Desolation Road

By KO HTWE
The Irrawaddy News
JULY, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.4

Some poor country girls survive by turning tricks with truck drivers doing the lonely overnight run between Mandalay and Taunggyi

MANDALAY — The highway from Taunggyi to Mandalay is long, smooth and straight, but there are many distractions along the way. Cafés, karaoke clubs and gas stations all compete for the attention of truck drivers who make the overnight haul, carrying fruit, vegetables, furniture and other products from Shan State to Burma’s second largest city.

Occasionally, the truck drivers encounter a flash of torchlight ahead in the darkness. They know this means one of two things: either the police have set up a roadblock to hustle them out of a few kyat, or a sex worker is waiting for a truck driver to pick her up.

Though I am neither a trucker nor a patron of bordellos, I asked my friend from Mandalay if I could join him on his overnight route: the journey from Mandalay to Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, and back the following day. He said he would be glad to have some company.

Because of the heat, the traffic and the frequency of roadblocks, most truck drivers travel by night. Trucks form convoys and the drivers quickly make friends with each other as they shuttle from town to town. As a truck approaches in the distance, a driver may slow down, flash his lights, wave, and sometimes pull up alongside his buddy for a chat.

We hit the road at sunset and headed out of Mandalay. Within no time it was dark, and the city was far behind us. The landscape was flat and dotted with trees, bushes and small hamlets.

Suddenly, like a firefly twinkling in the night, I saw a torchlight flashing at us from the roadside about 100 meters ahead.

“That’s the signal of a sex worker,” said my friend. “If you want to pick her up, you just reply by signaling with your headlights and then pull over.”

We could see her face in the lights as we passed. She looked young. Her face was thick with make-up.

Roadside sex workers usually ask for between 2,000 and 4,000 kyat ($2-4), my friend explained.

“So if you take them with you, how do you get them back?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I had just asked a stupid question, then smiled. “There are so many trucks heading in both directions, she just hitches back with another client,” he said.

He told me that drivers who take sex workers signal to other drivers with their headlights if they have a girl going in the opposite direction. They pass the girls on from truck to truck this way all through the night.

He told me that most of the sex workers are girls from poor villages along the highway who cannot find any other job.

These days, more and more university students are working the highway to make enough to pay for their studies. The driver said the number of roadside sex workers has increased considerably over the past few years.

“Do authorities know about it?” I asked.

“The police either ignore it or take advantage of the girls themselves,” he said. “Sometimes they refuse to pay or ask for a discount. The girls are afraid that if they refuse they will be arrested.”

Our first rest stop was at Shwe Taung, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Mandalay. It was late, but one restaurant was open. We went in and ordered something to eat.

When the waiter came to our table with our food, my friend whispered one word to him: “Shilar?” (“Do you have it?”)

“Shide,” the waiter replied without blinking: “Sure, we have it.” He told us that it would cost 4,000 kyat for a “short time.”

The waiter led us from the shop to a walled compound next door. There was no roof except the stars in the sky.

He called to a girl sleeping on a wooden bed, using her longyi as a blanket. She woke up and looked at us. Although she was obviously dead tired, she immediately got up and combed her hair.

She put a wide smear of lipstick on her mouth. Her bright red lips contrasted sharply with her ragged appearance and the dull, pungent room.

“Is she the only one?” my friend asked.

“For the time being, yes,” said the waiter impatiently. “The other girls didn’t show up tonight.”

“Where do they sleep?” I asked.

“Just here,” the girl said, pointing at the wooden bed.

“Do you have condoms?” I asked her.

“No. That’s up to you,” she said with a shrug.

My friend and I looked at the girl, not knowing what to say.

“You are my first customer tonight,” she said unconvincingly.

We apologized and sheepishly retreated out the door. As we walked away, I looked back at the house. Through the gaping holes in the brick wall I saw the girl lie down on the bed and pull her longyi up to her chin. Then she curled up and went back to sleep.

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Burmese Women Arrested in Prostitution Raid

By THE IRRAWADDY

Thirty-nine Burmese migrant women were arrested on Tuesday by Thai immigration authorities in Ranong in southern Thailand under suspicion of working as prostitutes and illegal entry into the country, according to local sources.

A local resident said that at least 40 members of the Thai security forces, including soldiers, raided a house where Burmese women were living and arrested all those inside.

“The women had been renting the house for some time,” he said. “But the neighbors were upset about what they were doing, so they informed the local authorities.”

According to Inn News, a Thai-language Web site, immigration officials questioned the arrested women, 17 of whom allegedly entered Thailand illegally and five of whom had border passes that had expired.

Inn News quoted a 20-year-old Burmese woman as saying: “I come from Rangoon and have been living in Ranong for six years.”

She said that she normally serviced eight to ten customers a night, according to the Thai Web site, and that Burmese migrant sex workers have to pay 180 Baht (US $5) per night to local authorities to avoid arrest.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday, a staff member at the immigration office in Ranong said the 39 women were being detained at the local police station.

Last week, Burmese and Thai authorities signed an agreement to counter human trafficking—especially that of women and children—which included a measure to set up more checkpoints along the common border.

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Minister calls attention to plight of exploited women

By JOSEPH FITZGERALD
The Call

BURRILLVILLE — When Lauran Bethell was working as a missionary in Bangkok in the 1980s, she’d walk every morning to language school where she spent hours each day learning the Thai language.


To get to her class, she had to pass through Patpong Road, one of the world’s most notorious red light districts and, in those days, a center for Thailand’s prostitution industry.

What she saw on her daily walks — gogo bars, massage parlors, sex shows and prostitutes as young as 12 years old — shocked and saddened her. Later, as she began befriending the Bangkok prostitutes of Patpong Road and teaching them English, Bethell began to realize there was a common thread in how these girls ended up in the heart of Bangkok’s sex industry.

“What I found out shocked me,” says Bethell, an American Baptist missionary and global consultant with International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches, based in Prague, Czech Republic, and former director of the New Life Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“What I discovered is that these girls were working to support their families,” she said. “In that culture the female is economically responsible for the family. These girls knew they were sacrificing themselves for their families.”

Rev. Bethell, one of the world’s leading authorities on the problems of international sex traffic, spoke to a group of about 40 people Thursday at the Berean Baptist Church in Harrisville. The talk was arranged by Donna L. Landry, a member of Berean Baptist Church, American Baptist Women of Rhode Island, and the Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Rhode Island.

Bethell says it soon became apparent to her that she had to do her small part to help fight the trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation. “I thought to myself who is offering alternatives to these young women?”

Bethell would end up answering her own question when she became the first director of the New Life Center, established in 1987 in Chiang Mai, north of Thailand. In that role, Bethell pioneered projects in Southeast Asia that specifically addressed the issue of child prostitution and trafficking of women and children, offering care for them “in Christ’s name.” The Center was started with 18 residents in an effort to offer young tribal women an opportunity to receive an education and vocational training which provided alternatives to prostitution and other forms of exploitation.

“I often tell the story of a 12-year-old girl from Burma whose mother had died, leaving the father to raise her and her siblings,” Bethell said. “The father would eventually give the children away to a family in Thailand because had they stayed in Burma they would have starved.”

“At the time, the girl was thinking, ‘what can I do as the oldest daughter to help my family,’” she continued. “A man came to the village and told her he could get a job for her in the city. She trusted him and ended up in a brothel where she served five to 10 men every day and night.”

That girl would end up at the New Life Center, which Bethell directed for 14 years. At various times, there have been as many as 200 girls and young women in the center’s houses in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. The center also sponsors at-risk girls who are attending schools in their villages or living in hostels and operates an adult school in Chiang Rai.

Though the New Life Center primarily focuses on preventing girls with high-risk factors from being exploited, the ministry also offers rehabilitation and life alternatives to those who have come out of prostitution and other exploitative situations.

“These girls do heal,” Bethell says.

The New Life Center has received international recognition and awards for its work, and has been the subject of many television documentaries as well as newspaper and magazine articles. In 1995, Bethell received an award on behalf of the New Life Center from the Prime Minister of Thailand.

While the sex industry and human trafficking in Thailand has improved dramatically over the years due to media exposure and pressure by human rights advocates, “it is still a huge situation that plagues Thailand and other Asian countries,” Bethell says.

“In Cambodia, child prostitution is huge,” she said.

Just this week, for example, U.S. senators urged Malaysia to probe claims by refugees from Myanmar that Malaysian immigration officials handed them over to human traffickers on Malaysia’s border with Thailand. The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations released a report Thursday that claimed illegal Myanmar migrants deported from Malaysia were often turned over to human traffickers and forced to work in brothels, fishing boats and restaurants in Thailand if they had no money to purchase their freedom. The report was based on a yearlong review by committee staff who spoke to migrants from military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, and human rights activists.

What Bethell says she has come to realize over the years is that trafficked people are usually the most vulnerable and powerless minorities in a region. They often come from the poorer areas where opportunities are limited, they often are ethnic minorities, and they often are displaced persons such as runaways or refugees.

“Trafficking is exploitation of vulnerabilities,” said Bethell, who travels extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, teaching, preaching and consulting.

Trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation in developing countries, she says, typically grows out of economic need where teenage girls are required to help their families earn income to help provide for food and basic necessities. In developed countries, a majority of women in prostitution are victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Women are particularly at risk from sex trafficking, she said. Criminals exploit the lack of opportunities, promising good jobs or opportunities for study, and then force the victims to become prostitutes. Through agents and brokers who arrange the travel and job placements, women are escorted to their destinations and delivered to the employers.

Upon reaching their destinations, some women learn that they have been deceived about the nature of the work they will do. Most have been lied to about the financial arrangements and conditions of their employment and find themselves in coercive or abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous.

Trafficking of children often involves exploitation of the parents’ extreme poverty. The latter may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income or they may be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children. In West Africa, trafficked children have often lost one or both parents to the African AIDS crisis. Thousands of male (and sometimes female) children have also been forced to be child soldiers.

The United States, Bethell said, is principally a transit and destination country for trafficking in persons. It is estimated that 17,500 to 18,500 people, primarily women and children are trafficked to the U.S. annually. The Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act of 2000 enhances pre-existing criminal penalties, affords new protection to trafficking victims and makes available certain benefits and services to victims of severe forms of trafficking. On December 10, 2008 the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victim’s Protection Reauthorization Act was signed and really strengthened many of these provisions from the 2000 TVPA.

While trafficking has often been thought of as a problem occurring in other countries, it is rampant in the United States, as well, and American women and children are increasingly used in trafficking, she said.

Sex trafficking linked to Rhode Island’s ‘prostitution loophole’

According to Donna Landry and the Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Rhode Island, circumstances or evidence found in a number of localities indicate that sex trafficking exists in Rhode Island. Some officials claim that trafficking is linked to the decriminalization of prostitution indoors, which has been referred to as Rhode Island’s “prostitution loophole.” The “loophole” originated 28 years ago when female prostitutes sued, claiming they were discriminated against by the police based on their sex.

With no law against prostitution indoors, Landry says, the number of traffickers has only increased, mostly since it is difficult to prosecute, and there have been no successful trafficking cases to date.

Bethell is originally from California. After graduating with a Bacherlor of Arts degree in psychology, religion and education from the University of Redlands, she taught elementary school in Central California for six years and then at the Hong Kong International School for four years. She returned to the U.S. to complete a Masters of Divinity from the American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, California, from which she was later awarded a Doctor of Divinity for her pioneering work with women and children in Southeast Asia.

In 2004, she founded and directed the first International Christian Conference on Prostitution bringing together the leaders of faith-based organizations involved in this work. Second and third similar conferences were held in 2006 and 2008 with representatives from more than 40 countries. From the ICCP, the International Christian Alliance on Prostitution has developed, networking and providing resources for Christians involved in ministry with people in prostitution.

Bethell was honored in 2005 with the Human Rights Award of the Baptist World Alliance, which was presented to her by President Jimmy Carter. She was given the Courage Award by the Whitsitt Society in 2007. She serves on the Anti-Trafficking Committee of the European Baptist Federation (EBF), providing resources to EBF churches in an effort to both prevent trafficking and offer after-care to victims.

Bethell has collaborated with governmental agencies, non-government organizations, and a broad spectrum of Christian ministries. Because of her personal contact with hundreds of women involved in prostitution and victims of trafficking and her experience of pioneering new projects, she was invited to testify before U.S. House of Representatives and Senate committees as they drafted and revised the U.S. trafficking legislation in 2000 and 2007.

In her presentation Thursday, Bethell called on all Christians to address the international crisis of women and girls who are trafficked into prostitution.

“Because this is such a huge and complex issue doesn’t mean you can’t get involved,” she said. There has to be a grass-roots effort to fight this because laws and legislation can only go so far.”

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