Jim Algie

by Bizarre Thailand Tales of Crime, Sex,and Black Magic

  Kamronwit Thoopkrajang, the commander of the Crime Against Children, Juveniles and Women Division (who led the raid along with Paveena Hongsakula, a long-time crusader for the rights of women and children), said these video recordings were used to blackmail the women, and that when the police burst into his house, they found the sorcerer in bed with a 19-year-old bargirl from Bangkok. In the room where he conducted his sex magic rituals, the cops confiscated boxes of condoms, Viagra, firearms, ‘love potions’ and lingerie. Among other items seized at the large compound—which, in addition to the boxing ring, also included a cock-fighting pit—were a new Mercedes-Benz and passbooks for different banks containing almost ten million baht. Police said that Aer scared up business by promoting his supernatural services in many popular Thai publications. For anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 baht, he could allegedly mend severed relationships with his brand of hocus-pocus. Some of his female customers claimed they had been raped, but most said they were shafted by a charlatan whose only ‘magic wand’ in working order was possessed by Viagra, not spirits.

  Facing up to five years behind bars and the confiscation of his assets on charges of public deceit—an offense under the Money Laundering Act—the trickster pulled his greatest sleight-of-hand yet, disappearing into the twilight zone after losing some of his assets and serving a brief jail term, from which he recently reappeared.

  During the political tumult of 2010 that left at least 90 people dead on the streets of Bangkok, the red-shirted protestors resorted to an ancient, supposedly Brahmin ritual, painting the gates of the parliament buildings and the premier’s house with buckets of their blood to put a curse on the government that would force them to resign. But the head of Thailand’s royal Brahmin priests complained that these rituals were a blasphemous travesty. “We don’t use blood in real Brahmin rites and our rites are designed to promote happiness at different stages of life, like at weddings, blessing a newborn, or going to live in a new house,” said Phra Ratchakru Wamadhepmuni. “If they want to donate blood, they should give it to those who really need it.” Deputy Prime Minister, and the head of national security, Suthep Thangsuban, also condemned the bloodletting. “The world sees some people in Thailand as believers in black magic and as uncivilised.” To counter the witchcraft, the government invited religious leaders from the Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Sikh communities to perform blessing ceremonies in front of the government building.

  In several of the photos published in the local press during the protests, a shadowy figure with tattoos on his face appears off to one side. Was the black magician serving as an occult advisor to the red shirts, or making good on his promise to enter the political fray?

  As in the days of ancient Siam warring with the Khmer and the Burmese, and during the time of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra praying to Rahu and practicing occult rituals to strengthen his tenuous grip on power, the country’s body politic remains paralysed by a centuries-old nerve centre of patronage, nepotism and superstition. As Nen Aer once said when he first threatened to run for political office, “All politicians are like magicians. They cast a spell on you, promise all sorts of miracles, and then people will believe anything they say. There’s no more blood on my hands than there is on any politician’s.”

  For the black magician and all the heavyweight politicos he has advised, power, money and sex continue putting curses on policy-making and democratic reforms.

  Empowering Sex Workers

  No issue has ever politicised sex the way HIV and AIDS have. In its first stages in the mid-1980s, when most people believed that only gay men and intravenous drug users got it, the disease was used

  by Christian fundamentalists as an example of an Old Testament-style plague brought down by God to punish the wicked.

  The disease sanctioned every strain of racism, as many claimed it came from Africa, supposedly because a black man had copulated with a monkey. Conspiracy theorists claimed that it was bio-engineered by rich Western governments hell-bent on destroying and taking over the Third World, or that it didn’t exist, or that it was a group of previously known viruses that had mutated into a new and far deadlier malady. In the pharmaceutical community, the disease spawned a multi-billion dollar industry after Robert Gallo, an American biomedical researcher, and several of his colleagues, first identified and isolated the retrovirus in 1984.

  Two years later, the first official case in Thailand hit the front page of the country’s most popular tabloid, Thai Rath, with a headline that read ‘Gay Man Contracts AIDS from Gay Foreigner’.

  Chantawipa ‘Noi’ Apisuk recalled the fear and hysteria sweeping through the bars of Patpong, where she first organised informal English classes for sex workers in the Electric Blue go-go bar, which is still there. “The women working in Patpong were terrified of catching the disease from foreign men and there was a lot of hatred directed towards sex workers for spreading the disease.” The NGO she had just started, Empower (Education Means Protection of Women Engaged in Recreation) became the first such organisation to distribute a pamphlet about HIV and AIDS in the kingdom, as well as giving out free condoms to sex workers and the male patrons of these bars. “The profession of sex work is not the cause of the transmission. Unprotected sex is the cause of the transmission. This is education we are doing, not blaming people,” she said.

  Solely funded by a small grant from a Christian organisation in Tokyo, the NGO faced vehement and vocal opposition. Chumporn Apisuk, a Thai artist who has worked with them since the beginning, recalled, “A lot of people wanted to sweep the issue under the carpet. They didn’t like seeing us out there distributing leaflets and condoms. I guess they thought it was bad for business. So Noi and I had to equip ourselves with whiskey, beer and gin before going out to visit the bars of Patpong,” he said with a laugh.

  As the fatal affliction turned into a full-blown pandemic scything through every sector of society across the world, it became the catalyst for the NGO’s multi-pronged agenda. “HIV taught us to look at the conflicts of gender, human rights, sex work and many other issues,” said Noi.

  At the time, there was only one other NGO in all of Thailand even examining questions of human rights, and no support or recognition from the government. But the pandemic brought Empower’s controversial work to a global audience, winning them as many converts as detractors.

  One of the organisation’s earliest supporters was the late and legendary tycoon, Udom Patpongpanich, who lent half his family name to the roads of Patpong 1 and 2, the capital’s biggest tenderloin and nocturnal bazaar for tourists. Noi may be a radical in some ways, but she remains respectfully Thai in many other respects, adding the honorific khun (‘Mister’) every time she speaks of their benefactor. “Khun Udom came down to greet us and meet the women. He thought that English studies were very useful for the women and he rented us a shop-house for a very cheap price of 16,000 baht a month. Having Khun Udom for a benefactor made us look very good.” The shophouse that they first rented back in 1989, hemmed in by go-go bars like Super Pussy on both sides, is still a nexus for sex workers in Bangkok.

  Empowerment through education has always been at the forefront of the NGO’s approach. “Some people have accused us of promoting prostitution by teaching English to the women. We are giving education to the women. What’s wrong with that? If other Thai people can go to English and Japanese classes at many other language schools, then why shouldn’t sex workers have the same opportunity? The women in Patpong want to speak up for themselves, they want to express their ideas, they want an education and they want to work, but they don’t have time to go to normal schools,” added Noi.

  To this end, the NGO started its own newsletter in 1986. After several name changes, they settled on ‘Bad Girls’ with the cheeky sub-head, “Good girls go to heaven but bad girls go everywhere”, which is both a line from an old Mae West film and a song by Meatloaf. Leaf through some back issues and the contributions from sex workers simmer with rage and buzz with pride. “I don’
t care what people say. We give them pleasure and we get money. That’s enough!” Another wrote, “Don’t call us ‘social garbage’, because we make this world a paradise on earth.”

  The newsletter underlines Empower’s stance that sex work is just another job that women and men can do. This pragmatic philosophy separates them from many other organisations that issue blanket condemnations of the business of pleasure. Francesca Russo, a volunteer English teacher who spent several years giving classes at the Patpong centre while writing a master’s thesis about the organisation, said, “It’s very, very alternative in terms of its philosophy amongst NGOs in Thailand, which tend to think of sex work as a problem rather than a career. But Empower supports women who wish to continue working in the industry. The other organisations are trying to get women out of the industry, or even trying to prevent them from entering in the first place.” What Francesca said is true of many governmental and NGOs around the world that do not see sex work as a viable profession.

  But Empower’s endorsement of this career choice comes with many caveats. The NGO believes that pooying borigan (‘service girls’) should be considered part of the wider service industry. For many years, Empower has been lobbying the Ministry of Labour to bring the bar staff in commercial sex establishments—waitresses, doormen, go-go dancers and cashiers—under the protection of existing labour laws, which would grant them health benefits, severance pay and sick leave. All their efforts have resulted in little more than lip service from the Thai authorities and a lot of unfulfilled promises.

  Surang Janyam, the former manager of the Patpong office who moved upstairs to found SWING, an NGO for male and transgendered sex workers, said, “We believe that sex work is one kind of valid work people can do, but how can we make them safe? How can we ensure they have the same rights as other workers do? And how can they protect themselves?”

  The only laws in existence in Thailand that really protect them are for those under 18 years of age. If underage girls or guys get caught working in the sex trade, she said, they might get put in a state-sponsored shelter, but they’re soon back in another bar with a different fake ID, and she understands why. “Yes, we have free school in Thailand for twelve years, but if the young girls and boys don’t have the money to pay for food, uniforms, transport, how can they study?” Their newsletters are rife with tales of desperation, poverty and dead-end jobs in factories and on farms that led the women to seek more lucrative alternatives.

  For some of these social pariahs, the lack of basic rights has a much more violent impact. Surang has had many run-ins with the Thai police. On one occasion, she took a female sex worker, who’d been beaten bloody by one of her customers, to a police box for help. But when she told the cop that the woman worked in a bar on Patpong, he said they couldn’t do anything to protect her. That issue is not the sole province of sex workers. As Chumporn said, “Any time a Thai woman gets beaten up, the police will usually side with the man.”

  Dee, a male sex worker who drops by Empower and SWING to take different classes, recalled how he and two of his male friends from the bar where they worked were taken to Pattaya by a trio of foreign customers. Once inside a resort bungalow, the men set up a video camera and told them to perform a threesome. They refused and were severely beaten. Fearing persecution and public humiliation, the three Thais did not report the incident to the police.

  Under the Prostitution Prohibition Law of 1960, sex work is still technically illegal in Thailand. “The women are not sure whether or not they are workers or criminals,” said Chumporn, who hosts workshops on theatre and performance art that mix social and political themes in the Patpong centre. “It’s in the interest of the entertainment places to keep this law in effect, because they don’t have to pay any benefits to the workers.” In fact, it took the NGO three years of lobbying the government to have the application forms at these entertainment venues changed. Until then, Chumporn said, the women did not realise that they were actually filling out the same forms police use after making arrests. So the cops had records of every single woman working in these bars. “The police were not using those records for anything, but they didn’t understand that there was anything wrong with this practise or that it was infringing on basic rights.”

  Frustrated by their lack of progress with the Ministry of Labour and club owners, Empower opened the Can Do Bar in Chiang Mai in 2006. Nicely lit and tastefully decorated, the bar defies any seedy stereotypes. In the back is a pool table. Out front is a terrace. The atmosphere is laidback; it’s not one of those ‘hard sell’ bars where patrons are constantly pestered by bargirls spewing the same mercenary inanities (“You buy me cola?”) over and over again. Billed as the only ‘Experitainment Bar’ in Thailand, it may well be one of the few establishments in the world run by sex workers for sex workers.

  More importantly, the Can Do Bar is a kind of laboratory where Empower has put many of its hypotheses into practise. True to their word, they adhere to the labour laws governing the hospitality sector. All the female staff members, who also moonlight as sex workers, receive social security, sick leave and proper days off.

  Because the bar is located on a Thai entertainment strip, far away from the Night Bazaar and other tourist enclaves, they don’t receive a lot of walk-in customers. Mostly it’s word-of-mouth that brings in patrons from all over the world. Liz Cameron, an Australian national who has worked with the Chiang Mai centre for many years, said they have entertained everyone from European diplomats and UN officials to a contingent of sex workers from a Canadian NGO. These visitors have made their mark in the bathrooms, leaving an array of gushing graffiti and sympathetic comments. One of their Canadian ‘sisters’ wrote, “The women of Empower are Goddesses!”

  Touring the bar’s upper floor, it’s easy to spot the twin embryos of knowledge and language that have fertilised the NGO from the beginning. Much like the classroom in the Patpong office, the walls of the study centre in Chiang Mai are lined with similar slogans and letters that spell out the language of self-reliance for working girls—‘bread winner’, ‘medicine’, ‘condom’, ‘happy’—next to polite expressions the women want to learn, such as “Can you buy me a drink, please?” “Do you want company?”

  Empower’s founder, Chantawipa (or Noi), was awakened to the power of the written and spoken word when her family relocated to Boston in 1975, around the same time as end of the Vietnam War. Her early days in the United States were fraught with tension. “They called all of us Asians ‘yellow’.” While studying at Boston College, in between working shifts as a waitress at Pizza Hut, she befriended a number of different Asian minorities and noticed that many women had been leading the protests against the Vietnam War. “It looked to me like women the world over face the same problems of discrimination. We’re all second-class citizens.” Working with different human rights organisations in New York and Boston, covering everything from the forced sterilisation of women in Third World countries to children slaving away in Thai sweatshops, Noi also schooled herself in the protest songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, making many useful contacts that she put to good use upon returning to Thailand in 1985. She quickly realised that many of her aspirations were well ahead of her time (the Human Rights Commission of Thailand was only founded in the late 1990s). While drinking beer with her American colleagues in bars around Patpong, she became a default English teacher and translator for many working girls who wanted to communicate with foreign men they had become involved with. Noi broke into a rendition of ‘Dear John’, a popular song of the Vietnam War era that encapsulated the language barrier that the Western man and Asian woman could not surmount.

  Teaching the women English and the ideas that inform the lingua franca was the starting line for Empower. “When they learn English and get educated on other subjects like human rights, it minimises exploitation at work, and they can make better decisions and regain their pride and self-confidence,” said Noi.

  The language of dehumanisation that keeps t
he downtrodden in their place is evident in the way the streetwalkers lurking in the shadows of Sanam Luang in Bangkok are referred to as ‘tamarind tree ghosts’, while the hookers working the streets around the capital’s Lumpini Park are referred to as ‘Lumpini ghosts’. Such derogatory terms are hardly unique to Thailand. They are endemic everywhere. In Los Angeles, for example, when a pimp or customer murders a prostitute, the police assign the case a low-priority tag known as ‘AVA, NHI’, which stands for ‘Asshole Versus Asshole, No Human Involved’.

  In attempting to rewrite the language of victimisation, Empower, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, published the Bad Girl’s Dictionary in 2007. On sale at the Can Do Bar in Chiang Mai, the dictionary was authored by Pornpit Puckmai and Liz Cameron, with contributions from all the Empower members across the country. Noi and Liz split the editing credits. It’s a fascinating compendium of facts about the sex industry for foreigners in Thailand (although it rarely touches on the much bigger domestic trade), with references to the golden days of Ayuthaya some 400 years ago; the 700,000 GIs from the Vietnam War who came to Thailand for ‘rest and recreation’; the first chrome poles in the go-go bars that came from a strip club in Montreal in the early 1980s; and the fact that the business is second only to rice in generating more foreign exchange. They also quote a report from the International Labour Organisation stating that each year, ‘sex workers send US$300 million dollars home. This is more than any government rural development budget’.