Here’s the wrap of the Thailand chapter of Disposable People. It’s a quick look at how Thai officials impact human trafficking. Then I suggest some specific things to pray for.

PART 3

Slavery, the law, and the police
Thailand has laws against “trafficking women, prostitution, rape, sexual abuse of children, kidnapping, forced labor, debt bondage, and slavery”: These laws are not enforced. Occasionally police will raid a brothel in response to international media attention or specific incidents (like the murder of a prostitute) that elicit public outcry.

Police are active participates in organized crime in Thailand. While prostitutes never see their owners, they see the police regularly as customers and being bribed by pimps. (This foundation explains some of the mistrust and fear that women exhibit when the police do happen to raid a brothel.) Police actively help legitimize brothels by patronizing them, ignoring their crimes, and bringing women who run away back to the pimps.

One woman who’d been threatened by her pimp ran away to the hospital. The hospital sent her to the welfare office. The welfare workers called the police, and, by the end of the day, she was dead with her throat slit. The policemen who were found to be at fault “were transferred for idleness and ‘allowing bad incidents to occur.’”

When the police raid brothels they arrest the trafficked women as well as the pimp. The women are charged fines, sent to jail, or occasionally sent to rehabilitation and vocational centers. There aren’t enough of these centers to help women and they don’t have the resources to be effective. Additionally, the practice of arresting women criminalizes prostitution and gives the police and pimps one more tool for intimidation.

In 1992, the government responded to press about child prostitution by setting up a task force that consisted of 6 men and 1 car. That same, year though, Thailand passed the Act on International Cooperation in Criminal (Law) Matters. This gives Thailand’s attorney general the ability to seek evidence against foreigners and send the evidence to their home country. So an American who purchases a child prostitute while on a trip to Thailand could be charged in the U.S. based on evidence gathered by Thai officials.

Summing it up
Bales says, “Many human rights organizations call on the government to enforce its laws. Indeed, if they were enforce to the letter there would be no slavery. But, as we have seen, the law can do little against the combined strength of a sexist culture, rationalizing religion, amoral exploitative economy, and corrupt government. Thailand is a country sick with an addiction to slavery.”

Pray for:

• Culture change in Thailand
• Honest law enforcement and productive international involvement
• Opportunities, safety, boldness, and resources for aid workers
• Education to prevent the next generation of trafficked women

Next, I’ll be reading about human trafficking in Mauritania. I’ll post information on that in the coming weeks.