Fighting Child Prostitution: A Red Light for Traffickers
Photos by Naveen Kishore
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Some 200,000 children and women sell themselves or are sold for sex in Thailand, and about one-third of the females are minors, according to UNICEF. Prostitution accounted for 10 to 14 percent of Thailand's annual gross domestic product from 1993 to 1995, and prostitutes working in Thai cities send about $300 million in earnings back to their villages each year, according to figures cited by a UNICEF study.
Each year, Sompop Jantraka has saved hundreds of girls from being sold into Thailand's brothels through his Development and Education Program for Daughters and Communities (DEPDC), which he founded in 1989. For his efforts, Jantraka has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was celebrated as part of a group of "Asian Heroes" that included Burmese Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in the April 2002 Asian edition of Time Asia magazine.
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DEPDC girls at the police station rehabilitation center in Mae Sai, Thailand's northern-most city, learn the craft of making paper flowers. DEPDC works with Thai police to rehabilitate youngsters who are habitual drug users by first making them kick their habit and then giving them skills to make a living.
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Motorcycle taxis await customers in Mae Sai, a town on Thailand's northern border with Burma where DEPDC is headquartered. This marketplace district is home to brothels packed with girls from the Akha hilltribe, who live nearby on either side of the Thai-Burmese border. By reaching out to the surrounding hilltribe families, Jantraka's program has helped many Akha girls avoid serving as prostitutes here.
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With few resources, Jantraka has assembled a network of volunteers who identify children at risk, according to Time,: "Then he persuades, pleads, begs or berates parents into allowing them to attend his school for free. Once there, the girls are taught vocational skills, then given help finding jobs or scholarships for higher education. If they are in danger, he will shelter them. The school, which depends on donations for survival, now also includes counseling services, a library and a legal aid center. 'To see girls enslaved in brothels, it hurts,' says Sompop. 'If you can protect one child, you protect future generations.'"
Time reports that Jantraka, age 44, discovered "that, aside from brothel owners and pimps, a wide range of people – many of them outwardly respectable – had a vested interest in perpetuating the sex trade. He calls them part of the 'bloodsucker cycle'; in some communities, parents, village leaders, taxi drivers, tour guides, bankers and elements of the police are all involved." Jantraka pursues his work undeterred despite being stalked by some of these people: "They show up in the afternoon, in a car outside the school and shelter he runs in the northern Thai town of Mae Sai. At dusk, when Sompop heads home, they follow him, making no attempt to hide. After he locks his front door, the phone calls start. Whispered threats before a click and a dial tone. Get out of town or we'll beat up your staff. Burn down your school. Get out before we kill you."
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Jantraka works in the remote northern tip of Thailand, a region of trafficking along the border with Burma. Another social entrepreneur – Montri Sinthawichai – is attacking the problem from Bangkok, Thailand's sprawling capital city in the south, where he is Rescuing Children from Abusers and "appealing to the heart of a society."
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Editing, design by Kris Herbst
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