Recommendations

Submitted by: Empower Foundation, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Input for: Expert Group Meeting: "Violence Against Women: A statistical overview, challenges and gaps in data collection and methodology and approaches for overcoming them," 11-14 April 2005, Geneva, Switzerland

Topic: Violence against women in the sex industry

Wherever sex work remains a criminal offense, there is scope for abuse by law enforcement. One of the most pernicious of these is the police entrapment operation.

The Thai Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution Act 1996 which forbids the sale of sex is concerned with five main areas of criminality.

• The Act specifically prohibits and penalizes:
• commercial sexual abuse of minors, i.e. under 18 years old,
• soliciting of clients,
• advertising sexual services,
• arranging for sex worker services for others and
• recruitment of others for sex work.

There is a growing national recognition of the need to repeal the latter four articles and decriminalize sex work in Thailand.

"The articles are exploitative, providing opportunities for police to take advantage of the girls," he said. "If we abolish those articles, they can do their profession within the law … and with fewer opportunities for police and authorities to exploit them."

— Professor Narong Phetprasert a consultant adviser for the ruling Thai Rak Thai party of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra

"Go-go bar managers in Thailand say the sex industry operates largely with impunity under a network of police, military and government officials who rake in an estimated $113 million a year from bribes…"

— The Nation September 7, 2003

Chuwit Kamkolvisit is a massage parlor owner who has been in a long political and legal battle with Thailand's police force since July 2003, when he claimed that he gave twelve million Baht (US$290,000) in bribes to police each month for the past several years. He also claimed he supplied police for years with Rolex watches, European cars and free services at his massage parlors.

So where does the motivation for arrests come from when law enforcement has so much to gain from a lucrative and functioning industry?

"In the past policemen both in plain clothes and in uniform used my sex services for free, but this time they then identified themselves and made the arrest. Policemen are known to use the sexual services of massage parlors, thus their presence would not necessarily indicate they were involved in a sting operation or investigation of the premises."

— One of the eight workers arrested at the Victoria massage

So why would entrapment operations be necessary when the police are so well acquainted with the workings of the industry?

Entrapment and arbitrary arrests are not news for sex workers in Thailand, or indeed anywhere in the world. It is also general knowledge that these operations frequently have motivations other than crime prevention. These alternative motivations include producing visible results for impressive police reports; punishing or warning renegade elements in the industry; and as a result of conflicts between different police districts or different government departments e.g. immigration.

However there is a recent new motivation for the entrapment and detention of sex workers in Thailand.

"There have been four episodes of police posing as customers leading to the detention of 37 migrant sex workers in the past three weeks. These are just the ones we know of personally. Sex workers involved tell us police action is being driven by an International Anti-trafficking Organization. The only such group we know of in Thailand is the International Justice Mission."

— Pornpit Puckmai, Empower Chiang Mai March 2005, recipient of Thailand's first national human rights award

"International Justice Mission is a US organization and recipient of a $US1,000,000 government grant for anti-trafficking work in January 13 2005."

— Dateline, NBC News January 13th 2005

Entrapment has no precise legal meaning. It applies to a variety of evidence gathering techniques by police. Police entrapment invites and encourages an accused person to commit a crime — the police or their agents are the "moving force" in bringing about the crime. Police generally use entrapment techniques to pursue consensual or victimless crimes involving a willing exchange of illegal goods and/or services.

"Entrapment is a human rights issue as it interferes with the right to protection from arbitrary and unlawful intrusion into daily life; and the right to fair treatment under the law."

— UNHRD Article(s) 9,11,12

"In terms of criminal justice, entrapment is at best, unethical and questionable police procedure. The criminal justice system says x ought not to be done, but we invite people to do x."

— Mike Bartlett, Criminal Law Department, Australian National University

March Bell is the Director of Interventions for International Justice Mission. He would seem to have no concerns about the ethical issues of entrapment. IJM has volunteers who pose as customers and visit places where mostly migrant sex workers are employed. They often make requests for young girls perhaps not realizing they themselves may be stimulating demand for the commercial sexual abuse of children. In addition they secretly interview women hoping they can encourage the woman to express a wish to go home and/or to ask for help. However most women when asking a customer "Can you help me?" are asking for financial or similar help, they are not asking to be taken into detention.

Bell spoke freely about the threats and coercion his organization uses to force police and immigration officials to override their local policies and their local knowledge. He expressed disdain for local police skills and described the reports IJM produces for local authorities:

"Here it is. Better documentation than you have ever seen in your country. They have everything they need. They have an undercover video of the girls talking. They have video pictures of the girls. They have the girls' test exams as well as thumbprints."

Under the process employed by International Justice Mission, migrant sex workers become evidence and our bodies become crime scenes, and are treated as such. Labeled, bagged and kept until the court case.

Recommendations

On the 12^th of May Empower held a meeting on trafficking and anti-trafficking responses with 64 female entertainment workers from three major centers in Thailand. The large majority of the group was women from Burma, some of who had at some time been "victims of trafficking" and all of who had at one stage or other enlisted help to migrate for work in Thailand.

They were unanimous in their recommendations that:

1. No person should be trafficked, or forced to work in work they have not chosen to do and that no child under the age of 18 years should be abused sexually either commercially or domestically.
2. Methods to combat trafficking must be revised and solutions found that do not violate the rights of workers but support true victims of trafficking.
3. The rights of adult trafficked victims as workers must be acknowledged. We should receive recognition of our work and compensation, so we are not financially worse off after our "rescue".
4. All women affected by trafficking or anti-trafficking measures must receive adequate compensation and if we are victims of trafficking we be given full support to seek asylum and/or residency with the right to work included.
5. The primary goal of prosecuting traffickers must be altered to a primary goal of assisting trafficked women and children. We propose that if trafficked women and children (whether trafficked or not) are continually rescued and assisted, the use of trafficked women and children will become unprofitable and entertainment places will only wish to employ those women who are over 18 years, informed and willing to work.
6. Understand that all women, who are unable to access travel documents and need or wish to migrate, must secure the assistance of an agent or broker. If our situation as refugees from Burma is not recognized we must secure work for the survival of our families and ourselves. While we are willing to work our illegal status leaves us with no recourse against exploitation by agents or employers regardless of the work we do. Anti-trafficking groups must work toward improving the human rights situation in Burma, securing the ability for women to travel independently, and fully supporting the recognition of our refugee status.
7. Currently women who work in entertainment places have their own methods of assisting trafficked women, those being forced to work, and those under 18 years. Anti-trafficking dialogue and groups have yet to consider us as anti-trafficking workers and human rights defenders even though the numbers of women and children we assist far out way the handful women and children serviced by the recognized anti-trafficking groups. Instead we are ourselves caught up in the "rescues and repatriation". The latest stance from the US government calling us "inappropriate partners" is just the latest example among many of the way we are ignored and our expertise sidelined.

Empower appeals to anti-trafficking campaigners, funding bodies and policy makers to urgently and very carefully consider these recommendations and ensure that they protect the rights of the women they propose to assist.

Submitted by:

• Empower Foundation, Chiang Mai
  Tel: +66 53 282 504
  Email: empower@cm.ksc.co.th