Filipino women lured to Singapore sex dens
Wed, September 10 2008
Penniless and deeply in debt in a foreign land, 24-year-old Camille, not her real name, had no choice.
She says she had sex with men in hotel trysts arranged by her pimp, who took most of the money, until she sought shelter at the Philippine embassy, according to a report in the Hong Kong Standard.
“My wounds barely healed and I was being forced to have sex,” she said, breaking into sobs during an interview before flying home earlier this year. “The pimp had no pity. The men had no mercy. I should have listened to my parents not to come here.”
Philippine embassy officials said Camille, a single mother, is among a growing number of Filipino women lured by human trafficking syndicates to Singapore, Southeast Asia’s wealthiest economy.
Promised jobs as “entertainers” in pubs and restaurants, many instead find themselves indentured as prostitutes, working to pay back the cost of getting there. Women interviewed said they were locked in cramped apartments, given one meal a day and told they owed from $1,000—$4,000 to their pimps for bringing them to the city-state.
Singapore’s sex industry, where prostitution is legal but pimping and public solicitation are not, is dominated by women from the Philippines, Thailand, China and Vietnam, sources said.
The Philippine embassy in Singapore said there were 212 cases of human trafficking involving Filipinas last year, up from 125 in 2006 and from 59 cases in 2005. Of those 212 (nearly 30 per cent) admitted to having engaged in prostitution or said they were coerced into sexual acts.
Filipino consul Neal Imperial said the numbers are the “tip of the iceberg” as they reflect only women who turned to the embassy for help. The U.S. State Department’s 2008 Trafficking in Persons report named Singapore as among the countries not doing enough to combat the problem.
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