Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People

People on the Move

N° 111 (Suppl.), December 2009

Rev. Sr. Rebecca Kay Thi Oo

Social Worker, Myanmar 

The Situation of Trafficking in Women and Girls in the Mekong Region

To acquaint with the situation, I would like to start with a story of a young girl from Thailand. Nu comes from a poor family in Northeast Thailand. As a child, she did not have a chance to study, she could not read or write. When she reached puberty, she thought of finding a job in order to support her destitute family. At the age of fourteen, she went to Bangkok to look for a job. A hairdresser friend in Bangkok advised her to find a well-paying job abroad that would take care of her food and accommodation. The friend introduced her to an agent who offered to help secure work in Japan. With excitement and full of hope to support her family, Nu accepted his offer. The agent told her that she would be working as a waitress in a bar earning approximately US $ 200 per month, and that she was not bound to go out with clients, but could if she chose to earn more. She was told that agent’s fees and other expenses were to be paid after receiving her first wage. Upon arrival in Japan, she was brought to a karaoke bar in Shinjuku. Before receiving her, the bar owner asked her to undress and examined her vaginally and asked her to take a blood test for HIV/AIDS. He told her that she had to pay off a debt of over one million yen for all the expenses and that her food, rent and other expenses would be added to this amount. She was shocked and realized that the only way for her to pay off her debt was to go out with as many clients as possible. Nu entertained three or four clients a night on an average. Oftentimes she was beaten with sticks, belts or chains by clients before intercourse. She took drugs before going to see the client so that she would not feel so much pain and worked even when she is ill or menstruating. During the debt repayment period, clients paid the bar owner directly for taking her out. Tips from clients were the only liquid cash she earned. Nu suffered deep depression because she could not support her family as she had planned to. It was a time of great suffering for Nu but it is almost impossible for her to get out of the terrible situation. The bar owner warned her that if she escapes from the bar, there would be severe punishment and she would accumulate double debt. Some of her friends in the bar who tried to escape were arrested by the police, fined, jailed, forced to provide sexual favors to them before eventually being deported. Without any legal documents and protection from the bar owner, the girls become illegal migrants and are considered as criminals by the police. Nu suffered bitterly at the hand of the bar owner and the clients until she was helped by a Thai NGO in Japan and sent back to Thailand.

Nu is one of the thousands of innocent victims of trafficking in the Mekong Region. Mekong Region encompasses Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos PDR, and Yunan Province of southern China. Women and girls with little economic opportunity in Mekong Region are lured by traffickers to travel abroad for what they are led to believe is a good job in a hotel or restaurant, or to work in a factory. The agents would advance all of the costs of travel, food, and lodging and make the women pay off the debt in the destination country. Upon arrival, the agents or brothel owners confiscate their passports, and they have little choice but to comply with the demands of their captors since they are working and travelling illegally. Unable to speak the local language, it is nearly impossible for these women to escape their situation. Once they are trapped in an illegal migration environment, many women find themselves living in inhumane conditions, locked in debt bondage to a brothel or restaurant owner who has no consideration for women’s basic human rights or health care. Many of them are threatened with violence or raped if they do not comply with the brothel owner’s demands. Some of them are denied the right to enforce condom use, and many others are prevented from seeking medical treatment for STD or other illnesses. In Japan, to prevent women in bondage from running away, the brothel owners commonly seize the women’s passports and confine them to the establishment, allowing them outside only when necessary.

In Mekong Region, Thailand is a major hub for international trafficking to other parts of the world. From Bangkok, women are trafficked, especially to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia and the United States. The largest numbers of victims come from Myanmar, followed by Yunnan (China) and Laos PDR. In 1999, an estimated 80,000 Myanmar women and children were trafficked into the commercial sex industry in Thailand, of whom 30 percent were under 18 years of age._[1] The International Organization for Migration estimates that around 300,000 people, particularly women and children, are trapped in slavery-like conditions in Mekong region._[2] It is believed that 90 percent of trafficking in the Mekong region is related to forced prostitution, and that 50 percent of women in the commercial sex industry have been trafficked._[3] Thai women are frequently trafficked to Japan to work in domestic service and the “entertainment” industry. The U.S. State Department in 2001 stated that 50,000 people were trafficked annually to U.S. and that the highest percentage of these were women from Thailand. The women are kept hidden and often moved from state to state. In 2001, an NGO called FIZ in Germany said that there were 80,000 women officially living in Germany and that twenty-five percent above that figure were illegal. Within Thailand itself, most of the trafficking takes place from the hill tribes of the north/northeast to Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, and involves mostly girls aged 12-16.

The trafficking of Myanmar women and children into brothels in Thailand is also a critical problem. Women and children from Myanmar are being lured by Thai recruiters with promises of good jobs and a cash advance, usually paid directly to the girl’s parents. The girls are forced to work off their debt bondage, confined to their brothel or factory, and generally experience some level of rape or violence to keep them subdued. Myanmar women working in low-class brothels have to work ten to eighteen hours per day, twenty-five days per month, and serve anywhere from five to fifteen clients per day. In most brothels that have been raided, between 50 to 70 percent of the women tested HIV positive. Thai NGOs estimate that over 20,000 Myanmar children are in Thai brothels, with 10,000 new recruits entering the country each year._[4] In April 2008, out of 121 Myanmar nationalities who are being trafficked to Thailand, fifty-four died of suffocation because they were transported in a container without enough air. Women and girls are also trafficked from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the Yunan Province of Southern China.

A multitude of factors contribute to trafficking, including poverty, the desire for a better life, the low status of women and children, lack of education and employment opportunities for women, official corruption, and the substantial amount of profits to be gained from the industry. Many young trafficking victims come from dysfunctional homes and were already looking for a way out, making them an easy target for recruiters. In addition, lack of information, lack of education or employment opportunities, and the cultural expectation that the daughters will support the family financially all play a part. Moreover, in the countries of Mekong region, there are cultural, familial, economic and historical reasons behind the decision to send a young girl to work in the sex industry. Girls are expected to support and obey parent’s wishes, and show parents gratitude and respect no matter what the difficulties. Many young girls who migrate to other countries to work in difficult, low-paid and dangerous occupations feel that they should not return home “empty handed” due to their traditional responsibility to care for their parents. Prostitution is often perceived as fulfilling a traditional role of daughters who are caretakers of the family and the community. Under Theravada Buddhism, women and girls are thought to be unable to achieve enlightenment. Thus, while men can show gratitude and respect to their parents by becoming monks and pursuing the spiritual life, many girls feel that they must make sacrifices for the benefit of their families, villages and their own karma.

This is a reality and a cry of our time that challenges each and every one of us, the followers of Jesus the liberator. Let us take a look at the Gospel story of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42). Notice the way Jesus relates to the Samaritan woman and how the encounter gradually transforms her life. The story tells us that Jesus comes from a journey and sits down at Jacob’s well, weary and thirsty, dehydrated from the heat of the noonday sun. The unnamed Samaritan woman comes to the same well to fetch water at off-hour with an empty jar. All these expressions symbolically speak that the woman belongs to outcast Samaritan, has no identity, has been isolated from the society, her life is empty and dry and is thirsty or longing to be filled. Jesus initiates the conversation by asking from her a drink. A simple request but one that surpasses cultural barriers of gender the second class status of women in a patriarchal culture and race/ethnicity Jew vs. Samaritan. He transcends cultural barriers to reach out to the unnamed Samaritan woman as an equal. It amazes her that Jesus, a Jew and a man would speak to her, a Samaritan and a woman. Jesus enters into a profound conversation with her and reveals himself to her as the living water. He who asks for water, draws the woman who comes to fetch water to acknowledge her thirst and to ask for that living water. The woman asks Jesus to give her the water so that she may never be thirsty and never come to the well to draw water. Perhaps, the first thought in her mind is only a labor saving device as a relief from the daily toil of having come to draw water. Women like her are marginalized in a patriarchal society. Women like her did most back breaking task of fetching water for their families and their animals. They were responsible for the hard domestic work. In a way, the woman’s request for living water can also be symbolically interpreted as an expression of her thirst, dryness and emptiness longing to be filled. Conversing with Jesus, the woman gradually comes to realize that water is the living water and Jesus is the giver and the source of that living water.  Jesus responded to her request by addressing her life experience. He asks about her five husbands. Having five husbands can also be symbolic to indicate the very low position of the woman in the society, a scandalous way of life which bears out the Jew’s low opinion of the Samaritans. The deep conversation with Jesus transforms the life of the woman totally. At the end, she leaves her jar-the emptiness, dryness, thirst- and went to the people from whom she is hiding. She shares with them her liberating encounter with Jesus the messiah. As a marginalized and perhaps excluded person, she thirsts for inclusion, and acceptance. It was Jesus’ loving acceptance of her true identity which touches her deepest self. She found in Jesus her true meaning and dignity which she has long searched for all her life.   

Today, there are many “Samaritan women” in various forms longing to be liberated from life’s burden. They thirst for understanding and acceptance of who they are in the society. The trafficking victims, especially women and girls, need people like Jesus who would speak for them and decriminalize them. Many people look on them as criminals, social outcasts, marginalized because they become illegal migrants in search of good jobs abroad in order to support their poor families. We need to seriously consider the terrible situation at home that pushes them to migrate. We need to recognize the sacrifice they are making for their loved ones. We need to let people know that they are not criminals. We need to help them reclaim their God-given dignity. It is our task to take concrete actions such as giving information about the real situation of the migrant workers, creating job opportunities at home that would help them to stop migrating and earn their living in their own place peacefully.