Human trafficking in Burma has reached epic proportions. It is estimated that between thirty to forty thousand Burmese women and girls, sometimes as young as twelve years old, have been trafficked to Thailand alone, with thousands of new arrivals each year.[1] Over sixty percent are under the age of eighteen. Burmese men and women hoping to migrate abroad for a better life instead find themselves forced into hard manual labour or prostitution. Children are trafficked to work as beggars, street hawkers, and soldiers. Burma is a transit country, where men, women and children are trafficked to Thailand, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Japan, and Korea, for the purposes of sexual exploitation, domestic, and factory work.[2]

The severe economic mismanagement of the military junta has resulted in a sharp increase in migration, making women extremely vulnerable to trafficking for prostitution. The problem is intensified by civil war. Any positive effects of the liberal, open market policies of 1988 have been counteracted by the huge increase in military spending. The subsequent economic failure, the halt of international aid in the wake of the ’88 civil rights massacre, and the diversion of state funds away from the development of infrastructure, has meant that the majority of the population has been left to ensure their own survival in whatever way they can.[3] A booming sex industry in Burma and across the border in Thailand is virtually the only option of employment for many women. Pressure to provide for their families means they have little choice.

The victims of trafficking mostly come from minority groups, such as the Shan, the Mon, and the Tai Yan. False job offers, abduction, and the selling of girls from hill tribes and rural communities are all methods of trafficking. The ‘green rice season’, when farmers struggle to make money, is when the sale of girls from rural areas reaches its peak.  Sometimes, these women and girls are aware that they will be working in the sex industry, but have very little understanding of the health risks, such as HIV/AIDS and other diseases, that they will be exposed to- as well as the degrading physical conditions they will be working in and the consequences for their own personal or social self worth. In other cases, family members sell girls to trafficking merchants in return for considerable amounts of money. Virgin girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen are in especially high demand in Thailand, so they are sold into brothels for short periods of time until their virginity has been deemed to have lost its value and they are returned to Burma.[4]

Those who are lured into trafficking are promised good jobs and high cash advances, often paid directly to their parents. After being smuggled across the border, they are confined in illegal brothels in Thailand where they are forced to pay off their debt with sexual slavery. Often these women are not even aware of this debt, and if they are, have no real idea of what it entails. They are constantly deceived about the amounts they owe- figures are almost always completely arbitrary. This so called debt can include money for travel, counterfeit documents, police bribes, medical treatment, lodging, food, clothes, and an exorbitant rate of interest, often charged at one hundred percent or more.[5] These are invisible workers- virtually imprisoned, silenced, and without documentation or rights. This means that they have absolutely no recourse to compensation, or the right to demand safe, regulated work conditions.

In addition to being trapped by debt, these women and girls are daily subjected to a wide range of abuses, including illegal confinement, forced labour, rape, other forms of physical abuse, exposure to HIV/AIDS, and even murder. They work up to eighteen hours a day, twenty five days a month, serving up to fifteen clients daily. Health care and contraception are all but neglected. It is thought that between fifty to seventy percent of those who return to Burma are HIV positive.[6] Escape is out of the question: if they attempt to leave the brothel, they risk severe physical punishment, retribution against their families for defaulting on debt repayments, and arrest and deportation back to Burma. Thai Non Governmental Organisations estimate that there are as many as ten thousand new arrivals each year.

Thai and Burmese border officials reportedly accept bribes to enable the smuggling of women and girls into Thailand. Thai police officers are also regular clients of the brothels, who pay these officers generously to turn a blind eye. The last time a police officer in Thailand was punished for involvement in forced prostitution was in 1992; but since then, officers, recruiters, brothel owners and pimps have all been allowed to remain in business.[7] Explicitly flouting international law, authorities have routinely deported Burmese prostitutes back to Burma, often abusing them in detention before sending them back home. Only a few lucky victims have been safely re-housed by Thai NGO’S before their return.

Information about what happens to these women and girls upon their return to Burma is not readily available. There are no domestic human rights organisations inside Burma, and international human rights groups are denied access. Many victims are known to have been arrested. In 1992 the Thai government worked together with Burmese officials in an effort to repatriate ninety five women and girls, in a brand new approach that might have been the blueprint for how to ensure a safe return home for the victims. But these efforts soon stalled: Thai authorities neglected to follow up on the girls and ensure their safety. The approach was soon abandoned.

The denial of basic human rights has an explicit connection with the exposure to  HIV/AIDS. The abject failure of Thai and Burmese officials to punish and protect against debt bondage, illegal confinement, and forced, unprotected sex with large numbers of men undeniably ensures exposure to this deadly virus. Subsequently, their actual or suspected HIV status exposes them to further abuse, including compulsory testing by officials and the non- consensual distribution of test results, which subjects them to yet more abuse.[8]

While legislation to stop trafficking does exist in Burma, these laws are ineffectual and overly restrictive. Furthermore, they are all too often directed towards the victims of trafficking, instead of the perpetrators. For example, the official ban on emigration has not succeeded in stopping the burgeoning sex industry in Burma; it has simply taken away yet another basic right from its women. This ban forces young women seeking to leave the country into the hands of ‘travel facilitators’, who often have close ties with traffickers. Although initial efforts have been made to stop the trafficking of Burmese girls and women, without the political will to punish the traffickers and to extend full protection to the victims, these abuses are likely to continue. None of the measures needed can be implemented without considerable international pressure. This pressure must come from countries with close ties to Thailand, the source of the problem- such as Japan and the U.S.; from the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations; from China, whose women are also being forced daily to work in Thai brothels; and from powerful international organisations, such as the United Nations.[9] If this issue is not genuinely prioritised, tens upon thousands of men, women, and children will continue to suffer through this modern form of slavery.