Pavena Hongsakula. JP/Rita A. Widiadana

Twenty years ago, Pavena Hongsakula, a newly-elected member of the Thailand parliament, came across an 11-year-old girl, while visiting a rehabilitation center near the capital city of Bangkok.

The government-run center, Bann Kedhakarn, is also a vocational training center that provides services to former commercial sex workers, many of whom are underage girls as young as 10 years old.

At the center, this young and beautiful girl was learning to knit. 'When I asked her under what circumstances she was brought here, she replied that she had been sold by her step-father to a brothel.' The Thai police later took her to the rehabilitation center.

'I was terribly shocked to learn what had done to this 11-year-old girl and I thought about my own child. I went home that day in tears after I saw the girl and other women in the center.

'I decided I would become involved in helping these poor women and children in addition to my legislative duties,' she said speaking about her defining and life-changing moment in her life.

Pavena shared her courageous endeavor to help children and women in Thailand with journalists, editors and academia from Asia-Pacific countries during a cocktail party organized by the Women and the United Nations Population Fund Agency (UNFPA) in Bangkok recently.

Pavena is a six-time member of parliament, former minister of tourism, former deputy minister of labor and social welfare department and now minister of social development and human security.

'With the authority and networks, I am working to garner help and support to free children and women from the labyrinth of sex trade and violence.'

As a legislator, she helped draft the Prostitution Prevention and Suppression Act, the Child Protection Act and the Trafficking in Women and Children.

Child prostitution is a serious social problem in Thailand ' a form of human enslavement that involves an estimated 800,000 girls under the age of 16, bought and sold for a profit that exceeds the drug trade and even weapon sales, data from the Global Witness reveals.

'Children and women must realize that someone close to them, whom they think they can trust, may in reality be a real threat to their lives. This is the case in Thailand,' warned Pavena.

Over the last two decades, Pavena has dealt with countless harrowing cases of children and women trapped in the vicious sex slavery, domestic violence and other forms of abuse.

Today, thousands of women and children in Thailand are being oppressed, abused and exploited by families and society alike.

Fathers, mothers, husbands, uncles or close relatives and friends deliberately, if not forcefully, lure these unfortunate souls into the cruel and merciless sex industry. Families often do not understand the mammoth problems these sold women and children will face ' including the danger of HIV/AIDS as well as other sexual related diseases ' all of the diseases that may lead them to their graves.

The blame lies with the country's tradition and history of prostitution, the government's ambitious tourism program and society, which lacks concerns and concrete action in facing this deadly issue.

The Thai government sees tourism as a way to earn money to boost its economy as well as to take its citizens out of poverty. Tourism brings in billions of US dollars every year. More than 10 million tourists visit Thailand every year and approximately 60 percent are single males.

An NGO stated that 70 percent of male tourists in Thailand are sex tourists. The prostitutes they use typically have sex with 10 to 15 men every day and sometimes as many as 30 men.

Tourism's impact on the lucrative sex industry has been a major contributor to the enormous growth of child prostitution in Thailand.

Many people, including government officials, have the opinion: 'hear no evil; see no evil and speak no evil,' and do nothing to deal with this 'covered problem'.  Society denies or fails to acknowledge the oppression and exploitation of children and women.

Pavena took a bold step by establishing the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women, which aims to help these needy children and women. She is the president of the foundation.

Almost every minute, the foundation receives calls reporting cases of child labor, child rape, child prostitution, illegal girl and women trafficking and domestic violence.

'What we needed was prompt rescue operations, coupled with a seamless entrance into traditional rehabilitation programs,' she said.

After the rescue, she added, women and girls needed legal help to secure the much needed evidence as well as witnesses to testify against the abusers.

The foundation set up the Pavena Rescue Squad, which collaborates with the Thai National Police Force to rescue children and women from abusers. The foundation also provides vocational training, housing shelters as well as legal and health assistance.

'Almost every day, I visit brothels, bars and entertainment centers all over Thailand and the border areas where children, girls and women might become victims of violence.'

Pavena has to face ferocious pimps, international drug rings, human traffickers and even the families that chose to sell their women. But to these people, the soft-spoken Pavena is their worst nightmare.

When asked whether criminal gangs have ever threatened her, she explained that: 'Sometimes, I feel my body shivering. But, somebody has to do the job. I have even sent a legislator to jail for having sex with underage girl,' Pavena said.

'Our children are the future of our nation and the world.'

Without help these women and children could turn into abusers themselves or become criminals.

'Let us give these children an opportunity to grow up in a warm and caring society.'

*The article was published in conjunction with the Regional Conference on Legal Protection for Child Victims of Sexual Exploitation in Southeast Asian countries to be held in Nusa Dua Bali on Oct. 23 and 24.

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