Sex trafficking victims help themselves to escape: Thais in Spain

I have objected to the use of the word myth to describe how trafficking is talked about nowadays. Myth implies fabrication, whereas I describe what’s going on as exaggeration, reductionism, over-simplification, stubborn refusal to recognise diversity and victimisation.

Here is a piece of trafficking news in which victims of the crime spoke up and got themselves rescued. Authentic victims who simultaneously acted to take control of their own lives:

Before the raid, one of the seven women had managed to contact the Thai Embassy in Spain and complained that herself and the others were forced into working as prostitutes at the club.

I am not saying this is always possible, but it illustrates how victims can and do act to help themselves. In the terrifying versions of the story told so often nowadays, traffickers exercise total control over sex slaves’ lives. But most sex jobs cannot involve guards remaining beside victims full-time, since the work they are meant to do involves private sex with customers. This Thai-Spanish story illustrates that Great White Rescuers are not always required and that third-world women are not so helpless and ignorant as the rescuers usually imply. Note that the women have also filed complaints against the trafficker back in Thailand.

Spanish sex ring exposed

29 August 2010, Bangkok Post

The Anti-Human Trafficking Division (AHTD) police have arrested a Thai man who is accused of luring seven Thai women into prostitution in Spain. . . allegedly sending seven women to work as sex workers at a night club in Spain’s northern city of Burgos.

The Thai Embassy in Madrid had alerted Spanish police to the suspected forced prostitution at La Boheme, the club, where 20 people, including the seven Thai women, were later rescued in a police raid earlier this year, said Pol Lt Gen Thangai. A Thai woman identified as Jinda Khetwat, who owned the club, fled before police arrived, he said.

Before the raid, one of the seven women had managed to contact the Thai Embassy in Spain and complained that herself and the others were forced into working as prostitutes at the club.

The AHTD investigation showed Mr Noppadon had lured the women to work at the club by telling them they would work as traditional Thai massage therapists. He had arranged their trips to Spain, including finding Thai men to be registered as their husbands to convince officials at Spain’s embassy in Bangkok they were newly married couples on a honeymoon trip to Spain.

Four victims have lodged complaints against Mr Noppadon, and his wife has been arrested in Spain, said the police.

A Spanish newspaper confirmed this story last November, by the way:

Ellas denunciaron: Al parecer, fueron las propias víctimas las que lograron hacer llegar la denuncia de estos hechos hasta la Policía, que desarticuló la parte ‘burgalesa’ de la trama. . . Estos hechos fueron puestos en conocimiento de la embajada del país de procedencia de las mujeres y posteriormente se procedió a la inspección del local. Diario de Burgos, noviembre 2009

My name is not spelled Laura Agustino or Agustine or Augustino or Augustine or Agostino or Augustin or Augustine. Correct is Laura Agustín

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