Working for the Yellow Slave Trade

Many instances of complicity

Bangkok Post editors in the pay of traffickers in women and children working for ECPAT and Thai police

The leading English-language daily newspaper in Thailand, the Bangkok Post, printed an article in its features section, called Outlook, on May 5, 2004 to publicize a local “non-governmental organization” (“NGO”) that is headquartered in Bangkok, called End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes, better known by the acronym, ECPAT.

This NGO was created about 16 years ago by Thais. It was called End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism and known by the same acronym. Initially, ECPAT, or its promoters, sought to blame foreign tourists for the most abhorrent aspects of the yellow slave trade   -   pedophilia and child prostitution. But given the fact that 95% of pedophiles in Thailand are local Thais, the name of the NGO was unrealistic and it was eventually compelled to change it.

Otherwise, ECPAT was created for cosmetic purposes.

ECPAT remained a virtually unknown NGO that did little more than peddle literature about itself and pedophilia through the offices of the International Catholic Child Bureau (ICCB), a worldwide organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, and send representatives to meetings and conventions. 

In Thailand, the police work hand in glove with slavers. ECPAT is staffed by "volunteers" who, for the most part, come from marginal social and economical backgrounds and pursue a marginal existence. Thus, ECPAT representatives often steadfastly deny any police complicity in the trade and refuse to consider complaints involving local trafficking cases.  

Other ex-patriates in Thailand who work for NGOs in child protection use their connections to cover their own complicity in the trade. 

Not wanting to disturb the yellow slave trade, representatives of the NGOs like to claim that they require evidence of sexual exploitation of a victim of kidnappers and traffickers before considering the case.

Thai police, prosecutors and judges and welfare and labor officials in Thailand are notoriously corrupt and complicit in the traffic and exploitation of children for many purposes, including sex. They refuse to consider or investigate complaints. Often, they refer complainants to ECPAT or other NGOs in Bangkok, like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) or the Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights (CPCR), or to the politician, Paveena Hongsakula, or to foreign embassies.   

ECPAT personnel turn the relatives of victims away. They tell them to go back to the police. They insist that they cannot consider requests for help without evidence of sexual exploitation for commercial purposes of the missing child beforehand.

ECPAT is just one organization that colludes with traffickers and complicit officials. CPCR is another. Paveena Honsakula is another. The Thai Red Cross Society is another.

These persons and organizations, or their sponsors, pay journalists and publishers to publicize them. I spotted one such article, about ECPAT, in the features section, Outlook, of the Bangkok Post in early May 2004.

Thus, I complained about the obnoxious behavior of the police and ECPAT personnel toward the relatives of victims of traffickers in a letter to the editors in the newspaper's letters' section, Postbag, on May 5 of last year, 2004.

The Bangkok Post ran a letter in reply, signed “ECPAT International”, on May 15, 2004 that attacked me (and relatives of victims of traffickers who complained about the run-around that they were given by Thai police and ECPAT personnel) with insults, insinuations and defamation (copy attached).

In an attempt to defend their vulgar behavior and intimidate complainants, ECPAT personnel resorted to defamation and innuendo. In their letter to the Editors, they insinuated that I   -   and the relatives of victims   -   opposed efforts to protect children; they called us criminals and demanded our condemnation.

The ECPAT letter could not go unanswered.

I wrote back to the Bangkok Post. I added something that I had omitted from my first letter, on May 8   -   that ECPAT personnel are familiar with the con-game run by inept and corrupt policemen and conspire with them to obstruct and delay the rescue of kidnapped and trafficked children. They tell the victims' relatives that only the police can help them, but they refuse to assist them in contacting the police. They refuse to urge the police to cooperate.

Any organization, like ECPAT, that refuses to remind the local police of its duty and abets its misconduct, especially in cases of kidnapping and trafficking in children, should be shut down. Complaints that expose such reprehensible behavior by ECPAT personnel or other NGOs should be encouraged, not condemned.

The letter to the editors, signed ECPAT International, in Postbag on May 15, 2004 is an example of the typically rude and insulting conduct of ECPAT personnel toward the relatives of missing, kidnapped and trafficked children, who have been sent to them.

The editor of Outlook, Sunitsuda Ekkachai, is a pseudo-communist Thai woman of early middle age who writes naïve, simple-minded drivel of the kind that often finds its way in American high school newspapers. She prizes her contacts with NGOs that claim a concern for children. Thus, she frequently prints articles about local NGOs that are notorious for their complicity in the traffic in women and children. Over the years, this section has played up gangsters in government and NGOs like Paveena Honsakula, Sanphasit Koompraphant (CPCR), Wallop _________ (Foundation for Better Life for Children), Surasak Sudtharom (police), Vitit Muntharbhorn (Chulalongkhorn University), Trakul WinnitnaIwappak and Wanchai Rootanawong (Attorney General’s Office), and others as reform-minded individuals tring to save women and children from traffickers and procurers.  

The editor of Postbag, Kanjana Spindler, excluded my reply from publication. She probably had conflicts of interests, perhaps stemming from some business arrangement with ECPAT or other NGOs, or she had perverse personal reasons.

Ms. Sunitsuda and Ms. Kanjana work hand in glove with traffickers. Ms. Kanjana retired late last year. The sooner Ms. Sunitsuda is gone the better it will be for all. 

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Editor's note: The above was written in early 2005.