'Bait-and-switch' luring Thai women to prostitution in Japan

[Nicke]

CHIANG MAI, May 25 (TNA) - In a kind of 'bait-and-switch' operation, more than 5,000 Thai women, mostly from the country's North, have been lured into prostitution in Japan, Chiang Mai Provincial Police Division vice-commander Colonel Chamnan Ruadrew said on Thursday.

Promising one thing, women and girls are attrracted to going abroad for marriage, but when they arrive at their destinations, the conditions of their life-changing journeys have been changed.

Attending a seminar on human trafficking here with Thai police and government officers and both local and international non-governmental organizations, Col. Chamnan said many women in the north have been recruited into the sex industry overseas through advertisements by companies seeking women as prospective wives of foreign men and enticing them to live their lives overseas.

After marriage and moving overseas, many such women are forced into prostitution, according to Col. Chamnan.

In Japan alone, according to the officer, more than 5,000 Thai women have been provided with arranged marriages to Japanese men, who head the advertisement lists of foreign men claiming to want to have Thai wives, and many of the women have been tortured and forced into prostitution.

Citing police records and the findings of many researchers, speakers at the seminar revealed that young girls, especially those of tribal minority ethnic groups, in Chiang Mai and two nearby northern provinces, Chiang Rai, and Phayao bordering Myanmar, are most prone to be lured into the traps of human traffickers.

The panelists appealed for harsher legal measures against human trafficking rings and more efficient mechanism in helping the victims. (TNA)

[slinggalin]

So what is the outcome in Japan? Any arrests????????