Nai Thar Bu

The 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok focused on the rights of people who are often stigmatized by society. People like sex workers. But Empower (an organization that supports and educates sex workers) was represented at the Conference and provided a space for the voices of such people to be heard. Journalist, Loa Htaw, met one of the women who was part of the Empower delegation and heard the story of her life.

“I haven’t told my story to anyone before but now I am telling you, because I believe you can understand me and tell others why I had to become a sex worker,” says Kiat Htaw who now studies at Empower in Chiang Mai.

Kiat Htaw (31) comes from Karen state and has six sisters and three brothers.
She has been a sex worker for three years. As a young girl she attended school
for just four years before her family secretly crossed the Burma border, like so
many migrants, to find work on farms in Thailand. Since joining Empower she
has been able to take up her studies again.

She begins to smile as she remembers the French man she met in a Chiang Mai bar last year. He has been sending her money each month so she can study.

“I hope my life will start changing. Now I am not a sex worker anymore. I am studying Thai and English at Empower so that I can work with my French friend in future."

Kiat Htaw's friend is about 50 and works as a tourist guide. " He is old and it seems he likes me about 80 per cent," she says. "He doesn’t want to marry but he told me that we can live and work together in future. Maybe I will get a passport and join him."

She tells me the rest of her story. Sometimes her eyes fill with tears:

“My mum died last year but I only heard in April because I couldn’t contact my family for about five years. I lost all details of them. Some people say the boss used to send people to our rooms to steal such contact details so that we could not communicate with other people. That is why I didn’t know what was happening to my parents”.

Then I met a woman from near my village and got a contact phone number for my home. That's how I found out about my mum.

But I could do nothing. I just dressed in a Thai nun's dress and donated some food to the monks for my mother. I lived as a nun for a few days. Then I waited for money from the French man so that I could go back to Burma and meet my dad”.

Kiat Htaw's voice becomes emotional as she describes the four husbands she has lived with, and the difficult decision she made to have an abortion with the third. "I had no choice. I discovered that my husband already had a wife and children. He was from my village, but we met in Bangkok," she explains.

She continues:

"When I went back home I was three months pregnant. Many people were talking about me and my parents were too shy to go out. I also have seven brothers and two sisters. Most of them did not want to talk to me because I was embarrassing them. Everyone kept telling me to have the abortion so that's what I did. As a Buddhist, having an abortion is like killing somebody. But I had no choice.

After five days, I left the village and came to Mae Sot to work in a shop which sells monks' clothing. But I was so weak at the time because of the abortion. I talked to my boss about my problem and she said: if you can’t work you must leave.

Then I met a man who told me to work in the karaoke bars in Bangkok. I agreed and came with other two Burmese friends and one Paoe. We had to give him 6,000 baht per person but he only took us to Chiang Mai.

There he separated us to work in two different bars. That's when my new boss stole my contact details."

Kiat Htaw's voice is strong. But her face reflects many changing emotions as she tells her story. She is quiet for a moment as she remembers her first husband:

"I met him in Bangkok when I was only 17. His village was near mine. We married and we were happy because he was so hard-working. We saved eight kyat of gold (about US$1500) after just one year. We decided we had enough money to go back to Burma.

But when he returned home he also went back to his old girlfriend. I felt so bad. After just two weeks he changed his mind and asked me to forgive him, but my mother said I should not.

If I had taken him back, I don't think I would ever have needed to become a sex worker. I could have been like everyone else."