Word: saied
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fetch their chips. The two tiny figures squatting at her feet jump up, run upstairs and return clutching gambling counters. "What the customers paid," explains Mama San. In the three months since Lek was brought to this back-street brothel in the northern Thai town of Mae Sai, she has collected eight white chips and four blues--equal to $59.50. Tip has done better: her chips add up to $163. "Not a bad little earner," says Mama...
...hired a minivan: Pim describes how her first day in captivity was spent driving from village to village as the man picked up a total of 12 girls. Bribing his way past the many Burmese road checkpoints and buying forged visitor papers allowing the girls to work in Mae Sai proved to be routine. The rebel threat and drug running give even honest Burmese security forces in the area other priorities...
...suspects her mother knew her true destiny. Lek and Tip, on the other hand, appear unaware, or unable to admit, that their mothers sold them into sexual slavery. Lek says she came to Mae Sai because she wanted to earn money to help her widow mother buy their rented house. A friend approached her in a market near her house in Rangoon, she says, and asked simply whether she wanted to make money in Thailand. She jumped at the chance. Tip, like Pim, was recruited by an agent but insists her mother thought she was going to be cleaning houses...
...parents or the village head," says Waing. Such arrangements, she adds, are extremely rare. "Generally these are the very people who sent them away in the first place." Since starting up a repatriation program early last year, World Vision has managed to bring only three girls back from Mae Sai...
...border turns out to be easy. Both girls insist they want to go to Kentung to live with Tip's family. They would feel safest there. With trepidation, we agree. While we arrange visas for ourselves, they pick up a pass to Tachileik, the Burmese border town opposite Mae Sai. With the heavy traffic across the bridge, the four of us cross unnoticed. Fearing problems with checkpoints if we go by road, we buy the two girls flights to Kentung. It is with relief that we watch the plane take...