Thai Woman Jailed For Swiss Prostitution Ring

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Thai woman jailed for Swiss prostitution ring

GENEVA, March 23, 2013 (AFP) - A Swiss court Friday sentenced a Thai woman to six and a half years behind bars for her role in a forced prostitution ring, in one of Switzerland's biggest ever human trafficking cases.

The regional Bern court ruled that the 43-year-old, whose name was not released, was guilty of human trafficking and incitement to prostitution after her network imported around 50 Thai women and men and forced them to sell sex in several Swiss cities, the ATS news agency reported.

The network, which was active between 2008 and 2011 in six Swiss cantons, was at the heart of one of the country's biggest human trafficking cases ever, according to the court.

The woman, a Thai national with a Swiss residence permit, was arrested in 2011 in Germany before being extradited to Switzerland.

When she was arrested, she was carrying documents including identity papers belonging to the victims, Swiss police said last October.

The court said Friday it believed the woman's claim that she was just a pawn in a vast network operating out of Thailand, but said that did not diminish her guilt.

In addition to heading the network of brothels, she reportedly personally ran one in Muellheim in the northern canton of Thurgau.

Police dismantled the network after a Thai woman told Bern authorities she was being held against her will and forced into prostitution at a brothel in the Swiss capital.

Seven people stand accused for their roles in the network.

The madame in the Bern brothel has already been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, ATS reported, and the ringleader's Swiss husband received a partially suspended sentence of two and a half years from the Bern court Friday.

Most of the victims came from poverty in Thailand and many knew they would work as prostitutes in Switzerland, police said, but the massive fees the network charged to get them to the country and to work in its brothels basically forced them to became sex slaves.

Each prostitute had to earn at least 60,000 Swiss francs (50,000 euros, $64,465), before being able to pay down their debt and actually pocket some of the money they made themselves, according to police.

The Bern court pointed out Friday that the ringleader had raked in nearly 1.8 million Swiss francs in less than four years.


-- (c) Copyright AFP 2013-03-23

[Locationthailand]

They should have given her life.

[clockman]

Yes, but what about the Thai gang leaders, in Thailand! they never get caught

[SOTIRIOS]

....a 'pawn'.....what a joke....

...how many years has this been going on....and she has been living 'high off the hog'...

...deflect the blame to foreigners...

...and six and a half years....(...they will never tell you that she may never even serve one day...)

[SOTIRIOS]

...and why was her name not released...

..... do they want to deter human trafficking or not......

[cooked]

This is part of the reason why I couldn't get a Schengen visa from the Swiss embassy in Bangkok for my now wife.

[cup-O-coffee]

In the time it took to do all of this, millions more "humans" have been trafficked. It is an exercise in futility. Society could never handle all these "victims" were they to magically be placed into their keeping. What's the use other than to be able to sleep at night with a fuzzy warm feeling that you took a teaspoonful out of a tidal wave?

[Tomtomtom69]

This is part of the reason why I couldn't get a Schengen visa from the Swiss embassy in Bangkok for my now wife.

My Thai friend, now 30 and turning 31 soon, but then 28, male, unmarried got a Schengen visa but not from the Swiss Embassy but rather the Dutch Embassy I believe, to visit his girlfriend, also Thai who was an au-pair in Holland at the time back in 2011. He has his own business, an online travel company and claims he easily got a visa with just 3000 Euros (equivalent) in his bank account and some documents showing him being the owner of his own company. How could it have been so easy for him and so difficult for your wife? Or maybe that's just it...he's a guy.

[Arkady]

I remember a pretty girl from the Safari in PP when it was a popular
expat watering hole saying she had been recruited to work in Switzerland
to make a lot of money. I thought it sounded like a tall story and
didn't think she would ever get a visa. But the gang was well organised
and found her a young Swiss guy to pose as her fiance and they got a
visa with a lot of faked correspondence and other stuff to convince the
embassy a long term relationship existed and that she had a respectable
background. Then it was off to Zurich. A few months later she was back
on leave weighed down with with a few kilos of gold jewellery and a presposterous looking nose to show
off to the other girls. But her cheerful personality was gone. She
had become a hard case and babbled incessantly about all the apparently
wealthy men who wanted to marry her and were giving her loads of money
and things.

I wonder if she is now a plump hausfrau with grown up kids screaming at her husband in broken Switzer Dutsch in a dreary suburb of Zurich or whether she became a burnt out wreck and was shipped back to her former life of poverty in Isaan.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Arkady

[cooked]

The Swiss embassy boasts about the high percentage of people getting a tourist visa first time. In fact when we went there was a quantity of travel agents getting visas for groups. That must have made out about 90% of the total. Remaining were a few obvious, under the table, well connected bar girls. They probably got visas also. So my then girl friend, now honest wife, as well I assume a few other girls, got refused so that they could show that some people don't get through. I think that most of the people doing the interviewing were Thais / Chinese.

Alles klar?

I had to appeal in Switzerland to get her there so that she could see snow and how life is over there.

By the way if you mention Thai massage to any Swiss male, a knowing leer appears on his face.

[how241]

In the time it took to do all of this, millions more "humans" have been trafficked. It is an exercise in futility. Society could never handle all these "victims" were they to magically be placed into their keeping. What's the use other than to be able to sleep at night with a fuzzy warm feeling that you took a teaspoonful out of a tidal wave?

+1

[belg]

i hope she had a workpermit loooooooooooooooool

what thais are good at have to be exported , right

just kidding

[nahkit]

In the time it took to do all of this, millions more "humans" have been trafficked. It is an exercise in futility. Society could never handle all these "victims" were they to magically be placed into their keeping. What's the use other than to be able to sleep at night with a fuzzy warm feeling that you took a teaspoonful out of a tidal wave?

So what's your solution to the problem then, do nothing? I would imagine that the woman in Bern that was rescued and started all this off is very happy to have been part of your " teaspoonful out of a tidal wave".

[Potosi]

In the time it took to do all of this, millions more "humans" have been trafficked. It is an exercise in futility. Society could never handle all these "victims" were they to magically be placed into their keeping. What's the use other than to be able to sleep at night with a fuzzy warm feeling that you took a teaspoonful out of a tidal wave?

So what's your solution to the problem then, do nothing? I would imagine that the woman in Bern that was rescued and started all this off is very happy to have been part of your " teaspoonful out of a tidal wave".

For sure it doesn't help that the prostitutes can get away with everything by claiming 'human trafficking'. I understood they came on their own, and were aware it's about prostitution? Let's see what they did, visa-regulation violations, illegal occupation, tax evasion for starters? There's a lot of people in the West with debts larger than 60,000 Swiss Francs, from student loans, consumer credits, home loans, and most of them in jobs paid not as good as a prostitute's. That however we can't call slavery.

[spud67]

In the time it took to do all of this, millions more "humans" have been trafficked. It is an exercise in futility. Society could never handle all these "victims" were they to magically be placed into their keeping. What's the use other than to be able to sleep at night with a fuzzy warm feeling that you took a teaspoonful out of a tidal wave?

So what's your solution to the problem then, do nothing? I would imagine that the woman in Bern that was rescued and started all this off is very happy to have been part of your " teaspoonful out of a tidal wave".

Agree with Nahkit. Over the past 200 years, while the industrialized and many other nations made huge gains in eradicating slavery, I suspect there were many loud voices to anyone that would listen, "Society will never be able to handle all of these slaves. Heavens, they'll probably put us all out of work!"

Congrats to the Swiss police in making a dent in this problem. Good luck to any of the ladies now freed who were held against their will.

Well done is better than well said. Always.

[XINLOI]

From the local gossip and some of the women taking off, the latest play on human trafficking is now, in South Africa. These women are promised a job, where they have to pay back their airfare and the list just goes on and on. I thought the Thai BG's were smarter than this. What I have heard is wrong on so many points but the girls are stuck on making the money and going anyway.....

Edited March 24, 2013 by XINLOI

[cup-O-coffee]

In the time it took to do all of this, millions more "humans" have been trafficked. It is an exercise in futility. Society could never handle all these "victims" were they to magically be placed into their keeping. What's the use other than to be able to sleep at night with a fuzzy warm feeling that you took a teaspoonful out of a tidal wave?

So what's your solution to the problem then, do nothing? I would imagine that the woman in Bern that was rescued and started all this off is very happy to have been part of your " teaspoonful out of a tidal wave".

Agree with Nahkit. Over the past 200 years, while the industrialized and many other nations made huge gains in eradicating slavery, I suspect there were many loud voices to anyone that would listen, "Society will never be able to handle all of these slaves. Heavens, they'll probably put us all out of work!"

Congrats to the Swiss police in making a dent in this problem. Good luck to any of the ladies now freed who were held against their will.

Well done is better than well said. Always.

Well, Nahkit, my point is still, "what's the use?"

As spud67 touched upon, I marvel at the stupidity and laxity of the masses, who react with their decent, human emotions to these clap trap "Christmas Carol" human interest stories, where Tiny Tim sits on Scrooges shoulder and wistfully says "God bless us all". It's a deceitful lie, and the issues are so mixed up that the sheep reader doesn't know the truth from the itch on their <deleted>.

To call it human trafficking and take that for face value without attempting the impossible task of splitting hairs and delving into each human trafficking case, and the causes which got that one individual into that situation makes this all a bunch of unreliable clap trap. It is impossible to do, yet necessary, and therein lies the problem. To paint it with a broad brush and call it human trafficking only serves the powers that be and makes anyone believing it an utter fool.

The big joke on all of this is that the serfs are lamenting the so-called slaves. Are they really slaves? The more I read and understand the truths about human trafficking, the more I begin to think that the media and politicians are revealing the truths behind serfdom whereby people willingly turn themselves over to a life of labor to pay off debts. I am certain, Nahkit, that the woman in Bern would lend some truth to that, and we'll probably see her being rounded up in another part of the world after she is returned home and her father and mother and brothers beat her (like the video of the Burmese workers) for not paying off the family debt, and she dutifully packs her rags and sets out again, or is given back to the same person who originally collected her from her family.

There is so much you do not reveal about your knowledge of these things, and I suggest you reserve your criticism until further due diligence is given (or you provide more broad-minded insight) into the Asian mentality about life and its purpose, or lack thereof. I don't have time to go into it all, but I guarantee that this isn't solely a "slave" issue. There is a lot more willingness on both sides than meets the untrained eye.

Edited March 24, 2013 by cup-O-coffee

[Mosha]

The Swiss embassy boasts about the high percentage of people getting a tourist visa first time. In fact when we went there was a quantity of travel agents getting visas for groups. That must have made out about 90% of the total. Remaining were a few obvious, under the table, well connected bar girls. They probably got visas also. So my then girl friend, now honest wife, as well I assume a few other girls, got refused so that they could show that some people don't get through. I think that most of the people doing the interviewing were Thais / Chinese.

Alles klar?

I had to appeal in Switzerland to get her there so that she could see snow and how life is over there.

By the way if you mention Thai massage to any Swiss male, a knowing leer appears on his face.

I would imagine all Western Embassies are the same. Our initial interview at the UK embassy years ago was so negative, my wife decided not to waste any money on pursuing it further.. We were only going so I could sell up. I ended up going alone.