Sex-trade women kept like slaves

Many Filipino and Thai women brought to Hong Kong for work in hostess bars are being imprisoned under guard in tiny flats during the daytime - only being released at night to work, it has been revealed.

As many as 16 women are sometimes crowded into a 500-square-foot flat, constantly under watch, and often two to a bed.

They are recruited in the Philippines and Thailand as entertainers to work in the nightclubs of Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui, often without being told they will have to work as escorts providing sex to customers outside the bars.

Robyn Emerton, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong's law faculty, uncovered the shocking conditions in which the women are kept in a ground-breaking investigation into the trafficking of women for prostitution.

Ms Emerton's report criticises police for the lack of prosecutions in recent years and suggests they are not actively pursuing the traffickers who bring in prostitutes. Police reported 80 cases and 20 arrests in 1994, but only three cases in 1999 and none in 1998, her research showed.

'Given that organised crime syndicates, including triad societies, seem to have such a high stake in the business, it seems highly unlikely that trafficking activities have abated so dramatically in this period,' her report said.

'Rather, the figures strongly suggest that traffickers are not being actively pursued. The current emphasis of the police seems to be on pursuing and punishing women, rather than traffickers.'