They were promised well-paid jobs in fine restaurants in Singapore. But a group of five Thai women, including a mother and a daughter, said they ended up being forced to sleep with hundreds of men before police rescued them.
“I thought I would come here to work in a hotel, but they put me in hell,” said Pon, a mother of two in her late 30s, recalling her three days of working in a “jungle brothel” before a police raid rescued her and two Thai friends.
“My pimps told me I had to pay them 20,000 baht [US$560] for what they paid for me if I didn’t want to work for them. Otherwise I would have to sleep with 160 men before they could start sharing some earnings,” Pon said, telling her story while sobbing at a shelter for abused migrant women.
Two others, a mother in her late 40s and her daughter in her early 20s, escaped the brothel and have returned to Thailand.
‘SHOT’
Pon, who preferred not to give her full name, said her “room” in a forested area was made of plastic sheets wrapped around wooden poles and a foldable mattress, in which pimps charged customers S$20 (US$13) for a 10-minute “shot.”
Singapore’s sex trade is a side of the Southeast Asian city-state less well-known than its air-conditioned shopping malls, efficient governance and laws that ban littering and the import of chewing gum.
Prostitution is legal in Singapore, but the law bans soliciting of sex and penalizes those who live on the earnings of prostitutes.
The government said it had a “comprehensive legal framework and a robust operational framework” to deal with vice and human trafficking, saying cases of forced prostitution were rare and it would take all reports of alleged exploitation seriously.
“Instances of women genuinely found forced into prostitution or lured into prostitution under false pretenses are few and far between,” the Ministry of Home Affairs said. “In most instances, police investigations found that the cases arose from disputes between the women and their vice abettors over payments and other arrangements.”
Rescued sex workers said many prostitutes, willing or deceived, entered Singapore as tourists and were kept together. As tourist visas allow them to stay up to a month, many choose to have sex with as many men as possible to pay the fee.
RECORD
“My record was 17 men per night but some of my friends reached more than 30,” said Ja, a 23-year-old from northern Thailand who declined to give her full name.
Ja, now staying at another Singapore shelter, made about US$2,000 in a one-month stay on a previous visit a year ago — equivalent to a factory manager’s one-month salary in Thailand.
“I think I have had enough of this job. If I can return home this time, I want to study, I want go back to school and work in another profession,” Ja said.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in February human trafficking for the sex trade or forced labor market appeared to be getting worse because many countries were ignoring the globalized problem, but it gave no figures.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS