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CAMBODIA-THAILAND: Migrant Villagers Bring Back Worries on AIDS

Chheang Bopha*

TNOAT TRET, Cambodia, May 16 2005 (IPS) - Neth Srey, 35, dreams of one day joining the ranks of the wealthy with the savings that her husband makes from working on a fishing boat in neighbouring Thailand.

In her balcony, Neth is lost in a reverie as she waits for her husband to return after being away for weeks. He is just one of many from Tnoat Tret village in the eastern province of Prey Veng who work in Thailand, whose massive fishing industry is dependent on foreign workers.

After long weeks of tiring labour, he does bring home some money. But whatever little he brought home last time went into clearing the family’s debt of about 2,500 U.S. dollars.

Worse, Srey is haunted by the fear of one day getting HIV/AIDS from her husband, who like many other migrant workers turn to risky sexual behaviour away from home. ”Instead of money, it’s what he brings back home,” she says.

Srey knows very well that her husband visits sex workers while in Thailand. ”He assures me that he uses condoms and says that he would keep me from that disease, AIDS,” says Srey.

When her husband insists on unprotected sex, Srey’s worries rise. ”Before going to the foreign country, my husband was not accustomed to brothels. Now I am afraid…”

Kun Poeuk village in Pak Nam, Rayong, a province with 100 kilometres of coastline located 180 kilometres south-east of the Thai capital Bangkok, is a port with an unending sequence of karaoke lounges and brothels from where deafening music blares.

On their doorsteps, women with heavy make-up approach passers-by. Often, workers who have just come ashore after weeks of being out on sea do not even wait for the night to fall before heading out for some ‘fun’. They feel they have little to fear there: after all, they come from another country – Cambodia.

In the midst of cacophony of the street, a Khmer melody overwhelms the atmosphere. Six tipsy men are seated around a table, passing the microphone to one another, and taking turns to tease an employee at a karaoke lounge.

Among them is Phan, thin and small, who left his wife and four children 10 years ago, to work in Thailand. He was only 24 then. ”I do not have enough money to return to my village,” says Phan. ”I would be greatly ashamed. So I remain here (in Thailand)…”

Money does not seem to be lacking when it comes to indulging in the pleasures of Kun Poeuk. Phan admits having spent 500 baht (12.5 dollars) in one evening of karaoke. ”And then when we are fully drunk, we take the route next to Song Phinorng,” Phan adds, referring to a brothel area.

Porhchay Panchmak of the Thailand-based Centre for AIDS Rights (CAR) explains the vulnerability of foreign fishing workers, saying they do much tougher work. There are hundreds of thousands of migrants working in the Thai fishing industry, including an estimated 180,000 from Cambodia.

Most Cambodian migrants work in fishing, and some say that get paid some 5,000 U.S. dollars after 24 months of working aboard the vessels. They do not have much negotiating power, and the undocumented ones earn less.

Apart from quickly spending their hard-earned money once ashore, ”most of them become drug addicts,” says Porhchay. ”Some of them even borrow (money) to go to those places. They are from the villages where there is nothing. And suddenly, they earn amounts that appear considerable to them, and they discover the temptations of the city. It is not hard to imagine that many are overwhelmed (by this change).”

When he visits commercial sex workers in Song Phinorng, Phan, the Cambodian worker, does not always use condoms. ”It depends,” he says. ”If I am not too drunk, I wear two because I’m afraid of catching AIDS. But when I’m overwhelmed by alcohol, I don’t even know for sure whether I wear them or not.”

Meas, his colleague, looks much older than his real age with his wrinkled face. But is this really due to the hard work, or the nightlife?

Meas cannot decide, but admits that he has never used condoms while having sex with prostitutes. ”I choose only the most beautiful and in good health,” he says. ”I spend 400 baht (about 10 dollars) on a girl. It is not a small amount, so I can insist on not wearing condoms.”

Phet, 25, says she would not take Meas as a client. The young woman, who has a sun tattooed on her left arm, says she refuses to have unprotected sex, even when the money is good.

Phet adds that Cambodian men are more reluctant than Thais to use condoms. ”They think that Thai girls with fair complexions will not infect them,” she says.

Pimps in Song Phinorng, however, are said to take to task men who insist on having unprotected sex with prostitutes.

A study conducted in 2002 by the Ministry of Health in nine of Thailand’s 76 provinces found that in Rayong, 12 to 30 percent of sex workers were HIV-positive.

According to Kanitha Tantaphan, an official with the Department of Planning at the Ministry of Health, the rates of infection are often higher in the coastal or port areas, also home to many migrant workers. But the fact that sizable numbers are undocumented make it difficult to determine the extent of infection among the mobile population of migrants.

Far from Rayong, in the village of Ksaok Tbong in Prey Veng, Cambodia, Khun Nak, a mother of four, is well aware of how men who have gone to Thailand to work fail to live up to their families’ great expectations.

Her husband died two years ago due to HIV/AIDS. The agony of those months has ruined the family. Nak sold the cows and everything else that would fetch her some money. Burdened by debt, she can hardly assume the role of the head of the family now. She is haunted by the fear of having HIV/AIDS herself, but is too poor to afford a blood test.

Many times, ignorance about HIV/AIDS and safer sex is at the root of the problem.

”When we explain to them the dangers of AIDS, some make fun of us saying that they will die anyway,” Pongsak Naunyai of CAR Rayong explains, ”so dying of the disease or of anything else does not make much of a difference.” His organisation has distributed 2,000 condoms to Cambodian fishermen, as a means of encouraging safer sex. ”They promised to use them, but let’s wait and see,” he adds.

Supatra Nacapew, CAR director, indicates that anti-retroviral treatment is available for migrant workers who are HIV-positive. ”But once they return home, they don’t have access to free treatment any more,” worries the director. ”We are now fighting to change the situation and putting pressure on the Thai and Cambodian governments to stop the treatment from being interrupted.”

Meanwhile, in early 2004 a survey by the Prom Denn (‘Border’) organisation in five districts of Prey Veng records 131 cases of AIDS deaths, including 37 who had worked in Thailand.

This should serve as a warning for the villagers, particularly to women who may not be able to demand safer sex with migrant husbands.

Neth Srey regrets not having deterred her husband from returning to Thailand to work. ”We should have opened a small business, very humble… in front of our hut,” she muses. ”I should have told him to live in our village, rather than to face the evil and to risk his life there.”

(*Chheang Bopha of ‘Cambodge Soir’ wrote this story under the ‘Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation Programme’, implemented by IPS Asia-Pacific).