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On Tuesday night the spec
assignment investigation exposes a network of south
African syndicates that smuggle Thai women into the
country and the sexually abuse and enslave them.
Rough estimates put the
number of Thai women trafficked into South Africa every
year at 1000. They are lured by Thai women they know…but
end up in the clutches of South African men who profit
from their suffering.
Co-owner of a brothel
where Thai women work explains how it works: “…a
syndicate buys them in Thailand…their parents or
whatever sells them to the syndicate and then they come
across here. They organise the permits and then they get
bought over here, so once they get bought over here,
then they’ve got to work back that amount of money,
plus whatever else…bought and paid for like beasts of
burden…”
Gauteng Provincial
Commander of Border Police, Supt. Frans Kloppers says
“These people are faceless…the main brain behind
syndicate or even the lady that is being trafficked will
never ever know these people, or will ever see them…because
they are making use of agents to come and do their dirty
work for them.”
Not content to leave the
perpetrators of such gross human rights violations
unknown and unnamed, Special Assignment goes undercover
and follows the trafficking trail from Johannesburg,
through a small KwaZulu-Natal town and on to Durban.
This Tuesday we present
“Traffic Report”, a programme about the South
African men and their Thai wives who lure women into
this country with promises of greener pastures, but
become their exploiters and oppressors.
David McCarthy, partner
in Durban club we infiltrate explains: “those Thai
girls…however sick it may sound…they appear to be
little school girls and I think that’s what the
attraction is all about…they are small, petite and
most of them are quite pretty.”
We discover that behind
the promises of easy money and the brisk sex trade Thai
women are part of here, lies tales of deception and
enslavement, mental and physical abuse. We introduce
some of the main characters in a sordid and lucrative
trade.
“Traffic Report” is
produced by Anna-Maria Lombard and cameraman Dudley
Saunders.
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