Men posing as Thai police rape 12-year-old Burmese migrant worker

May 6, 2009

WCRP: A twelve-year-old Burmese migrant child was gang raped by five Thai men posing as police in Minburi Sub-district, Bangkok.

Early in the morning, at around 2am on May 2, a group of five men came to the apartment where a Burmese migrant worker family was living. Pretending they were Thai policemen coming to check their work permit cards, they ordered the workers to open the door. Upon entering they half-heartedly checked work permit cards, ignoring some of the residents, and proceeded to search each room.

According to the aunt who is living with the child, “They captured the two children by showing us their gun and also stole a mobile phone which cost around 5,000 Baht as well as another 25,000 Baht in cash.” The girl who is from Ye township works with her aunt at a construction site in Miniburi, while her mother works farther away in Bangkok.

The men then drove away with the two children and after a few minutes stopped their car near a banana farm. One man held the 18-year-old boy at gunpoint while the others took girl out beside the road. According to the 18-year-old boy, each of the men then raped the young girl.

“During the rape she nearly lost conscious because of pain. After they raped her, they left both children on the road side with 100 baht to get a ride back home. The girl was so terrified she couldn’t speak,” said the victim’s aunt.

Lost and unable to get back home, the children proceeded to just walk along the road. Back home the aunt had prepared a search party to sweep the neighborhood, and luckily found the two children at about 6am.

The 5 men were not immediately followed for fear an encounter would bring additional violence. The Burmese workers were also worried about being arrested as some of them did not posses a work permit card.

Additionally the victim’s mother didn’t want to contact the police about the case because, as a migrant worker, if the police needed to question her about the incident, she would have to go to the police station. Leaving work and missing that time could result in the loss of her job.

The migrant family did inform their employer about the incident, but he took no action other than to send the child to the hospital for a medical check. The employer never contacted the police for fear the 5 might have actually been police officers. He was concerned that if they were real police the men would make problems for him and his business, as well as the potential loss of face over the incident.

However the doctor who preformed the medical examination informed the employer that in fact the rape of the 12 year old was not a small issue, and because of its significance the police should be contacted.

Written by HURFOM · Filed Under News