Masu, an ethnic Hmong, from Burma paid a flesh trader to take her to Thailand where she hoped to find work so that she could support her impoverished family back home.

She landed a job as a maid in a furniture shop owned by an army officer and his wife in Lop Buri, and was promised $30 a month.

Three months later her barely alive body was found dumped. Her head was swollen from severe beatings, her whole body was charred, one hand had been amputated, her whole body wrapped in bandages. In her weakened and schockingly abused state she could barely speak but speak she did.

Her employers had accused her of stealing a mobile phone, a gold necklace and some money. Although she denied it, she was beaten senseless by her employers. They then tied her to a tree and poured petrol over her and set her alight. She screamed her innocence and eventually they put out the fire, cut off her hand for the theft and then left her alone in a darkened room for three days without food or treatment. Thinking her dead, they wrapped her weakened body and dumped her in a wood in Uthai Thani some way away.

Masuu regained conciousness and managed to crawl to a nearby road, where she was quickly found and taken to a hospital by a passer by. In her weakened state she said again and again that her only wish now, was to return home and make 'merit' by putting a gold leaf on a chedi* so she would not have to suffer like this again in her next life.

Masuu died nine days later. She was just seventeen, she was unable to place the leaf on the chedi.

It was over two years later before her brutal murder reached the courts, and this was only because of the efforts of a group of human rights lawyers determined to bring the plight of people such as Masu into the public eye. The truth is that illegal immigrants are persona non grata and as such are afforded no protection by the Thai state and their well being and treatment is of no concern to the Thai state. Thailand is a racist country, immigrants are regarded as people that steal jobs, bring disease, are recidivist criminals, historical enemies or subversive revolutionaries

Masu is not alone in being abused at the hands of brutal employees. Last year in Mae Sot, six migrant workers were beaten and roasted alive on a pile of rubber tyres. A kamnan, or communal elder, was the chief suspect but there was no police investigation. Local people say that the kamnan had no further use for their hard labour and did not want to pay them their wages. So he had them burned alive instead.

Young children are also often sold by their parents to pay off gambling debts, for as little as a couple of dozen dollars, and they are then forced into prostitution.

Hard labour, slave drudges, prostitutes - these are all euphanisms for slavery, which is very much alive and kicking in the so called modern world.

yechydda,

* A chedi - is a domed edifice, often quite tall, under which relics of the Buddha or revered religious teachers are buried.