By: LAMPHAI INTATHEP

Published: 23/05/2009 at 12:00 AM

The migrants, all females aged from 12-18, were sent to the Kredtrakarn Protection and Occupational Development Centre after police raided the sweatshop and rescued them on May 14.

The raid followed the police arrest on May 8 of a 15-year-old Lao girl who was selling flower garlands at Wat Rai Khing in Nakhon Pathom province.

The girl, an illegal migrant, told the police that 19 other Lao girls were being kept as slave workers at a house in Samut Sakhon's Krathum Baen district.

Police raided the house on May 14. The house owners, Kasem Pensuk, 48, and Thawanrat Sukprasertngam, 42, were arrested and charged with human trafficking, housing and employing illegal workers, and illegal use of child labour.

The girls said they were forced to make flower garlands from 5am to 8pm every day without pay or days off.

Nang, 14, whose fingers were severely blistered because of the hard work, said she came to work in Thailand to help ease the financial burden of her poor parents back in Laos.

BANGKOK - The pullout under protest of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) from the Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Petchabun in Thailand is a slap in the face to Thailand and Laos, both of which claim their repatriation of Hmong refugees is voluntary. To be sure, many of the refugees are actually economic migrants, but without a transparent screening process it is impossible to tell refugees with serious concerns for their safety from migrants.

MSF's departure is another human-rights embarrassment for Thailand's Abhisit Vejjajiva government which earlier this year came under intense international criticism over revelations its military had pushed Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar back out to sea. Thailand's military, however, appears undeterred and has announced a September 30 date for closing the camp. Critics allege the date was set to make sure all the Hmong were repatriated well before the start of the 2009 Southeast Asia Games in Vientiane, Laos, in December.

Huay Nam Khao camp was set up in 2005 after several thousand Hmong began arriving in Thailand in 2004 claiming persecution from the Lao government. MSF began working in the camp in 2005 providing food and medical relief. The original refugees were later joined by others and the camp population eventually reached a peak of 7,800 people. Thailand had believed the Lao refugee situation had ended with the closure of the last camps in the late 1990s and the agreement of the United States in 2003 to accept remaining Hmong refugees sheltering at Tham Krabok monastery in Saraburi province.

A British woman to be tried in Laos for heroin trafficking secretly impregnated herself with the sperm of another prisoner in an effort to escape the death penalty, according to a government newspaper.

Samantha Orobator's trial, originally scheduled for early May, had been delayed while authorities tried to determine how she could have become pregnant inside the prison.

The 20-year-old was arrested last August, but her case didn't draw international attention until news of her pregnancy became public and concerns initially grew that she could be executed by firing squad if found guilty.

Under criminal law in Laos, a pregnant woman cannot receive the death penalty.

According to Lao officials, Orobator initially told authorities she was pregnant by her boyfriend in Britain, but tests showed no signs of pregnancy.

It was not until March 2 that a hospital test showed she was pregnant, verified by a second test on April 4, police said. That meant she must have become pregnant while in prison.

Orobator's mother recently said her daughter had not been raped by prison officials or fellow prisoners, as some media had reported.

The Vientiane Times quoted police as saying Orobator told authorities she secretly obtained sperm from a fellow prisoner to impregnate herself to avoid the death penalty. The newspaper did not name the sources or give other details.

Orobator was in jail and so could not be reached to confirm or deny the newspaper account. Orobator's mother Jane has said her daughter told her that she had not been sexually assaulted while in prison and that the father of her unborn child was not a Lao prison official.

But Jane Orobator did not reveal the identity of the father.

Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

HANOI (AFP) — The trial of a pregnant British woman charged with drug trafficking was due to start Wednesday in Laos, a British embassy spokesman said, ending weeks of waiting and false starts.

The case of Samantha Orobator, 20, was expected to begin at 0630 GMT. A British legal charity brought her case to light early in May, saying at the time that her trial could be imminent and fearing she could be executed.

"The Lao authorities informed us yesterday that the trial will be going ahead," said the spokesman, who is in the Lao capital Vientiane with three other consular officials who flew there from Bangkok.

The Lao government spokesman, Khenthong Nuanthasing, could not be reached and his office said he was out of the country.

Orobator was detained in August after allegedly being caught with 680 grams (1.5 pounds) of heroin while trying to board a plane to Thailand. Normally, anyone found with more than 500 grams of heroin faces the death penalty.

Laos' National Anti-HIV/AIDS Commission recently released a new report summarizing the HIV/AIDS situation in the country. The report says from 1990 to the end of 2008, authorities were able to perform a random voluntary screening of 175,000 people across the country, which is considered a relatively small number when compared to the total population of almost six million. 

Screening results found 2,858 infected people, with 1,837 having full-blown AIDS, leading to 873 deaths so far. The screening also found a disproportionate increase in the number of female infections. Of the 900 patients currently receiving treatment and drugs from the National Anti-HIV/AIDS Center, 43% are women, many of whom became infected after having sex with husbands or boyfriends who return home from   working illegally in Thailand. A large number of HIV/AIDS-infected Lao women comprises of those who, driven by poverty, went to work in the sex industry in neighboring countries, particularly Thailand. 

Authorities say a major factor contributing to the increase in HIV/AIDS infections in Laos is its central location in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, which links it to all its GMS neighbors. That, combined with Laos pursuing the policy of opening its door to trade, foreign investment and tourism, makes it difficult for Lao authorities to effectively stifle or control the spread of the disease.

Acknowledging the predicament, Laos' Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bounkouang Phichit, says to effectively address this problem requires not only preventive measures, but also treatment as well as seeking out high risk groups and providing them appropriate services. Education, advertisement and dissemination of information are also important to raise awareness, to make people in all walks of life and strata of the society understand the danger of the disease, and know how to prevent themselves from getting infection.

 A doctor treating an AIDS patient LaosThe current HIV/AIDS situation in Laos led the country's National Anti-HIV/AIDS Center to estimate that, in reality, there are more than 10,000 infected people. And another important contributing factor, besides all those mentioned above, is the lack of government budget to fund the efforts to effectively address the problem.