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From Hong Kong: Escape from Hell
Anna, 31, used to be among an unknown number of Filipino women lured in sex work in Hong Kong. She got to this former British colony after a series of misadventures that followed her quest to escape a life of grinding poverty in the southern Philippines. At 17, she was recruited into the sex industry by agents of a brothel in the Philippine capital. From there, Anna joined a syndicate preying on Japanese tourists in Malaysia, before returning to Manila where she heard of a group promising a monthly pay of 80,000 pesos (1,600 U.S. dollars) for those willing to work as bar girls in Hong Kong. Because she had two fatherless sons to support by then, Anna jumped at the chance to make what she thought was ''easy money.'' She arrived in Hong Kong on a tourist visa in 1984. She was met at the airport by a local Chinese man who hustled her off to a small, barred room in the seedy part of the busy Mong Kok district in Kowloon, where four other Filipino women were being held. Though no stranger to the illicit profession, Anna was shocked when told of what was expected of her: sex with a client every five minutes, any time of the day or night. If she did not meet her ''quota'' of 30 clients a day, she would not get any food. Anna said the longest rest she had was two hours, in between meeting clients at the guest houses where she was taken and guarded by an escort. She said the girls who got sick were lucky in a way because they got to rest. Those who had their menstrual periods did not get the same privilege: they were injected with a drug that stopped the bleeding. For the next three days, Anna did as she was told. Then she got lucky. A client who took pity on her paid for five hours' worth of sex -- enough to give her time to get to the airport with the taxi money also given her by the Good Samaritan, and fly back to Manila. Shocking as this story might be, it is by far not unique, says one church-backed concern group in Hong Kong. The Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers (MFMW) says that as recently as about two years ago, it had sheltered two to three Filipinos each year who were in the same situation as Anna. MFMW chair Cynthia Tellez says the fact that their help was not sought last year was not likely to be due to a stop in the trafficking of Filipinos to Hong Kong. ''It's probably because the syndicates behind this have become more sophisticated in their techniques.'' In the past, she says, syndicate members would pose as relatives of the Filipino women brought in for sex work, so they were usually granted visitors' visas of two to three months. But most of the women are now apparently brought in on six-month entertainer's visas, or more surreptitiously, on two-year domestic workers' visas. This was the case of a group of women interviewed by 'The Sun," a publication for the Filipino community in Hong Kong, of which more than 100,000 are domestic workers. It was learned that some of the Filipino women seen hanging out in the bars of the red-light district of Wan Chai are part of a well-guarded group of sex workers with domestic workers' visas. The women said the syndicate holds all their documents, including
passports and fictitious work contracts. The main reason is money. Staff interviewed at a remittance centre, where another group of Filipino women plying Wan Chai's bars regularly sends money to the Philippines, say each girl remits at least 10,000 Hong Kong dollars (1,280 U.S. dollars) a month to her family back home. This, compared to the minimum monthly salary of only 3,670 Hong Kong dollars (470 U.S. dollars) for a domestic worker here. Compared to many other host countries for migrant workers, Hong Kong is more tolerant of those in the sex industry. Its statute books do not cite ''prostitution'' as a crime -- rather, it is ''soliciting for immoral purposes'' that is forbidden. And there have been no official reports of Filipinos in the sex trade. ''There are no more Filipino prostitutes as far as we're concerned,'' says a spokesman for the police department, when asked for statistics on arrests. Police records show that of the 3,665 women charged with ''soliciting
for immoral purposes'' last year, most were mainland Chinese holding
two-way travel permits to Hong Kong. Months after she returned to Hong Kong with the British man she met and married in the Philippines, she was accosted by a group of men in a quiet road near her house. Without a word, the men beat her black and blue and knocked off some of her teeth. Anna knew better than to ask for an explanation or report the matter
to the police. The warning, she says, was clear. Republished with permission from Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS) Asia-Pacific. About Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS): IPS, the world's leading provider of information on global issues, is backed by a network of journalists in more than 100 countries. Its clients include more than 3,000 media organizations and tens of thousands of civil society groups, academics, and other users. IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.
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