Welcome to Asia: The World's Brothel

I have held Ethiopian children in my arms that died of starvation and disease only moments later. I have spoken with men and women who lost arms or legs during bombing raids in South Sudan, and watched these same people boiling tree leaves, hoping for some sort of nutrition to give their children. I have spoken to Filipino pastors who were tortured by Muslims because they refused to renounce their Faith. I have witnessed battles in the Philippine Provinces where the New People’s Army cut down innocent men, women and children. I thought nothing could match the horror of what I had already seen … until I saw 12 and 13 year-old girls being forced to sell their bodies.

In Vietnam and in nearby nations where our soldiers enjoyed R & R, when our military pulled out (1975), there was far more supply than demand for sex. The solution was two-tiered: begin marketing to local men, and to crank out an international marketing plan for sexual tourism.

In Phnom Penh, for example, 5 or 6 buddies from places like Japan and Europe will check into a hotel, have a few drinks, and then be whisked away in an SUV to visit a brothel, where they can choose girls whose typical ages range from 12 to around 19 years old. The 12 year olds fetch the highest price. Why? They are chosen because these children are virgins and, thus, disease free or simply because some men prefer children. Imagine the psychological and physical damage these barely pubescent girls suffer when having sex with older, abusive men.

The same basic scenario is played out throughout the nations we visited—The Philippines, Cambodia, and Thailand, as well as across the rest of Asia.

Some girls are ripped away from their families and villages and taken across international boundaries to serve men in places like Tokyo and Bangkok. Some are taken and sold to brothels or mama sons (think: older female managers) in other villages or larger cities in their own nations.

Not all of the girls are captured and thrown in the back of trucks or in vans. Many of them are lured to far away cities by the offer of jobs: entertainment, domestic work, secretarial work, etc. Sometimes the agents for brothels will conduct a “beauty contest” where the “winners” will get to travel and compete in another country. Once they arrive, however, they discover that they have been sold as sex-slaves.

The recruiters are usually someone the child knows: a friend, a trusted older woman (a covert retired sex-worker), a boyfriend, an aunt or uncle … a parent. Sometimes the parent doesn’t realize what they are sending their child to do; oftentimes they know exactly what they are doing. They are poor and $50 dollars for a daughter is a month’s salary or more.

I was told that in Northern Thailand some families have actually begun grooming their daughters for prostitution, seeing their girls as a cash crop. In many villages, the farmers will receive a down payment for their future rice-harvest: a Tok Khiew, meaning Green Harvest. Parents can now receive a Tok Khiew for their daughter’s future services. How could they do such a thing?

In general, women in Asia are not afforded much value, especially in comparison with males. Quite often the birth of a girl is seen as a burden, as her parents will have to feed and care for her, and then pay for her marriage dowry just when she is of age to contribute to the families financial needs. Many Buddhists see being born as a woman as proof of Bad Karma: the child must have done something evil in a past life to be cursed by returning to this world as a female.

Another avenue into the sex-trade is rape. When a girl or young woman is raped she is seen as unworthy of marriage. Often the man who raped the girl will then become her pimp. Sometimes the raped girl will volunteer to become a prostitute, as this will be the only way she can support herself. After all, she is now a pariah in the eyes of her family and community.

Still another avenue is where the girls will be married off to husbands who will then pimp them out to their friends.

Some of these prostitutes are paid well, work in a clean environment with men who won’t beat them or force them to perform certain acts. These women usually work in Bangkok or Tokyo. These are the women who are used to paint a Pretty Woman, romantic and lucrative picture, so as to seduce young girls into the trade. They may comprise 3% of the Asian sex-trade. Typically, the girls will live in squalor, subject to severe abuse, being required to service as many as 10-15 men a day, being paid wages that leave them starving to death.

Trapped
After the girls are enslaved, they have to keep working so as to pay off their debt: a debt that can be as much as $30,000 dollars. (Recruiter fees, manager’s cut, travel expenses, room and board, salaries for guards/security, etc.) It is not unusual for the slave-owner to sell the girl just before her debt is paid off. She is old (19), can no longer demand as much money for her services, is about to become an economic liability, and so is sold off to a far away village where the men can only afford $1 a visit, and she, once again, is in debt.

She can’t go home because she no longer is a virgin. In fact, one aspect of the psychological warfare used with these girls (physical abuse to make the girls more compliant is also used) is to threaten to call her parents, telling them what she is doing. Better they think she is an entertainer in Bangkok than to hear she is a prostitute. Anyway, even if she wants to run away, she doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t even know for sure where she is.

Many girls are never allowed to see the light of day, and, if they are, guards accompany them. They also don’t have the money for a flight back home, and are in the country where they are working, illegally. If she is legal, the manager has her passport in a safe. If she does escape, the local policemen, being paid for his trouble by the brothel’s management, will recapture her and return her to the brothel. Speaking of the police—

Yes, there are often laws against prostitution. The UN has passed resolutions for 60 years, damning this practice. If prostitution isn’t illegal in a particular nation, at least there will be laws against human trafficking (taking girls against their will across international borders) and slavery. In the Philippines, for example, prostitution is illegal. However, the government also requires prostitutes be licensed and receive periodic medical examinations! (I have often wondered why the men who visit these girls are not required to have medical exams, especially as most of them refuse to wear condoms. Yes, HIV is rampant.)

Solutions
There is no magic wand that we can wave, ridding the world of such horror. What is needed is worldwide education as to the realities of human trafficking and sex-slaves, people who will address these practices on a national and international platform, and people and institutions that will go into the cities and villages where these girls are trapped, offering hope, help, a home, reeducation and a community of caring friends.

The reason we have come to Asia is to seek out people who are already doing such work and to see what we can do with and for them. Better a well-funded and staffed organization that can offer first class help to these young women than 10 such organizations that each can barely care for only a few girls.

Or so I believe …

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2008