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Sex slaves: trafficking of women in Asia

Chapter Seven: The Law - part 1

Part 1: 7.1: Who is making the law? - criminal mothers selling their daughters - mama-san (malkin, gharwali), the criminal brothel boss - and racist governments leaving the countryside in poverty -- 7.2: International laws and guidelines about prostitution business -- 7.3: Punishments of prostitutes by police and justice - mothers and mama-sans are never punished  -- 7.4: Laws and practice in Islam - more half truths of Louise Brown -- 7.5: Islam law and sometimes cruel practice in Pakistan -- 7.6: Islam law and practice in Bangladesh - with Bengali heritage -- 7.7: Law and wild practice in sexy Thailand -- 7.8: Law and sometimes cruel practice in Japan -- 7.9: Law and practice in the Philippines -- 7.10: General information: law and practice are very different in Asia

by Louise Brown

presented and with subtitles by Michael  Palomino (2013)

7.1: Who is making the law? - criminal mothers selling their daughters - mama-san (malkin, gharwali), the criminal brothel boss - and racist governments leaving the countryside in poverty

[Author Louise Brown is going on blaming men unilaterally. She is just destroying the third chapter with it[:

The only law that matters in a brothel is the law that grants men the right to buy sex.

[WRONG! Writer Louise Brown did not read her own book! The real laws of a brothel in Asia are giving all rights to mothers and mama-sans:
-- there is the unwritten law that mothers can bring and sell daughters to the mama-san even getting an "advance"
-- there is the law to torture, manipulate and extort girls and young women for "seasoning" breaking their moral will for profits of this mama-san, traffickers, merchants and medical doctors etc.: beatings, extortions with moral breaking rumors, extortion with debt (debt bondage extortion)
-- there is the law of mama-san to decide how many customers a girl has every day
-- there is the law of mama-san NOT TO inform the customers if a girl or young woman is enslaved or not
-- and there is the customer to purchase some minutes of sexual joy with an offer of this mama-san
-- but at the end there is the law that the parents or other familiars come to the brothel for getting the money the sacrificed daughter made with selling sex].

International declarations and national legal codes that attempt to outlaw prostitution or contain its excesses are little more than well-meaning but empty gestures. They are a kind of window-dressing to appeal to moral sensitivities. In reality, what is written in the statute books often bears little resemblance to the way laws are applied.

[WRONG: All declarations are useless when the real reasons for prostitution with the criminal mothers and mama-sans are not detected
Declarations against prostitution are useless as long as the real reasons for prostitution is not eliminated:
-- criminal governments are racist against the population in the countryside and leave the countryside in poor poverty
-- criminal governments are prohibiting joy of sexuality at home but give out the code that "no sexuality" would be "good behavior" so wives do not know anything about sexuality and wives send their husbands to brothels
-- criminal mothers selling their daughters
-- criminal mama-sans selling torturing, manipulating and extorting these daughters
-- criminal mama-sans torturing, manipulating and extorting young women
-- criminal mama-sans offering their "products" to customers without the declaration if they are slaves or not].

Even when laws on prostitution are enforced they are interpreted in such a way that women are cast in the role of villains [the bad part of the game].

[WRONG: In reality women ARE the bad part in this game of prostitution but nobody is analyzing their actions precisely: criminal mothers and criminal mama-sans are dominating and preparing the victims. And governments leaving the countryside without jobs are the third big part in this game. And wives without knowledge about sexuality at home sending their husbands to brothels are the fourth part].

At worst, men are seen as the weak victims of immoral women. Laws are routinely ignored or manipulated by clients, brothel owners and the very people who are supposed to enforce them. All these participants in the sex industry pay homage to an older and higher authority. This authority is not explicitly acknowledged in any legal code, although its logic underpins [supports] and gives shape to many - especially in Asia. In practice the fount [source] of this authority is respected in all societies. It is called the law of the penis.

[WRONG: It's the law of mama-san].

Red light areas have their own codes of conduct and their own (p.185)

morality. In places where the sex industry is especially lucrative and extensive, the laws of the state simply do not apply because the state's writ [orders] cannot compete with the finance or the organizational sophistication of the sex industry. In Patpong in Bangkok, in Kabukicho in Tokyo and Kamatipura in Mumbai the sex business is the law.

[Better: The law of mama-san is the law].

The sex industry flourishes in so many parts of Asia because it has protection from important quarters. It has protection from virtually all men. Even men who do not use prostitutes may still think of the institution as a 'necessary evil'.

[They call it like this because they have never analyzed the complex situation and it's reasons].

Those who are hostile to the purchase of sex will lay the blame upon the conduct of morally degraded women. Very rarely is any responsibility laid at the feet of a patriarchal society and men's sexual behavior. As the sex business is an intrinsic [essential] part of the power structure it is supported by those in positions of power. Corrupt police, politicians and bureaucrats give the industry their unofficial blessing and protection. In return they receive bribes, political support and sexual favors. Some of these leading figures short-circuit [interrupt] this process and have found a better way to combine social power, sexual indulgence [joy] and financial gain: they own the brothels themselves. In a number of places the police do not tackle the traffickers and the brothel owners because they are the traffickers and the brothel owners.

[But mama-san is deciding if a girl is tortured and abused or if a young woman is extorted in a debt bondage or not. And this is the point which is never presented and most men don't know about].

7.2: International laws and guidelines about prostitution business

Convention about Human Rights

A host of international conventions and declarations relate to prostitution, trafficking and sexual slavery. The relevant documents make edifying reading. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains articles prohibiting slavery and cruel and degrading treatment.

[So, the mama-sans have to be brought to trial and not the house owners].

Convention about traffic in persons and prostitution of 1949

A 1949 UN Convention on the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Prostitution of Others, although not well subscribed to by the international community, does make a commitment to halt trafficking in women. CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), which was ratified in 1981, seeks, among other things, to suppress all (p.186)

forms of traffic in women and their exploitation in prostitution. This convention has been ratified by a large number of nations - even by those whose treatment of women should immediately disqualify them from claiming any measure of adherence [realization] to its provisions [regulations, stocks].

Convention about rights of children

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is widely accepted, and is also immensely relevant to the issue of child prostitution. In the last decade, the Platform for Action outlined at the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference identified forced prostitution as a serious form of violence against women and pledged [assured] to eliminate it. Similarly, the horrors of child prostitution were addressed [mentioned] at the 1996 Conference on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm.

[No precise analysis until today: criminal mothers, criminal mama-sans, some male brothel bosses
It seems that nobody has made any precise analysis about the topic of Asian prostitution business and never presented this result so precisely until today (2013). National and international justice does not know where the "point" is. The "point" are criminal mothers and criminal mama-sans. So, criminal mothers selling their daughters to mama-sans and criminal mama-sans torturing, manipulating and extorting daughters and these women - criminal mothers and criminal mama-sans - have to be brought to trial - eventually also some male brothel bosses, but mostly female brothel bosses (mama-sans)].

Conventions not ratified - or ratified but not put into reality

And now back to the real world. On paper these conventions are inspiring. But they are not universally ratified and they are not binding. For all the impact they have upon a girl incarcerated in a brothel they might as well not exist. Even Pakistan - of all places - has ratified CEDAW. It is a joke. Just as it is a joke to think that the national legal frameworks, and the authorities that enforce these laws in Asia, are anything but massively corrupted and complicit in the very activity they are supposed to regulate. Of course declarations of good intentions are necessary. But they are not enough. They provide the map for the route ahead. The problem is making sure that people - and by this I mean men [and women not???] - travel down the correct road and arrive at the destination rather than just talking about the journey or sometimes assuming that they have nearly arrived.

Societies manage prostitution in different ways. In some countries it is legal and in others it is illegal. But whatever the legal system, there are two threads common to all major societies: there are always girls and women in sexual slavery and there are always men ready to buy them.

[WRONG: Writer Louise Brown forgets the criminal women in the business
Louise Brown is not mentioning who is provoking and realizing this sexual slavery: criminal mothers (WOMEN) selling the daughters, and mama-sans (WOMEN) torturing, manipulating and extorting girls and young women, sometimes also male brothel owners. But the male customer who is only present for some minutes or some hours CANNOT see if there is slavery or not in the brothel].

Legalization of prostitution giving rights to the young women in the brothel

Legal codes adopt four main approaches to the management of prostitution. Where prostitution is legalized, as in Nevada in the United States, the sale of sexual labor is recognized as work, and (p.187)

full legal rights are given to sex workers. Prohibition is the exact reverse. All prostitution is outlawed. This system is theoretically in operation in most of the Islamic world, in Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Burma, The Philippines, Nepal, [also in Thailand prostitution is formally illegal], and in Japan. Someone should inform them.

[Writer Louise Brown does not see the WOMEN Ministers in the governments
Since 20 years most of the Ministers of Family, Ministers of Culture and Ministers of Education in the governments are WOMEN, and THESE WOMEN IN THE GOVERNMENTS block the legalization of prostitution giving the women more rights - NOT the men!]

Malaysia and India with certain guidelines

A tolerationist system criminalizes the organizers of the sex industry but does not necessarily criminalize the act of selling sex providing that it is done discreetly and within certain guidelines. Malaysia and India are good examples of this tolerationist approach in Asia. Finally, a regulationist approach legalizes prostitution, but only in specific zones.

'Forced' prostitution is internationally banned in any case - laws against slavery - mixture of culture and poverty

Anyone passing through the red light areas of Asia's cities will be hard pressed to guess which legal system is in force. Lots of women are selling sex and lots of men are buying. It does not seem to matter which approach is theoretically followed. All legal codes nevertheless prohibit the 'forced' prostitution that produces Asia's sex slaves. Sometimes this is explicitly stated and, at other times, this crime falls under other rubrics, such as anti-slavery provisions. These legal niceties, however, are totally meaningless when a potent mixture of culture and poverty blend to produce a supply of prostitutes, a market full of clients and societies that look the other way.

[Writer Louise Brown is simply NEVER blaming the decisive persons:
-- criminal mothers selling daughters to mama-sans and
-- the criminal mama-sans torturing, manipulating and extorting girls and young women
-- and then these criminal mama-sans are ordering the tortured, manipulated and extorted girls and women also the clients.
This violence will end suddenly when these criminal WOMEN like mothers selling daughters and mama-sans are torn to justice. Also the Asian governments in general must be blamed leaving the countryside in poverty in a racist way of thinking].

Writer Louise Brown only blaming men

The law in relation to prostitution as it is written, interpreted and practiced throughout the world reflects the stigmatized role of the sex worker in societies run by and for the benefit of men. There is little mystery in this.

[WRONG: above all for the benefit of the own family and of the mama-san brothel boss which enslaved the girls and young women].

Writer Louise Brown protecting criminal women in the sex business!!!

Of course women are seen as criminals. To brand men as the culprits would cause the entire logic of the system to come crashing down. So when the authorities take action on prostitution they do not target the clients, nor the brothel owners nor the pimps, nor the corrupt police and politicians. They select the women.

[--which are sold by criminal mothers
-- which are tortured, manipulated and extorted by criminal mama-sans, only sometimes by male brothel owners
-- and the customer is only present some minutes or some hours and he cannot see if a girl or a young woman is tortured and extorted or not, all is kept secret to the customer, and sometimes repeated contact is forbidden - by the ward or mama-san brothel owner...
-- principally no customer wants a tortured victim in the bed...]

7.3: Punishments of prostitutes by police and justice - mothers and mama-sans are never punished

Police and governments punishing prostitutes without rights - and criminal mothers and criminal mama-sans and brothel owners are never punished

They [men police commanders] choose the most powerless people [prostitutes without rights] for punishment. They do this because it is easy and because the women are vilified [defamed] targets. The women are simultaneously essential but peripheral to the trade. As a group they are essential but as individuals they are of (p.188)

no consequence because they are just bodies that can be so easily replaced. The women cannot speak out against unfair treatment because they are socially stigmatized people and from despised communities. Few decent citizens from the influential classes have the stomach to listen to a whore talking about her rights. Arresting a few prostitutes will not upset important figures and men of wealth and power. And, as well as all these other advantages, punishing prostitutes can win the authorities a veritable incandescence for their fight against vice.

Condemned traffickers

Occasionally action is taken against traffickers but, unsurprisingly, it is always the small fry [little groups] that are targeted. Big-time traffickers are protected. At the time of writing there has been no successful prosecution of a major trafficker in the whole of Asia. The ones who are charged and convicted are of virtually no significance. Often they are the first links in the chain of supply, which links the brothels to the homes of their victims.

[WRONG: The most important trafficker is the criminal mother selling her daughter not calling for help when she is in poverty!]

Legal and illegal prostitution in India

India practices toleration of prostitution. Selling sex is legal providing the girl is sixteen or above and is working independently. Prostitutes must not solicit [offer] or practice their trade near a public place. However, try finding anywhere in an Indian village, town or city that is not near a public place and you will have an idea of the difficulty in adhering to these restrictions. A large proportion - perhaps even a majority of girls - begin prostitution when they are under sixteen. A lot of the business is conducted in brothels and is conspicuously public. Trafficking of women and girls is also an offense [delict]. Despite the official toleration of sex work, most prostitution in India is therefore illegal.

Traffickers in Nepal - law - but no justice

Like many other countries Nepal has a blind spot when it comes to the trafficking of its females. Propriety [correctness] demands that the government, and even many voluntary organizations, maintain a fiction that girls are not sold into prostitution. Instead it is believed that a majority are duped [lured and tricked]. It does not reflect well on a society, whatever its travails [is working hard] of poverty, to admit that its families are selling the bodies of (p.189)

the young daughters, especially to foreigners. The government is therefore reluctant [not so willing] to admit the extent of the problem. As with all other difficulties encountered by Nepal, trafficking is blamed upon the twin evils of poverty and India. Trafficking is now illegal, as is prostitution, but little has been achieved in the war against the traffickers and not much can be expected. Nepali legislation has a tendency to languish [be weak], unheeded [not respected] and unimplemented on the statue books. Certainly, those organizations dealing with the repatriation of Nepali girls from Indian brothels have received scant [little] support from successive governments. It is little wonder: it would demand an uncharacteristic degree of efficiency on the part of the Nepali administration.

[WRONG:
-- the main trafficker is criminal mother selling her daughter - is not detected
-- the main reason for prostitution - poverty and no jobs in the countryside - is not detected].

Example: 13 years old Nepali girl in an Indian brothel - repatriation blocked by statal offices in India - the girl is dying with tuberculosis in India

A social worker in Calcutta described the following case as an example of the bureaucratic delays in repatriating girls:

<We had a girl about three years ago who was tricked and came from Nepal when she was thirteen. She managed to get a customer to send a message to her family, and her father contacted the consulate and the police. But when the police arrived at the brothel they couldn't find her. She had been locked in a room, gagged [bound hands, feet, and filled mouth] and her feet and hands tied. Fortunately, someone heard a noise and she was discovered. I want to know how the brothel owner knew that the police were coming for her. She was taken to the government home and the papers took so long that she never did manage to get back to Nepal. She died in the home of tuberculosis when she was fifteen.>

Pakistan with Islam laws against women

Women in Pakistan are woefully discriminated against by increasingly Islamized legal codes. Prostitutes, inevitably, are the most victimized women. Despite the claims of apologists, the Sharia - the Muslim legal code - is an exercise in misogyny [hatred against women].


7.4: Laws and practice in Islam - more half truths of Louise Brown

[In this chapter writer Louise Brown is failing totally because she is only citing the superficial information about Islam without having asked people at all about possibilities or reasons].

Islamic men are "infinite" with their sexual desire - and Islamic women do not have?

Muslim family laws provide an answer to the basic assumption [speculation] that men's sexual (p.190)

desires are infinite and that some way must be found to manage these and to prevent fornication [unchastity, when fathers sleep with daughters]. The laws give men access to physical pleasure within a legitimate setting [1].

[1] Zia: Sex Crime in the Islamic Context, p.15

[WRONG: Islam has more sexual possibilities than alcoholic and mentally limited Buddhist Asian world
Women in Islamic countries also can have a lot of sexual pleasure with men when they are using the laws in their ways. One has to consider that there is no alcohol in Islamic states and all difficulties and atrocities provoked by alcohol abuse are NOT happening in Islamic states. Islamic countries are sometimes even more liberal than crazy Buddhist Asian countries where alcohol abuse and faked rumors and manipulations of governments and of police commanders and violence are destroying any brain in the Asian population as for example in crazy and criminal Thailand].

Men [in Islamic states] can have up to four wives at any one time and these can also be changed through repudiation [being rejected].

[WRONG: Islamic men with four wives is not so easy - and rejection of a wife is not so easy
Islam men having four wives is not so easy but depends on the finances of the husband. And for a good family life women have to be tolerant or there will be the hell of intrigues in the house. Rejecting a woman is also a question of reputation when the woman is destructive - or the husband is going another path of life. Without reason a divorce is never made or the husband is loosing it's reputation. Add to this there are Islamic states prohibiting more than one wife today like Morocco which is not so Islamic any more but with many women rights groups].

Women do not have these options.

[WRONG: Women in Islamic states forming groups can make a lot of pressure against Islamic men correcting important things].

Although most Muslim men do not avail [use] themselves of this opportunity with abandon [with passion], the fact that it is possible underlines and perpetuates the minimal respect given to female sexuality and to women as individuals.

[WRONG: Law for having 4 wives was provoked by wars killing many men
The law for having 4 wives came from elder times when many young men were killed in wars - and today yet there are wars instigated by criminal "USA" in Islam world where many Islam men are killed and leaving their wives alone. It was above all for these cases that the law was introduced that a man could have several wives. Additionally there are cases of young women marrying with wise men as a safety for the women's family not getting in connection a rude man without education only with a big car - and if it will not work then a divorce will always be possible in an easy way in a later time.

The unhappy society is the "Christian" society where several wives or several men are forbidden until today and people are unhappy with divorces paying for children during 20 years they can hardly see. And Buddhist culture rejecting sexuality for women and rejecting divorce driving men thus into brothels without end is not at all intelligent either but Buddhist culture of sexuality is a rape of sexuality].

7.5: Islam law and sometimes cruel practice in Pakistan

Inhuman sexual prohibitions in Pakistan since 1970: sexual law as if there would be war

In the 1970s the Pakistani President, Zia ul-Haq, mobilized support for his repressive regime by playing the card of religious conservatism. The Hudood Ordinances promulgated [announced] in 1979 and enforced in 1980 were a direct product of the manipulation of religious sentiments for political gain. These ordinances were designed to give constitutional sanction to Islamic orthodoxy. Of particular relevance to prostitution was the Zina Ordinance [within the Hudood laws] that followed the Sharia by punishing extramarital sexual relations. Severe punishments, with a maximum penalty of death by stoning, were fixed for adultery [breaking marriage law having sex with a person from outside]. But even unmarried people were prohibited from having sexual relations with one another. The punishment for this heinous crime could be a lengthy [long] prison sentence and a brutal whipping.

The dreadful Zina Ordinance has been applied most harshly and consistently [almost always] to women. And it has generated some terrible injustices. In line with Islamic law, four pious men are needed as witnesses to prove a crime of rape. It is therefore incredibly hard to prove a case of rape. Instead rape is conflated with female promiscuity. In a travesty of justice, there have been incidents of rape victims being charged under the Zina Ordinance on the grounds that they had been fornicating [having sex with men outside of marriage] [2].

[2] Government of Pakistan: Report of the Commission for Inquiry for Women (Islamabad, August 1997), p.72


Pakistan: prostitutes in jail for having sex with men who were not their husband - unfair Pakistani justice against women

A visit to the Central Jail in Karachi is a salutary [mentally healing] experience. A high proportion of female inmates at any one time will be charged under the Zina Ordinance. In other words, women are incarcerated for having sex with a man who is not their husband. Many of the women I spoke to were prostitutes. But this was a fact they flatly [completely] (p.191)

denied. The women commonly described their alleged customers as being a 'friend' of their 'husband' who had come to the house to do some 'painting'. Either there are a lot of keen [enthusiastic] decorators in Karachi or the women need to think up more varied and convincing alibis. Two crucial points need to be made in relation to this.

First, if women cannot admit [confess] they are prostitutes then they also cannot seek help when dreadful abuses are perpetrated upon them. Even a sex slave cannot easily seek help because she risks being charged with Zina.

Second, lots of prostitutes are arrested, charged and convicted while, at the same time, the men who buy them are either not arrested, fail to be charged or receive less severe punishments. We should expect nothing else: sexually wayward [egoist] men in Pakistan are not to be condemned. They are the otherwise pious victims of women's deadly sexuality.

Pakistan detaining trafficked imported prostitutes because of "illegal entry" and for having had sex with men without marriage

The unfortunate women who are trafficked to Pakistan for prostitution are doubly [doubled] burdened. The Bangladeshi women who were sold into sexual slavery in the 1980s and 1990s found themselves to be criminals worthy of prison rather than victims in need of help. They were arrested under the Foreigners Act prohibiting illegal entry to the country.

[Detaining foreign prostitutes because of illegal stay  is just normal also in Europe. This only happens because police wants to make career collecting career points. But it was mostly the same police permitting the importation of the women before...]

And to increase the injustice they could also be charged under the Zina section of the Hudood Ordinance. Zia Awan is a prominent Pakistani human rights lawyer who has been closely involved in the cases of over two hundred Bangladeshi victims of trafficking and prostitution. He believes that the government and law enforcement agencies give a low priority to the problems of trafficking and prostitution because they involve women - and women in general are given a low priority in Pakistan. Prostitutes - both 'voluntary' and 'forced' - languish [are week] in Pakistani jails today for having had sex. Their customers do not. And it should go without saying that brothel owners and traffickers are conspicious by their absence in the men's prisons.


7.6: Islam law and practice in Bangladesh - with Bengali heritage

Tolerance and legal prostitution in Islamic country of Bangladesh

Although Bangladesh is also a Muslim country its relatively open and tolerant Bengali heritage has helped to spare it from some of the (p.192)

political and religious excesses that have had such a negative effect on many women in Pakistan. Bangladesh, however, suffers from the same schizophrenia as other Islamic countries when it comes to sex. Prostitution in Bangladesh is a legal confusion [trouble]. Even senior decision-makers and academics do not seem to be totally conversant [have experience] with the legislation. It does not inspire confidence to find that this uncertainty also afflicts police officers.

License and affidavits - faked license and faked affidavits - women brothel owners making profits with faked affidavits

Prostitution is permitted in Bangladesh providing a woman is eighteen or above, is of sound mind and has chosen her profession. In order to prove that they are of an eligible age, prostitutes have an affidavit confirming their date of birth and signed by a notary public or a magistrate. The affidavit is sometimes referred to as a license and the women are described as 'registered prostitutes'.

In fact neither is true. And neither is the age commonly ascribed to the women. Brothel owners [mostly WOMEN brothel owners] manipulate the provision of affidavits and will extort money from the women [from the girl]. Brothel owners [mostly WOMEN brothel owners] then keep the affidavits so that they can increase their leverage over the prostitutes while they undergo their period of 'apprenticeship'.

A woman can be charged anything from 2,000 to 5,000 taka (24 to 60 English Pounds) for an affidavit. This is a fortune for a poor Bangladeshi prostitute and she will have to service many, many clients in order to repay its cost.

Bangladesh: basic statal registration systems do not exist - women not knowing their own age

The legal profession runs a profitable trade in affidavits. The profession does have a difficult job on its hands because establishing anyone's age in Bangladesh is a monumental task. The country's documentation system is virtually non-existent. There is no national system of birth registration and there are no reliable data on marriages and divorces. Women might not even know how old they are. But that does not mean that members of the legal profession cannot see the difference between a child and a woman.

Bangladesh: affidavit indicating adult age for little girls

Girls of ten, eleven or perhaps twelve years old proudly showed me their affidavits certifying that they were adults. Their saris [long dress], however, did little else but reveal that these prostitutes were small, thin children (p.193)

wrapped in women's clothes. The law, however, tells men that the children are old enough to be bought for sex. There are papers to prove it.

[The WOMAN brothel owners are organizing the forged affidavits, and the Women Ministers are also WOMEN since over 20 years having all power to change something - but they don't change ANYTHING...]

Bangladesh instituted new legislation on trafficking and forced prostitution in 1995. It imposed severe punishments for the sale of children, including the death penalty. Accomplices ["friends" helping] to the crime of trafficking are also be subject to the same penalties. Although the 1995 Act has some drawbacks - particularly because it lacks an adequate definition of trafficking - the real weakness of the legislation lies in the fact that it is unlikely to be implemented.

[The law does not describe the three main culprits:
1: the mother selling her daughter - the mother is trafficker Nº 1
2: the mama-san woman brothel owner torturing, manipulating and extorting girls and young women
3: the government leaving the countryside in poverty without installing industries and jobs in the countryside.]

7.7: Law and wild practice in sexy Thailand

Closed brothels reopen as bars, parlors or restaurants or are going "underground"

Thailand has been active in forming task forces, commission and overhauls of the law relating to trafficking and prostitution. A new law in 1996 concentrated on punishing the procurers, the brothel owners and even the families who sold their children into prostitution. Closed brothels were targeted for closure. This was all very encouraging. And lots of the brothels did close. But then they reopened in a more sophisticated form as karaoke bars, massage parlors and restaurants. Others simply went underground.

Separation from brothel and sleeping room

The 1996 legislation prevented girls from living on the premises [territories] of Thai brothels. So instead the same old forms of control operated in two settings: the place in which the girl sold sex and the place in which she lived.

Violence and debt bondage continue

Violence and debt bondage within the Thai sex industry still exist despite the legislation. The response of the sex industry to the new laws has been to 'clean up' the most visible parts of the trade. This, however, would almost certainly have happened as a natural phase in the development of the industry, the enactment of the new legislation simply accelerated the process.

[Prostitution in criminal Thailand is illegal (estate 2014) whereas this country is making it's biggest profits with sex tourism since 1964 and whereas the secret services installed women and child trafficking there sine 1975. This law serves the Thai government only for hunting and spying tourists. This is just a joy for alcohol addicted and racist Thai police officers - just for fun. The Thai ladies who are partly absolutely criminal are never persued or are only punished a little bit].


7.8: Law and sometimes cruel practice in Japan

Illegal prostitution in Japan - illegally trafficked women are in heavy difficulties in Japan - hardly any help for them

Prostitution is illegal in Japan. We are supposed to believe that thousands of 'snacks' and clubs are providing entertainment to men but that this entertainment stops short of offering sex. It is incredible that a fiction can be maintained on such a scale. Women trafficked to Japan without legal visas are therefore breaking Japan's very restrictive Immigration and Nationality Law and also the laws (p.194)

on prostitution. Even women who are forced into prostitution in Japan feel unable to approach the police for help because they fear being branded as a criminal. Ironically, the law serves, in this instance, to trap migrants in exploitative situations. This phenomenon is not exclusive to Japan. Illegal migrants all over Asia [and also in Europe]  find it very difficult to approach the authorities for help. A survey of NGOs working with illegal migrant prostitutes listed the most common barriers that dissuaded women from seeking help. They feared deportation; they had difficulty communicating in a foreign language; they lacked knowledge about their rights and the legal system; they had no access to legal assistance and no confidence in either the legal system or the law enforcers [3].

[3] Marjan Wijers and Lin Lap-Chew: Trafficking in Women, Forced Labor and Slavery-like Practices, p.103

Threats in Japanese local brothels ("snacks") against foreign prostitutes without end

While there is so much fear and uncertainty in these women's minds they are unlikely to have the confidence to tackle their traffickers and to make an escape from situations of sexual slavery. To instil [provoke step by step] fear into women, snack owners and managers in Japan use threats of arrest, detention and deportation. These threats are effective and there is plenty of evidence to prove that the women's worries are not groundless.

Case in 1992: 6 Thai prostitutes murdering their brutal mama-san - process without understanding anything

In 1992 six Thai women in Japan were arrested for the murder of the brutal Taiwanese mama-san who operated them. The Shinkoiwa Case, and others like it, brought a spotlight to bear on the lives of trafficked women and illustrated the kind of treatment they could expect from the Japanese authorities. The case was investigated without the women being able to see a lawyer. As a result they were unaware of their rights under Japanese law. The women were detained in a Tokyo detention center and were not allowed to speak Thai when meeting visitors. One of the women, who had sustained a leg injury, also received inadequate medical treatment. Despite their pleas that they were trying to escape inhuman conditions of sexual slavery and had been driven to murder by desperation, the women were convicted and imprisoned.

[Again it is a WOMAN mama-san who is the cause for atrocities in brothels, not men].

Flight of around 3,000 women from Japanese brothels every year - each day about 8 to 10 women - lack of concern also by Japanese racism

Around 3,000 women escape from brothels each year in Japan and flee to the Thai Embassy in Tokyo [4].

[4] Yayori Matsui: Women in the New Asia (London: Zed Books, 1999), p.18

They do not flock to the (p.195)

Japanese police for help. And they cannot expect a sympathetic response from the public. Although there was a series of shock revelations about trafficking and the sex industry in the 1980s and 1990s the public remains largely apathetic about the fate of foreign prostitutes in Japan. And this applies whether they were voluntary recruits to the industry or whether they were trafficked and coerced into prostitution. Intense and abiding [constant] racism contributes significantly to this lack of concern [5].

[5] In conversation with Yayor Matsui, April 1998

[Some politicians in Japan state that Japan would be a country of only "one race". Minorities and foreigners are sometimes harshly discriminated, see the web site "Discrimination and racism in Japan": http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=632 (2013)}

[But there is nothing written about one good case in Japan - that's not scientific].

7.9: Law and practice in the Philippines

Health card for prostitutes

The Philippines has a startlingly two-faced official attitude to prostitution. The sale of sex is illegal. Yet, at the same time, there is also an official licensing procedure for sex workers. Women have to submit themselves to regular medical examinations and are given cards guaranteeing that they are not infected with sexually transmitted diseases. These are shown to reassure clients, and a woman is prohibited from selling sex without one. According to the law, however, she should not be selling sex in the first place. Maybe the health check procedure is a sensible [reasonable] precaution taken by a responsible government, and can be justified on the dubious grounds that it helps to contain STDs and to keep the women safe for use by the clients, but it also makes a mockery of the law.

Work overseas - sending much money home

Labor export has been a major plank [element] in the Philippines' development strategy. Filipinos are employed overseas, in the process decreasing [reducing] pressure upon scarce jobs at home. The overseas workers also remit [send] a large proportion of their money home. In theory this keeps poor families afloat [with a positive balance] and keeps the treasury filled with foreign exchange. But, for all too many Filipina women migrants, labor export has meant the export and sale of their sexuality.

Governmental measures against exploitation - collaboration with NGOs - watching the airport

The government has made some efforts to prevent the sexual exploitation of migrant women. It has, for instance, worked with non-governmental organizations to raise awareness and it has deployed social workers at Ninoy Aquino International Airport to monitor the travel of minors abroad [6].

[6] National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women: Philippines Plan for ender Responsive Development 1995-2025 (Manila: Government of the Philippines, 1995), p.305

Initiatives like this, however, are largely fruitless when conditions of poverty and the cultural devaluation [degrading] of women (p.196)

consistently produce a stream of girls who leave their homes in search of work both in the Philippines and abroad.


7.10: General information: law and practice are very different in Asia

Legal frameworks exist in Asia - but are hardly followed - and the initial point - poverty in the countryside and the criminal mother selling the daughter - are NEVER mentioned

Although the legal frameworks governing or prohibiting prostitution vary from country to country in Asia, we can identify some patterns that are common throughout the region [of Asia]. The first is that the law has less to do with the reality of the sex industry and far more to do with political considerations and the image a society wishes to project of itself. The law is usually an irrelevance for the sex industry although in some instances the law may even be a boon [good action] for the business because it deprives women of even more control over their lives. Trafficked women in Japan and prostitutes in Pakistan receive dismal [dark] justice at the hands of legal systems that are respectively racist and deeply sexist.

In the past few years some countries in the region have enacted new legislation on the trafficking of women and children for prostitution. Many other countries plan an overhaul and improvement of current legislation. It is hoped that international co-operation, particularly in the Mekong Basin and to a lesser extent in South Asia, will curtail [limit] the incidence of trafficking and lead to the development of integrated regional legal frameworks. In April 2000 a conference in Manila attended by sixteen Asian and Pacific countries, the European Union, Russia, United Nations agencies and NGOs adopted a non-binding action plan to prevent trafficking [7].

[7] Financial Times, 1-2 April 2000

[Well, all plans against trafficking of women for prostitution are useless
-- when the countryside is left in poverty by a racist government of a country - and this is in almost every Asian "Buddhist" country the case
-- and when the initial trafficker, the criminal mother, is not condemned for selling her daughter].

Central to the plan was increased exchange of information and more severe punishment for traffickers. Initiatives such as these are encouraging because they mean that the issue, at least of international trafficking (if not sexual slavery and domestic trafficking) is at last receiving the attention it warrants. However, I believe that the problem is not one of poor legal frameworks and a lack of well-intentioned plans. The problem is one of implementation. Many countries already have flawed but adequate laws to deal with trafficking and sexual slavery. Creating new legislation will improve definitions and make the frameworks more (p.197)

comprehensive, but even strong and well-drafted laws need will and commitment to enforce them.

[Real measures reducing prostitution bringing a happier life:
-- a law against poverty in the countryside and the commitment of the governing families of a country not to be racist against the populations in the countryside any more but install jobs also in the countryside would be very good.
-- also education with good language teachers and free sports facilities is reducing the devotion to prostitution.
-- and legal porno cinemas can reduce the rate of customers in brothels by 50% or so.
This balance of mental forces is working in Europe very well - and it seems strange, but writer Louise Brown is not mentioning one of these points, and in Buddhist Asia not one of these points is fulfilled - with the exception of Japan].

Trafficked children cannot remember their original language nor traffickers

It is very difficult to gather sufficient evidence to charge traffickers. Women may be rescued years after they were trafficked. In South Asia some girls cannot even remember their native languages because they were incarcerated when they were children. They cannot remember the route they traveled to the brothel and the mechanics of the trafficking procedure. They do not remember the names or the faces of the traffickers.

In some instances when the traffickers were their own family members they do remember but have adopted an understandable amnesia. Trying to secure a conviction is almost impossible when crucial witnesses are confused, forgetful or plainly traumatized by their experiences.

[The main convictions has to be against the mothers selling their daughters].

Prostitutes in the trap of slavery - accepting their slavery as a fate

Significant pressures are brought to bear upon women who have been trafficked and / or forced into sexual slavery. Most important is the heavy weight of psychological conditioning. Many women believe that they have in some way deserved their fate and that there is no point in making a fuss [noise] because they are locked into a life of prostitution irrespective of any criminal conviction that can be brought against their traffickers or the brothel owners.

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Sources

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