Singapore is a choice destination for many Thai 'working girls', but an unknown number are trafficked to remote locations on the edge of the city where they are essentially held as sex slaves
Erika Fry
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| BEFORE BUSINESS: This clearing will be converted to a makeshift brothel before nightfall. |
Not far outside central Singapore, across from one of the city-state's foreign worker dormitories, is a small forest.
It appears ordinary enough - just trees, separated from the pavement by a steep embankment. If one looks closely, there is a trail; and if one is curious enough, it leads to a clearing that even at first glance, appears - part-dump, part-deserted camp - not quite right.
There's a spirit house at the base of a ribbon-wrapped tree, and just beyond that a cache of futons that have been flung in the brush. Tree branches are knotted with plastic bags. The site is strewn with beer cans, water bottles, planks of cardboard and a tremendous number of condom wrappers.
Yet what looks abandoned and random by day is reassembled and ready for business by night. The futons are brought out of the brush and laid on the cardboard mats, and a group of Thai ladies are brought in - either from forest hideouts or cheap hotels in Singapore's red light district - and lined up on a log bench.
There, they'll wait for their customers - Bangladeshis, Thais, Indians, an international coterie of foreign workers, almost all of whom will wander over from the dormitory across the road.
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| BRIGHT LIGHTS: Tanjong Pagar, one of destinations for prostitution in Singapore. |
During the course of the night, a woman might service 20 men. She'll dispose of the condoms in the hanging plastic bags and wash herself using the water bottles provided. The air will be thick with mosquitoes, and she'll have sex, with ambiance and privacy provided by a tarpaulin, for S$10 or S$20 a session.
However un-Singaporean this may sound, such sites - also known as "forest brothels" - are long-established and relatively common in the tightly-regulated city-state.
Usually located in wooded areas surrounding Singapore's foreign worker dormitories (these tend to be zoned in areas on the outskirts of the city), the sites serve as one of the few - also the cheapest - sexual outlets available to the hundreds of thousands of men that migrate to Singapore on annual construction contracts (there are an estimated 43,800 from Thailand).
A handful of Thai workers who lived at a variety of Singapore's worker sites, and were well-connected with the Thai community there, estimated that several hundred women work in Singapore's forest brothels at any one time.
The sites are also the destination for a number of Thai women - by almost all standards (though not Singapore's) trafficking victims - whose migration stories have usually taken an unanticipated and sinister twist.
Though the story comes in countless variations, the women working in the forest camps are almost invariably doing so against their will, says Bridget Lew, founder and president of Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), an NGO in Singapore that runs a shelter to assist foreign workers. "No one wants to be there," she says, explaining that the women have been drawn through deception, and are then held captive in a "circle of fear".
"They don't know where to run," she says. "They are in the middle of the forest in a country they don't know. They are scared of the authorities because they are foreigners."
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| ARRANGING A MEETING: For many, courting by phone is the first step. Privacy at home is a thing of the past for most construction workers. |
While anecdotal evidence suggests many of these operations exist, and persist largely due to Singaporean policy - what many call its "blind eye" approach to trafficking and the strict sexual code that governs its migrant workers (see sidebar) - little is being done to stop them or amend policy.
"It's quite complicated," says Dr Pattana Kitiarsa, a Thai anthropologist who teaches at National University Singapore and who has studied the issue extensively. "These women know what job they are on, but can't accept the conditions. It becomes a trafficking problem because the women can't stand, and were not prepared for the conditions. They expect to work for clients, but were not expecting to sleep on the ground with mosquitoes and no toilets."
He adds that in many cases, the women are held in debt bondage to the agents who brought them to Singapore.
Pattana explained that the nuances of the situation, that sometimes the women intended to work both illegally and in the sex industry, are at the heart of Singapore's argument that this is not trafficking and that such women are criminals, and not victims.
Those interviewed for this story (a Singaporean police officer among them) speculated that policing of forest brothels is rare because they are silent, out-of-sight operations that don't cause trouble for Singapore or its citizens.
There is also the fear that without allowing
foreign workers a sexual outlet, they will turn
to more violent forms of crime, says the Singaporean
police officer.
The Thai embassy in Singapore has recorded
17 cases of trafficking this year.Though
there is no official record, an embassy representative
estimates there are 1,000 Thaiwomen
working in Singapore’s sex industry at any
one time. Of these, it’s estimated 10 per cent
have been trafficked into it. She admits the
numbers are hard to track because there is
no official Thai worker registry. In addition,
most of the sex workers are there on social
visitor passes, andmanyof those thatmaybe
trafficked will never make it to the embassy
to file a report.
While there are countless variations on
the story, Pattana says the journey for forest
brothel workers tends to begin in Isan,
prompted by a call from a close contact already
in Singapore, or an agent that speaks of jobs
in the city-state’s highly profitable entertainment
or sex industry.
‘‘The agents who manage the businesses
are normally close to the women — uncles,
aunts. They promise a good job. Girls are
ready to believe their relatives,’’ explains
Pattana. He suspects veteran Thai workmen
in Singapore are also involved and adds that
as a trans-national network, it must involve
players at both ends.
Often the trip also involves a stop in Hat
Yai, where the women will initially work in a
brothel, or simply catch the bus that takes
them, by cheapest means possible, to Singapore.
Some of these women may expect to work
in massage parlours, karaoke clubs, or discos
without supplying sexual services, though
there are also those that may plan to work in
brothels or on the streets in the Geylang
district as sex workers.
Though authorities resist the word ‘‘legal’’,
sex work is not against the law in Singapore,
if the worker is registered and employed in a
licensed brothel. Nontheless, because of Singapore’s
immigration policy, it’s an open secret
that thousands of women from across the
region come to Singapore to work as sex
workers on Social Visit Passes, which are
granted, almost indiscriminately, to all visitors
upon entry to Singapore. (Probably few if
any of these aspire to work in forest brothels,
however.)
The pass lasts for a period of weeks or
months and can easily be extended online.
Once the pass expires, one does not need to
leave Singapore long before re-entering the
country, again indiscriminately, on another
Social Visit Pass.
The police officer explained that immigration
officials will deny the most obvious of
offenders from time to time, but not often.
Thus, while streetwalking and solicitation
are illegal, they are hardly rare.
Once in Singapore, some of these women
are taken by their agents to the forest where
they find the ‘‘job’’ they were promised, but
conditions they were hardly expecting.
Nonetheless, Pattana says many of these
women resign themselves to their fate, and
endure it. Because they may be on a social
visit pass, ‘‘They live and work there a relatively
short time. They also don’t know where to
go.’’
When victims do show up at the Thai embassy,
they are encouraged to report their
case to the Singapore police, though an official
admitted that few want to do so because of
the lack of social support Singapore provides
them and the strong desire to simply return
home.
Though many know these situations persist,
little is done to prevent them. Police raids at
the sites are rare and usually unsuccessful.
Workers explain that the operators post watchmen
at the edge of the forest to look out for
raids.Whenthe police docomeit’s thewomen
—not their agents, nor customers—that are
arrested and taken away. Demand, and the
supply go on unabated.
What noise does come from the sites comes
only rarely, when women manage to escape
and report their cases. There have been a few
such instances, and while the women may
be only marginally better off for their efforts,
their stories, along with the accounts of
workers, provide the best indication as to the
nature and methods of the forest brothel
operations.
Lew’s organisation has assisted several
women who have escaped or been rescued
from such sites, including one Thai woman
who fled her forest brothel during the chaos
of a murder-in-progress several years ago.
She went to the police to report the murder,
but was charged with immigration offences
and imprisoned.
She had been duped into captivity in a
forest site by Thais she met — fresh off the
bus—at the Golden Mile complex, a sprawling
plaza of discos, markets and Isan food stalls
that is dubbed as Singapore’s ‘‘Little Thailand’’
and which doubles as a bus station. The Thai
agents told her they’d help her find cheap
housing on the outskirts of the city. They
instead took her to the forest, where she was
expected to service 250 men to clear her
debt.
The woman was later released from prison
and served as a state witness in the murder
trial. While the Singaporean government
waived immigration regulations, she was not
given any form of social support for the period.
She stayed at Lew’s HOME shelter and left
the country after the trial, her traffickers having
never been arrested or even acknowledged.
In another case, Lew’s organisation initiated
a rescue at one of the sites. Singapore’s antivice
squad again arrested and imprisoned
thewomanthey went to rescue, only to release
and deport her when an NGO lawyer wrote
a letter of appeal. ‘‘Had we not intervened,
she would still be in jail,’’ Lew says, adding
that there are likely a number of similar cases
in which thewomenhave been less fortunate.
‘‘Police don’t tell us [when they make these
arrests].’’
Julie Sim, a media officer with Singapore’s
Ministry of Health, says Singapore conducts
‘‘regular enforcement operations’’ to keep
prostitution ‘‘in check’’, and that police forces
‘‘monitor closely the ground and investigate
any information of organised vice trafficking
or cases of commercial sexual exploitation of
women and minors’’.
Atotal of 5,400 foreign females were arrested
for vice-related activities and repatriated by
police in 2007, she says.
There were 28 cases of trafficking investigated
by police in 2007. Of those, only one
was found to have sufficient substantiating
evidence for prosecution.
Yet, Singapore’s interpretation of such
events is increasingly being called into question
by foreign embassies and NGOs.
The US government recently published
the 2008 Trafficking in Persons report, which
rates Singapore—along with Thailand, Cambodia
and most other Southeast Asian nations
—a Tier 2 country, a designation that essentially
translates to ‘‘more could be done’’.
According to many sources, Singapore was
irritatedbythe charge (ithadbeendowngraded
from a Tier 1) and demanded US data to
explain the categorisation.
The government of the Philippines also
recently began voicing its concern over trafficking
in Singapore, after its embassy recorded
212 trafficking cases in 2007 (only those in
which victims are willing to stay and testify
will be investigated by police), an ‘‘alarming
increase’’ in the words of a national report,
over 125 cases in 2006and 59 in 2005. Twentyseven
per cent of the 2007 cases were said to
involve the sex industry.
While the Thai embassy in Singapore declined
to comment on Singapore’s trafficking
policies, it stressed the need to educate women
in Thailand, particularly those that were considering
foreign sex work, aboutsafe migration
and ensuring agents and job conditions are
reliable. The embassy also stressed its efforts
to educate Thais in Singapore about Thailand’s
new trafficking law (effective June 2008) and
so, provide assistance to victims.
Gauging the severity of Singapore’s trafficking
issues ‘‘depends who you speak to’’,
says John Gee, the President of Transient
Workers Count Too (TWC2), an NGO that
concentrates on foreign worker issues.
‘‘Authorities in Singapore say there are
very few cases. It comes down to a difference
in definition. The UN definition includes
women brought in by deception and false
promises. Singapore’s definition is much more
restricted to [the use of] force.’’
He explained that in the eyes of Singapore’s
law enforcers, if individuals come through
checkpoints and turn over passports without
asking for help or claiming to be a victim,
then they aren’t one.
He explains the problem with this logic is
that people may not yet realise they’re being
trafficked, or they may have been dissuaded
by threats from making such claims. ‘‘Policing
should be more aggressive towards those
who are coercing— it’s not seen as grave as
it really is,’’ he adds.
Pattana says, ‘‘Here it becomes trafficking
only when victims break out of the cycle and
news gets to the media. This is the only way
cases become widely known. Otherwise, it’s
just normal business, travel, etc.’’ He remarked
that trafficking is happening far more often
than authorities admit, through prostitution,
the entertainment industry,andevenmarriage.
‘‘They [officials] say they are all coming voluntarily,
though.’’
Lew agrees that protection for trafficking
victims, is ‘‘an area where Singapore can
improve’’.
‘‘The official argument is that if they were
more compassionate, women and men would
take advantage of the compassionate response.
They ask, how do you know whose telling the
truth? Authorities think the women should
know better.’’
But citing the forest brothel cases, she
says, ‘‘If someone does escape, we need to
give social assistance. To me, that’s not a
question. It’s common sense.’’
She also voiced the suspicion of many
people I spoke to in regard to the extent of
illegal sex work and related trafficking cases
in Singapore and what many consider the
government’s ‘‘blind eye’’ approach.
She pointed out that everything is micromanaged
in Singapore, and that the persistence
of such cases gives an impression that
so long as such behaviours are contained
enough to not stain Singapore’s image, the
government doesn’t care. ‘‘The law here can
do almost anything. It is easy to contain things
in a small nation, especially in Singapore,’’
says Lew.
David Feingold, International Coordinator
on HIV/Aids and Trafficking for Unesco,
agreed. ‘‘Singapore has the capacity [to do
something about it] — it’s one of the least
corrupt bureaucracies in Asia, at least that is
the perception. Unlike in other countries,
this is a matter of political will.’’
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