Thirty years ago, virtually none of Thailand’s hill tribes’ women were snared in the country’s thriving sex trade. Now they are flooding the brothels and sex-karaoke bars.
Anthropologist and filmmaker David Feingold set out to determine why about one in three Thai sex workers comes from the highlands — despite development projects, anti-narcotics campaigns and efforts to fight sex trafficking.
His five year investigation became the documentary film Trading Women, now reaching US audiences through public television. It has been screened at the United Nations and will be shown on June 20 to the National Press Club in Washington.
His film quietly interviews hill tribe girls in brothels, in karaoke bars where sex with customers is optional, and in their home villages. It also seeks the views of brothel owners, US politicians, Thai police, and health officials who take an annual census of sex workers.
He listed a number of problems that have led highland women to leave the countryside and migrate to the sex trade: drug eradication programmes with too little emphasis on alternative crops; population pressures; loss of land to other Thais, and conflict in neighbouring Myanmar.
But the greatest risk factor is the women’s precarious legal status: minority groups have enormous difficulties obtaining Thai citizenship and therefore have few economic opportunities.
In addition, discrimination against women intensifies their economic desperation, said LaShawn Jefferson, head of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch.
International conferences tend to globalise the issue, as if Eastern European and Thai women had the same needs, he said, while US policy-makers sometimes overemphasise law enforcement.
The US State Department released its third annual Trafficking in Persons report on Wednesday, which says Thailand is striving to meet minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking.
It says Thailand should intensify law enforcement at home together with neighbouring countries, and it notes that ”many of the victims are from stateless ethnic tribes in northern Thailand”.
The report is the first to recommend sanctions against countries that do not fight trafficking. However, a department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the emphasis is not on punishment but on funding local efforts.
Thai officials estimate 200 000 women work in Thailand’s sex industry, not the two million sometimes claimed.
Feingold found that most hill tribe girls serve the domestic sex market — not the sex tourism and export market for which Thailand became notorious. Girls fleeing strife-torn Myanmar, known as Burma, have also fallen prey to sexual exploitation.
Feingold hopes drawing American attention to the problem will lead to lasting solutions. – Sapa-AP