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Sex trafficking victim in Thailand: 'She caught me. I didn't know what to do. She took my passport and I had to go back to work.' [Paula Bronstein/Getty Images]
Escaping the clutches of sex trafficking in Thailand
An Uzbek woman who was trafficked to Thailand and forced to sell sex shares the story of her escape.
By Ashton Kobler
Al Jazeera
It's nearly 10pm and Umida* is cooking dinner - a simple meal of rice and meat for the 11 members of her household who have been stuck inside the house all day due to Uzbekistan's intense summer heat.
Since emerging as an independent nation in 1991, after nearly 200 years of Russian and then Soviet rule, Uzbekistan has slowly seen some economic progress. But poverty and unemployment remain high and many Uzbeks travel abroad for work. This leaves the men, women and children vulnerable to forced labour and sex trafficking.
"My older sister works in a hospital in Moscow, so I look after her children," Umida says. "She's the only one who understands what happened to me in Bangkok, I have told nobody else."
Born into a large, impoverished family, the 36-year-old says life was difficult growing up. Her mother died in 2000, leaving her father, a builder, to care for his four children. "It was hard without my mother," she recalls, "the families in my town with two parents had more money."
When she was 28 years old, Umida says she met a local Uzbek woman who promised her profitable work in Thailand. Umida doesn't say whether she knew the specific nature of this work, but explains that with the hope of providing for her son who was then six years old, she agreed to travel to the Thai capital, Bangkok.
But, when she arrived in Thailand, she realised that she had been deceived. The woman who had made the arrangements destroyed all of her documents. "She was a very bad lady. She gave me no food, no money. I could only go outside to work every day," Umida says quietly. The woman forced her to work as a prostitute on the streets of Bangkok.
Trafficked for sex
Many downtown Bangkok streets are lined with women, shifting from one foot to the other, whispering to passers-by, hoping to attract their next customer. Statistics from the Thai Ministry of Public Health and from NGOs indicate that there are more than 120,000 people working in the Thai sex industry.
Some of these women are engaged in sex work because they have no other way to make money, others have been forced into the industry, and many are trafficked to Thailand from other countries.
Annie Dieselberg, CEO and founder of Nightlight International, an organisation committed to helping victims of sex trafficking and exploitation, says that the authorities do not always take the situation seriously. "Often, authorities don't recognise the complexities of sex trafficking - that it isn't as simple as underage women in a brothel," Dieselberg says. "It may be an adult woman, walking the streets of Bangkok, being forced against her will to work for sex."
Angkhana Neelapaichit, one of the seven National Human Rights Commissioners appointed by the Thai king to examine and report acts which violate human rights or "do not comply with obligations under international treaties to which Thailand is a party", concurs. "Essentially, I can say that dealing with trafficking among sex workers, in the long run, is still challenging for Thailand and it is hard for authorities to find the real perpetrators," she says.
After a few months, Umida attempted to escape her trafficker, anxious to return home to her son. She managed to convince one of her clients, who sympathised with her, to give her money for a return flight home.
"He gave me a lot of money, so I bought some things for my son and a plane ticket home," Umida says. She went to the Uzbek consulate in secret and was issued with a certificate to return to Uzbekistan. When she arrived at the airport, however, a woman with a face veil approached her. She revealed herself as the trafficker. She was angry and threatening - Umida felt powerless before her. "She caught me. I didn't know what to do. She took my passport and I had to go back to work."
She worked for a further five months, receiving little to no money. She was made to stay in an apartment with no shower and no food, she recalls.
"I was hungry. It was only when I had a customer that I could have a meal. We would go out and drink and eat," she says of the meetings with clients. "Then we would end up in a hotel or an apartment."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f5uM6L2sy0
Thai general among many found guilty in Rohingya trafficking trial
Published on Jul 19, 2017
An army general in Thailand was one of the most prominent figures found guilty in a major human trafficking trial that included more than 103 defendants accused of involvement in a modern-day slavery trade.
Lieutenant-General Manas Kongpaen was convicted on Wednesday of several offenses involving trafficking and taking bribes.
By late afternoon on Wednesday, a judge had announced 50 verdicts with more judgments expected later in the day.
Al Jazeera's Scott Heidler reports from Bangkok.
