More than 30,000 Thai women have been tricked by the Japanese Yakuza maffia to work as prostitutes in Japan, a senior official of Thailand's Ministry of Social Development and Human Security has revealed.
Speaking on returning from a Japanese meeting with the Thai community in Japan, aimed at finding ways to help Thailand's victims of human trafficking, Khun Veerasak Khwaisurat, the assistant to the Thai minister for social development and human security, announced that more than 30,000 Thai girls and women are living in Japan, of which only about 8,000 had legal visas.
Additionally, most of the Thai woman currently living in Japan, had been tricked into working in the Japanese sex industry as prostitutes, either through a setup marriage with a Japanese man or by the way of one of the 10 Japanese Yakuza Mafia gangs, who forced Thai girls to work as prostitutes in Japan to pay off their travel-debts of TBH 500,000 to 2 million ($US 12,000 to 48,000).
Khun Veerasak also said that even if those Thai woman were close in paying off their debts to the Japanese Yakuza gangs, they rarely saw a better form of life in Japan. It is very common for Japanese police officers to arrest and deport the Thai girls back to Thailand, once their debt is paid of. Khun Veerasak agreed however that many Thai girls keep trying to enter the golden land Japan illegally, with as result that most of them become involved in the human trafficking and Japanese prostitution trade, once they are married to one of the puppet-men of the Japanese Yakuza mafia gangs.
Veerasak agreed that the only way in which the members of these Japanese Yakuza gangs in Thailand could be caught was to offer bribes and rewards for information, as otherwise only the small-scale Thai pimps working together with the Yakuza maffia would be caught by the Thai police.
The Thai government needs to communicate more with Thailand's Anti-Money Laundering Office to seize the assets of the Thai and Japanese people involved in those prostitution and human trafficking operations in Thailand and point a finger to Thai government officers who turn a blind eye on these ongoing illegal operations. However, as their is no extradition agreement between Thailand and Japan, punishing suspects is often very difficult.
A very large number of Thai women are suffering in Japan. Their passports have been taken away by Yakuza members and they are scared to ask help from the Japanese authority and police. As they have entered Japan illegally they also can not receive any kind of healthcare protection. Many Thai girls are infected with AIDS and do not receive treatment, they have to struggle on working in the Japanese prostitution trade until their AIDS infection reaches its final stage and they are send back to Thailand to die.
Khun Veerasak also said that they had found that the Thai women working in Japan could only send little money back home, as they are illegally in the country, they get cheated by sending their money back to home to Thailand. They are encouraged by their Japanese bosses to keep their earnings in the form of gold jewelry, and are then encouraged to enter gambling dens and to buy drugs and heroin, which are medicines, they are told to help them work better and help them lose weight.
Veerasak explained, that in order to help solve these problems of Thai woman in Japan, the ministry was preparing to offer special savings schemes for Thais living and working abroad, next week, his department would discuss this topic with the Ministry of Finance, to offer the Thais living abroad the opportunity to purchase 1-year Thai savings bonds. he absolutely denied that this was to encourage Thai people to work abroad, but said it was to help Thais already living abroad to gain enough money to come back home.
He further warned the Thais that working in another country was far from the heaven portrayed by the illegal recruiting agents, he said that Thai victims of these recruitment agents were mostly taken advantage of and became simply illegal immigrants in that country.
The Thai Ministry was now showing special video's in the entertainment districts of Patpong, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy, in an effort to try and discourage the Thai girls working there from being tricked into forced prostitution abroad.
Veerasak also added that on 1-3 September 2003, Thailand would host the Asia-Europe meeting APEC on cooperation to combat human trafficking in Asia and the rest of the world.
