Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Monday, November 25, 1996.
Grant Peck, Associated Press Writer
On the second day of her two-day tour of northern Thailand, an area ravaged by AIDS and the sale of girls into sexual slavery, Mrs. Clinton toured a shelter founded by two American missionaries that houses 151 girls from ethnic hill tribes.
The girls at the New Life Center are either at risk of being sold into Thailand's huge sex industry by their parents, who are seeking income for either survival or status, or they have already been rescued from brothels or quasi-prostitution as restaurant hostesses. The center tries to educate them and give them vocational training.
Mrs. Clinton was welcomed by 30 girls, some wearing traditional black garb and elaborate silver-spangled hats. Mrs. Clinton joked that she couldn't perform their complicated dances of greeting, then joined a panel discussion with the directors and some of the girls.
"When you sell a young girl, that brings a very limited benefit for a few years," Mrs. Clinton said. "When you educate a girl, that brings a lifetime of benefit to a family."
As she left, Mrs. Clinton walked over to a wheelchair-bound girl named Mi Cha Ach Mae, who resides in the center's hospice for AIDS patients and is in the final stages of the disease. The girl was sold by her parents as a house maid when she was 10 and was eventually forced into prostitution.
Mrs. Clinton touched her on the wrist and said a few words of encouragement. The girl pressed her hands together in a prayer position and nodded, the traditional Thai gesture of respect.
The center was founded by American Baptist missionaries Paul and Elaine Lewis, who worked for more than 40 years with the Lahu and Akha people, who live by subsistence agriculture in remote areas and have few survival tools in Thailand's rapidly modernizing society.
In a speech later at Chiang Mai University, Mrs. Clinton urged Burma's military regime to open a serious dialogue with Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The ruling junta in Burma, Thailand's western neighbor, has recently stepped up a crackdown on Suu Kyi's movement.
Mrs. Clinton said Thailand, Washington's strongest ally in Southeast Asia, had shown an "enlightened example" by providing a haven for students and minority groups fleeing repression in Burma.
"We all hope that Burmese refugees will be able to cross back to their homeland soon," she said, "but such an outcome depends on real political dialogue, and that dialogue must be serious and must commence between Aung San Suu Kyi and the military regime in Burma."
Meanwhile, in Bangkok, exiled Burmese students delivered a letter to the U.S. Embassy urging President Clinton to use his influence with Burma's neighbors to "clarify the policy of the United States towards the Burmese dictatorship."
Clinton was joining his wife tonight, after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Philippines, for the first state visit to Thailand by a U.S. president since 1969.
On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton inspected other anti-prostitution projects.
Earlier in the day, Mrs. Clinton inspected a U.S.-aided program in Chiang Rai province that has provided scholarships, vocational training and jobs to some 1,200 girls to give families that might sell their daughters an alternative source of income.
Mrs. Clinton toured a school that extends the girls' education after mandatory schooling stops at 12 -- an age when many are bought by middlemen for delivery into the garish brothels of Bangkok and elsewhere. Many die of AIDS. Thailand has an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 prostitutes.
Girls can be sold for $1,000 and send remittances home to their parents afterward. Having a daughter as a prostitute can mean the difference between poverty and a new home, motorcycle and status.
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