Police Shut down Biggest Thai Prostitution Ring in Germany’s History
On Wednesday, German authorities reported carrying out the biggest raid in their history of an organized crime ring that trafficked women and Trans women from Thailand for prostitution. Alexander Badle, from Frankfurt’s prosecutor’s office said that the crime ring had a specialty of targeting Germany’s transsexual market in the sex industry.
The German police force raided over 60 brothels in 12 out of Germany’s 16 states. Prosecutors suspect 56 responsible for trafficking and 41 of them to be women. Badle, says that the victims were brought in with tourist visas that did not allow them to work. The women were led to believe they would be compensated for their work whereas in reality they had to hand over all of their pay in order to pay off their smuggling fee, which cost anywhere from 618,000 to 1.4 million baht.
Even though Thailand has a permissible attitude towards Trans people, they still lack laws to identify their sex which means a social stigma against them and a lack of healthcare pushing them to “social, economic and legal margins”.
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