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British Man Held Over Thai 'Sex Trafficking'

That chap is from my home town

There is more of this story and an ITN video here.

Very shortly the UK will sign up to a number of conventions whereby we will be doing a mite more than before to combat trafficking. Just before Christmas a “Competent Authority” convened by the BIA will be created to identify trafficked persons. No one quite knows who will be on the "Competent Authority" yet ( it seems to me that every Muppet smelling a gravy train is gearing up to grab a slice of the pie )but whichever NGO, charity etc gets on board it will have a significant component of police, SOCA etc. The BIA Pilot Project/ competent authority is up and running and gunning for traffickers and not just sex traffickers. It seems to me that the Police and other agencies are taking these cases very seriously despite the fact that they might have to make arduous trips to inhospitable places such as Thailand to further their investigations.

It's a bad bad time to be a trafficker.

THe BIA toolkit says:

Trafficking as a whole has three core elements:

movement of a person

with deception or coercion

into a situation of exploitation

So the agencies will also be gunning for the employers of all sorts of migrant workers. For example if a restaurant were to promise a chef £500 quid a week but then only pay £200 or charge £300 per week rent and the Chef did not have the money to buy a ticket home and was being shouted at as an ingrate......Yep the employer is a trafficker.

ps if identified as trafficked the women in this case will be granted a period of reflection in the UK and not immediately be removed.

Richard

Anyway "som nam nar" seems appropriate for him
colin 244

The website for his PI company has closed down.

http://www.thai-pi.com

More from other newspapers:

Liverpool Daily Post

The Nation

Still more from

Pattaya Daily News

and a bit more detail in
Bangkok Post

quote:

Originally posted by richardb:
a “Competent Authority”

Surely an oxymoron?

Wasn't SOCA also judged to be a massive failure only weeks ago?

Personally I think it is only lip service, as this government often does they will hit the easy targets such as the restaurants etc.

The fact is they should have been stopping many of these girls entering the country in the first place.

quote:

Originally posted by SteveR:

quote:

Originally posted by richardb:
a “Competent Authority”

Surely an oxymoron?

Wasn't SOCA also judged to be a massive failure only weeks ago?

Personally I think it is only lip service, as this government often does they will hit the easy targets such as the restaurants etc.

The fact is they should have been stopping many of these girls entering the country in the first place.

Agreed but "Competent authority" is what its called for now though I am sure it will get a snappy name soon. As for stopping the girls comming in!! False Malaysian passports ( as they are non visa nationals ) is a favorite ( one asian woman looks much like another in the que at T3! ) Its not Thai women who are the "problem" at the moment but loads of 14-17 year old Chinese girls and the odd N Korean as well as rakes of west african kids. All minors all unremovable and parked up with Social Services till the owners or owners of the travel debt turn up. Moldovans too who pass for Romanian and of course all the South Americans on false Spanish/Portugues ID's. Moan over. Maybe best to legalise the oldest proffession, tax it pay NI and the traffickers would maybe be out of a job.

Heck maybe some would make it into the " Highly Skilled Migrant " program.


Richard