KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia police reported on Wednesday that they had arrested five Vietnamese women, including a minor of just 15-years-old, on Tuesday for allegedly sex work in the country. Overall, they arrested 8 women, two Indonesians and a Thai woman, during a raid on a bar in Selangor, to the west of Kuala Lumpur. Seven of them are aged between 19 and 25, including four of the Vietnamese, Malaysian newspaper The Sun Daily reported. “The club offers the services of prostitutes at RM150 (US$47), inclusive of a room on the upper floor of the bar,” Rohan Shah Ahmad, vice chief of the Gaming and Secret Societies division, told the newspaper. “Customers are given a discount if they order alcohol,” he said. Ahmad said the police have classified the 15-year-old's case under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, and the rest under the Immigration Act. They have also arrested a man believed to be the pimp and five other people. Earlier, on June 3 the Selangor police busted another sex worker ring involving 9 Vietnamese women and a Chinese aged between 19 and 34 at a factory. Police have repeatedly told Bikyamasr.com that they are pushing forward on cracking down on sex work in the country, but are struggling with limited resources and a rise in the number of young women entering the country illegally to work in the industry. “It is difficult to find the sources of these women and the people responsible for forcing them into this industry,” one police source said on condition of anonymity. “But we are finding more and more evidence that this is a nationwide phenomenon that can be tackled with the proper resources and tackling the problem at the root. The people who participate in buying women are the main problem in Malaysia and we must campaign to stop this,” the source said. In recent months, dozens of young women, often girls, from Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Phillipines have been detained and given medical and psychiatric treatment by the government here after being removed from their situation, officials said.
