Quoting from your link regarding the Lao women
[QUOTE=Rocko20;2970672]-snip-
Thats the point, its not legal. It happened to Lao WGs as well and many Lao women look Thai.
[url]https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/prostitution-04082024184617.html[/url]
I dont understand why mongers continue to think its legal. Its technically still illegal, but its simply rarely enforced so everyone can get their tea money, its really not rocket science.[/QUOTE]Haven't you noticed that every linked report posted by you and others trying to prove the simple act of consenting adults exchanging sex for money is illegal is loaded with tangential factors and qualifiers that are illegal other than that simple act?
From your Lao girls arrested link:
[QUOTE]Authorities in Thailand have arrested eight Lao women, seven of whom [b]entered the country illegally[/b] to work as prostitutes, and one who worked as their madam, Radio Free Asia has learned.
............
"Usually, people from Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar are allowed to work in Thailand in only certain types of work like construction, [b]but not in entertainment venues or karaoke bars[/b], Col. Pattanapong Sripinproh of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Unit told RFA Lao.
[B]They are not allowed to work as bar girls or drink girls, he said. If they do, theyll be arrested.[/b][/QUOTE]Who are the Thai freelancers paying the cops tea money?
Instead of calling it The Prostitution Prevention and Supression Act why didn't they just call it The Criminalization of Prostitution Act? If they meant to make it illegal in light of The Thai Penal Code failing to do so, why just lick around the edges with this attempt only to "prevent" and "supress" an act that is otherwise not illegal in Thailand?
So this "technically illegal" act as every publication appears to have followed some template to repeat over and over while zero, none of them refer to any Title or Section of the Thai Penal Code to back up their unsubstantiated assertion, is "rarely enforced"?
How about "never" enforced. Because there is no Title or Section in the Thai Penal Code nor a passage in The Prostitution Prevention and Supression Act that clearly states that the act of consenting adults exchanging sex for money is illegal or a crime.
There are only Sections for the tangential factors that invariably show up in these news reports about someone getting arrested; advertising on a public platform, openly and shamefully offering it, running it the same as a legitimate business entrrprise, someone who is not performing the sex living off the proceeds of someone else performing it, procuring or taking by force or seduction (recruiting) someone to work as a prostitute, the usual other age and nonconsentual factors and so on.
Do you know how police in countries where prostitution IS illegal bust the prostitute offering it and customers accepting it?
They don't sit at a distance and "observe" public conversations until they are "certain" someone is openly and shamelessly offering sex for money and then arrest them for having that particular conversation but not for the act itself.
They don't sit around six at a group at sidewalk tables in the heart of Sex For Money districts with so much idle free time on their hands with nothing better to do than hassle bicycle riders walking their bicycles to park at a sidewalk bicycle rack.
The don't wait for the opportunity to bust people for visa violations rather than everyone else in the exact same venue selling Sex For Money but who happen to have no visa problems.
Here is what they do; they wire an attractive plain clothes female police officer, station her on a corner and wait for perpetrators to approach and ask 'How much for a blowjob".
Or they wire a plain clothes male police officer and assign him to walk up to and chat with any likely candidate on the street, African, Lao or otherwise.
Then they just wait for the magic words. Sometimes they string it along until they are in a hotel room or apartment, just to make sure, before they slap on the cuffs.
In several locations in Thailand they would be racking up arrests and 20,000 baht Fines every 15 minutes. Better than tea money.
Has any Thai police force ever done something as obvious and simple as that to "prevent" and "supress" prostitution among the local citizenry?
Not "rarely", has it happened "ever"?
Having observed Thai culture and the Thai mindset over the past 12 years, it is impossible to imagine the government making illegal or a crime anything that an uneducated single mom with few if any better options for making serious good money with her natural resources and initiative, short of her commiting robbery, kidnapping, bodily injury and murder. The public outrage would be historic. They haven't done it and they aren't going to do it.
Yes, I trust him to know the law too.
The Pattaya police colonel and I both noticed they were not arrested for Prostitution. Not even one of them.
And all 60 of those prostitutes were apparently so unfit for the job there were no customers to be found in the vicinity to arrest for that non existant crime either. Not even one.
[QUOTE=Rocko20;2970766]Haven't you noticed they were still arrested for prostitution?
Even Thai women are not immune to random arrests. This is straight from the Pattaya police:
[URL]https://www.newsflare.com/video/220809/sixty-thai-prostitutes-frogmarched-to-police-station-in-sex-trade-crackdown?origin=ids[/URL]
Sorry dude, I trust the Pattaya police colonel over random internet posters who think prostitution in Thailand is legal.
Feel free to contact Colonel Nattithorn Ratananatanan to tell him not to arrest sex workers.
Correct. I thought all of this was common knowledge for longtime mongers of Thailand, but apparently not.
Its shows us many mongers haven't really been in Thailand long enough to understand Thai laws, so they get shocked about such news reports that we already knew about decades ago.[/QUOTE]Again, the report you linked and what the Pattaya colonel is quoted to have said about it fully supports my and other "no law against the act of prostitution between consenting adults"" contention and refutes yours:
[B]Sixty Thai prostitutes frogmarched to police station in sex trade crackdown[/B]
[URL]https://www.newsflare.com/video/220809/sixty-thai-prostitutes-frogmarched-to-police-station-in-sex-trade-crackdown?origin=ids[/URL]
[QUOTE]This is the bizarre moment 60 Thai hookers were rounded up and [b]arrested to have their details taken - in case they commit crimes in the future.[/b]
Police frogmarched dozens of young woman to the station in Pattaya, Thailand, after picking them up on the red-light strip Beach Road. The prostitutes had their IDs recorded, pictures taken and fingerprints marked - with police heralding the ''grand crime [b]prevention[/b] measure''.
Footage shows them being herded from police pick-up trucks and covering their faces as they are ushered in lines into the station. [B]They were released an hour late.[/b]
Critics said it was unfair to stigmatise the group of young women and an invasion of their privacy. Sue Bangsai, who runs a support group for Thai women in the sex trade, said: 'Police should be supporting the women not demonising them even more.'
"Sex workers risk abuse from customers every day but often their complaints are not heard.
''They often choose this work through a lack of other options and they [b]should not be treated as criminals.''[/b]
Colonel Nattithorn Ratananatanan from the City's police station said: [b]''Ladies who were loitering under trees along the Beach Road were taken to the police station in order to prevent crime."[/b]
"We are following the policy [b]to suppress the spread of prostitution.[/b] Officers split up and tackled the area and when they saw women [b]showing signs of prostitution [/b]they were arrested.
''Background checks were made and their details were added to a database. When tourists have problems in the future we can show the pictures for them to identify the offender.''[/QUOTE]Now, I have gone ahead and highlighted the parts where the prostitutes were herded, rounded up and arrested for "showing signs of prostitution" that no one here has refuted is indeed cited specifically in The Thai Penal Code as illegal, a crime, and repeated in The Prostitution Prevention and Supression Act as a means to prevent and suppress an act nobody in authority apparently can find the words to specifically declare as illegal, a crime.
As followed by the Pattaya police here.
So if you will kindly highlight the parts where the Pattaya police colonel states even one of those 60 Thai ladies was arrested for Prostitution rather than for "showing signs of prostitution", presumably openly and shamefully enough to justify an arrest for that particular infraction, we can take it from there.
What have you heard they are they detained for? Exactly.
[QUOTE=MrEnternational;2970741]To throw another log on the fire, immigration sometimes detain the chicks at the airport who are heading to Bahrain to be hookers.[/QUOTE]Have you heard they are detained to be questioned about who recruited them by force or seduction to be taken to Bahrain to work as hookers? That would make sense and certainly fits the laws on the issue.
Because we now all know that particular act of procurement for the purposes of taking someone to engage in prostitution either in or outside of Thailand is specifically cited as illegal and punishable by fine and / or prison sentence in The Thai Penal Code and The Prostitution Prevention and Supresson Act.
For the recruiter / procurer, that is. Not for the hookers or their customers in or outside of Thailand. There is no specific law for that cited in The Code or The Act.
Inaccurate use of the word Technically in those news reports
[QUOTE=PhilipMarlow;2970789]A friendly word of advice. Whenever you're in Thailand, if you ever find yourself in need of a criminal defense attorney, be sure to get one who didn't get his law education from website news stories and from Thai police colonels. Or from mongers who have been in Thailand a long time. Find one who knows what the Thai penal code is, and understands it.[/QUOTE]I wonder if it is a bad translation by the editors of those news reports or are they simply towing the Thai cultural line of protecting the image of the country by using the word "technically" so often.
"Technically, prostitution is illegal in Thailand but blah blah blah. ".
Of course, that is just the point; prostitution is not illegal "technically". Not by the definition of the word "technically", as in:
According to the facts or exact meaning of something; strictly.
If there was a law in the Thai Penal Code or the nice try but still missed the target The Prostitution Prevention and Supression Act that specifically states the exchange of money for sex between consenting adults is illegal, a crime, that would be "tecnically" illegal. And then they could cite the specific Title and Section in The Code or The Act that strictly states the exact words and facts that make it so. But there isn't one.
"Roughly", "approximately" or "vaguely" might be accurate I suppose. But not "technically".
Then again, maybe they are playing typical Thai-style word games with the use of the word "illegal", as in not legal or not legitimate.
Now, that's a different matter entirely.
Practitioners of something that has not been officially "legalized" or "decriminalized" can be targeted for demonization, abuse and exploitation without the legal protections afforded legitimate businesses following fully ajudicated contracts and business practices.
And that is the part of prostitution that Thai authorities have not accommodated, although certain Sex Worker Advocates are asking them to do that. They have chosen instead to say nothing about it specifically at all in The Code or The Act. They don't yet want to be seen as a country that tolerates Sex For Money as a legitimate, legally sanctioned and ajudicated business enterprise.
Cannabis sales and consumption? Yes, that is now an officially legalized and legitimate business enterprise in Thailand. With certain qualifiers. Violate those Cannibis issue qualifiers openly and shamefully and you will be busted and arrested for that. But merely smoking or consuming it in Thailand is not a crime. Similar to the situation with prostitution except for the fact that Thailand is not yet ready to officially "legalize" it and accommodate it in law as a legitimate business enterprise.
Which leaves it neither a crime nor legally sanctioned by the government.
Therefore, in ordinary parlance and I dare say even technically that makes it "not a crime" "unindictable", "no law against it" and "legal to do it" regardless whatever word games one wants to play about it being "illegal" or not specifically accommodated or sanctioned by law.
