Thai women under debt bondage in Japan

By Jim Lobe
Septemeber 21, 2000

Washington - Thousands of Thai women suffer debt bondage and "slavery-like conditions" in Japan where they are trafficked into the country's sex industry, according to a new report released here Thursday by a major US human rights group.

In a blistering, 227-page study, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) charges that Japanese officials, while aware of the dimensions of the problem, have failed to take strong action to curb the trafficking, particularly against those forces, such as the yakuza and other underworld groups, which benefit from the practice.

"If the Japanese government is so 'concerned' about the problem, it should do something for the victims instead of just talking about it," said Regan Ralph, the director of HRW's Women's Rights Division. "It is high time to stop the rhetoric and start some serious lawenforcement," she said, noting that the principal victims of police crackdowns against foreign sex workers are the women themselves.

The report, 'Owed Justice: Thai Women Trafficked into Debt Bondage in Japan', is the latest in a series on the growing problem of global trafficking of women put out by HRW and is based on a six-year study carried out by it and other rights groups in Japan and Thailand. Much of the study consists of excerpts of interviews in which victims recount their experiences.

Its release coincides with action in Congress here to toughen US laws against human trafficking, which, according to a recent report by the CIA, has become a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry and the fastest-growing source of profits for organized criminal enterprises around the world.

As many as 2 million people, primarily women and children, cross national borders each year in search of what they believe is legitimate work, but which turns out to be a form of virtual slavery or indentured servitude to employers who used them as prostitutes or in hard labor. The CIA estimated earlier this year that, of the global total, some 50,000 such people are brought to the United States each year, mostly from Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Mexico, and Asia.

Like the United States, Japan exercises a major pull for desperately poor people, particularly from poor regions elsewhere in Asia. The report cites estimates that some 150,000 non-Japanese women - many of them Thai or Filipino - employed in the sex industry.

The sexual exploitation of foreign women has been a sensitive issue in Japan for some time. During World War Two, the imperial army enslaved an estimated 200,000 women from conquered lands to serve as sex slaves for its soldiers. While Tokyo has since issued a verbal apology to these "comfort women", it has steadfastly ignored their claims for reparations. Coincidentally, 15 Asian women sued the Japanese government just this week in US court in their latest effort to recover damages for abuses committed against them.

In the late 1960s through the 1970s, Japanese men gained notoriety throughout Asia for "sex tours" and many Japanese companies even offered "weekend sex holidays" in Thailand, the Philippines, and South Korea for their employee's yearly bonuses. Such practices generated strong criticism from around the region. As a result,the yakuza and other criminal enterprises moved to import women into Japan itself and the number of foreign women recruited into the sex industry soared to the current levels.

Typically, women from Thailand originally came to Japan after being promised jobs as waitresses or factory workers or in the belief that they would be highly paid as entertainers or sex workers. Once in the country, however, they find themselves saddled with huge debts - usually US$25,000 to $40,000 - and "forced to work under brutal conditions without compensation until they are released," according to the report.

In most cases, trafficked women are compelled to work off their debts as bar "hostesses" who accompany clients to nearby hotels to perform sexual services, according to the report. They are not able to refuse clients, insist on the use of a condom, or even seek medical care without their employer's consent. Moreover, while they remain in debt many women are kept under constant surveillance - often by video cameras and motion-sensitive lights - and forced to satisfy all customer demands, the report says. Disobedience often leads to fines, physical violence, and even "resale" to third parties at higher levels of debt. If they contact the authorities, they usually face deportation, according to the report.

"They know that as 'illegal aliens' and 'prostitutes,' the best treatment they can hope for is summary deportation, while authorities turn a blind eye toward the abuses they've suffered at the hands of their traffickers," according to Ralph.

Most of the women interviewed for the study eventually paid off their debts over a period from several months to two years and then remained in Japan in order to earn money for themselves and their families back in Thailand. Some of the women, however, said that the working conditions were so unbearable that they chose to return home, even empty-handed.

The Thai and Japanese governments, which are participating in the drafting of a proposed UN anti-trafficking protocol, are well-aware of the situation and have publicly acknowledged the extent of the problem. But there is little appreciation, particularly in Japan, for the plight of the women themselves. Japanese authorities generally see the women as "criminals" who are entitled to little sympathy and support. Access to health care or the opportunity to sue their employers for damages is denied. By contrast, to the extent their employers or traffickers are prosecuted at all, they ordinarily are charged with immigration offenses or procuring prostitutes; almost never for committing serious abuses of human rights, such as forced labor, illegal confinement, or assault.

For its part, the Thai government has undertaken major efforts to prevent trafficking through public-information programs and training and employment projects in areas where many women are recruited by traffickers. It also screens passport applications for indications of trafficking and helps victims return from Japan to Thailand where they receive rehabilitation services.

At the same time, laws to crack down on traffickers have proven difficult to enforce and the government does not help victims gain justice against their employers in Japan. Their support also does not extend to women who cannot demonstrate Thai citizenship who are then left to fend for themselves in Japan, according to the report.

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