No money and nothing to eat at times

Published by The StarOnline on 3 December 2012.

Manizel Mazano, from the Philippines, has only one wish – she just wants to be in a place where she can put her miserable experience at a maid agency behind her. “It was terrible. I had no money and nothing to eat at times as the bosses ordered me to work for the past six months. I have not seen any of my salary as well. The worst part is when they (maid agency owners) locked me in a room with other maids after work. I don’t have much to ask now. I just hope we are placed in a much better place after this,” the 22-year-old woman said yesterday at the district immigration office."

Mazano said she paid for her own travel expenses when she came to the country several months ago.

Adinda Tanas, 20, an Indonesian helper, said the agency owner was indifferent to their health. “I once complained of a swollen leg because I was standing too long but they did not care,” she said.

Adinda, who entered Malaysia on a social visit pass in May, also claimed she had not been paid her wages. When she questioned the agency about this, Adinda said she never got a proper answer.

Another Indonesian woman, Yusnida, who arrived here six months ago, said the agency had been bringing her and other women to different homes to work as maids from 5am to 8pm daily. “My hands and legs were swollen from the long hours of work every day. The agent only provided us with two meals a day. There was not enough food and the workload was heavy,” she said.

Yusnida had once asked to go home but was told by the agency that she could only leave once she could settle the cost in agency fees to bring her here.

Link: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/12/3/nation/12404814&sec=nation

Related report:
http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=44629:105-foreign-maids-rescued-in-klang&Itemid=3

The Port Klang Immigration rescued 105 foreign women confined in a four-storey building of a maid agency in Bandar Baru Klang near here after raiding the premises yesterday. Selangor Immigration director, Amran Ahmad said the raid at about 7.45am found the women aged between 18 and 25 years, locked on three floors of the four-storey building, occupied by the maid agency.

"The women comprised 95 Indonesians, Filipinos (six) and Cambodians (four) who only had social visit passes and were believed to have entered the country between one and six months earlier," he said in a media conference here today.

He said 12 people were arrested, three of them were local men believed to be the agency employees, as well as nine foreign women supervisors, comprising five Indonesians, three Cambodians and one Filipino.

"Based on investigations, all women rescued were believed to be tricked into becoming maids on monthly and daily basis and were not paid wages after working for the past six months. All the women were sent by van every morning to houses around Klang to work as maids and would be confined in the building after work," he said.

Amran said the women were promised a salary of RM700 per month but have not received any money as the agency had claimed that their seven months salary would be charged as payment for working in the country. He said the licensed agency, believed to have been operating for the last five years, would be committing an offence for recruiting the women who have only social visit passes.

He said rescued women alleged they were roughed up and had their food rationed by the agency. Amran said the department was looking for a local man who is the owner of the maid agency to assist in the investigation. The operation was led by Immigration deputy director M. Chandran with 20 Port Klang immigration officers.

– Bernama

Standing up for sex workers is standing up for pimps

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/standing-up-for-sex-workers-is-standing-up-for-pimps-20120618-20k84.html Published by The Age on 19 June 2012. By Caroline Norma.

Prostitutes are not sex workers, they are prostituted women.

ELITE academics in Australia love to profess their support for ''sex workers''. University of New South Wales academic Catharine Lumby in ''Sex is not dirty work'' on these pages pleaded for the media to treat sex workers with more respect, given that prostitution is a legal form of employment in Australia.

Lumby recalls telling her sons over the dinner table to not make jokes about women their friends call ''prosties'', and to remember that feminists and Christians could be condemned for failing to properly recognise prostitution as work.

This idea of prostitution conveyed to the two Lumby juniors is unmistakably a liberal one. In this framing, prostitution is embarked upon by individual women as something akin to a small-business enterprise (women in brothels in Australia are legally recognised as sub-contractors, not employees). While ''sex workers'' might be at the bottom rung of the social ladder in terms of education, prior victimisation, social networks, and personal asset bases, liberals see them as admirable for attempting to improve their circumstance, and possibly give their kids a better chance in life.

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In conveying this idea of prostitution, Lumby teaches her sons to be nice to ''sex workers'', which is indubitably a charitable thing for an elite academic to do.

However, in framing prostitution as a benign form of ''work'', Lumby also disenables her sons taking social and political measures against the sex industry and its customers as perpetrators of serious and widespread harm against women in Australia.

There now exists a mountain of empirical research, not only from feminist social scientists, but also from psychologists, clinicians, nurses, anthropologists and economists, of the harms of prostitution for women. These harms include post-traumatic stress disorder, genital and other physical injuries, pregnancy, depression and anxiety, and social isolation.

It has been known since the late 1970s that a major precursor of women's entry into prostitution is childhood sexual abuse. There is also empirical evidence of the damage to women's social status, and the negative impact on women's connection to local community, of the sex industry.

Overwhelmingly, the social science and health literature condemns prostitution as a source of harm to women, as well as children.

For liberals to successfully frame prostitution as ''work'', rather than commercially mediated sexual abuse, they must close their eyes to this evidence. They must also avoid encountering most women in prostitution - even the most conservative demographic studies of this population find that half would leave the sex industry if they could. And they must overlook the good results that governments in Sweden, South Korea, Norway and Iceland have achieved in declaring prostitution a violation of gender equality, and criminalising the sex industry and its customers.

Most significantly, though, liberals must avoid mentioning pimps, traffickers, and sex industry customers in making their argument that prostitution is a legitimate form of work for poor women. Lumby doesn't breathe a word of the profit-making activities of pimps in Australia, nor the acts perpetrated by sex industry customers who buy women in half-hour blocks. She fails to tell her sons about the strategies of violence, debt and intimidation that pimps use to keep women in prostitution, and to make sure they service customers with a smile.

She also omits to mention the kinds of sex acts customers do to women in prostitution, and the misogynistic abuse and brutality that women face when they're dispatched to the hotel rooms and houses of prostitution buyers.

These inconvenient facts cause liberals great difficulty in selling the message that prostitution is work. In light of these facts, prostitution begins to look like a system of hush money paid to pimps to supply men with vulnerable women for sexual use and abuse.

When elite academics like Lumby publicly declare their allegiance to ''sex workers'' they concurrently reveal a loyalty to pimps and sex industry customers. They do this through framing prostitution as ''work'', and therefore sending the message that no policy or community action need be taken against the sex industry as an employer of women and legitimate business sector.

In this atmosphere, pimps and their customers are able to continue their harmful activities, and the sex industry in Australia is able to profitably expand and diversify.

On the other hand, when elite academics like me declare our support for ''prostituted women'', we declare a commitment to elimination of the sex industry. We work towards public recognition of prostitution as a social harm through public awareness campaigns highlighting the effects of the sex industry on individual women, and women's social status.

Just like the anti-smoking campaigns that began in the 1970s, we seek a reorientation of the public's thinking about prostitution towards a critique of the ''pretty woman'' and ''happy hooker'' stereotype. Australian policymakers and community leaders mobilised against the tobacco industry in the past three decades, and we seek similar government action against the sex industry as a driver of social harm.

The criminalisation of pimps and sex industry customers is a necessary first step towards this goal, but we also call for public education about the reality of prostitution, as well as policy planning for programs and initiatives to assist women to leave the sex industry and build lives that reflect their worth as full citizens.

Dr Caroline Norma is a lecturer in the school of Global Studies, Social Science & Planning at RMIT University.

A Former Sex Slave Finds Freedom As An Entrepreneur

Published by Huffington Post on 21 May 2012.

Pamela Villarreal grew up as a sheltered child in a middle class home in upstate New York. But at age 15, one act of youthful rebellion ended up with her abduction as a sex slave for three weeks and not knowing on a daily basis whether she was going to live or die. By escaping the very day she was supposed to be sent by train to her new "owner" in New York City, Villarreal got the second chance at life she prayed for.

Healing from the traumatic experience didn't come easily. Though her life was no longer in danger, Villarreal couldn't find the comfort she needed in her family, as she had been a victim of incest, nor could she find it in marriage, as she was in two abusive relationships before reaching her mid 20s. It was only by starting her own businesses that Villarreal started the recovery process.

In fact, Villarreal started two of her businesses specifically to get over what happened to her. Her industrial maintenance business, Texas Property Control, was created out of her attempt to overcome her fear of men and large crowds, and helped to instill in her a sense of empowerment as a woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated field. More recently, she decided to turn her therapeutic hobby of candle making into a business, Revelations Candle & Christian Gift Shop, as a means to give back. After moving to Texas, Villarreal found out that nearby Houston is a major hub of human trafficking, and she wants to use her candle business to help other human trafficking victims in the area to start a new life after sex slavery.

Was your childhood in Angola, N.Y., pretty typical?

We were pretty sheltered. There was a lot of control. My father was a Navy man, so a lot of our discipline was military style. My sister and I had a very difficult childhood -- we had good times, but the discipline was hard. We weren't allowed to do a lot of things with other friends.

But when you were 15, you took a bus ride with a friend, without your parents' knowledge? What was your intention?

I would never normally have done this, but this girl I met at school, who I thought was my friend, talked me into skipping school. We took a bus from Angola to Buffalo, and we were supposed to spend a couple of hours at the restaurant where her boyfriend worked and then come back. I did not know at the time that this girl was supposed to pick me up -- that was her job. Well, we missed the bus coming back, so she called her boyfriend to pick us up. I was not street wise at all. I just knew I did not want go with him. He decided to go home first and change his clothes -- they told me to come in and I would be fine. I was going to wait in the car, but I was in an unfamiliar neighborhood and didn't want to stay by myself. As I was going up to the door, I wondered why there were bars on the upper windows, but thought, "Never mind, I'll be alright." I followed them upstairs to his apartment on the second floor, and when we got inside, he locked the door, and that was the turning point of my life.

Your instincts told you something was wrong, but you ignored your instincts?

Yes, I ignored them because I was afraid to call home. My grandmother lived in Buffalo but I didn't know her number. I felt like I had no choice, nowhere to go. I just needed to follow this girl and hope to get home, but I knew something was wrong.

After he locked the door, what happened next?

They started drinking, and I was in tears. I just wanted to go home and they kept giving me excuses and saying, "We'll go in a little bit." He said, "Why don't you lie down in the spare room? We'll wake you up later and take you home?" By then I was scared to death, because I didn't think I was getting home. I woke up the next morning and asked, "What happened, why aren't we going home?" And he looked at me and said "You're not going home. You're here to stay."

What was the first thing that went through your mind?

"I'm going to die." And I fought it -- I cried, screamed, tried to get out of the door, but I couldn't. By that night, I had fallen asleep again, and when I woke up, I was tied to the bed and that's the night I was raped. I kept thinking, I'm going to die, my parents are not going to know where I'm at, they're never going to find me, I'm never going to see my family again. And I screamed and he just kept forcing himself on me. After it was done, he told me to get up and take a shower and keep my mouth shut. I was in tears and I had blood all over. And he told me if I ever got out and if I ever said anything, he would go after my family, and he would kill me. I was there for three weeks. After one week, he started bringing people in and forcing me to have sex with them as well. I had no escape so I told myself I just need to give in or he's going to kill me, and some time there will be a chance that I will be able to get out but for now I just have to give in, and that's what I did. After the second week, he started bringing people in to look at me to buy me. I never knew what was going to happen -- whether I was going to get raped, bought or taken away then and there. I was drugged and got beaten every day, and I still fought as much as I could, but there wasn't anything I could do.

Going through that, did you ever want to give up on living?

I didn't know what to think -- I had nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. It looked like this was going to be my life, and I was never going to get out of it and had to accept it, but I didn't want to accept it. I wanted to get out. I always had that in my mind. I was pretty strong willed. I didn't want to die. I still don't know how I made it through. I prayed all the time that God would find a way to come and help me, take me, save me, show me a way out.

And then when a woman from New York City bought you, that was actually what allowed you to escape?

[The abductor's] brother found out about it, and he had a key to the apartment, which was locked from the outside. He came up when the other girl and I were alone and said he didn't know this had been going on and told me I had just been sold and I was supposed to leave on a train that evening to New York City. He asked what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to go home. So that man saved my life. He got a taxi and paid the taxi money to take me as far as it would take me. I was able to get to my grandmother's house.

And what happened to the girl?

He set us both free but a block down the road, she got out of the taxi and said she had to go back -- she couldn't leave.

What happened? Were your family members looking for you?

Yes, they were looking for me, but they had no idea where to look.

How did you find out that this man was caught years later, on your 26th birthday?

He was arrested on several counts of rape and sodomy. I was watching the news and talking to my mother on the phone, and the man's name and picture came on the TV.

So how did you go back to life as normal?

It's been a roller coaster ride until about five or six years ago. Now that I'm older, I can look back and say that girls have to be careful of new friends -- you don't know who they are. It's just like being married to a man. You never really know somebody. You have to be careful, strong. These relationships hurt me in one way, but made me strong in another way.

Where did candle art come into play?

A local candlemaker in Angola taught me, and I loved it. The candles came at a time in my life when I started opening up and feeling more confident. Anything creative, anything I could do with my hands was therapy.

I went through a lot of different things and forced myself into situations to get to this point where I could deal with my fears and overcome them, but it was my church that opened my mind to how I could reach out to other people and give back what God has given to me, and that's where the candles come in. I wanted to be able to sell these candles and give some of this money to Home of Hope in Houston, so I've slowly been getting involved in that. Eventually I'd like to set up an organization to house victims of sex trafficking, so they can start recuperating. Until I get to that point, I'm going to do whatever I can to help these girls. I have girls coming here to the shop talking about their experiences that they've never talked to anyone about before.

So at your shop, you want to not just sell candles but keep the door open for girls who want to talk, so they know they're not alone?

Exactly. And I have compassion, but I'm not going to feel sorry for them, because I have gone through every experience you can possibly think of. So if they come to me, I'm going to tell them to be strong, there is life after this, you can turn your life around. You can even own your own business. You are still a human, and it doesn't matter what people say about you or how they look at you, you need to be proud that you made it through. You lived.

Do you think you started your businesses as a way to regain control because of this experience where you felt so out of control and powerless?

Yes. I'm in control of myself. You get to the point where you're confident in yourself and you don't want to let anyone take that away, and that's the point I'm finally at.

Entrepreneur Spotlight

Name: Pamela Villarreal
Company: Revelations Candle & Christian Gift Shop, Texas Property Control
Age: 51
Location: Port Lacava, Texas
Founded: TPC: 2007. Revelations: 2010.
Employees: TPC: Seven. Revelations: None. 
2012 Projected Revenue: For both: More than $150,000
Website: www.wix.com/texaspropertycontrol/tpc, www.wix.com/texaspropertycontrol/native-lights

A stroke of searing pain

Published by Free Malaysia Today. By Stephanie Sta Maria

| October 24, 2011

There are some wounds that time doesn’t heal. For these wounds the only balm is the ceasing of nightmares and the loose embrace of normality once again. But the passageway between darkness and light is never quite sealed.

Nom Khai, 26, has been traversing this passageway for the past three years. He lives mostly in the light these days but a single flashback can hurl him right back into the dark pool of pain and fear.

In October 2008, Nom Khai was en route to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to apply for his refugee card when he was stopped by police.

As a Myanmar refugee living in Malaysia for three years he was used to such occurrences and braced himself for yet another interrogation. If he was lucky he would be let off without being relieved of all his money this time.

Instead he was arrested and subsequently bundled off to a prison near Kuala Lumpur where he spent the next three months waiting to be told of his fate.

The news finally arrived and with it came the first arrow of fear. Nom Khai was to be transferred to a detention camp.

“I was taken to court where the judge passed a sentence I couldn’t understand,” he told FMT through a translator. “My translator told me it was a three-month jail term and one stroke of the cane.”

“I was scared but he tried to comfort me by saying that other detainees had received harsher punishments. What we weren’t told was the date and time of the caning.”

A typical Inmate Card provides the precise number of years and months of the penal sentence and the number of strokes but not when the sentence will be executed.

Mental torture

Caned inmates interviewed in a recent Amnesty International report, entitled “A Blow to Humanity: Torture by Judicial Caning in Malaysia”, described this indefinite period of waiting as “mental anguish” and “like waiting to be hanged”.

“At first I was calm until one of my cellmates was caned,” Nom Khai said. “I saw the pain he was in and at one point his wound was exposed. That’s when I began feeling really scared.”

“We were told that if we bribed the prison officials we wouldn’t be hit so hard. I think the fee was about RM300. I would have paid but I didn’t have any money.”

Caning officers receive regular salaries as prison officials and a bonus for each caning they perform based on the number of strokes. In 2005, the government raised that bonus from RM3 to RM10 per stroke.

Amnesty also learnt that caning officers exploit a loophole in the caning procedure whereby a stroke that misses is still counted as a stroke. For a bribe, some caning officers will agree to miss one.

But since inmates don’t know which caning officer will be assigned to them, other prison officials are used as middlemen.

Nom Khai was eventually told of his date and time of the caning a week ahead. As the day drew closer he cried himself to sleep.

“At 11am that morning 30 of us were called out and assigned numbers,” he recalled. “Mine was 12. Then we had to stand in a line outside the caning room.”

While waiting for their turn the inmates were ordered to strip and don a small loin cloth that covers the genitals but leaves the buttocks exposed. A doctor checked then checked their heart and blood pressure to certify their fitness to be caned.

“We weren’t told the reason for the examination,” Nom Khai said. “But no one was rejected.”

Completely immobilised

From the waiting area the sounds of the actual caning were clearly audible. Inmates have described it as the sound of fireworks exploding accompanied by screaming and crying.

“Boom boom boom!” Nom Khai said solemnly. His translator flinched. “Some inmates had to be carried out because they couldn’t walk or had fainted. I was finally called in at 1pm.”

Then he fell silent and stared at his hands. His subsequent narration of what took place in the caning area was succinct.

“My hands and feet were spread and tied to wooden bars. I couldn’t move. I heard the prison official shout out ‘one’ and then I felt the cane. I have never felt such pain before.”

The Amnesty report has chronicled the events from the waiting area to the caning area. According to the interviewees, when an inmate enters the caning area a prison officer reads the sentence aloud after which the inmate is forced to respond, “Terima kasih, tuan”.

The inmate is then taken to a scaffolding of an A-frame truss where his hands and legs are tied, a belt is fastened around his waist and an open panel is placed around his buttocks.

Inmates told Amnesty that the restraints rendered them completely immobilised and the resulting sense of powerlessness was terrifying. The report went on to describe the excruciating details of the caning.

“Once the inmate is secured a guard counts out the strokes. At each count the caning officer lifts his cane, takes a full-body twirl and lands the end of his cane directly on the victim’s buttocks,” the report said.

“The canes are over one metre long, 1.25cm in diameter and rinsed in saltwater so it is heavy. It travels up to 160 kilometres per hour to shred the victim’s naked skin, turn the fatty tissue into pulp and leave permanent scars that extend all the way to muscle fibres.”

Bucket of iodine

The report added that the impact of the caning causes the inmate to lose muscle control in the buttocks and at times even over his urinary and bowel functions. Nom Khai nodded silently when asked if this account was accurate.

“Before we left the area we had to bend over in front of a guard who dipped a paint brush in a bucket of iodine and brushed it over our wounds,” he said. “That was all the medical treatment we got.”

“I had to lie on my stomach for the first week and I was only able to sit after a few weeks. The scar is still visible and even now it hurts if I sit for too long.”

Since no special clothing is provided to the caned inmates, they cut out the seat of their pants to avoid the cloth from sticking to the wound.

Nom Khai was released four days after his caning and promptly sold to a syndicate in Thailand by, he alleged, Malaysian authorities. FMT was unable to verify this claim. But he returned to Malaysia within a week.

“I’m seeking asylum in the US,” he explained. “As soon as I am granted it, I will bring the rest of my family to Malaysia and we will leave together. I don’t want to live here anymore.”

Since his detention, Nom Khai has been arrested five more times but none resulted in another caning sentence. He continues to live in fear but insisted that he has no other choice.

“I left Myanmar because the junta took my father away and returned him with two broken legs,” he said. “Then the junta came for me, so I ran to Thailand and now I’m here. I’m the sole breadwinner and I’m earning more in Malaysia than I did in Thailand.”

“But it’s a difficult situation. If I return to Myanmar, I will surely be killed. If I remain in Malaysia, I am an illegal and the punishment for that is like a death sentence.”

*In 1996, amendments to the Immigration Act made caning mandatory for illegal entry and forging of immigration documents. In 2002, Parliament made immigration violations punishable by “whipping of not more than six strokes.”