Another voice

Thai `slave-girl' mystery

Auberon Waugh

y n the Spectator for 17 April I drew atten- tion to a most affecting article written by John Pilger which had been splashed all over the Daily Mirror's front page on 22 March and occupied three full pages inside. Over a large photograph of a pretty Thai girl of eight was written: 'EXCLUSIVE: I bought this child for £85'. Underneath, we read: `SUNEE: the little girl sold as a slave in Thailand: JOHN PILGER reports from Bangkok, Thailand.'

The story which, said Mr Pilger, 'graphically illustrates the trade in slave children that has become a major industry in Thailand' was followed by four letters, apparently from readers, which appeared in the Mirror on 29 March. It did not occur to me to doubt Mr Pilger's account of buying an eight-year-old Thai girl on Mir- ror expenses in Bangkok and returning her to her mother in the north of Thailand. The Thai Government is acutely aware of child exploitation, and has a permanent branch of its Labour Department, with 64 inspec- tors, trying to combat it. In fact, the Woman and • Child Labour Division welcomes assistance from the press in ex- posing child abuse, although Thai newspapers are regrettably uninterested in what has always been a feature of South- East Asian peasant society. But Mr Pilger's story was picked up by the Thai daily Matuphum on 7 April, as well as by the Australian Daily News, which splashed it on its front page, and by the BBC, whose com- mentator called upon the British Govein- ment to end aid to Thailand on the eve of a visit by the Thai premier to Britain.

The Woman and Child Labour Depart- ment immediately started an inquiry into the case of Sunee Nantapan, aged eight, and her mother, Daeng-toi, described as a widow of 38 in the northern province of Phitsanulok. It took them some time to trace the pair, because they did not live there, but they eventually four:d the tin shack which had been photographed by the Daily Mirror and identified by Mr Pilger as Sunee's home 'which leaned on a mound of scabrous earth. It was one room, beneath a tumbledoir iron roof . . . This was landless poverty as stagnant as the malarial pool beyond.'

No doubt it was all of these things, but it was not Sunee's home, according to the Department's investigations. Nearby was the home of Sunee's mother's sister-in-law, who told them the shack had been used by some nice Englishmen for some filming in which Sunee and her mother had been paid to take part. She gave them Sunee's address in Bangkok ...

Before giving the account of these events as produced at a press conference of the

Labour Department by Sunee and her mother in Bangkok last week, perhaps we may recapitulate some of the salient points of the Sunee story as told by John Pilger in the Daily Mirror.

By Pilger's account, .Sunee had been stolen from her home in the north of Thailand and brought to Bangkok where she had been held for seven days and abominably treated in a shop where 40 other children were for sale. When Pilger bought her for £85 she told him: 'My father is dead. My brothers and sisters went away long ago; I don't know where. On the day I was taken away, my mother was in the fields and this auntie came and told me she was taking me to Bangkok for a happy outing I don't know what Bangkok is or where ... We got to Bangkok; I have never seen a big city before.'

Sunee had never been to school, said Pilger, although the Daily Mirror was now paying for this. When she was taken to Phitsanulok she was unable to identify the place, until greeted emotionally by her mother who, after photographs had been taken, led them to the shack for further photographs.

That, at any rate, is Pilger's story, which prompted Miss J. Walsh, of Liverpool, to write to the Daily Mirror (29 March): 'I just cried for joy when I read John Pilger's ac- count of the reunion between Thailand slave-girl Sunee and her mother. Well done, John, for buying Sunee, eight, for £85 ...'

The account given by Sunee and her mother, Toi, of their reunion is different in several important respects. Far from being a peasant orphan from the north of Thailand, Sunee is a Bangkok schoolgirl whose parents, both of whom are still alive, 'I don't know what they see in each other— who ever heard of a bird and bee going round together?' Spectator 12 June 1982 send her to the Phrompan School in Huey Khwang. She and her mother were asked if they would like to pose for some photographs for some nice Englishmen, whom they knew only as John and Time for which they would be paid a sum of money The nice foreigners also gave Toi some money for a train ticket to the northern town where her sister-in-law lived, saying they would bring Sunee to meet her there for some photographs of a tearful recon- ciliation. They apparently said they were making a film about a hell-factory. Toi told the press conference that she would never have done such a thing if she had kno°11 that it would be used to defame Thailarin. At this press conference, the Director" General of Thailand's Labour Department; Mr Vijit Sangtong, charged Mr Pilger and the Daily Mirror with the deliberate inveri: tion of a cock-and-bull story about Sunee',Il order to discredit Thailand. If the DaitY Mirror actually paid the mother's ticket from Bangkok to Phitsanulok in order in stage this bogus 'reunion', it is hard to Pn.l any other interpretation on it. Otherwise, 't might have been possible to suppose that ci Pilger and his companion, Mr Tim VI (formerly working for the United Nations,. in Thailand), were the innocent victims °I Thai confidence tricksters, although Pilger would still need to explain his reported con- versations with the 'slave-girl' Sunee.

An alternative explanation might be tn

the Thai Department of Labour is involveu in an Argentinian-style cover-up, having persuaded Sunee and Toi to give P4''' evidence, invented a husband for Toi,8 school for Sunee, and an address for OW1'„,

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both in Bangkok. The Labour Minister

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claims to have documents proving "Ar payments made by the Mirror team. !", Pilger claims to have a document provall his illegal purchase of the 'slave-girl'. A this distance, and not having had the °P: portunity to examine the documents or to interrogate Sunee and Toi, I am scarcelY a position to decide between the two stories.: Thailand, as I never tire of pointing olilf is one of only four countries in the whole °s, Asia with a free press. Perhaps it is Prcteb sional jealousy against a visiting Briti„ss journalist's world scoop which exPlal'e why both Thailand's English-languag newspapers — the Bangkok Post and Pla,

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tion Review — which were in a position L" examine documents and which did inte,r, w rogate Sunee and her mother, decided _ give credence to the Minister's accusatioliss against the Daily Mirror in their issues of and 29 May respectively. Strangely enough, I have seen no rnelli; Lion of these accusations in the Britis, press. Perhaps I am being old-fashioned„ but it seems to me that for a major Brit.ls„ newspaper to be accused of fabricatlf! evidence to support an untrue st°yr amounts to a fairly serious charge un any circumstances. If the charge is made v,'„ tfhrierdelsyponsible minister of a resPectahw

government, somewhere might care to look intsoointheebta°c1:(':

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ter, and decide which is telling the truth-