Look, don’t touch: Thai Bars raided for trafficking child ‘entertainers’

In Nanchanok Wongsamuth’s article, “Look don’t Touch: Thai Bars raided for trafficking child ‘entertainers’”, she covers the recent anti-trafficking operations on karaoke bars in Chiang Mai. Wongsamuth interviews Pim, a 16-year-old waitress and entertainer at one of these karaoke bars. Although Pim claims that she wanted to work there and that no one forced her to have sex with customers or wear revealing clothing, the government still considers it sex trafficking because she is a minor. This new form of trafficking, where children work as entertainers at restaurants and bars rather than in brothels is in part a result of the harsher child prostitution laws that have been put in place as Thailand tries to upgrade from a tier 2 country on the U.S. TVPA scale. Although Thailand’s anti-trafficking division has been trying to crack down on these child ‘entertainer’ cases, there is little prosecution of perpetrators in the courts due to the difficulty of securing evidence.

Wongsamuth notes that the child sex trade in Thailand has evolved over the past decade to meet new demands and challenges. Perpetrators now more often meet minors at bars or online, rather than purchasing time with them in brothels. The spread of technology has contributed to this two-fold, on both the supply and demand sides. It is now easier for minors from rural regions to learn about and obtain work in the cities, and also for child abusers to find and connect with them online. We see evidence of this in the article when the author notes that police are identifying suspected victims through social media, where bar owners post pictures to showcase their young entertainers. These cases provide a brief glimpse into how globalization, the flows of technology, people, and money, are contributing to and forcing the evolution of human trafficking.

As globalization and other forces cause the human trafficking industry to evolve, it is important for us to understand the new forms it is taking and the people who are being victimized. These new types of trafficking encourage a consideration of how gender roles affect perceptions of human trafficking. In the past there has been a narrow focus on the human trafficking of women and girls for sex work and prostitution, but as we see in this article trafficking can take several forms and there is no singular archetype for victims of it. There has also been a major issue in recent years with the trafficking of boys for work in the fishing industry, but media coverage and public concern over it is underwhelming in comparison to the international condemnation of sex trafficking. As the trafficking industry grows and changes, an important component of working to end it will be fully understanding all the forms and victims that it takes.