Keywords: Sex Worker, Sex Trafficking, Precarious, Raids, Collusion
Introduction
Thailand is renowned as one of the most popular sex tourist destinations in the world; with the industry estimated to have contributed to 12% of its GDP in the year 1998.[1] Alongside its natural landscapes and its bustling street food culture, some of the commodities it exclusively offers to both its tourists and domestic populace includes the sexual services of women, children and men who have been trafficked from the nearby Mekong sub-region. Not only is Thailand a country of destination and origination when it comes to sex trafficking victims, but it is also a country of transit.[2] This means that Thailand is so entrenched in routes and networks of sex trafficking that its populace, particularly its ethnic minorities and those who hail from its lowest economic strata are shipped off as mail to order brides and sex workers to other countries, while acting as both a workplace for those who have been sex-trafficked in the region and as a point of transit for those victims waiting to be shipped to a different destination country.
Definitions
The principal difference between a voluntary sex worker and a victim of sex trafficking, albeit the (il)legality in conducting the work of the former one, lies in the consent of the individual providing the sexual service and their agency in choosing to do so. Voluntary sex workers willingly provide their services as a means of livelihood without being influenced by means of coercion, intimidation, or abuse. Meanwhile victims of sex trafficking are non-consenting individuals who provide sexual services out of fear or intimidation. The absence or presence of consent is applied throughout multiple aspects of their work; ranging from their expectations of the work environment, their ability to refuse a customer, their ability to choose the rate and the frequency of their services among other things.
This key difference is also enshrined in Thai law, particularly the 1996 Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution act and the 2008 Anti-Trafficking in Person’s Act (ATIP). The former criminalizes voluntary sex workers who ‘promiscuously’ display or offer any sexual service in return for proper compensation. If proven guilty, the voluntary sex worker can be subject to a fine of 1000 baht and 30 days of imprisonment.[3] The latter piece of legislation defines that any person, regardless of gender or age that is coerced, intimidated or abused into providing any service including sexual services are to be treated as victims of sex trafficking. Oftentimes, these victims are forcibly sent to ‘rehabilitation centres and shelters’ where they must testify as a witness against their traffickers, before they could leave the custody of the government.[4] ATIP does however criminalize partaking and profiting in any form of human trafficking; increasing the severity of the sentence depending on if the defendant is employed in civil service or not.[5]
Vulnerable Populations
The populations that are the most vulnerable to sex-trafficking are usually those who work precarious jobs as a result of various socio-political markers. Most victims of sex trafficking are migrant workers from nearby countries (i.e. Laos P.D.R, Cambodia, and Vietnam), hail from an ethnic minority (i.e. the Shan, Karen, Akha, and Lahu)[6], and are oftentimes women or men from the LGBTQIA community.[7] This is primarily due to the fact that these populations lack social and/or legal provisions or status; due to their lack of citizenship or knowledge of their rights upon entering Thailand they become vulnerable to the whims of their traffickers. Oftentimes, these migrants are lured by brokers into believing that there are a multitude of opportunities or better working conditions that await low-skilled workers like themselves in Thailand.[8] Others, on the other hand, start off as voluntary sex workers but become victims of sex trafficking upon realizing their inability to pay off the debt they owe the brokers, the horrid work environment, and their inability to decide how long their shifts are in any given night.
Traditional Policy Responses
The Thai government has sought to address this human rights issue through various policies and programs, however it has traditionally approached this in a manner that is punitive. This approach often emphasizes criminalization rather than prevention, conflates the definition of a voluntary sex worker and a sex-trafficking victim through its practices, and fosters collusion through discretionary power. This has resulted in adverse effects, which have criminalized and punished the very victims it wishes to protect, forcing them more and more into precariousness. Should it continue to practice the same measures without reform, it risks materializing a statement made by EMPOWER, a local NGO that advocates for the rights of sex workers, from 2008 which states: “We have now reached a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry who are being abused by anti-trafficking practices than there are women being exploited by traffickers.” [9]
Issues in Traditional Policy Responses
The Thai government has ratified various policies to address sex-trafficking such as those aforementioned and the 1966 Entertainment Place Act. This particular act, although well-intentioned, has proliferated the collusion of local law enforcement agencies and human traffickers. The act encourages the registration of a variety of entertainment establishments and their respective employees all across Thailand ranging from karaoke and go-go bars to massage parlours.[10] The objective of this act was to help weed out entertainment venues that were employing victims of sex trafficking. The act however is quite ambiguous in that it makes enforcement and investigations such as raids, selective and discretionary for the police to conduct. This grants them the opportunity to collude with traffickers by purposely not registering certain entertainment venues or by ‘rescuing’ a batch of troublesome sex workers so that compliant victims of sex trafficking can quickly replace them in the interest of the owner.
Another issue in the Thai government’s “War on Trafficking” is the degree to which it relies on ‘raids and rescues’ to help crackdown on sex trafficking and prostitution and neglects the valuable information that sex worker advocates and NPO’s can provide them.[11] Due to the fact that prostitution is criminalized, albeit being heavily present in Thai society; the Thai government implicitly forces sex workers and victims into further states of precariousness which discourages them to report on the abuses they have witnessed or experienced in the workplace, from seeking sexual and health services, and most importantly from reporting on perpetrators of trafficking. This proliferates the underreporting of sex trafficking. In detaining voluntary sex workers, the Thai government is virtually detaining human rights and anti-trafficking advocates who are knowledgeable of how to identify and escape trafficking. This is can be seen in EMPOWER’s commentary on the government’s ‘rescue’ operations:“In a brothel if you’ve been trafficked…you’ve got eight other women telling you when to run away, where and how to run away and how to keep safe in the meantime…Women already have strategies we say to each other. And when a woman gets ‘rescued’, there is no one in the brothel whose got these strategies anymore”[12]
Furthermore, these anti-trafficking measures or ‘raids and rescues’ conflate the distinction between a voluntary sex worker and a victim of sex trafficking due to the emphasis the officials give on a certain set of social characteristics to determine this. This results in limiting the program’s ability to properly provide legal protection and shelter to those that need it by inaccurately determining the demographic the program wishes to serve.
During raids and rescues Thai officials presume that all immigrants working in the raided establishment are victims of sex trafficking, while all Thais working there are presumed to be voluntary sex workers.[13] The program delivery is further skewed by the fact that the officials out of fear that the ‘victims’ are susceptible to being tracked by their traffickers; confiscate their belongings, ban them from leaving the shelter, and force them to find other ways of earning a livelihood by teaching them skills such as sewing.
Proposed Policies and Measures:
- Minimize the discretionary powers of the police in conducting raids and rescues by reforming its 2005 War on Anti-Trafficking measures enacted by Thaksin Shinawatra.
- Amend the 1996 Prevention and Suppression of Women and Children’s Act, so that it decriminalizes sex work and allows sex workers to enjoy the same legal protections other workers enjoy under the Thai Labor Protection Act. This would result in higher rates of reporting, deter trafficking, which in turn would hold government officials more accountable.[14]
- Reform anti-trafficking measures in a manner that accurately categorizes victims as sex workers or as victims of sex trafficking, so that their right to enjoy being subject to a non-discriminatory application and interpretation of the law is ensured.[15]
- Consult with and consider the suggestions of local NPO’s that advocate for the rights of sex workers such as EMPOWER and FFW (Foundation for Women) throughout the policymaking and program design process of anti-trafficking measures.
- Mandate training all tourism and hospitality workers in Thailand on ECPAT’s (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) Tourism Child-Protection Code of Conduct. This will ensure that workers are trained on reporting, identifying and preventing human trafficking in their workplaces.[16]
Alfonso Ralph Mendoza Manalo is a third-year student at the University of Toronto Scarborough, majoring in Co-op Public Policy and Global Asia Studies and minoring in Critical Migration Studies. He currently works as an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy Advisor for the RCMP and as an Administration Assistant and Grant Writer at the Filipino Centre Toronto. He is also an intern for the Richard Charles-Lee Asian Pathways Research Lab at the Asian Institute and has held previous roles in the Racialized Students Collective at the Scarborough Campus Students Union, the Filipino Centre Toronto, and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations. He is passionate about Filipinx, Southeast Asian, and Diasporic Studies.
Bernstein, Elizabeth, and Elena Shih. “The Erotics of Authenticity: Sex Trafficking and ‘Reality Tourism’ in Thailand.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 21, no. 3 (September 1, 2014): 430–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxu022.
Brooks, Ann, and Vanessa Heaslip. “Sex Trafficking and Sex Tourism in a Globalised World.” Tourism Review 74, no. 5 (January 1, 2019): 1104–15. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-02-2017-0017.
Caballero-Anthony, Mely. “A Hidden Scourge: Southeast Asia’s Refugees and Displaced People Are Victimized by Human Traffickers, but the Crime Usually Goes Unreported.” IMF Finance & Development, September 2018, 18–21.
Davy, Deanna. “Understanding the Complexities of Responding to Child Sex Trafficking in Thailand and Cambodia.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 34, no. 11/12 (January 1, 2014): 793–816. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-10-2013-0103.
Elias, Juanita, and Jenna Holliday. “Who Gets ‘Left behind’? Promises and Pitfalls in Making the Global Development Agenda Work for Sex Workers – Reflections from Southeast Asia.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 14 (October 26, 2019): 2566–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1456747.
Empower Foundation. “Hit and Run : Sex Worker’s Research on Anti Trafficking in Thailand,” 2012. http://www.empowerfoundation.org/sexy_file/Hit%20and%20Run%20%20RATSW%20Eng%20online.pdf.
Kara, Siddharth. “6. Thailand and the Mekong Subregion.” In Sex Trafficking, 152–78. Columbia University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7312/kara18033-009.
Kinney, Edith. “Raids, Rescues, and Resistance: Women’s Rights and Thailand’s Response to Human Trafficking.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, by Carisa R. Showden and Samantha Majic, 145–70. Minneapolis, UNITED STATES: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docID=1663028.
Kuo, Michelle. “Asia’s Dirty Secret: Prostitution and Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia.” Harvard International Review 22, no. 2 (2000): 42–45.
L, Carolin, Lindsay A, and Victor W. “Sex Trafficking in the Tourism Industry” 4, no. 4 (2015): 6.
Leibolt, Cristina. “The Thai Government’s Response to Human Trafficking: Areas of Strength and Suggestions for Improvement.” Thailand Journal of Law and Policy 17, no. 1 (Spring 2014). http://thailawforum.com/articles/thailand-human-trafficking.html#6.
Lim, Lin Lean, and International Labour Office, eds. The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1998.
Meyer, Sarah R., W. Courtland Robinson, Nada Abshir, Aye Aye Mar, and Michele R. Decker. “Trafficking, Exploitation and Migration on the Thailand-Burma Border: A Qualitative Study.” International Migration 53, no. 4 (August 2015): 37–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12177.
Peach, Lucinda Joy. “‘Sex Slaves’ Or ‘Sex Workers’? Cross-Cultural and Comparative Religious Perspectives on Sexuality, Subjectivity, and Moral Identity in Anti-Sex Trafficking Discourse.” Culture and Religion 6, no. 1 (March 2005): 107–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01438300500071315.
Smith, Heather M. “Sex Trafficking: Trends, Challenges, and the Limitations of International Law.” Human Rights Review 12, no. 3 (September 2011): 271–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-010-0185-4.
Tanakasempipat, Patpicha. “Thai Sex Industry under Fire from Tourism Minister, Police | Reuters,” July 16, 2016. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-vice-idUSKCN0ZW16A.
Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Sex Workers Petition to Decriminalise Prostitution.” Bangkok Post, September 22, 2020. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1989843/sex-workers-petition-to-decriminalise-prostitution.
United Nations Action for Cooperation against Trafficking in Persons. “Thailand.” UN-ACT Thailand. Accessed December 8, 2020. http://un-act.org/thailand/.
Weitzer, Ronald, and Melisa Ditmore. “Sex Trafficking: Facts and Fictions.” In Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry, 325–43. Routledge, 2010. https://books-scholarsportal-info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks2/taylorandfrancis/2013-03-12/1/9780203872802#page=346.
[1] Lim, Lin Lean, and International Labour Office, eds. The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1998.
[2] United Nations Action for Cooperation against Trafficking in Persons. “Thailand.” UN-ACT Thailand. Accessed December 8, 2020. http://un-act.org/thailand/.
[3] Bernstein, Elizabeth, and Elena Shih. “The Erotics of Authenticity: Sex Trafficking and ‘Reality Tourism’ in Thailand.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 21, no. 3 (September 1, 2014): 430–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxu022.
[4] Kinney, Edith. “Raids, Rescues, and Resistance: Women’s Rights and Thailand’s Response to Human Trafficking.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, by Carisa R. Showden and Samantha Majic, 145–70. Minneapolis, UNITED STATES: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docID=1663028.
[5] Leibolt, Cristina. “The Thai Government’s Response to Human Trafficking: Areas of Strength and Suggestions for Improvement.” Thailand Journal of Law and Policy 17, no. 1 (Spring 2014). http://thailawforum.com/articles/thailand-human-trafficking.html#6.
[6] Caballero-Anthony, Mely. “A Hidden Scourge: Southeast Asia’s Refugees and Displaced People Are Victimized by Human Traffickers, but the Crime Usually Goes Unreported.” IMF Finance & Development, September 2018, 18–21.
[7] Brooks, Ann, and Vanessa Heaslip. “Sex Trafficking and Sex Tourism in a Globalised World.” Tourism Review 74, no. 5 (January 1, 2019): 1104–15. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-02-2017-0017.
[8] Meyer, Sarah R., W. Courtland Robinson, Nada Abshir, Aye Aye Mar, and Michele R. Decker. “Trafficking, Exploitation and Migration on the Thailand-Burma Border: A Qualitative Study.” International Migration 53, no. 4 (August 2015): 37–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12177.
[9] Empower Foundation. “Hit and Run : Sex Worker’s Research on Anti Trafficking in Thailand,” 2012. http://www.empowerfoundation.org/sexy_file/Hit%20and%20Run%20%20RATSW%20Eng%20online.pdf.
[10] Kinney, Edith. “Raids, Rescues, and Resistance: Women’s Rights and Thailand’s Response to Human Trafficking.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, by Carisa R. Showden and Samantha Majic, 145–70. Minneapolis, UNITED STATES: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docID=1663028.
[11] Bernstein, Elizabeth, and Elena Shih. “The Erotics of Authenticity: Sex Trafficking and ‘Reality Tourism’ in Thailand.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 21, no. 3 (September 1, 2014): 430–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxu022.
[12] Kinney, Edith. “Raids, Rescues, and Resistance: Women’s Rights and Thailand’s Response to Human Trafficking.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, by Carisa R. Showden and Samantha Majic, 145–70. Minneapolis, UNITED STATES: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docID=1663028.
[13] Bernstein, Elizabeth, and Elena Shih. “The Erotics of Authenticity: Sex Trafficking and ‘Reality Tourism’ in Thailand.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 21, no. 3 (September 1, 2014): 430–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxu022.
[14] Weitzer, Ronald, and Melisa Ditmore. “Sex Trafficking: Facts and Fictions.” In Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry, 325–43. Routledge, 2010. https://books-scholarsportal-info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks2/taylorandfrancis/2013-03-12/1/9780203872802#page=346.
[15] Kinney, Edith. “Raids, Rescues, and Resistance: Women’s Rights and Thailand’s Response to Human Trafficking.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, by Carisa R. Showden and Samantha Majic, 145–70. Minneapolis, UNITED STATES: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docID=1663028.
[16] Brooks, Ann, and Vanessa Heaslip. “Sex Trafficking and Sex Tourism in a Globalised World.” Tourism Review 74, no. 5 (January 1, 2019): 1104–15. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-02-2017-0017.
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