Phuket Immigration Control Centre (PICC) officers arrested four Ugandan and Tanzanian women for illegally engaging in prostitution in the province.
Residents in Phuket filed complaints with the PICC police, reporting that they had witnessed foreign women offering sexual services to foreign visitors in Soi Bangla, in the Patong area of Phuket. Phuket Times also shared pictures of the women, taken while they were talking to men at the scene.
Acting on the tip-off, officers monitored the women in Soi Bangla until they were certain of their involvement in prostitution. At that point, the officers identified themselves and successfully arrested the four women at the scene.
The four foreign suspects are identified as 34 year old Ugandan woman Kembabazi, 27 year old Ugandan woman Nancige, 22 year old Ugandan woman Ajambo, and 29 year old Tanzanian woman Sangana.
They were charged under Section 5 of the Act on Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution: contracting, inviting, introducing, or following people in a public place for prostitution. The penalty is a fine of 1,000 baht.
After paying the fine, each woman will be deported from Thailand as punishment. No entry ban will be issued on the foreign suspects.
Some Thai netizens raised questions about the police operation, pointing out that Thai sex workers were also present at the scene, yet officers chose to ignore them. One Thai man commented, “Arrest foreigners, so Thai sex workers can continue!”
Others urged the police to monitor Vietnamese, Filipina, and Russian sex workers more closely. Some accused the Thai police of being racist in arresting these four foreign women because of their skin colour, stating that there are far more Russian workers than people of colour.
In a related story, a group of alleged Uzbek sex workers and their procurer were involved in a physical altercation with a newcomer of the same nationality on Pattaya Beach at the beginning of November. They reportedly fought over customers and the locations where they stood to offer services to beachgoers.
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