Travel  |  Business World  |  Women's World  |  Entertainment

Change Your Life!

International conference of sex-workers in Thailand

News
Sports
Chat
Travel
Dhaka Today
Yellow Pages
Higher Education
Ask a Doctor
Weather
Currency Rate
Horoscope
E-Cards
B2K Poll
Comment on the Site
B2K Club

November 2, 2000 

BANGKOK (AP) - Sex workers from the Asia-Pacific and the United States will gather in Bangkok to discuss how to change public perceptions of prostitution and improve working conditions, organizers said Wednesday.

Around 50 prostitutes and representatives of non-governmental rights groups from 11 countries are due to attend the unprecedented closed-door meeting Nov. 15-19 in the Thai capital, notorious for its red light bars and sex industry.

Chanthavipa Aphisuk of conference organizer Empower, a Thai group that educates and gives legal help to sex workers, said participants will also discuss how to change government policies that do little to protect women involved in the sex industry.

"Society's perception of this profession is that it's like a soap opera, with upcountry girls forced to sell themselves in a brothel in the big city," she said.

"But it's not true. This is a profession that can make a girl independent and earn money. It's better than sitting still and waiting for the government to help."

However, as prostitution is illegal in most countries, the rights of sex workers are often violated by brothel owners, mafia and law enforcers, Chanthavipa said.

Foreign participants at the conference will include nationals of Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Fiji, Laos and the United States and possibly India.

The meeting will be closed to the public because some may be reluctant to talk openly about their professional experience, Chanthavipa said.

One participant will be Victoria Schneider, 49, who was a sex worker in San Francisco for eight years. She is planning to set up a retreat for female sex workers on the southern Thai resort island of Samui.

She will use funds from a dlrs 250,000 legal settlement awarded after she had sued the San Francisco sheriff's department for a police strip search when she was arrested in 1997 for working the city's streets.

Schneider encouraged other women sex workers to stand up for their rights.

"Being prostitutes, we still have our integrity. We should not let anyone destroy or violate our rights by any means," she told The Associated Press in Bangkok.

"I hope this conference will give an opportunity for sex workers from many countries to sit down and talk about how to deal with these problems."

Thailand is a center of the flesh trade in Southeast Asia. Estimates of the number of the sex workers in the country ranges from 150,000 to more than 1 million.

Many come from poorer neighboring countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Others come from eastern and central Europe.