My sex trafficking feature was published today on Metropolis. Metropolis is a weekly with a super-short production schedule, so some edits got omitted, which sucks. (e.g. Graf 2 says Bua went to Japan to be an entertainer, but later in the story we say she realized she's not going to be a waitress.)
Instead of finding a current trafficking victim to profile, which would pose problems of safety, anonymity, censorship, etc., I wrapped the feature around the true story of Urairat Soimee, who died last year after a harrowing experience of being trafficked and forced into prostitution in Japan. I used to work on sex trafficking reports with the Asia Foundation while doing my MA, so I wanted to just get the important issues out there. Here's the intro:
Bua* was getting desperate. Ever since her husband was maimed in a car accident, the farm they owned in their small village in the Lom Sak province of Northern Thailand was shorthanded. Unable to afford even the most basic daily provisions, Bua started to depend on her extended family to support her three children. But she knew that arrangement couldn’t last forever.
Then, one day, Joe appeared. An older man with a daughter who was good friends with Bua's mother, Joe offered her an opportunity she couldn’t afford to turn down: a job as an entertainer in Japan. Bua didn't know anything about Japan but, right now, her family could really use the money. The decision to leave them in favor of work was hard to make, yet the promise of a better future easily trumped the desire to stay.
She didn’t know it yet, but Bua had just signed herself up for a trip on the human trafficking highway that would ultimately land her in prison.
good read!
Posted by: kyle | February 16, 2007 at 10:21 AM