailand lost human resources that way.

"There were Thai female workers at the age of retirement who wanted to return to Thailand. In 2007, transnational workers brought as much as Bt30 billion to Thailand, which was more than the income from rubber and jewellery exports.

"Thailand has to implement measures to take care of them because transnational labour migration is a growing trend. This is because economic problems push more and more Thai women to become transnational workers but the Thai government still drags its feet in solving this problem and only solves it periodically when something serious comes up.

"This issue has built up and expanded further. I want the government to set up a working team comprising representatives from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Labour Ministry, Social Development and Human Security Ministry, and NGOs to take care of or liaison for solutions to this issue," she said.

National Human Rights Commissioner Naiyana Supapung said that while hundreds of Thai women have been tortured and killed overseas, many others were still heading to foreign countries.

"People usually think that they will be lucky, and that bad things will not happen to them," she said.

Firstly the agencies could then work together to make a database of Thai people in other countries. The Foreign and Labour ministries and Immigration Police should make a database showing how many Thais went abroad, to which country, on which type of visa, and how many of them come back, she said.

Secondly, this would help the government to obtain information to formulate proactive policies in negotiating with destination countries such as Japan, Germany and Taiwan, she said.

Thirdly, this would enable studies of legal matters of the countries to assist Thai female workers in the future because each country's laws were different, she said.

In some countries, when the husbands die, the Thai wives gain no right of custody to their children.

And lastly, the Thai consulates could coordinate with the NGO networks or communities in those countries to assist the consulates because the NGOs or communities were closer to those Thais than the government agency.

Siriporn Skrobanek, chairwoman of the Friends of Women Foundation, said it was high time that the government enforced pro-active measures to protect Thai women who were working overseas, if it would continue to encourage Thais to seek overseas jobs.

Once this study was complete, it hopefully would provide useful information to various agencies in relation to the solutions to the transnational female worker issue, she said.