(News)Bakun sex slaves cry for help

OMG......this news turn out in Star paper juz 2 days b4 i am going Bakun~ muaha
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/8/3/nation/18485558&sec=nation
Friday August 3, 2007
Bakun sex slaves cry for help

By STEPHEN THEN

MIRI: Gangsters are believed to be holding several foreign women as sex slaves at the giant Bakun dam site, in remote central Sarawak, and the women are crying for help through SMSes to The Star.

Their fear and desperation were also expressed in text messages about a grave the women had found with a crossed-stake planted on it.

The grave served as a chilling reminder that there was no way out but death for those who defied the gangsters.

A non-governmental organisation came to know about their plight and gave the women the telephone number of this reporter.

A woman, who has been sending the messages and making calls to The Star, claimed that the foreign women were being confined and abused for sex services.

The messages were accompanied by appeals for help. Some of the messages read:

> Pls sir help us.

> Not fine, sir.

> We cannot stand here sir.

> My friends very pitiful here.

> Can you come help us sir?

The Star has forwarded the text messages to senior police officers in Bukit Aman for action. Some 2,000 people are working at the 60,000ha Bakun dam, which is about the size of Singapore.

Sarawak Police Commissioner Datuk Talib Jamal confirmed that police had evidence of people bringing women to the project site for sex.

“They bring in the women to ‘service’ workers in and around the Bakun project site,” he said, adding that due to the magnitude of the project, the RM6bil Bakun hydroelectric dam had attracted many workers.

He said certain people had set up makeshift entertainment centres there for the workers’ leisure.

It is learnt that the women are moved around in four-wheel-drive vehicles and vans to the entertainment centres.

Labourers involved in timber fields and oil palm plantations within the Kapit Division are also said to be enjoying the sex services.

Gangsters and syndicates are said to be supplying the women, both local and foreign, to the workers at the project site in Belaga district.

“These people are cashing in on the situation. We believe some of these women were brought into the state illegally,” Comm Talib told The Star.

On Tuesday night, police crippled one of the suspected syndicates providing the sex services.

A pimp and 10 women from Indonesia, the Philippines and China were picked up about 189km from Bintulu town, near Bakun.

Asked how the women were brought into Sarawak, Comm Talib said there were two possibilities – via entry points and transported to Bakun to be used as sex slaves, or smuggled in over the porous 1,000km Sarawak-Kalimantan border.