KUALA LUMPUR: Maria thought life was good. She had a job in Malaysia as a secretary and was going to be sending money back home to help her family make ends meet. “It was great, got this job and then came here to Malaysia,” she told Bikyamasr.com at her Kuala Lumpur flat. “Then I found out they didn't want me as a secretary, but as a sex worker.” Maria is one of the lucky ones who was able to escape before being forced to work in one of the numerous brothels that have sprouted up across Malaysia. But the recent arrest of two Singapore nationals over human trafficking of at least two Filipino women and their subsequent conviction in a Kuala Lumpur court has shown Malaysia could finally be getting serious about the trafficking of women into the country. The Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur convicted Eugene Beng Hua Lim, a.k.a. Alfred Lim, on two counts of human trafficking, and sentenced him to 3 years of imprisonment for each count. In June 2008, Marilyn Bagsit and Marilou Capistrano and 4 other Filipino women escaped Lim's agency offices, after enduring abuse and maltreatment. They asked the Philippine embassy for assistance and cooperated with Malaysian authorities in pursuing a criminal complaint against Lim. Malaysia's Attorney General's Chambers filed a criminal case against Lim in July 2009. In June 2010, Bagsit and Capistrano testified in court that they were recruited by Lim's Filipino agent from their hometowns in Luzon, even though they did not have sufficient documentation. They were both sent to Malaysia to work as domestic helpers, but they were mistreated by their employers. When they sought refuge at Lim's agency, they suffered further verbal and physical abuse. Lim even threatened they will be sold in prostitution to recover the costs of recruiting and deploying them. For women like Maria, they say that while the jail sentence is “too lenient” it is a step in the right direction. “These kinds of people are bad for the world and should go to jail longer, but at least the court is doing something,” she added.
