Posts Tagged ‘Thailand’
Monday, May 10th, 2010
10/5/10; (2 Items)
A couple who operated a Sydney brothel forced five women to live in “conditions of slavery”, making them work more than 100 hours per week, even if they were sick, a jury has been told. Trevor Frank McIvor, 62, and his de facto wife, Kanokporn Tanuchit, 44, have each pleaded not guilty to five counts of possessing a slave and five counts of using a slave. The jurors, who were told the hearing is a retrial, heard that the five women were recruited from Thailand by a third party, who arranged Australian visas for them. Crown prosecutor Bruce Levet said on their arrival in Sydney, the women had their passports and phones taken and they were housed in “restricted circumstances” at the Fairfield brothel or the couple’s house.
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Tags: Australia, Sex Trade, Thailand, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Sian Powell; 13/3/08;
A laugh rings out; one of the young women leans over, grinning, and whacks her neighbour on the arm. There are eight or 10 friends here in the Can Do bar in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai, sitting in easy camaraderie around a big table in an open-air back room. Eating noodles, teasing, gossiping – they are clearly enjoying themselves, at ease with one another, relaxed. These women could be students, or colleagues, or factory workers on a break.
Instead, they are all prostitutes – forced by economic necessity and a lack of opportunity to make a living selling sex to men. Thailand has limited social welfare provisions and life is hard for the poor, especially refugees.
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Tags: Sex Trade, Thailand, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Ben Doherty; 13/1/10
The 4500 ethnic Hmong asylum seekers – including more than 40 probably bound for Australia – who were forcibly deported from Thailand in late December are being held in squalid secret camps in remote parts of Laos, guarded by soldiers. The Herald reached the main entrance of a camp at Paksan, on the Mekong River, where hundreds of Hmong hillt-ribes people stood barefoot in the dirt behind three metres of razor wire as loudspeakers ordered them to move away from the gate. The Hmong have historically suffered persecution, including arbitrary arrest and internment in re-education camps, at the hands of the communist Lao Government, because many of their ethnic minority were secretly recruited by the CIA to fight for the US during the Vietnam War and in the ”secret war” in Laos.
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Tags: Laos, Terrorism, Thailand, USA
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA, Vietnam, War | No Comments »
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
31/12/09
The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, has asked the government of Laos to allow it access to the more than 4,000 Hmong asylum-seekers recently deported from Thailand. The agency says some of those sent back to Laos have refugee status and need international protection. In a statement, the UN also urged the Thai government to detail the assurances it recieved from the Laotian authorities on the treatment of the Hmong. Thai officials, supported by hundreds of Thai troops, completed the deportation of the ethnic Hmong back to Laos on Tuesday.
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Tags: Laos, Migrants & Refugees, Thailand, UN
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, United Nations | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Paul Maley; 30/12/09; (2 Items)
Sixteen Tamil refugees rescued by the Oceanic Viking will begin arriving in Australia today, six via the Christmas Island detention centre. Forty of the Sri Lankan Tamils left Indonesia’s Tanjung Pinang detention centre yesterday morning, courtesy of a special deal underwritten by the Rudd government to fast-track their resettlement in exchange for ending their month-long standoff aboard the Customs boat. In an unlikely twist, The Australian has been told six of the Tamils will travel straight from Indonesia to Christmas Island, where three of them – a mother and her two young children – will be reunited with their husband and father. It is understood the woman asked to be taken to her husband, who came to Australia via a separate asylum boat about six months ago.
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Tags: Australia, Indonesia, Migrants & Refugees, Sri Lanka, Thailand
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant, Sri Lanka | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
29/12/09
Thailand has sent army troops with shields and batons to begin evicting 4000 ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers from Thai camps and send them back to Laos despite strong objections from the US and rights groups who fear they will face persecution. Under tight security, an initial group of Hmong – many of them children – was driven out of the camp in covered military trucks, each manned by several soldiers. Journalists kept at a distance from the camp could see the convoy as it left. Thai authorities said the first batch would include 448 people. Washington called for the eviction to stop. “The United States strongly urges Thai authorities to suspend this operation,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement, noting that the UN and Thailand in the past had deemed that many of the Hmong in this group were “in need of protection because of the threats they might face in Laos”.
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Tags: Laos, Terrorism, Thailand, USA
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Sermsiri Ingavanija, Coordinator, Ban Landmine Project, JRSAP – JRS- Asia Pacific Issue 75, PO Box 49, Sanampao Post Office, Bangkok 10406, Thailand; 28/11/09
Ms. Wiboonrat Chanchoo is like any other normal person and in a crowd no one would notice anything strange about her. Only a careful look at her left leg would let one know that it is not her natural leg, but a prosthetic leg. “I stepped on a landmine in 1966. My father, brother, sister and I went to cut the bamboo not far from our village. I cut 69 bamboo stalks. I needed one more stalk and then I could go back home. While trying to cut this last bamboo, I stepped on a landmine. Hearing the blast, my brother and sister ran to help me. I shouted to them not to come as there could be more landmines around. I dragged myself about 50 metres to a safe area. I was taken to the hospital for an operation and upon waking up afterwards I found that I had lost my left leg below the knee. At that time I had two children. Soon after the accident my husband divorced me because of the loss of my leg. Since then, I have taken care of my children alone. Because of the loss of my leg my mobility was greatly reduced and life became very difficult because I was so slow. A job that other people could finish in one day might take me eight to ten days to finish.”
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Tags: Arms, Human Rights, Thailand, USA
Posted in Arms, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA, Vietnam | No Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Sanjay Gathia, JRS-AP Regional Information Advocacy Officer; JRS- Asia Pacific Issue 75, PO Box 49, Sanampao Post Office, Bangkok 10406, Thailand; 28/11/09
Bao (name changed) spoke softly. I had to lean forward and strain my ears to listen to him. He was the only one among the group who could understand English easily and spoke it with some fluency. He and ten other men and three women were a group of Montagnards from Vietnam who had arrived by way of Cambodia in Thailand to seek protection. They were caught by police in the border area and then sent to the Bangkok IDC to be processed as cases of illegal entry into Thailand. They were now held in detention for one year already. The term ‘Montagnard’ is a carryover from the French colonial period in Vietnam. It means ‘mountain people’ in French and describes several tribal peoples from the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
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Tags: Cambodia, Human Rights, Thailand, USA, Vietnam
Posted in Asia, Terrorism, USA, Vietnam | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 20th, 2009
20/11/09
The United Nations has urged Thailand to end the three-year detention of nearly 160 ethnic Hmong from Laos. The Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also asked the government to allow the Hmong to be moved to several western countries. The UN agency said the Hmong detainees have been recognised as refugees deserving asylum, and should be allowed to resettle in western countries. But Thai authorities insist that they are economic migrants, and are holding them in two cells at the immigration detention centre in Nong Khai on the Mekong River border with Laos.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, Thailand
Posted in Asia, Burma, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
18/8/09; http://www.theage.com.au/national/sex-slave-sentence-20090817-enpo.html
The first person to be found guilty under federal anti-sex slavery laws has won a reduction in her sentence. Wei Tang was sentenced to 10 years’ jail in 2006 for forcing five Thai women at her brothel to serve 900 clients. Her conviction was quashed and a fresh trial ordered in 2007 by the Court of Appeal, a decision the High Court overturned last August. Yesterday in the Victorian Court of Appeal, Tang’s sentence was reduced to nine years, with a non-parole period of five.
Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Thailand
Posted in Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, Sex Trade, Workers | No Comments »
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Peter Alford; 14/8/09
Burma’s reclusive head of state, Than Shwe, will meet a senior US senator who is helping shape the Obama administration’s Southeast Asia policy – a signal that, in spite of again imprisoning Aung San Suu Kyi, the regime could respond to American outreach. Senator Jim Webb, a strong critic of the sanctions-first approach of the previous two administrations, is expected in Burma this weekend during his fact-finding tour of Southeast Asia. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s East Asia and Pacific sub-committee, Senator Webb is likely to be talking to Than Shwe as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unofficial envoy. At the ASEAN regional forum in Phuket, Thailand, last month, Mrs Clinton called for “a creative way” of dealing with Burma, a full member of the Southeast Asian grouping, but hampered by US, EU and Australian trade, travel and investment sanctions.
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Tags: Burma, Human Rights, Thailand, USA
Posted in Burma, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Sian Powell; 6/8/09
Shackled at the ankles, with his head bowed, Sydney man Andrew Hood barely flinched when a panel of judges in Bangkok’s Central Criminal Court yesterday sentenced him to life in prison for an attempt to smuggle 3kg of heroin from Thailand into Australia. Hood had earlier told The Australian he had been promised $15,000 for the smuggling run by someone he knew in Sydney; and it was tempting because he had lost his job and his car had been repossessed. A former heroin addict, Hood had never left Australia before, and he was only in Thailand for a few days before he was arrested at the airport. “It’s cost me my life,” he said from behind the screens of a visiting cell in Bangkok’s Central Correctional Institution for Drug Addicts, some time after he was caught. I wouldn’t want no one to go through this.”
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Thailand
Posted in Aid / Trade, Asia, Drugs | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
Farah Farouque; 28/4/09
A Thai woman flown to Melbourne to work in the sex industry manufactured a story that she was a member of a persecuted religious minority to gain a bridging visa, a court was told yesterday. But although the woman, who had no English, signed the blank refugee application soon after she arrived in Australia she only later came to understand what was written on her behalf, she said through an interpreter. The woman was allegedly told by members of a sex-trafficking syndicate to claim she was a part of an oppressed group, the Hope of Thai People Foundation and subject to physical harassment and maltreatment in Thailand.
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Tags: Australia, Sex Trade, Thailand
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, March 21st, 2009
Jewel Topsfield; 21/3/09;
Afghan refugees may have escaped the oppressive Taliban regime, survived dangerous journeys at sea and endured months in detention, but the last thing many want when they come to Australia is counselling. “Counselling doesn’t work for my community, they are reminded of what happened in their life. They are crying,” says social worker Gulghotai Wahidi. “Women need activities … something to forget about what happened in their past.”Ms Wahidi is one of 41 Afghans whose settlement experiences are told in a profile launched this week by the South Eastern Region Migrant Resource Centre, which helps services meet Afghans’ needs.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Africa, Australia, Burma, Korea, Malaysia, Migrants & Refugees, Thailand
Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, Asia, Australia, Gender & Marriage, Health & Children, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Daniel Flitton; 28/2/09; (4 Items)
“OLA,” the man cried in a surprised greeting. The bargain shops crowded along Footscray Mall are hardly a usual hang-out to find a high-flying ex-prime minister. Especially one from Portugal. But Henrique Sa — who has lived in Australia for 19 years — noticed the former leader of his homeland and knew him from pictures on television, so rushed across to shake his hand.
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Tags: Australia, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, Migrants & Refugees, Thailand, UN, USA
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, United Nations, USA | No Comments »
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
14/2/09; (2 Items)
Thailand’s Prime Minister has admitted that boatloads of Rohingya asylum seekers have been towed out to sea and allowed to “drift” by Thai authorities. The admission reverses weeks of denials of mistreatment of the Muslim minority from Burma. More than 1000 Rohingya boat people are believed to have been herded into wooden boats without engines and left at sea over the past seven weeks. Hundreds have been rescued or drifted to shore in Indonesia and the Andaman Islands, showing scars from alleged beatings and saying they were left with little food and water to survive.
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Tags: Australia, Burma, Migrants & Refugees, Thailand
Posted in Asia, Australia, Burma, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
