Burmese Kill 22 HIV-Positive Prostitutes With Cyanide Injections

The incident has prompted Thai police to halt deportations of Burmese girls caught working as prostitutes in Thailand, the English-language newspaper The Nation said.

Crime Suppression Division Deputy Commander Bancha Jarujareet told the newspaper that officers last June rescued 25 Burmese women from a brothel in the southern city of Ranong. He said all tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

Police deported the women to Burma, where Bancha said he has now learned they were injected with cyanide to prevent them from spreading the disease. The official said he was unaware who gave the women the cyanide or whether they had died.

Bancha, who heads a police anti-prostitution center, told The Nation that no further Burmese girls rescued from brothels would be deported.

Nitiya Thippayanuruksakul, director of Emergency Home, a Bangkok shelter for abused women, said Thai police at the northern border crossing of Mae Sae told her a group of 20 Burmese prostitutes deported last year from the home were murdered by troops of Burma's military regime.

"The police told us the girls were injected with something and buried. All 20 of them killed," she told United Press International. Burmese dissident groups have also recently reported that Burmese girls forced to work as prostitutes have been murdered and their bodies found at sea after they were deported from Thailand.

The Burmese government last year said more 74,000 Burmese have tested positive for the HIV virus that causes AIDS. It said that in some towns in the north of the country, where drug addiction is widespread, between 10 and 90 per cent of those tested were found to have the virus.

Posted by C.T.
From soc.culture.thai newgroup (BITNET)