Dec 20, 2010, 8:26 GMT
Bangkok - Thai police cracked down on an international sex trafficking ring over the weekend, rescuing a dozen Uzbek women from forced prostitution in Bangkok, police said Monday.
Acting on a tip from the Freeland Foundation and United Nations, police on Sunday raided an apartment where they found 12 young women from Uzbekistan who had allegedly been lured into prostitution and robbery.
'Four of the women had no passports so we will send them back to Uzbekistan,' said Police Colonel Surachet Hakphan of Anti-Human Trafficking Division. 'The other eight are still under investigation to see if they are victims or procurers,' he said.
'Some of the ladies said they had been threatened with death or with attacks on their relatives in Uzbekistan if they didn't work for the gang,' Surachet said.
He said police had been investigating the case for three or four weeks after receiving information from Freeland and the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking that an international human-trafficking ring was operating in Bangkok.
Sources at Freeland, a rights group that combats both animal and human trafficking, claimed the ring was operated by Uzbek, Russian and Thai criminals.
'We still don't know if Thais are involved, but we understand that this ring is run by the Uzbek mafia,' Surachet said.
Freeland workers claimed that at least three Uzbek women had recently escaped from the trafficking ring in Bangkok, which forced them to work the streets around Nana Road, a red-light district that is popular among Western and Arab tourists.
They were reportedly forced to drug clients so the gang could rob them when they passed out.
'When recruited, the mainly rural-based Uzbek women reported they were told they would make significant sums of money in Thailand where they would be free to come and go,' said Freeland's Asia director Steven Galster.
'These women fear the mafia and police alike, so it is difficult to convince them to seek help from law enforcement,' he said.
Freeland appealed to Thai authorities to allow the victims to return home as soon as possible, rather than putting them in government shelters where they can be kept for over a year while awaiting court proceedings against their controllers.
Source: monstersandcritics.com
Thai police crack down on Uzbek sex trafficking ring - Monsters and Critics
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