Population, Gender, and Disparity - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 79

Figure 3-7
I discovered this sign in Laos. It is informing
people, especially “bridge populations,” (men who
work away from home) about the risk of AIDS
from unprotected sex. Photograph courtesy of
B. A. Weightman.

out and was kept naked to make it almost impossi-
ble for her to get away .
By a miracle of ingenuity , Rath finally escaped
and went to the police where she was arrested for
illegal immigration. After serving a year in prison, a
Malaysian policeman drove her to the border with
Thailand, where he sold her to a Thai brothel. For-
tunately , she was not beaten there nor was she well
guarded. After two months, she was able to escape
and make her way back to Cambodia.
Once in Cambodia, she was fortunate enough
to gain the attention of a social worker from the aid
group American Assistance in Cambodia. She was
given US$400 to open a souvenir stall in Poipet at
the Cambodia-Thailand crossing—a town famous
for its brothels.
When I got there on a jam-packed bus, I and
the mob got off and dragged our bags along a dirt
strip about the length of a football field. Part way
along, little boys came running to carry the bags of
foreigners and others they thought could afford the
miniscule fee of a few coins. If you insisted on car-
rying your own luggage, you were swarmed,
grabbed, and clawed by tough, desperate limbs and
your stuff quickly thrown into rickety wheelbar-
rows or stacked on their head. There were plenty of
young girls, their faces plastered with makeup,
hanging around outside an array of shacks. I stayed
at a medium-low end hotel that had a large teak-
floored veranda with a bar. Several older, Caucasian
and East Asian men sat around with their girls. I
didn't dare interfere because I probably would have

been arrested and thrown into some hovel never to
be seen again. In 2008, the Thai government raided
Poipet and half the brothels closed. As far as I
know , Rath is still there selling her baseball hats
and T T-shirts.

What is the United States doing about human traffick-
ing? As of this writing, only about one percent of the
American foreign aid budget is directed toward women' is
issues around the world. However, the U.S. Department of
State now is strongly involved in the issue of human traf-
ficking. The agency is trying to coerce countries to take
strict and legitimate actions against traffickers. Its 2009
T Trafficking in Persons Report assesses a country' s laws and
programs and places it in one of four tiers ofprogress:
Tier 1 Countries whose government fully complies
with the T Trafficking Protection Act (TVPA)' s minimum
standards. (South Korea)
Tier 2 Countries that do not comply but are making
efforts to comply . (Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Laos,
Maldives, Nepal, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-
Leste, and Vietnam)
Tier 2 W ATCH LIST Numbers of victims are rising
and governments fail to provide valid evidence of
efforts. (Cambodia, Bangladesh, China, India,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka)
Tier 3 Countries do not comply and show no
significant efforts to do so. (Malaysia, Myanmar
(Burma), and North Korea)

The American government is finally exerting
meaningful pressure on these countries to get rid of