Myanmar’s poor turn to prostitution in China

JIEGAO, China, (AFP) - The spaces behind the rusty garage doors are meant for storage but they instead house dozens of young women from Myanmar like Thin Thin Thay, refugees of the bitter poverty afflicting their home country. In the late afternoon, Thin Thin Thay's big brown eyes peer out from the half open garage door onto the street in Jiegao, a Chinese town bordering Myanmar where prostitution has followed on the back of flourishing trade.

Across this secluded street only a flimsy wire fence separates Jiegao in southern China's Yunnan province from Myanmar, but at night under the hue of garish pink lights it is a world apart. As a quiet darkness descends across the border, this nameless street in Jiegao turns into a bustling sex market, with groups of young women in high-heels impatiently awaiting for itinerant Chinese and Myanmar traders.

"Of course, I'm not happy here and I don't like what I do," said the thin 23-year-old sitting on a filthy sofa beneath the walls papered with posters of women. "But there was not much else I could do," she said. Like most of the girls here Thin Thin Thay is a product of a nation that despite its immense natural wealth is devastated by poverty, appalling school standards and lack of work.

"They come here to make money and the faster they can make their money, then the try and get home," said Oakkar Myo, a young man working on both sides of the border in construction. Thin Thin Thay's life is also marked by personal tragedy -- the loss of her father and brothers four years ago in fishing accident left her mother to fend for herself -- but her financial difficulties are all too commonly heard.

When her 68-year-old mother became seriously ill her hairdresser's salary of 30,000 kyat (four dollars) a month made it impossible to live."We couldn't afford food like rice, and we couldn't buy any medicine," she said. Her friend Tha Thi, 22, tells a similar story of the hopeless poverty and lack of opportunity that drove her to try her luck in China, which has a much more open prostitution scene than in Myanmar.

"At least I can send money to my family from here," said Tha Thi, her breath heavy with alcohol. It is this dead-end impoverishment that is one root cause of the nationwide protests against the military regime that has ruled the Southeast Asian nation formerly known as Burma in one form or another since 1962.

Outraged residents began taking to the streets this month in the Southeast Asian nation after fuel prices were doubled on August 15, prompting a violent crackdown this week on the mass anti-government protests. Almost all the girls here have heard of the rallies that have seen people crowd the streets of Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, and resulted in the deaths of at least nine people.

Traders frequenting this street said that they had yet to see any signs of unrest in northern Myanmar, but with business ground to a halt by the internal strife, were worried what the future would hold."Nobody is buying anything," said Sai Saing Mine, 33, as he played pool in a small bar next to Thin Thin Thay's garage.