Asia: Lessons in Hope
From Inter Press Service
News Agency (IPS) Asia-Pacific
Koh Kred Island, Thailand - At a school on this island north of Bangkok,
around 250 girls and women are busy taking English-language lessons
and other courses to prepare them for the new lives they will lead
once they leave its premises.
But "Baan Kredtrakarn" (Koh Kred Island's Beautiful Home)
in Nonthaburi province, some 20 km north of the Thai capital Bangkok,
is no ordinary school. It is a protection and occupational development
center for girls and women trafficked from various parts of Southeast
Asia.
The school has been a rehabilitation center for sexually abused and
exploited Thai women for 42 years. Since 1999, the school, run by
the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, has taken on young women
trafficked into the country from neighboring Burma, Vietnam, Laos
and Yunnan province, southwest China, to work as beggars, cheap laborers,
or sex workers.
''I like this place and I learn a lot here,'' said Dara (not her real
name), a 22-year-old Burmese woman, who has been at the center for
seven months now. But it was only about a year ago, she recalls, that
she spent 14 hours a day, seven days a week, working without pay in
a pen factory in a Bangkok suburb.
Dara and her friends were trafficked from Burma into Thailand through
Mae Sai in Chiang Rai province, 830 km north of Bangkok, the common
entry point for majority of Burmese trafficked into this country.
''It was my own decision to come and work in Bangkok as the broker
promised I would get very good pay,'' said Dara. Her family had to
pay the broker 10,000 kyat (1,500 U.S. dollars) to find Dara work
in Bangkok.
Thirteen-year-old Nam (not real name) was seven when she was trafficked
to Poipet in Cambodia from her home in Hanoi, Vietnam, before arriving
in Pattaya, a popular seaside tourist attraction 147 km south-east
of Bangkok.
''I was selling chewing gum on the street (in Pattaya) when the police
arrested me, and I never saw my mother again,'' recalled Nam.
''Begging has become a way of living for some Cambodian families.
They (Cambodians girls) are among the youngest at the center, starting
from about five years old,'' said social worker Monthip Kijyingsophon.
Some 500 to 1,000 Cambodian children are now working as beggars in
Thailand, according to figures of the International Labor Organization's
International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO-IPEC).
Dara's and Nam's stories are not uncommon at the center, where many
women have arrived after being rescued from violent or exploitative
situations following police raids of illegal establishments.
Others walk into the center looking for help, mostly to escape difficult
living conditions. Some Thai girls are brought in by their parents
who fear, for a variety of reasons, that they could fall prey to sexual
exploitation, teachers at the school said.
As victims of physical and sexual violence, many trafficked girls
arrive traumatized by what are often slave-like experiences, and are
in need of psychological counseling and vocational training to help
them cope and reintegrate into society.
''Though there are less newcomers at the center this year, compared
with the year before, we all know that trafficking and exploitation
has been on the increase,'' Monthip pointed out. With growing rates
of poverty and illiteracy providing the backdrop for the trade in
trafficking women, it is becoming increasingly difficult to help these
girls, she said.
Monthip said that the idea of working in a big capital like Bangkok
and escaping life in their villages, where the prospects for work
are bleak, proves overly attractive for many girls who take the risk
and place themselves in the hands of traffickers every year.
Tens of thousands of women are trafficked each year into and out of
Thailand, a magnet for migrants and trafficked people in the region.
ILO-IPEC estimates that 80,000 women and children have been trafficked
into Thailand as part of the sex trade since 1990, the highest number
coming from Burma, followed by China's Yunnan province and Laos.
''Trafficking is not a problem of morality. It is a problem of rights
of a person as human,'' said Jean D'Cunha of the U. N. Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM) regional program on gender, globalization
and markets.
However, there are some misperceptions about how to solve the problem,
says D'Cunha: ''Many governments tend to implement restrictions on
women's movement rather than working on prevention and empowerment
of women.''
Apart from providing the girls with accommodation, the center gives
them legal assistance as well as non-formal education in beauty salon
work, sewing, and traditional massage, as well English-language lessons
and computer skills.
Baan Kredtrakarn also works closely with nearby schools, offering
classes where youngsters are told about the risks of trafficking and
exploitation. Girls from the center share their experiences with the
young audiences, said Monthip.
The administrators at Baan Kredtrakarn collaborate with NGOs in the
Mekong countries to check on them and to monitor their reintegration.
After spending eight months at the center learning about beauty salon
work, Nam looks forward to returning to Poipet where her mother now
lives. ''I am very happy and excited to see my mom again,'' said Nam.
As for Dara, with the center's help she finally got the 10,431-baht-salary
(241 dollars) owed to her by the factory she worked in, and is preparing
to return home. ''Though I like this center very much, I don't think
I want to come back here ever again.''
__________________________________
This article is reported by Chayanit Poonyarat for IPS Asia-Pacific.
Republished with permission from Inter Press Service News Agency
(IPS) Asia-Pacific.
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